Monocled Alchemist

STEVE KEATON has no reservations about Southern Death Cult

Article published in Sounds, 24th April, 1982

THE DOOM watch says it’s time to give back what you took away, Uncle Sam meets the reaper —it’s Wounded Knee all over again From ‘Moya’

AT THE entrance to that crumbling edifice of transport known to man as Covent Garden tube station four strange creatures lurk like phantasmagorical buskers. Their curiously dressed heads sit like Halloween pumpkins on top of bodies cocooned in black leather and indian braid and wary commuters give them disapproving frowns as they shamble quickly homeward. I hurry my small squat body towards them and speak:

‘Er, Southern Death Cult?”

“Er, yeah.”

“Oh, good. I’m Keaton . . . Y’know the journalist. How do you do?”

Communication thus established we shuffle off into the night. People squint in our wake. Southern Death Cult are a remarkable band that this investigative scribe happened across by chance.

There I was all unsuspecting down London’s Marquee, looking forward to a typically hot and unpleasant time courtesy of the rejuvenated Chelsea when I suddenly found myself the victim of an aural assault as vicious as a careening tomahawk.

Southern Death Cult | Southern Discomfort

There were Southern Death cult: Haggard harbingers of monstrous rhythm and understated guitar. Talk about uppity support bands. And the singer was doing a wardance — an honest to goodness Bonanza-approved wardance. You could have knocked me flat with a totem pole!

An excited review quickly followed wherein your humble hack (buffoon that he is) dutifully got said fab band’s name wrong. A swish of canes. The great Southern Death Cult had miraculously metamorphised into Sudden Death Cult. Oops. Not my fault honest chief.

“It doesn’t matter,” declares Barry the bassist generously beneath huge tufts of green and black hair, “It’s happened before.”

Ragged barnets

AS WE settle into the corner of a small pub a landlord of vast girth eyes us suspiciously. Ian the above mentioned wardancing vocalist and Acky the drummer refuse alcohol and settle for blackcurrant cordial while Barry and Buzz (Bleep and Booster?) opt for larger.

Their ragged barnets cut Medusa shadows on the wall and the fat-bellied landlord turns to stone. Hey, I think something’s happening here!

The Cult have been the Cult for roughly a year now and hail from Bradford, a tropical paradise infamous as the old stomping ground of Peter Sutcliffe — but no great well of innovative rock bands.

Southern Death Cult | Southern Discomfort

“There’s nothing there at all,” Acky tells me. “No real venues, no fanzines and no interest. There’s a couple of punk bands but they don’t do any gigs. They just sniff glue and that’s it. It was just ambition which kept us going there, we had to always keep things happening. Get a little ball rolling and keep it going.”

“It’s all pretty unfair,” moans the singer. “Down here the bands have got it all going for them. They only have to get themselves together. Up North it’s totally different, you can work really hard and not get anywhere. A lot of good bands have packed it in because they can’t actually get any place. But I’d resent having to base myself here in London. I couldn’t live here.

“Down in the tube stations you just see everyone hanging around, nobody looks at each other, nobody cares for one another. The other day a guy banged into me and I thought, you bastard. He didn’t say ‘excuse me’ or anything.

“And people are extra cynical. If you say ‘thank you’ in a shop people look at you in amazement. Hum, I suppose this must sound a bit country bumpkinish!”

Chicken bones

The singer smiles but his head doesn’t move. His hair is a soft mohican. Very Anabella. Plaits of heavy rope frame his face and animal-skin pom-poms dangle by his lobes. A torrent of black hair obscures his left eye and feathers move in the slight breeze.

The man called Ian looks like no country bumpkin I’ve ever seen. Indian braid hangs from his jacket and a necklace of chicken bones decorates his neck.

I ask them if they’re a punk band and get a ferocious “No way!” as a reply. They appear genuinely upset at the question.

“I know all bands say it, but we really do feel that we’re doing something original, something different. Our audience at the moment seems to be mainly punks which is ok but we’re not a punk band. Punk is the Exploited and Discharge.

Southern Death Cult | Southern Discomfort

That said they happily admit that their first break (namely the support slot with Chelsea) did come via spikey hands.

“We first supported Chelsea at the F club in Leeds,” explains the drummer.

“Actually we were a bit worried what with them being a punk band, we didn’t know if the kids would like the music. But we thought we’d give it a go and just be chance Gene October really liked us. He invited us to support them up at the Marquee, and generally made us feel good.”

“We were as nervous as hell playing there!” says Buzz the guitarist. Like the others his hair dominates his features. One side of his scalp is closely shorn while the other looks like uncooked crinkle chips.

