Garbage Days Revisited #51: Cats In Boots - "Kicked And Klawed" (1989)

 

"Lay down your gun, you got fire in your eyes and your web is spun..." - Cats In Boots - Her Monkey

I think the truth is when you're talking about sleaze rock, especially the '80s variant when major labels were chucking frankly ridiculous sums of money at any band from L.A. with a few cans of aqua net in their bathrooms, that the best bands in the genre basically lived by the maxim "go big or go home". To say that Cats In Boots were a gloriously OTT band even by glam metal standards doesn't even begin to tell this story and in Kicked And Klawed, similar to Love/Hate's classic Blackout In The Red Room, they came up with a supremely scummy slice of sleaze rock that grabs you by the hair, drags you into the gutter, beats ten shades of shinola out of you and leaves you lying there wondering what just happened. I mean, it had a song called Whip It Out on it ferfuxxake, need I say more?

Cats In Boots were a bit of an odd 'un in that they were a half American, half Japanese band. They were formed when Japanese guitarist Takashi O'Hashi (who’d made a name in his homeland by frequently playing gigs in full kabuki devil facepaint) made the trip across to the States and hooked up with American singer Joel Ellis who'd served time in the final line-up of early Sunset Strip almost-weres Rough Cutt among others. The pair decided to work together, O'Hashi knew a bassist from his previous band who was keen to come on board (Yasuhiro Hatae), Ellis knew a drummer from his (Randy Meers) and thus Cats in Boots were born. A self-released mini-album Demonstration (East Meets West) was enough to bring them to EMI's attention and thus 1989 saw their one and only album Kicked And Klawed unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

The first thing you need to be aware about Kicked And Klawed is that there is literally nothing subtle about it whatsoever. Ellis has the sort of banshee screech of a voice that makes Sebastian Bach sound like Glen Danzig by comparison and the group crash their way through the likes of Shotgun Sally and Her Monkey with a fizzling sleazy aggression that should by rights be utterly ridiculous but somehow, goddammit, it just works. The aforementioned Whip It Out meanwhile sounds probably exactly like you’d expect - imagine Poison’s Unskinny Bop and Whitesnake’s Slide It In having a ten pints punch-up in a pub car park at closing time and you’re basically there. Like I say, about as unsubtle as you can get but somehow brilliantly daft.

It helps that Cats In Boots are a pretty proficient band musically - Nine Lives (Save Me) is a distant cousin of Van Halen's Hot For Teacher with O'Hashi's hyperventilating guitar propelling the song along and Coast To Coast is a full-tilt Junkyard-style speeded up boogie while the pummelling Heaven On A Heartbeat kicks like a Japanese mule to use the old Phoenix Nights phrase. The only red light is the token power ballad Every Sunrise which is reminiscent of post-shark jump Aerosmith and is just dull unfortunately. Overall though, Kicked And Klawed is so gleefully over the top and fun that you just can't help but love it a bit.

Unfortunately though, despite good sales in Japan and some good press in Kerrang! here in the UK, Kicked And Klawed did nothing in the US (again, shades of Love/Hate a couple of years later) and relations with the label rapidly worsened. Cats in Boots would be gone from EMI in short order, splitting up within a year of the album's release. Ellis would go on to form a group called Heavy Bones with former Quiet Riot and future W.A.S.P. drummer Frankie Banali but by 1992 that had gone under after one album as well and Cats In Boots would get back together with the aim of giving things another go but by now, it was very much the era of grunge and by 1995 another record deal still hadn't materialised leading them to finally call it a day (the latter era recordings would surface as the Last Works '93-'95 demo collection which...well, sounds like a shoddy demo collection basically and doesn't match up to the album's brilliance unfortunately).

Cats In Boots have reformed very intermittently over the years, usually to do a few gigs in Japan where O'Hashi's infamy helped them to get a leg up back in the day. Most recently, the guitarist has been in a group called Alley Cats LV in Vegas with ex-Faster Pussycat and Bubble man Brent Muscat which produced an EP which I wasn't even aware of until I started researching this article. Anyway, I'm digressing - Cats In Boots might not be a band who get mentioned much at all these days even in sleaze rock circles but Kicked And Klawed is a gloriously wicked slice of fun party scuzz-rock to sit alongside Love/Hate's Blackout In The Red Room and L.A. Guns' Cocked And Loaded for something to dig out when you want to knock a few beers back on a Friday night and enjoy yourself. A very under-rated effort which is well worth checking out.