It’s a few minutes before 11 o’clock on a Saturday night, and the Entercom studios suite in downtown Seattle – home to several local radio stations – is deserted and dark except for a small 16th floor corner studio.
Inside the studio, Kevin Diers and Ian Reas, newly crowned hosts of Metal Shop, KISW’s weekly heavy metal show, prepare.
Diers, 24, peruses the show’s Facebook page, monitoring the Metal Shop faithful as they post remarks in anticipation of their weekly dose of metal.
Reas, also 24, runs through the song list, monitoring the on-air music as they prepare for the shows opening.
At 11 p.m. it’s on, as the show opens with a blast, courtesy of Swedish death metal legends At the Gates.
For Reas and Diers, Green River Community College graduates and alumni of the school’s radio station KGRG, it’s been six weeks since they took over the local metal institution from former hosts Steve Rock and Kevin Jacober – also former KGRG DJs.
According to Reas, he already was working at Entercom as a board operator when he found out about the Metal Shop opening.
“Basically, I had expressed interest in doing whatever DJ work I could for 107.7 The End (alternative station),” Reas said. “I just wanted a job in the industry. I heard about the show opening and thought that it was worth a shot.”
The tandem was so confident they would secure the job, they decided to throw a party on the night the new hosts were to be announced.
“Then they announced they were going to call the losers, and we thought, ‘Oh no, why did we have this party?’” Diers said. “Then they called us, and turns out they were just tricking us.”
“This is a probably a poor metal analogy, but we were like 14-year-old ’N Sync fans jumping all over each other when we heard the news,” Reas said.
“I literally ran out of my house into the middle of the street and yelled,” Diers recalled.
Diers, a Kentwood High School graduate, and Reas, a Kentridge High School graduate, met at GRCC and began to hone their craft at KGRG, co-hosting Dead Air.
“I think I speak for Kevin too, but we grew up listening to that station (KGRG),” Reas said. “I used to make mix tapes in my room and call the DJs on the station every five minutes. We used to harass them pretty regularly.”
In the late 1980s, the station, which broadcasts at 250 watts at 89.9 FM, was renowned for being at the forefront of Seattle’s “grunge” movement, helping to break local acts such as Nirvana, Mudhoney and Mother Love Bone.
“I fell in love with KGRG early on because they were like this hidden radio station, almost like pirate radio,” Diers said. “You’d find it and they’d be playing ska, punk and metal and all the stuff I was interested in and no one else was playing.”
“Naturally I just gravitated toward it and started going to all their shows,” Diers added. “And I knew that after high school there would be a place for me there. And it happened and I put in the work. It didn’t come naturally at all. My first break I think I stuttered and screwed it up like five times in a 10-minute break.”
Reas emphasized the importance of their time at KGRG.
“We came up here knowing how to do everything,” Reas said. “They didn’t have to show us how to do anything.”
“It would have taken months to show a new person how to do things,” Diers said. “Just little things, like how confident you are on air to the process, like how to push the buttons. It’s little things we grew comfortable with at our small level. We had the chance to mess up at KGRG.”
“We already made our mistakes there,” Reas added.
With those lessons in hand, Reas and Diers are excited to continue Metal Shop’s legacy on the Seattle music scene.
“We’ve inherited quite a colorful audience,” Reas said. “It’s just a big party every weekend. It’s just fun. We’ve inherited the most fun radio show there is. It’s such high energy. The people who listen to this show love it. It’s not like they’re just stumbling across it. They love metal.”
“We’ll play the mainstream to a certain point, but we’ll play some extreme stuff also and everything in between,” Diers said. “We’re not trying to be the most obscure show ever. This show isn’t about only the things we love. We’re playing stuff for the coolest audience ever. It’s their show.”
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Tune into Metal Shop from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. every Saturday at KISW 99.9 FM.
