By Sean Flinn | May 10, 2000
It's a new
band of old acquaintances. That is, the Damage Manual didn't exist
prior to 1999, but its members have been kicking around music
together, in one group or another, for the past 20 years. Drummer
and producer Martin Atkins, vocalist Chris Connelly, guitarist
Geordie Walker and bassist Jah Wobble have been involved in some
of the most influential bands of the last 20 years, sowing the
seeds of a partnership that is only now ready for harvesting.
The Damage
Manual is the resultant supergroup (though the band itself hesitates
to call itself that), an industrial rock/post punk hybrid with
a pedigree that includes Public Image Ltd. (Atkins and Wobble),
Killing Joke (Atkins and Walker), Ministry (Atkins and Connelly),
Murder Inc. (Atkins -- detecting a pattern yet? -- Connelly and
Walker) and Pigface (Atkins and Connelly).
On
their own, Atkins, Connelly, Wobble and Walker have had at least
as much success as the bands they've supported. Atkins runs Invisible
Records, maybe the last bastion of "classic" industrial music
and musicians (Throbbing Gristle's Genesis P-Orridge, Skinny Puppy's
Ogre and Einsturzende Neubauten's FM Einheit all call the label
home). He also uses the band Pigface to collaborate with over
250 musicians from the industrial, experimental and alt- rock
scenes (Trent Reznor, Frank Black and Flea and Jello Biafra have
all played roles in the group). Connelly has a critically acclaimed
solo career, having released three critically lauded albums and
a book of poetry. Wobble, a once-close friend of the Sex Pistols
Johnny "Rotten" Lydon (and whose first experience playing the
bass guitar occurred when he borrowed the instrument from the
Pistols' Sid Vicious), runs his own label, 30 Hertz Records, and
fronts the Invaders of the Heart, working with the likes of Sinead
O'Connor, U2's the Edge and Primal Scream. Geordie Walker continues
on as the guitarist for Killing Joke, whose lasting presence has
been felt across the punk, post-punk industrial and metal scenes.
But the four
haven't worked with one another in years, which begs the question:
why now?
"I'd been
wanting to work with Wobble for a couple of years, and the time
that worked for Wobble and I to get together, Geordie happened
to be in the country [Walker, a Brit by birth, currently lives
in Michigan]," explains Atkins, speaking by phone from his home
outside London. "And I invited him down to the studio. I don't
think any of us had too much planned, although I did know that
I wanted everything that we did to be loop-based -- or click based,
if you like -- so that if we were jamming on a riff for 10 minutes
and something happened in minute number nine, I could edit the
information from the ninth minute onto the first minute."
Atkins's
low-pressure recording and production techniques gave the trio
the flexibility to jam freely in the studio without worrying too
much about the final mix, alleviating some of the pressures of
the reunion and the recording process. Inevitably, it allowed
Atkins, Wobble and Walker to forge -- or rather, reforge -- a
collaborative unity that they hadn't enjoyed in years, with one
another or any other musicians. The enjoyment the three experienced
working together fueled a certain excitement about the project
and gave the three the impetus to move it to the next level.
"We got
together again because we had so much fun, and I think Wobble
said, 'Look, this feels like a band.' So I took about 22 of the
ideas that we'd worked on and sent about 16 of them off to Chris
Connelly, and he really liked what we were doing. So I went out
to Chicago to record his vocals."
Despite having
constructed three-fourths of the Damage Manual's music before
even conceiving of adding a vocalist, Atkins placed enough faith
in Chris Connelly's lyrical abilities to give him free reign over
his contributions to the project.
"I'm the
kind of vocalist nowadays who -- whereas before, when I was working
with Ministry or something like that, lyrically it was a collaboration,"
says Connelly, a transplanted Scotsman, over a brief phone conversation
from his home in Chicago. "And working with Ministry, Al [Jourgensen,
Ministry's front man] would maybe have an idea of what he would
like to write about and maybe ask me to illustrate it or elaborate
upon it. This time, I was left to my own devices. That's the only
way I can do it because I start off with the germ of an idea,
and it grows into something through my own thought process, which
is very personal to me -- as it would be to anyone else.
"What I
really loved about [the Damage Manual] was that, for the last
five or six years, I've been writing my own melodies, and this
time, the melodic part of it was already there. So I found I was
being presented with almost a musical protagonist, if you like.
And it took me into places where I normally wouldn't go lyrically,
and that was really exciting to me. I'm actually real happy with
what I've written, not in a kind of 'Boy, I'm so brilliant way,'
but as a writing exercise, it was very valuable to me. It opened
up a few doors that I've never opened before.
"The music
and some of the stuff that's on the EP -- for example, 'Damage
Addict' -- was, to me, suggestive of some kind of Clockwork
Orange-y kind of wasteland. It seemed brutal to me, and I
found I was writing very brutal lyrics. Not 'I'm gonna kick your
head in' kind of lyrics, but I was accessing parts of my brain
that were very cold, very gray. And I think there's a lot of power
struggles in these lyrics and a lot of questions are being asked.
And I think they're cryptic -- but I always am cryptic.
But then there's some stuff that I thought was just downright
hilarious. There's a lot of lyrics, like [in the song] 'Scissor
Quickstep,' that I see as slapstick, sort of like Laurel and Hardy
for the year 2000. There's a lot of dark humor in there, and I'm
really pleased that this music sort of lead me down that path."
The results
resemble Ministry circa 1988'sThe Land of Rape and Honey,
with perhaps less mechanical precision, more texture and melody.
"Sunset Gun," with Walker's loose, driving guitar line and Atkins'
thunderous beats, is anthemic and boisterous, boasting a southern-fried
groove that's damn near unstoppable. "Damage Addict" and "Blame
and Demand" are both soaring, classic industrial rock, the likes
of which haven't been heard since the heyday of Wax Trax! Records
(once the premier label for industrial and experimental rock).
With the
vocals added to the instrumental mix and with Atkins having added
some finishing touches in the studio, the band had yet to play
together with all four members, with Connelly and Wobble never
having met at all.
"I didn't
meet Wobble until after I'd done everything," Connelly says over
the phone from his home in Chicago, where he's currently preparing
to tour with the Damage Manual and laying down plans for a reunion
with Revolting Cocks, the industrial party band he fronts along
with Ministry's Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker. "I'd never met
him before, until Christmas, and luckily we got along really well."
| Next:
On the road, and on the Net.
| 
