Marlboro decided to renew our option and we got the budget to record a full length album. It was to be recorded in March and April of '95 and released in October. Warren Croyle was to produce it again, and so in December of '94 I flew to Los Angeles for a week to work on the songs I had written with Warren and Bernhard. I noticed that Kommunity FK, the legendary goth band from the 80's was playing at the Troubadore while I was there, and so I had to go. The lead singer, Patrick Mata had become a huge influence on me in the past few years and I couldn't miss it. The show was great, and after the show I had this crazy idea to try to meet Patrick and ask him if he wanted to write a song with me for the next album. I guess we clicked because he accepted and we decided to meet again when I flew out in March. In January, Ace Frehley came to Baltimore and Warren got me backstage passes to meet him. I gave him a bunch of our material and asked him if he would like to play a solo on the new album. A week later his manager called Warren and accepted. A price was negotiated and agreed upon, but it was never to be: Ace lived in New York and we were to record the album in Los Angeles, CA. There wasn't enough money in the budget to fly Ace out just for one solo. But wouldn't that have been great? The band flew out to LA in March and for a week we rehearsed with Warren in preparation to record. During that week after rehearsal I met up with Patrick Mata and we wrote the song, "No More", which appears on that album. It's only available in Europe, but it's one of my favorite songs, so try to hear it if you can. For all of March and most of April we recorded the album in three different LA studios: Track Record in N. Hollywood, LAFX in Hollywood, and Milagro in Glendale. We wanted to call it, "Apathy", but ultimately Marlboro decided to call it simply, "godhead". Recording that album was one of the best times of my life. While recording the album we were offered a contract from Sonic Underground records (for North America: remember, we only had a contract for Europe), who wanted to release the five songs from the America Now sampler as an EP in the US, and then release the "godhead" album at a later date. They were distributed through Caroline so we accepted, but 2 weeks before it was to be released, Sonic Underground went bankrupt. Lame. No US release. But that was okay, because after touring the States one more time, and playing the '95 Foundations Forum, we were scheduled to tour Europe again in February of '96.   At this point, the big wigs at Marlboro decided that they wanted me to be more of a singer, and not so much of a guitar player, so they asked us to add one. A very talented guitar player and good friend of ours, Danny Reibez, had just quit his band and he was on the top of our list. After jamming, writing and rehearsing with him everything seemed to fit right, but for one reason or another, Danny's heart just wasn't in it, and so we parted ways amicably. With a tour of Europe just months away, a great player just fell into our lap. A former crew member of a band we were friends with called Click gave me a call, and we "clicked" instantly. Mike Miller, who was and is an incredible guitar player and singer already knew how to play our entire album and fit in flawlessly. Now we were ready. For the entire month of February we toured in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and promoted our "godhead" album, co-headlining with the band, Ugly Mus-tard from Dallas, Texas.   Now it was March of ' 96 and we're home and we're miserable. We went from being rock stars in Europe to having to come home and work day jobs just to make ends meet. As you could probably guess, our sound changed a lot over the course of 4 years. I was being influenced more and more by the goth/ industrial scene that I had been involved with at home, and I wanted to incorporate more of this into our sound. I had been trying for years with John and Bruce to open their minds to it, but they really weren't interested. At this point I had met a guy that I thought might fit in really well and add this very dimension. He gave me a demo tape that really sparked my interest and I played it for the guys. To my surprise, they really liked it and thought it might be cool to see if we could write with him. I was still doing the majority of song writing for the band at this point, but everyone contributed to our sound. By May, the method, became a full member of the band and by June, we had signed a new US deal with Sol 3 records, a label co-founded by Richard Gottehrer, founder of Sire records and discoverer of bands such as Blondie and The Go-Gos.   