the Champs

Have you ever had one of those moments when you were listening to some great instrumental metal, and you thought 'Hey, this sounds like the Melvins', turned around, and found King Buzzo, the *huge*-haired lead singer of the Melvins standing right behind you? Well, generally, that does not happen to me either - except for the first time I saw these nice gents perform. At least I thought they were nice gents until I found this little manifesto of theirs out on the web:

"The Champs solitary aim is to destroy weak music and its purveyors by at once rejecting and exalting the tenets of the classic rock idiom. Also by killing."

Ah, I see. Anyhow the fact that Mr. Buzzo turned out to see them was high praise of their mastery of the subtler elements of the metal genre - they are very tight and very loud.

Oh, OK, one more thing. Apparently, the Champs also feature the world's only 9 string guitar.

Links of note:

A Champs fan page: http://www.thefuckingchamps.com - Note that the Champs also sometimes go by the C4am95, just to be tricky.

Live show in RealVideo: http://www.supersphere.com/Club/Archive/ - in the "Rock / Pop" section.

My review, 4/9/98, Spaceland, LA.

If you'd like, you can email me here: richard@hearingmusic.com.

Oh, and all content on these pages is copyright Richard Lewis.