Imperial Wax are a British
alternative rock
Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...
band, formed in 2018. Guitarist Pete Greenway, bassist Dave Spurr and drummer Keiron Melling previously played together in the final line-up of the long-established
post-punk
Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-roc ...
group
The Fall. After the death of the Fall's vocalist and band-leader
Mark E. Smith
Mark Edward Smith (5 March 1957 – 24 January 2018) was an English singer, who was the lead singer, lyricist and only constant member of the post-punk group the Fall. Smith formed the band after attending the June 1976 Sex Pistols gig at the ...
, the trio recruited vocalist and guitarist Sam Curran to form Imperial Wax.
The band describe themselves as, "noise rock & garage brawlers unafraid of a psych workout or a rockabilly dust-up."
Formation
Greenway, Spurr and Melling had been the instrumental core of the Fall's line-up for over a decade when Mark E. Smith died in January 2018.
After Smith's death, the trio played their first live gig as the backing band to former
Can
Can may refer to:
Containers
* Aluminum can
* Drink can
* Oil can
* Steel and tin cans
* Trash can
* Petrol can
* Metal can (disambiguation)
Music
* Can (band), West Germany, 1968
** ''Can'' (album), 1979
* Can (South Korean band)
Other
* C ...
vocalist
Damo Suzuki
, better known as Damo Suzuki (ダモ鈴木), is a Japanese musician who has been living in Germany since the early 1970s and is best known as the former lead singer of the krautrock group Can.
Biography
As a teenager, Suzuki spent the late 196 ...
in
Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
in May of the same year.
They were then joined by Curran, formerly of Leeds-based punk band Black Pudding,
naming themselves after the first Fall album that they had worked on together, 2008's ''
Imperial Wax Solvent''.
They played their first show as a four-piece at
The Troubadour, London, in February 2019.
''Gastwerk Saboteurs''
The band's debut album, ''Gastwerk Saboteurs'' was recorded with Andy Pearce, the former in-house producer at
Real World Studios
Real World Studios is a residential recording studio complex founded by Peter Gabriel and situated in the village of Box, Wiltshire, England, near to the city of Bath. It is closely associated with the Real World Records record label, Real Wor ...
, and released in May 2019 on the Texas-based label
Saustex Records. The album was released on vinyl (including a limited edition of 150 copies on pink vinyl), CD and digital,
with the CD and digital versions including three extra tracks. A limited edition, lathe-cut clear vinyl 7" single of two of the tracks, "The Art of Projection"/"No Man's Land", was released around the same time.
The album received generally positive reviews from the music press.
The Arts Desk
''The Arts Desk'' (theartsdesk.com) is a British arts journalism website containing reviews, interviews, news, and other content related to music, theatre, television, films, and other art forms written by journalists from a variety of tradition ...
described it as, "storming stuff with a sneering wit and a thump that’s aimed firmly at getting listeners on their feet", while
The Big Takeover
''The Big Takeover'' is a bi-annual music magazine published out of New York City since May 1980 by critic Jack Rabid.
History Establishment
Jack Rabid and Dave Stein began publishing ''The Big Takeover'' in May 1980 as a fanzine dedicated to N ...
said, "the band succeeds at every approach it attempts. With a combination of solid musicianship, smart songwriting and sparkling interband chemistry, Imperial Wax easily makes the case for not only being a reasonable outgrowth of its much-beloved predecessor, but also as a great new band in its own right."
Imperial Wax quickly followed the album with more new material. A 7" single, "Bromidic Thrills"/"Bloom & Wither", was released on limited edition red vinyl by
Louder Than War
''Louder Than War'' is a music and culture website and magazine focusing on mainly alternative arts news, reviews, and features. The site is an editorially independent publication that was started by journalist John Robb in 2010 and is now ru ...
in October 2019.
Discography
Albums
*''Gastwerk Saboteurs'' (2019), Saustex Records
Singles
*"The Art of Projection"/"No Man's Land" (2019), Saustex Records
*"Bromidic Thrills"/"Bloom & Wither" (2019), Louder Than War
References
{{Reflist
External links
Official website
English noise rock groups
The Fall (band)