24-7 Spyz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
24-7 Spyz
Jimi Hazel with 24-7 Spyz in 2012
Jimi Hazel with 24-7 Spyz in 2012
General information
origin New York City , New York , United States
Genre (s) Crossover , funk metal
founding 1986
Current occupation
initially electric guitar , now also vocals
Jim Hazel
Rick Skatore
Sekou Lumumba
Electric guitar, vocals
 Ronny Drayton
former members
singing
 Peter "Fluid" Forrest
Drums
 Kindu Phibes
Drums
 Anthony Johnson
singing
 Jeff Brodnax
Drums
 Mackie Jayson
Drums
 Joel Maitoza
Drums
 Matt Martin
Drums
 Tony Lewis
Drums
 Tobias Ralph

24-7 Spyz is an American funk metal and crossover band from New York City , New York that was formed in 1986.

history

In 1986 in New York's South Bronx , the singer Peter Forrest alias “P. Fluid ”and drummer Kindu Phibes got together to form a band. When they met guitarist Jimi Hazel and bassist Rick Skatore, this was complete. A few months later, Phibes was shot in the street. After his physical recovery, he was left with a trauma that manifested itself in fear of people and as a result he had to be replaced by Anthony Johnson. Johnson can thus be heard on the 8-track demo that brought the band a record deal. The debut album Harder Than You was released in 1989 via In-Effect Records . The Kool - & - The-Gang cover version Jungle Boogie has also been played several times on MTV . The album also includes the Black Uhuru song Sponji Reggae as a cover version . After the second album Gumbo Millennium was released in 1990 , it went on tour with Jane's Addiction . At the end of November 1990, Forrest and drummer Johnson left the cast. Forrest had told his fans about his departure during an appearance on the tour before the band members even knew it. Singer Jeff Brodnax and drummer Joel Maitoza joined in as replacements. In addition, the group switched to the East West Records label . In the same year, the band played, among other things, as the opening act for Alice Cooper , and then as headliner for over a week in German clubs. In 1991 the EP This Is ... 24-7 Spyz! , which was followed by the next album Strength in Numbers in 1992 , which was produced by Terry Date . During the recording period, the group was able to stand on stage with Public Enemy . After the album was released, there was a long break due to the members' frustration with the album release. During an earthquake in Los Angeles , Jimi Hazel wondered how much time he had wasted while inactive with the band, which led him to revive them. On the 1995 album Temporarily Disconnected , which was only released in Europe , the group again consisted of the members who had already been heard on Harder Than You before the line-up changed again. Finally Hazel also took over the vocals, while the post of drummer changed several times. In 1996 the album Heavy Metal Soul by the Pound followed , which was called 6 in Europe . Then Joel Maitoza returned as a drummer. Doug Pinnick from King's X also contributed guest vocals. The European version had a slightly different track list and was released on Enemy Records . The album also featured older recordings in which Carlton Smith played the drums. In 1997, the EP If I Could was released , which contains live recordings of a concert in their fan club in St. Louis from October 1996. Then the group went on a European tour. The band took a break from 1998 to 2003.

Hazel and Skatore then revived the band in January 2004, prompting the band to release their first live album, Can You Hear the Sound? appeared, the recordings being from 1998. A new studio album was released in 2006 under the name Face the Day .

