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Sometimes it’s
hard to believe any of this ever happened. Men dressed like freakshow
extras from ‘The Crow’ packed into the back of Transit vans,
drummers dicing with on stage electrocution, packed houses in places
like Birmingham and Bradford, features in ‘Kerrang!’, squawking
managers with hidden agendas, and mystery ‘booking agents’ with
links to terror groups. Memory assures me it did happen, and everytime I
listen to ‘Mechanical Animals’ by Marilyn Manson memory reminds me
again. Oh,
if labels knew then what they know now. It was 1992 when I first checked in with these guys. Kane and guitarist Kerry Wild were in a Welsh glam band called City Kidds. I introduced them to drummer Ian Danter, who had been with Midlands’ blues rockers Shotgun Wedding. Jonny Everett turned up in Monmouth, after a succession of bassists came and went. It was shortly before the arrival of Everitt and Danter that Kane had his big idea, revealed to me over a beer on a beautiful day on Cardiff’s Atlantic Wharf. I was, to say the least, interested. Nine Inch Nails and White Zombie were twisting rock in Kane’s mooted direction anyway, but no-one had really done it with hook-laden commerciality. It was time to play. As the band changed name, the majority of the cheesy glam stuff was axed, and new material with hues and tints began to rear up in the background like thunderclouds. The image went from pretty to pretty scary. Songs like ‘Voice Of Tomorrow’ and ‘Perfect 10’ were stripped bare and rebuilt, as new material like ‘The Overflow’ and ‘The Cure’ began to drop hints of things to come. Sons Of God wrote songs with wild abandon and looked astounding on stage with Kane wielding a loudhailer and glaring out from the standard white-on-black war paint. It was a case of ignore at your peril, seek and be blown away. The gig at Birmingham’s Xposure Rock Café that led to the ‘Kerrang!’ review printed in the booklet that accompanies the cd was a remarkable night. It proved pivotal in an almost literal sense. You’d have struggled to fit another body into the venue with a shoehorn, and an ill-fated record deal with MGL immediately ensued. For Sons Of God, it was both their finest hour and the beginning of the end. Looking at the goods on offer, it wasn’t surprising that so many industry types wanted a piece of the pie. More surprising was the fact that almost everyone involved let them down. Managers came and went – one wound up in prison, one tried to fake a Richey Manic type disappearance and another had the big idea of employing Kane in a fast food outlet. Worse, a salivating booking agent turned out to be a dangerous criminal with the very worst kind of connections. A major funder from Germany appeared – and then disappeared. I had some special experiences with the band in those odd few years. I saw Ian survive electric shocks from a support band’s careless on stage ‘set-up’. I’ve seen an ex-drummer fired following a dispute over hair-crimpers. I heard a distracted, shot-to-pieces Kane speak in weird tongues. I saw him leap on stage at another band’s gig to sing a note-perfect ‘Strutter’ before disappearing from view in a hail of projectile vomit. Kane and I were also invited on stage by Bon Jovi of all people at Cardiff Arms Park, where we gaped at the audience and drank Bon Jovi’s rider. The night before, Bon Jovi and ourselves went to the annual ‘Kerrang!’ awards, Kane looked a helluva lot like Marilyn Manson would at the same event five years later, when collecting the Best International Artist gong. Sons Of God, however, are gone. Crucified! The few things that came from the MGL years – other than confusing memories and a handful of legendary live shows – was a few demo tapes. It is only fitting that these tapes have at long last been properly mastered and now comprise the majority of this album. Enjoy it – but think not of where Sons Of God came from, but of where they were going. Where they came from is all a memory now. A blur…Maybe they were never really here at all. |
Jonny Everett - Bass Kerry Wild - Guitar/B.Vox Ian Danter - Drums/B.Vox
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