The audience bugged me

“Despite all the technical problems that plagued the band it was still really exciting for us, but the way the audience just stood around really bugged me. I thought London would be all for getting into new sounds, enjoying it. But they didn’t. They weren’t even dancing to the disco. We were really surprised. It’s just the same in Liverpool.”

I remark that London is as lifeless as a headgehog pattie and the concensus agrees.

“Everybody dances in Bradford. The last time we managed to play a gig there the kids invaded the stage. It was really odd,” his eyes bulge as if in surprise.

Southern Death Cult | Southern Discomfort

Tell me about the name? It’s an unusual handle to say the least.

Ian: “Well we were going through this phase, trying to think of a name for the band while I happened to be reading a book on the North American indian. I came across these people known as the Southern Death Cult and thought it looked interesting. It sort of tied up with us being down south and how dead everything was there. It related to us.

“The original Death Cult were a Mississippi valley people who used to share shrines and build burial mounds all the time. Their whole lives used to revolve around maintaining these burial mounds. they also used to be called the Buzzard cult.”

Well known in Bradford

Hmm, sounds suspiciously like some people I know in Neasden.

OK, SO how did the image evolve. You’re all fairly colourful, what with the leathers and the chicken bones, the hair and the feathers. The look compliments the music beautifully.

“We’re not really trying to present a particular image: There’s four people in this band, we’re all individuals (cont. Life of Brian). Like Acky being a pakistani and in a band is amazing!”

This catches me on the hop, a sad admission. I look across at the leather jacketed figure hiding behind a swirl of dark hair. Hardly a racial stereotype. I hadn’t noticed, I say.

“Well I am!” He grins. “I feel great up here because nobody knows me, but back in Bradford I’m pretty well known. It’s really quite bad. I can see everyone looking at me out of the corner of their eyes —some get really disgusted. The hassle my parents get!

Y’know basically I’m a brilliant person, there’s no one better in this world than me but other people don’t know that. They’re two-faced and they talk behind your back.

“Now I’m not a rebel for the sake of it; I still do the things I’m supposed to do. I don’t drink, smoke or take drugs. I wouldn’t break the rules just for the hell of it. But it really makes me happy when I disgust these people.”

Demo tape

They pass me a cassette which I later listen to (well what else do you do with ’em?). It’s a collection of demos that have been hawked around the majors with predictable results, i.e. piss off; the mix is quite appalling but the music hints at the glorious. It reminds me just how brilliant the set was.

Songs like ‘The Crow’, a tune dominated by a great rolling rhythm section and throaty vocals. Ian’s voice being rich, full and just a wee bit off centre. The lyrics tumble over the music like lemmings over a cliff.

And ‘Moya’ — an absolute triumph of a song that rumbles along with bison might.

“That one’s all about my friends in Canada, doped out of their minds,” says the singer. “My little sister had a bad time over there with drugs. A couple of years ago two friends gave me some LSD. I’d never touched anything before that and it freaked me out completely. Terrified me. Have you ever seen a thirteen year old girl being violently sick on barbiturates? It makes you feel ill.”

The cassette ends with ‘Vivisection’ — an explosion of manic guitar. No it’s not a song about animal vivisection, well that’d be too obvious wouldn’t it. The lyrics have in fact been taken from a passage in the classic H G Wells book, The Island Of Doctor Moreau.

The bit where Moreau’s creatures, ‘orrible animal/human mutations (just imagine the Exploited) are bowed to the godlike doc’s laws: ‘Not to eat flesh nor fish that is the law/ Not to go on all fours that is the law.’ etc. etc. The resulting musical cacophony is tremendous.

AND ON top of all that come the heavy indian motifs which are manifest in both sound and vision. Just what’s happening here?

The ultimate right

“Well I lived in Canada for about five years,” explains Ian. “That’s where this interest in the North American indian comes from. I played with their children and just grew interested in their culture. I spent time at the reservations and visited the cultural centres, it became very important to me. And then I returned to England just as the punk thing was happening.

“When it finished I was totally lost. I had nothing going for me and I grew back into the indian culture. I don’t dress like this to impress anyone or to turn heads in the street. At the moment I’m trying to suss out what is the Ultimate Right in everything. Then I’ll feel happy all the time.”

Hold on Hiawatha. The Ultimate Right? What the Dickens is that?

“I don’t know! That’s why I’m looking for it. It’s that shiver up your spine, when for just a moment everything seems fine. I want to feel that, feel comfortable in everything I do. Like walking through London the other day I felt really scared. I don’t know why I just did. I want to be able to walk and enjoy it.”

And so the conversation goes. In these baleful times of musical bankruptcy the Cult offer an icy vacation to nether regions new. They’ll be gigging your way shortly. Yield to the beat.