I've got a new (old) article for you.
Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:03 pm
I transcribed it because it was tough to read through the graphics.
Not to take anything away from the insight of God Lives Underwater, but the meeting of rave and alt-rock was as inevitable as the 1979 fall of Skylab - and they knew that thing was coming down before they even sent it up. Amid ultra baggy clothes, x-tacy tripping, Lollopalooza, and snowboarding, there had to be a band fearless enough to unite the ravers and razors in one head. Killing Joke may have come close, but drifted too far into industrial. Faith No More and White Zombie flashed metallic. We saw touches here and there in some of those flailing Manchester bands, but it was never taken to the extreme. Never all the way.
With an alternative foreground and a hyper-techno background, God Lives Underwater melds two diverging styles into one striking sound. The band's unique hybrid recalls the invention and gall of Jane's Addiction, Fishbone, and Rage Against The Machine, who are notorious as innovators of style as well as sound. God Lives Underwater adds another audio-alloy to the already broad musical periodic chart. They take the next logical step by merging rave with vocals and guitars into a sound that is both totally cohesive and totally chaotic - irrationally described as thromboseismic.
"We didn't plan our music," explains singer/guitarist/keyboardist David Reilly. "A lot of people ask us if it was a thought-up decision to put rock guitars to techno, but that's just the way we were raised. We grew up listening to a lot of Depeche Mode but at the same time we were into bands like Squeeze, Bowie, and The Beatles. By the time we got our own band together it had become acceptable for us to be sequencing rhythms and doing that kind of music but with vocals and guitars to it."
"We didn't think we were doing this super-innovative thing," adds keyboardist/guitarist Jeff Turzo. "Until the time we got our deal we weren't really aware that we were doing was so new. We were just doing what came naturally... what we were into."
Reilly and Turzo built the band on their classical piano training and encyclopedic knowledge of techno. They are the inception, the primary songcrafters. School friends from Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania, each had the perfect mix of intensive computer knowledge and invasive musical smarts to find a sound. Their attempts at mixing music for raves ended up in collaborations that became songs and ultimately an EP. Guitarist Andrew McGee and drummer Adam Kary, fellow Pennsylvanians, were added as demolition experts. American Recordings is a natural house for this guitar electronic ensemble, having found some success with high speed techno wizards Lords Of Acid. But where Lords Of Acid have their "#### and suck" lyrical frenzy, God Lives Underwater shoves that same attitude out through their sound.
Nineteen-ninety-five may be the year for God Lives Underwater. The track "No More Love" - from their February released EP - was just snatched up for inclusion on the soundtrack to Johnny Mnemonic, the Keanu Reeves cyber-thriller perfectly in synch with the band's futuristic frenzy. Just as that sound is hittin', they're in the midst of an extreme evolution as they work on their next release. When their full-length debut arrives this fall, their already hyper-kinetic style will still be as recognizable as God Lives Underwater, but this time everthing has been jacked up, like, to the tenth power.
"There really is a lot more of everything on this album," explains Reilly. "There's a lot more emotion, and at the same time the music is a lot harder. Now we have even more guitars and even more techno. It's also produced a lot better with really cool sounds and sequences."
Like the new Sega sports games that allow you do your own player trades, God Lives Underwater is what you'd get if you took Layne Staley and made him the lead singer of Lords Of Acid or maybe placed Trent Reznor in charge of Rage Against The Machine. It's music that would have perfectly fit in with the music on The Crow soundtrack, that electronic-tinged loop-oriented guitar gravel, embellished with industrial and drowned in deep techno/rave. Too late maybe for The Crow, the sound is evolving, updated, stylized and just in time for Johnny Mnemonic. "Rave rock" arrives just in time.
Brent Kidwell
Huh Magazine Issue 9 May 1995
). That magazine is how I first learned about GLU. It came with a CD every month and they had GLU three times while I subscribed. I didn't remember there being an article but I went ahead and took a look just in case. One massive headache later... here you go.
effin' synchronicity for ya. 
