FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.


OH, THE HORROR (ROCK)
Forbidden Dimension are the kinda guys you can really dig... a grave! (Ha ha) Forbidden Dimension CD release party

"If this is the history of horror rock 'n' roll," says Forbidden Dimension gittarist / organ-grinder / voxalist Jackson Phibes as he draws a smiley face in the dirt with his snake-head cane (NOT an anatomical metaphor), "we're somewhere in the middle, 'cuz we've been doing it so darn long."

"Forbidden Dimension," says bass-boy Bloody Holly. "It's not funny anymore."

"Forbidden Dimension," chimes (!) drummin' Carl Pagan. "Maybe your parents remember these guys."

Phibes, again: "Forbidden Dimension: pack up your coffins and GO AWAY!"

Phibes, like BH & CP, is a g'darn Encylopedia Brown, Black & Blue of all things rock 'n' roll. He's quick to rattle off a noggin-bogglin' horror r'n'r lineage, encompassing Screamin' Jay Hawkins and John Zacherly (noting, natch, the blessed convergence of monster movie TV syndication with the rise in popularity of rock 'n' roll: the teen boy's ultimate bed-wet), Alice Cooper and Kiss, 45 Grave and the Castration Squad, the Misfits and Christian Death, and the Cramps, who "cavorted with the imagery, but were crowded out by all the Batcave bands in the '80s, so they renounced their horror ways." Whew.

"It's never been taken very seriously, and that's how it should be."

(Lest you think the makeup over(eye)shadows the music, Phibes notes that crazed Texan Roky Erickson made some of the best horror rock 'n' roll, "and he was a reg'lar looking hippie guy.")

Forbidden Dimension, with their bee-yooty skool dropout looks, pulp lyrics, and "sub-Black Sabbath" sound, come off like a tighter, smarter, more highly-evolved Misfits. The song titles shriek volumes about FD's flair for scare: "Butcher, Maker, Undertaker," "Irricana Bloodbath," "The Devil's Generation." For Phibes, horror rock 'n' roll is, "pretty much for fun, but it's a good way of putting across ideas. It's a fast, accessible medium.

"Even when I try to write something different, it still comes out sounding the same."

The gentlemen of Forbidden Dimension are complete and total musickos, the kinda guys you'd take home to mom so they could argue the merits of owning the orig Ramones LPs vs. the CD collections, so they could crab about the lack of Alice Cooper websites (or praise the Blue Oyster Cult search engine), so they could three-way nitpick (the French term for which escapes me) the first Dead Boys album. When Carl Pagan discovers a troubling photo in a r 'n' r paperback ("Hey! Charlie Watts doesn't have a bass drum! He's got long hair and no bass drum!"), Phibes drops whatever he's throttling to check it out.

"We're music fans first," says JP. "It's the only way to be. Everything we do is a rip-off of something, but the trick is to mix it up so it's not immediately detectable, so you can't pin it down. Elvis didn't just rip off Wynonie Harris, he ripped off Dean Martin, too."

April Fül's Day sees the release of FD's third CD, Widow's Walk, 13 unlucky numbers about (or, at the very least, mentioning) evil & blood & death. The songs echo Phibes' usual musical touchstones: The Stranglers (not so much the organ, but paying "a bit more attention to the arrangements"), the Damned, heavy metal, and of course, Vic Mizzy. (Duh: he scored The Addams Family and The Ghost & Mr. Chicken.) (S'okay, I didn't know either.)

"We're not about super-heavy doom-laden chord progressions," says Phibes. "We try to get Vic Mizzy minor chords - it puts me in a good mood to hear the Addams Family TV soundtrack. It's a good place to be."

Widow's Walk is Forbidden Dimension's second outing with the heavy-hitting Carl Pagan, and the first with new brute recruit Bloody Holly. "I'm glad to be outta the grave and playin' some real rock 'n' roll," says Bloody, no less than the third bassist thru the Forbidden Dimension grinder.

"We make them play so hard that their fingers wear down to little stumps and we have to retire them to the Old Bass Players Home out in the country," explains Han'some Jackson P. "We're still on speaking terms, though. Speaking, of course, thru seances."

The new FD lineup also appears on an upcoming single ("Gloria Was Evil" b/w "Coffinful of Crows") and the second volume of the Oh Canaduh! compilation, on which young(ish) punx cover old punx. Forbidden Dimension have chosen to slather up Personality Crisis' "Vampire's Dream." "We're the only band that's doing a metal song," notes Holly with more than a trace of pride.

Between now and summer, FD are spending their weekends on the road, peddling their badtime sounds in every nook, Dick & Harry. Carl Pagan laments how the "gosh darn touring" (not a quote) is making him miss Cheap Trick's upcoming gig. Phibes, always the gentleman, reaches over and dries Carl's tears with a fist.

"Yeah," he says, feeling Pagan's pain, "but when Kiss come to town, we're takin' the weekend off!"

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