In July, we went back into the studio with Drew Mazurek, producer of our first demo back in '92, and recorded "nothingness". We actually used 4 tracks from the "godhead" European album as well. In October it was released, and then all hell broke loose. In a band meeting discussing touring, future plans, musical direction, etc., an impasse was reached. This meeting lasted 5 hours and the only people that were present were the 5 members of the band. At the end of the meeting, John and Bruce had quit, and a lot of hearts were broken, especially mine. I had spent the last 4 years of my life with Bruce and the last 3 with John, touring, writing and working for something that we all believed in. But there was no turning back, and so the longest incarnation of godhead died on that day. Our only choice was to go on, so Mike, Oolie and I decided to look for a new drummer. Enter James O'Connor (no relation to Sinead), a young open-minded talent, eager to work and learn. Since Oolie also played bass as well as keyboards and sequencing, we decided to just keep it a four piece. For the next 6 months we played shows with the new line-up while writing about 30 songs for the new album. Starting in February of '97, we went into 3 different studios in New York, with Richard Gotterhrer as our producer. Then again in June and finally in August we finished up production of our new album, "Power Tool Stigmata" which was released in February of 1998.   At this point, rather than wait around for the record company to hire us an agent, we coordinated with our local agent Chip Seligman and decided to book a tour ourselves. Using the internet (and AOL profiles), I profiled people in every major city that liked gothic /industrial music and emailed them. Since the goth /industrial community has such a strong and supportive presence online, I quickly amassed quite a large list of clubs nationwide, and for most of '98 and the beginning of '99, we toured coast to coast on our own again. One of the highlights of 1998 for us was opening for the Misfits in June at DragonCon; one of the largest Sci-Fi / Fantasy conventions in the world, held every year inAtlanta, GA. Also on the bill at the convention was GWAR, a band that we would later tour with.   Early in '99 we were fortunate enough to play a few shows with the Genitorturers (something we would do again in 2000) and we finally felt like we were making an impact with our music and doing it from the ground up. Sol 3 Records had virtually no budget for promotion so we were basically on our own. In March, while playing the World Horror Convention we attracted the attention of Dave Brockie, better known as Oderous Urungus; the lead singer of GWAR. Luckily for us he was really impressed by our show and we began talking about their tour starting in April. They didn't have an opening band yet, and although our styles didn't exactly match, Dave thought it would be a great idea if we toured together. We JUMPED at the chance! This would mean playing in front of one thousand to two thousand people every night!   The first night of the tour was in our hometown at the 9:30 Club, and everything went great. Since this was our home crowd, we didn't really get a taste of what a typical GWAR crowd was like until the next night in Philadelphia. Quarters, bottles, pitchers and anything anyone could find were thrown at us for most of the tour. At first it was disheartening, but after a while we just took it as part of the rite of passage and had fun with it. The funny thing was that the same guy who was flicking us off or who threw a cup full of beer atus would then buy our CD and both T-shirts! We sold more merchandise on the GWAR tour than on any other, so we must have been doing something right.   The tour ended in June, but we felt like "Power Tool Stigmata" still had some life left in it. We weren't really sure when we would record our next album and with what label (Sol 3 was very vague on when and if they were going to pick up our option to record another album). So, we took another tour that was offered to us; opening for legendary goth rockers Christian Death, starting in September of '99.   This tour was quite a lot of fun as well. Two other bands were also on the bill, Diet of Worms and Mortiis, so we were like one big dark circus of crazy people traveling from town to town. Most of the people in Mortiis were from Europe, two from Sweden, one from Norway and two others from England. Mortiis himself dressed like a possessed demon-troll from another planet, so we were quite the dysfunctional troupe, but it was a very enjoyable tour.   With that tour behind us we weren't really sure of our future. Sol 3 had done all that they could, but with all of our extensive touring we felt that we had pretty much gone as far as we could go on that label. So we decided to really get out there and make ourselves known to larger labels. With the help of our incredible attorney Terri DiPaolo, we were flown to Hollywood several times by many major labels at the end of '99 and the beginning of 2000 to play private showcases (all expenses paid by the labels of course). How we ended up on Marilyn Manson's Posthuman Records will be revealed at a later date, but all I can say is that we couldn't be happier and we feel incredibly strong about our future. ;

    Prev