Christian Death - Horror-punk in California

Christian Death are the American answer to British dark-punk. Their sound, pompous and gloomy, gothic and decadent, picked up on the ideas of "dark" bands from across the Channel such as Siouxsie and The Banshees, Killing Joke and (above all) Bauhaus, updating them with the American "horror-shock" tradition of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the Cramps. In doing so, Christian Death managed to transplant witches, ghosts and vampires into the California sunshine.

The band was formed in Los Angeles on the initiative of young singer Rozz Williams. Born in Pomona, Southern California, on November 6, 1963, Roger Alan Painter (his real name) grew up in a Southern Anabaptist family and received a particularly strict religious upbringing. A fan of David Bowie, Roxy Music, T-Rex, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop and The New York Dolls, young Roger decided to try his luck in rock music. He chose the stage name Rozz Williams, taking it from a tombstone in his favorite cemetery. His early bands were called Crawlers To No, The Upsetters, The Asexuals, Daucus Karota. Then, in October 1979, Christian Death was born. The band's name is nothing more than a mangled version of famous designer Christian Dior's name. The original lineup consisted of just three members: Rozz on vocals, Jay on guitar and James McGearty on bass. Later McGearty brought drummer George Belanger into the group, while Rikk Agnew took Jay's place on guitar.

Williams, a gloomy punk demon capable of a dark, passionate register close to that of Peter Murphy, is the black heart of the group. But it's also Agnew's guitars, dissonant and melodic at once, that give backbone to the music on the debut album, Only Theatre Of Pain (1982). The result is a handful of songs as romantic and poignant as they are desperate, teeming with ghosts and demons, lost souls and suicides. "Romeo's Distress", with its bewitching chorus (“Kiss on my hand / after dark / hand for a kiss”) and obsessive crescendo, grabs you from the very first moment; "Cavity" and "Spiritual Cramp" (already recorded in different versions on the later mini-CD Deathwish) are ballads with sinister, shadowy melodies; "Figurative Theatre" has a hypnotic, surreal pace; the heartfelt anthem "Resurrection" is a gut punch; while the Eastern-tinged "Stairs/Uncertain Journey" and the psychedelic "Burnt Offerings" round out the record's musical spectrum. This style is renewed in an even more esoteric vein on the subsequent ode to suicide "Death Wish" (on the self-titled 1983 EP).

Christian Death's live shows caused outrage: Williams would appear onstage dressed as a bride; on other occasions he'd re-enact the sacrament of Communion; at other times still he'd perform hanging from a cross, re-enacting the crucifixion of Christ. These performances drove some religious groups to wage a campaign against the band, culminating in the burning of copies of Only Theatre Of Pain outside the venues where the shows were held. But there was no peace within Christian Death either: before long Williams was left on his own and, in effect, reformed the band around a new lineup: Valor Kand (guitar), David Glass (drums), Gitane DeMone (keyboards, backing vocals) and Constance Smith (bass).

With this new lineup Christian Death made Catastrophe Ballet (1984), released on the (far from reassuring) label L'Invitation Au Suicide and recorded at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales. The album, destined to remain their masterpiece, reflects in its lyrics Williams' love of Surrealism and the Dada movement (the whole work is dedicated to André Breton). The record rests on a typically dark architecture: sickly dandy vocals, menacing basslines, dissonant guitars, martial and obsessive drum cadences, ghostly choirs, baroque organ phrases, anguished screams. The result is a sequence of majestic, esoteric ballads ranging from medieval gothic to expressionism, blending the glammiest Bowie (but also the "icy" Bowie of the Berlin trilogy) with the most necrophiliac dark-punk. The opening "Awake At The Wall" lives on a series of sinister echoes and reverbs as well as Williams' agonized spoken delivery. The claustrophobic "The Blue Hour" is a hypnotic hall of mirrors. The desperate, gripping "Sleepwalk" evokes the Bauhaus of "In The Flat Field". "Androgynous Noise Hand Permeates" is an instrumental woven around a pompous cadence. "As Evening Falls" throws itself into a dark gallop worthy of Sisters of Mercy. A sense of looming danger, emptiness, vertigo and, ultimately, death dominates the album.

The following Ashes (1985) renews those atmospheres, but without quite the same magic. Still, the stylistic range expands: from the voodoo dance of the title track to the macabre litanies of "When I Was Bed", "The Luxury Of Tears" and "Face", packed with piercing riffs and enveloping melodies, always poised between outrageous decadence and desolate romanticism.

Williams left Christian Death in April 1985. Valor Kand seized the opportunity to take over leadership (and the name) of the band. After relocating to Europe and Williams' departure, Christian Death under Valor's guidance veered toward a sideshow gothic cabaret, stuffed with genre clichés (with the albums Atrocities, The Scriptures, The Wind Kissed Pictures, All The Love All The Hate, The Decomposition Of Violets).

Meanwhile Rozz Williams attempted the ill-fated industrial venture Premature Ejaculation, perhaps most successfully with Daucus Karota (the EP Shrine, 1994), and recorded two albums with Eva O (formerly of Speed Queen and Super Heroines) in Shadow Project (the self-titled 1991 album and Dreams For The Dying from 1992). These were followed by the spoken-word records Every King A Bastard Son and Whorse's Mouth. In the meantime, Williams managed to reclaim the rights to the Christian Death name.

While The Iron Mask (with the striking "Skeleton Kiss") is little more than an experiment, the subsequent The Path Of Sorrows (1993) at times seems to recapture the most evocative atmospheres of early Christian Death.

Having now firmly brought Eva O on board (she would become his wife in 1987), Williams decided to rebuild the band's core lineup by calling in Rikk Agnew and George Belanger. This reunion gave birth to Iconology (1993), a live document of a historic concert from June 1993 in Los Angeles. The follow-up, Rage Of Angels (1994), featuring Paris of Shadow Project and the rhythm section of Cradle Of Thorns, was still dominated by baroque, shadowy sounds.

On April 1, 1998, Rozz Williams, increasingly isolated and ravaged by alcohol and drugs, was found hanged in his Hollywood home at the age of 34. But not even their leader's suicide could halt Christian Death's relentless output, as the band returned to the studio to record two more albums: Pornographic Messiah (1998) and The Bible (1999). In 2000, the book "The Art Of Rozz Williams" was published, dedicated to the life and work of this ill-fated black messiah of rock.

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