Sounds From The Junkshop #88 - Zombina & The Skeletones

 

"Just 'cos I'm biting on your head, there's no need to be impolite..." - Zombina & The Skeletones - Nobody Likes You When You're Dead

The groups we cover on Sounds From The Junkshop from this era (the early noughties) can pretty much be divided into two groups. Firstly there's the ones who were briefly being hyped up by the music press only to rapidly fade away into obscurity after one or two albums once music trends left them behind (see the Vines, the Hives, the Cooper Temple Clause, Andrew WK etc). And then there's the ones who didn't even really get that far and remained a delicious underground secret to those aware of them while the zeitgeist undeservedly passed them by. A while ago, I wrote a column on Leeds legends the Dead Pets in this column and it's somewhat apt that the first time I discovered Liverpudlian ghoul-rockers Zombina & The Skeletones was on a night out at the Well supporting Sweeney and co.

It's safe to say I was pretty much instantly hooked, so much so that I picked up a copy of the group's debut album Taste The Blood Of Zombina & The Skeletones on my way out of the venue that night. A gleeful mix of pop-punk, psychobilly and kitsch '50s pop, the Skeletones were pretty much unlike anything else on the scene at the time and for a long time I was convinced it was gonna be a case of when, rather than if, they broke through to the big time. I mean I know I say this about nearly every band that features on Sounds From The Junkshop but the fact that the world missed out on the Skeletones getting their own goth Monkees style TV series and Zombina, Doc Horror and Johnny Tokyo action figures being available in your local toy shop really just feels like one of the early noughties' great musical injustices to this aging music journo.

Then again, maybe it's for the best that they didn't. The best thing about the Skeletones was that they were a hell of a versatile band - their early singles saw them swinging like an undead gorilla from pop-punk (I Was A Human Bomb For The FBI) through Cramps style garage rock (Zombie Hop), ska (Spring Heeled Jack), pure new wave pop bliss (Staci Stasis) and even the odd bit of Mariachi murder balladry (Counting On Your Suicide). It made for some thrilling music but in an age where, in the wake of the Strokes and the Libertines, bands were expected to have a nice pigeonholable sound and not to deviate too far from it, I can see how it must have sent record companies back to their 13th floor offices scratching their heads.

More fool them though because they missed out on a damn good band who it was nearly impossible to second guess what they would come up with next other than the fact that it would pack a tune and a hook that'd have you cueing it straight up for another listen. Their second album, Death Valley High, was a concept album about a girl getting stood up at her high school prom who promptly decapitates her science geek ex-boyfriend's new crush before turning a dissolvo ray on the school and blowing up the whole planet. Think Carrie meets Mars Attacks set to a soundtrack incorporating punk, bubblegum pop, goth, doo-wop and pretty much everything else the band could throw into the pot and...well, you're about as close as I'm probably gonna be able to describe it.

The Skeletones would continue to doggedly push on in the face of constant rejection by the mainstream and would go on to at least build up a sizeable underground (appropriately enough) following both here and in mainland Europe and even picked up a bit of press in the States (Sleazegrinder I seem to remember frequently singing their praises) and they had a decent run on the minors putting out a further two albums (2009's Out Of The Crypt And Into Your Heart and 2014's Charnel House Rock, both good efforts in their own right) before slowly slipping into inactivity half a decade or so ago. Recently Zombina has put out a couple of solo EP's which we've reviewed here on Nite Songs and the Skeletones still do the occasional reunion gig here and there so fingers crossed another album may surface at some point but from what I've gathered from the band's social media, it's a case of real life having got in the way of them being able to function as a band anymore.

I would go and see the Skeletones many times down the years after that first encounter and have plenty of fun memories of them - interviewing the band for Bubblegum Slut* in a vegan café bar in Leeds before they did a gig there, going to see them with fellow Pure Rawk scribe Sexy Dave at a gig in Hackney Wick which finished at 4am in the middle of summer and saw us wandering back across an empty Victoria Park just as the sun was rising above the horizon, going to a gig in Lewisham of all places which had pretty much our entire 'zine writing staff turn out to see it where they were joined on the bill by the similarly awesome Pussycat & The Dirty Johnsons and a great time was had by all. They were fun times and it's a pity they had to come to a (hopefully temporary) end. Fingers crossed that one day in a cemetery on Merseyside five pairs of bony hands will shoot up out of the ground and the Skeletones will ride once more. We live in hope.

* - Quick footnote for those who remember the mid-noughties, Alison, my ed from the Bubblegum Slut days has now got a blog of her own going dedicated to the zine's archives - give it a read, it's a fun trip down memory lane.

** - If you were unlucky enough to miss the Skeletones first time out, their Bandcamp page is still active and contains pretty much their full discography. You should go give it a look.