Sounds From The Junkshop #108 - Zen Motel

 

"I’m so sick of being tired/I’m so tired of being sick" - Zen Motel - Devil Song

I think the first time I ran into Zen Motel was supporting Tyla's Dogs D'Amour on Christmas Eve at Bradford Rio's. Needless to say, that Christmas was one of the more hungover ones in recent memory. I think that might have been the infamous gig where me and a mate ended up sat at the same table as Danny McCormack (the Yo-Yo's were basically acting as Tyla's backing band on this tour) and I went into complete and total starstruck mode and basically ended up telling him that if it wasn't for him then I'd never have wanted to be a bass player and join a band. Bless him, he was really good about it and gave me a hug. Top bloke, Danny.

Anyway, before Zen Motel, there was a group called Johnny Zhivago from Colchester who I was sort of aware of around the turn of the millennium as they put a couple of singles out on ChangesOne records (I seem to remember them doing a cover of Motley Crue's Girls Girls Girls in the pre-Dirt days before every two bit Camden sleaze rocker was tipping their hat to messrs Sixx and Lee). From what I know of it, that group fell apart after their two co-frontmen Lee and Steve had a serious fallout with Steve moving up to Leeds to form Vicious Cabaret and Lee remaining in Essex and putting Zen Motel together.

I was actually friends with Vicious Cabaret at this point (and was blissfully unaware of the history there) as I'd ended up reviewing them live during my time writing for Leeds Music Scene and Sandman and giving them a good write-up - they had a snarling glam-goth sound mixed with a Manics style scathing approach to lyrics which always worked well. They liked said review and were nice enough to invite me to gigs and send me CD's to review and were always good to me back in those days when I was still very much a novice music journalist and pretty much awed that any bands or "rockstars" would want to let me hang out with them.

Anyhow, back to that Christmas Eve gig. I remember Zen Motel absolutely kicking loose on that stage with a half hour set of gleefully vitriolic scuzz-punk which I enjoyed so much that I picked up a copy of their album Transform And Escape from one of the band (probably Lee I suspect) at the bar while I was waiting for the Dogs to come onstage. Listening to it for the first time that Boxing Day, it was pretty damn good - while the likes of Devil Song and Rocket 69 brought the King Adora style leering menace, the more measured and sinister likes of Another World and This Happens Forever showed a darker gothier side to their repertoire and it all made for a good debut album.

The group would amp things up further with 2007's Stations of the Dead, arguably their best effort. Like all good sophomore albums, it took the best bits of their debut album and refined them to come up with a lean fat-free 35 minute stormer of an album with the likes of Howl, Real Good Time and Dress Code Violence packing a seething scuzz-glam aggression that knocked the air clean out of your lungs.

By this time, I’d left the world of Leeds indie-zines behind to start writing for Bubblegum Slut and Pure Rawk which were much more in line with my music tastes at this point (and where, to be brutally honest, I feel as if I finally started to properly develop as a music writer, no small thanks to my eds Alison and Nix who were both probably a lot more patient with me than they had any right to be) and Zen were one of the bands, along with the likes of Kitty Hudson and Teenage Casket Co, who were deserved favourites at both ‘zines meaning I saw them live quite a bit around this time (especially the early days of living in London after I moved there). Suffice to say that they always delivered with Lee the menacing centre of the storm while the others kicked out the jams with reckless abandon around him.

Unfortunately, line-up instability started to set in around this point and I think this was what kind of stalled Zen Motel a bit - by the time of 2012's We Want Your Blood, Lee was the only band member who remained from the Stations Of The Dead line-up. Despite this, it was still a strong effort, much darker and punkier than its predecessor with the brutal likes of Superhuman Colosseum and Curse of the Girlfiend being particular highlights. Unfortunately, this line-up would end up disintegrating pretty quickly and I'm not sure they ever got round to properly touring the album with this line-up - the fact that they would remix and re-release it with a different tracklisting a couple of years later suggests to me that Lee possibly wasn't too happy with the initial version of it either.

Zen Motel have managed one further album to date, 2016's Choking On The Chrome, which saw part of the mid-noughties line-up reconvene and was another good effort with the scathing London Is Dead, I Want Your Drugs and Shatterproof all being standout moments. The album also had a bonus covers EP which saw the group turning their attention to songs by Therapy? (Sister) and Art Brut (Bang Bang Rock 'n' Roll) among others.

The group still resurface for the odd gig here and there, usually in their native Essex (I remember seeing them in Chelmsford around the time Choking on the Chrome came out) and new material occasionally resurfaces on their website (most recently the excellently named Even A Horse That's Waiting To Be Glue Needs A Little Sugar Too which comprised the songs that were originally planned to be their third album before line-up instability set in and which we reviewed on Nite Songs a couple of years back) Lee has even patched things up with Steve in recent years with the two of them teaming up to finally give the abandoned second Johnny Zhivago album a re-release proving time's a great healer.

In between times, Lee has also been a longtime musical collaborator with CJ Wildheart, first in the Satellites and more recently with his solo albums (you can definitely sense a hint of that Zen Motel scuzzy heaviness in a few places on them). The guy's definitely a very underrated songwriter and Zen Motel are a band who I've been saying for years deserve to be a lot better known than they are. Hopefully some new material will be forthcoming from them at some point in the future but in the meantime I heartily encourage you to check out both the Zen Motel Bandcamp and Johnny Zhivago Bandcamp pages for some proper filthy high octane scuzzy rock 'n' roll the way it should be. Crank it up and enjoy.