God Less
Crust-punk prime movers Amebix resurrected, 20 years later
By David Cotner
As punk rock splintered outward after its golden dawn in 1976, it became clear that the music either would mean something, or it would not – that it would have to find a way to still stand for something in a time when people seemed eagerly ready to stand anything. Among the bands making a conscious attempt to rise above that sargasso of jocular twaddle were anarchic British punk bands like Crass, Poison Girls, Doom, and Bristol crust-punk founding fathers Amebix. Theirs was a vision squarely at odds with the increasingly draconian, materialistic England of the ’80s – their wisdom, transmitted through badges and back patches, was most succinctly distilled in Amebix’s dictum “No Gods, No Masters,” and was potently presented in person by a band sounding like a particularly frustrated cross between Killing Joke and Motörhead. After more than two decades, founding bassist/singer Rob Miller and his guitarist brother Stig were coaxed out of retirement, joined by drummer Roy Mayorga of Stone Sour for an eight-date U.S. tour debuting in Los Angeles. Rob Miller spends his days lately as a swordsmith on the Isle of Skye; he spoke from his home recently about Amebix and its history.
You come off as incredibly serene and gracefully aged. How do you account
for that?
That’s very generous of you to say! I really followed my star after the band broke down; things got increasingly worse for me! Well, basically, I broke my arm and crashed my bike, and at that time I’d lost my home and my relationship with my kids. I arrived on Skye several weeks later because I was working at a sheet metal factory at the time, and of course couldn’t work with a broken arm, so I came up to see my folks here. I suppose I’d had a bit of an epiphany, really – it pointed me toward needing to find out what life is trying to tell you; what opportunities present themselves and how you deal with that. Opportunities present themselves that you don’t have to contort yourself out-of-shape to get into, because they’re the ones that are really yours.
When you look at those old Amebix videos on YouTube, what do you see?
The one where we’re in the squat with Disorder – that’s a nice video. It’s nice to look back and see the person I was back then. Life wasn’t very easy for us in Bristol. But we still had enthusiasm and we still had very much a positive attitude toward things. One of the things I found quite difficult about the punk scene at that time was that it was very negative; people were basically wallowing in their own self-pity and really not that inspiring, in some senses. When we came around with Arise [Nb. the 1985 LP on Alternative Tentacles], it was really to grab people by the throat and pick them up again and say, “Fucking get yourself together! Do what you should be doing – have some self-respect and self-worth!”
What’s the dirtiest you’ve ever been?
For four years in Bristol, I can probably remember about maybe four baths, and we would never actually change clothes! [We’d be] living this sort of transient lifestyle – being in a place for maybe two or three weeks and then having to move on and drag a smelly mattress through the streets. You know, there was nothing glamorous about that, and the funny thing is that people formed a sort of uniformity around those ideas and they’ve mythologized the whole crusty-punk squatting thing. There was one guy called Bear [Nb. vocalist Michael Hopewell], from a band called Lunatic Fringe. When we turned up in Bristol, we had the tatty old clothes, and they kind of looked the same as well. He coined the term. He said “We’re all pretty crusty,” as in: you’re kind of dirty on the outside; you’re not polished and cleanly-spiked. But it’s become a lifestyle choice for some people! A bit strange, really. People need to have an identity that just speaks about the basic human requirement for security. And what we were trying to do was say, “Move outside that security zone – you don’t have to fit in with what’s expected of you.”
Amebix, with Book of Black Earth, Doomsday Hour and Bruise Violet at the Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd., Echo Park. Thur., 5:30 p.m. All ages. Attheecho.com. Also with Annihilation Time, Bad Reaction and Mala Sangre for two shows at the Cobalt Café, 24407 Sherman Way, Canoga Park. Fri., 6 and 9:30 p.m. All ages. Tickets for the Regent show will still be honored. Further information and tickets available at myspace.com/blacknoise or myspace.com/fyeahfest.
Published: 01/21/2009
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