Gene Loves Jezebel may not be high on 80s playlists these days, but there has always been something special about them. Formed by brothers Michael and Jay Aston, Porthcawl’s finest came writhing out of the cellar in 1980 with [literally and figuratively] shrieking abandon. Borne of Siouxsie and the burgeoning post-punk movement, they took scything guitar […]
Scandal, sleaze, art and darkness: Sex Gang Children were and remain one of post-punk’s most difficult outpourings. Essentially the vehicle of Andreas McElligott [Andi Sex Gang] with a contentious name borrowed from Boy George*, SGC embodied the diversity, intensity and creativity of the early 80s punk fallout. Any fan of SGC knows the minefield their […]
Wayne Hussey and the Mission had essentially disappeared following the creative black hole of ‘Blue’. The 1996 release created a schism between band and fans – the Blue Nun-guzzling songwriter and once press darling seemed gone for good. All fell silent until Hussey resurrected the band with co-founder Craig Adams for a one-off tour with […]
Terminal Gods followed up their promising ‘Electric Eyes’ and ‘Lessons in Fire’ singles with an EP broadening their stylistic parameters. In the late 1970s the ‘alternative’ music industry was wound tight to the point of implosion – an undercurrent of frustration had begun to occur in the face of bloated and indulgent 60s alumni. As […]
A few years ago a friend put together a low-key but ultimately successful post-punk compilation for a fanzine he was writing called Panic Button. The ‘zine’ was distributed the old-fashioned away: Handing copies out to passers-by who showed a modicum of interest or at least looked interesting; he also plugged it on his late-night university […]
Having fallen victim to lazy, short-sighted journalism, it remains all too easy to write Terminal Gods off as yet another smoke and shades Goth-by-numbers collective. In truth however, there was little tying debut 7 inch ‘Electric Eyes’ to the Sisters’ well-trodden path of danceable gloom – a sing-along slice of leather-clad riffage that owed as […]
Perhaps the cult band of the 1980s, New Model Army effortlessly bridged the gap between the snarling politic of punks first-wave and its darker, more experimental [read: interesting] post-punk cousins. The “f*** you” rhetoric of punk could only go so far, and soon – as Tony Wilson once said – someone was going to want […]
Out of the Cellar 