We are a 4-piece political punk band from Bristol, UK, who play kind of crusty/anarcho with some noodly bits in and lyrics about little things like how the environment is getting totally fucked while consumer capitalism and apathy hold sway, ‘politics’ rules our lives through big business, the Apartheid in Palestine/Israel, fascism in black metal, etc.  We’ve played and organised a lot of gigs, often benefits for various activist groups that reflect the politics of members of the band.

The band started in early 2006. Andy had been trying to start a band for a while (he’d done the hard part and found a drummer, Matt) but despite trying loads of promising punk musicians he was running out of options. He saw Badger had a CRASS tattoo at a free party and so talked him into learning bass and managed to recruit Other Andy to play guitar.  They wanted a 2^nd guitarist so after trying everyone else they asked me (Myles) coz I was mates with Matt.  We practised in Other Andy’s basement and started gigging in summer 2006 (i.e far too early, which Bristol has never forgiven us for!).  It was all pretty ropey with crap songs that we could never remember when we sobered up and people frequently missing practice and, after some fucking shit performances up and down the country, Other Andy decided that as a talented musician he had better things to do than play in a crap anarcho band and left in June ‘07.

He was right so there were no hard feelings.  This was actually a bit of a blessing as we realised we needed to sort our shit out and by the end of the year we were in pretty good shape as a four-piece.  Badger decided that as we’d managed to attract no fans at all in the UK it was time to conquer Europe and booked a week in Germany, Holland and Belgium for April ‘08.  We needed a driver with a van and Andy said he knew someone in Leeds who drove bands around so we contacted Talia to drive us on tour.  Although some of us had seen her in her previous band we didn’t actually know her and she’d only seen us once (a shite early incarnation), but after the 1^st gig of the tour she asked if she could do some singing.  We taught her a different song each day of the tour in sound check and by the time we got back she’d joined the band and decided to move to Bristol.  This 5-piece line up lasted about a year, including a tour of Scotland with DISKELMA which was fucking amazing, until Talia decided that life in JESUS BRUISER wasn’t for her and returned to the frozen North of England.

In an unconnected move we’d decided that we needed 2 guitarists again if we were going become the self-indulgent prog-crust wankers we now dreamt of being.  We approached Alexis, a Greek guitar god who played in local band BELLADONNA (now known as MY NEW LOW) and had come to our attention by actually coming to gigs and saying he liked what we were doing.  We trained him up fast and played some gigs in May/June 2009 finishing with a weekend we were invited over to in Holland playing Amsterdam and Groningen which was cool and very messy.  Alexis then went back to Greece to recuperate from the new J.B lifestyle for the summer but returned and we started gigging hard as a 5-piece again.

In late November 2009 after a string of gigs we parted ways with the final Andy, leaving Myles, Alexi and Badger to take up full responsibility for vocal duties, the logic being the more idiots screeching into microphones the more effective the masking of instrumental ineptitude.

We’ve got a 6 track 10” that is out now (email us to arrange getting a copy, or if you’re in Bristol on Saturday between 11am-2pm try the Kebele infoshop – 14 Robertson Road, Easton, BS5 6JY).  It’s been a total nightmare to do: we recorded it in October 2008 (with Talia but before Alexis), took ages to mix it, didn’t like that mix so took months waiting to get it remixed.  It was originally going to be released as a split 12” with DISKELMA but we took so long they decided to release their tracks separately.  So we released it ourselves and fortunately some lovely people in France offered to help us because they liked what we were doing, particularly the fact that we were anti-Myspace.

We’ve now recorded some new songs with the new line up that should be out as a split LP with the epic WAR COMA from Manchester that’s due out early 2010 (in time for our next European tour in April – watch the website), and also have songs recorded for a split 7” in the future as well.

You can check us out at www.jesusbruiser.co.uk to find out about gigs, listen to some songs, contact us about anything, etc. Cheers!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.