Garbage Days Revisited #65: Hellion - "Screams In The Night" (1987)

"Now this gun's pointing at me in this reality/Am I breathing my very last breath?" - Hellion - Run For Your Life

So not for the first time we've gone on a bit of a detour with Garbage Days Revisited. That's the thing about doing a series of columns revisiting forgotten albums y'see, just when you think you've got the next couple of months' worth all cued up and ready to write, one of the revisits sends you off down a rabbit hole and the next thing you know, you're blundering around the grimier outskirts of Sunset Strip in the '80s and pushing those columns on other groups back a few weeks. Such was the case with the Rock City Angels GDR we did last week - while sorting through the sheer weirdness of that story, I ended up touching on Ann Boleyn who managed the band through her Renaissance records label in their early days (you may remember that someone who may or may not have been connected to either Geffen who were trying to sign the RCA’s at the time or RCA guitarist Johnny Depp’s management in Hollywood who were worried they’d lose him to the music biz instead of acting, tried to run her car off the road during this period) and ended up revisiting her '80s band Hellion. I wasn't quite sure whether to do a GDR on them or not initially as while their sole full length Screams In The Night is a decent enough album, their collection of early '80s EP's Up From The Depths is actually just that little bit better in my opinion. I ummed and ahhed for a bit but eventually decided sod it, let's delve a bit deeper into the legend of Sunset Strip's very own Queen Of Hell...

So, Ann Boleyn then. No, not the second wife of Henry VIII and subject of a LOT of ghost stories over here in England, this Ann Boleyn was the singer of early '80s L.A. metallers Hellion. Depending on which story you read, she either claimed herself to be the resurrection of, or a descendant of, the original Ann. Oh and also she was a self-proclaimed witch whose family had been friends with Aleister Crowley. Anyway, she found herself in L.A. at the dawn of the '80s and, well, what's a long lost English queen to do if not give being a rock star a go?

And she was actually pretty good at it as well - having rounded up a group of ne'er do wells from the Sunset Strip in the pre-hair metal days, Hellion made their live debut in 1982 and would be a fixture on the Strip for most of the rest of the decade. Ann had a throaty snarl of a voice, similar to Sally Cato of fellow GDR alumni Smashed Gladys, but could also hold her notes impressively well (think a cross between Cato and Ann Wilson from Heart and you wouldn't be a million miles off). Behind her, the band were tight and drilled (maybe not a surprise given that signing an oath of loyalty to Ann was allegedly part of the joining process for Hellion) and weren't averse to a big gang chantalong chorus here and there (check out Backstabber off their debut EP for proof).

The stories surrounding Hellion are absolutely legion - supposedly Ann lived in a haunted mansion in Tujunga, just on the outskirts of L.A., where the group would live, rehearse and even throw DIY gigs in the early days. This apparently spooked out their original bassist Peyton Tuthill so much that he quit the band and joined the church! The group also had Rik Fox on bass for a bit during this era who would go on to join S.I.N. with future Four Horsemen frontman Frank C Starr and also featured in W.A.S.P.'s early line-up. The group were even managed by Ronnie James Dio's wife Wendy for a bit and toured supporting Dio both in the States and Europe (a pretty good fit if you listen to their records) and got plenty of good press in Kerrang! back in the days when it was still worth reading. Their debut EP got picked up by Music For Nations in the UK and made the indie Top 5 and it was all looking fairly rosy for a bit.

Unfortunately by the time of Screams In The Night, things were already falling apart for Hellion. The other members of the group, getting tired of Ann's slightly autocratic style of leadership, basically rebelled against her and walked out to form their own band, Burn, leaving Miss Boleyn to put an entirely new line-up together for the album. Despite this, it's still a valiant effort even if it doesn't quite hit the heights of their early EP's with the likes of the title track and Bad Attitude being prime early '80s headbanger material, not a million miles away from the likes of W.A.S.P. or the Scorpions.

Again though, rows were already breaking out by the time Hellion came to touring the album - despite the Music For Nations deal in the UK, the group were still unsigned in the States and the other members were convinced that Ann's continual dabbling in the occult was scaring labels away. Her response was to sack them and reunite with the earlier line-up in the wake of Burn splitting to release a mini-album called Postcards From The Asylum in 1988 including a competent cover of Judas Priest's Exciter. To get around the fact that record labels still wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, Ann formed her own New Renaissance records which is still going today. Although it specified mostly in speed and thrash bands, they did dabble in the sleaze rock arena and had both the Rock City Angels (see last week) and King Kobra (of whom more next week) on their books. Hellion are still a going concern today with their most recent release, the Karma's A Bitch EP (with the title track including the excellent chorus "Karma's a bitch!/Don't mess with the witch!") seeing the light of day in 2014.

As I said earlier, for my money the best place to listen to Hellion is on the EP collection Up From The Depths which takes in their 1984 debut, the Postcards From The Asylum mini-album and a couple of other compilation tracks that the band did between 1983-88. Certainly, the chantalong Backstabber, the ferocious Nevermore and the panicky Run For Your Life are fine stuff indeed. Screams In The Night might not quite hit the same heights but for those into the gnarlier nastier end of sleaze rock, it's certainly worth a listen. Either way, Hellion deserve respect for being one of the better early Sunset Strip bands and for their sheer longevity and, just like every great horror movie villain, I very much doubt we've seen the last of Ann somehow...