style

According to Allmusic's Greg Prato , the living color album Vivid paved the way for other African American bands like 24-7 Spyz. The group play a mix of funk and heavy metal with meaningful lyrics. Jimi Hazel chose his pseudonym from the first and last names of his favorite guitarists: Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Hazel . The Encyclopedia of Popular Music characterizes the style as a mixture of Ska , Punk and Funk in the manner of Fishbone and the Bad Brains , whereby the debut album has a not inconsiderable proportion of Thrash, in addition to the high funk , which is enriched with rap and reggae . According to rockdetector.com , the band mixes funk, rhythm and blues and hard rock on Harder Than You . According to Holger Stratmann in the Rock Hard Encyclopedia , the band on Harder Than You offers a crossover of metal , rap, funk, hardcore punk and reggae. At the time of publication, the group was "[i] in the wake of other crossover acts like Fishbone, Bad Brains and Living Color". Detlef Wulbrandt chose the tapeworm designation “Funk-Metal-Rock-Reggae-Hip-Hop” in the Metal Hammer . According to Hanno Kress from Rock Hard , Temporarily Disconnected is about heterosexual relationships. In an interview with Kress, Jimi Hazel stated that the members were surprised that all the texts were on the same topic because they wrote separately from each other. Kress wrote that the song Why is about Hazel climbing onto a roof to fix it. This would be symbolic of mending a relationship. However, the content does not address personal relationships. Hazel stated that he came from the hardcore punk scene. Martin Popoff wrote in his book The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal. Volume 2: The Eighties in his review of Harder Than You that the band combines funk with heavy metal and rap and can therefore be classified between bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers , Living Color, Faith No More , Beastie Boys , Bad Brains and Scatterbrain . The bass is occasionally played with the slap technique . In addition, one can occasionally hear influences from thrash metal , progressive metal , rock music , rhythm and blues and reggae. The band also make use of breakdowns . According to Matthias Prenzel from Metal Hammer, there is a song on Gumbo Millennium called Do the Right Thing , which takes its name from the film of the same name , which refers to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King . In an interview with Prenzel, the singer of the time Forrest stated that the band was on the side of Malcom X. He explained the band name 24-7 Spyz by saying that the band spied 24 hours a day, seven days a week in foreign styles. Regarding Harder Than You , Prenzel wrote that the band followed the “decisiveness of hardcore, [the] energy of funk, [the] power of metal, perhaps [the] aggressiveness of rap-piger rhythms [and] certainly with [the] confusion of Reggae "combine. According to Forrest, Harder Than You is based on funk and hardcore punk, while Gumbo Millennium is based more on soul , which displaces reggae a little more, and rock, which replaces hardcore punk. Mark Sikora said in Spex about Gumbo Millennium that there are playful crossover experiments on the trail of Living Color. In her review of Gumbo Millennium , Andrea Nieradzik from Metal Hammer stated that the band experiments with different styles of music even more than Living Color. The band is more mature on the album than on the previous album. The hardcore punk passages that were interspersed on the predecessor have now almost completely disappeared. In addition, the number of heavy metal passages has decreased, so that “ jazzy tootling” now dominates. According to Markus Kavka from the same magazine, the band is playing a "funk-jazz-metal-hardcore brew" on Temporarily Disconnected . The first album was way ahead of its time. Since then, however, the band has hardly developed any further. Kavka wrote to 6 that the group played " old-school funk-rap-metal" on it. On the album, in contrast to its predecessor, one tries “not to sound like young hoppers by force”. In addition, the "silly guitar solos [...] have been reduced to a tolerable minimum, the grooves are straighter and Jimi Hazel is a gifted, unsophisticated singer". The Musikexpress already noticed the “ingredient” jazz at Strength in Numbers , alongside heavy metal, melodic rock , funk psychedelic and zappaesque sound experiments. The lyrics are also something special: "Partly in the form of stories, partly like headlines, their songs are gripping short reports on American reality."

1996 Jimi Hazel named as "musical relatives": Rage Against the Machine , Korn and Biohazard .

Discography

  • 1989: Harder Than You (Album, In-Effect Records )
  • 1989: Jungle Boogie (Single, In-Effect Records)
  • 1990: Gumbo Millennium (Album, In-Effect Records)
  • 1990: Don't Break My Heart! (Single, In-Effect Records)
  • 1991: This Is ... 24-7 Spyz! (EP, East West Records )
  • 1992: Strength in Numbers (album, East West Records)
  • 1995: Temporarily Disconnected (Album, Enemy Records )
  • 1996: Heavy Metal Soul by the Pound (Album, What Are Records? )
  • 1996: 6 (European version of Heavy Metal Soul by the Pound , Enemy Records)
  • 1997: If I Could (EP, What Are Records?)
  • 2005: HMS4L: The Many Lives of Walter Rattamus (DVD, self-published)
  • 2006: Can You Hear the Sound? (Live album, What Are Records?)
  • 2006: Face the Day (album, Gumbo Records )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Metronome Musik GmbH press department (ed.): Bio 24-7 Spyz . Hamburg August 1989 (two-page biography for doctoral purposes).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Biography. (No longer available online.) Rockdetector.com, archived from the original on November 12, 2014 ; Retrieved November 4, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Oliver Klemm: 24-7 Spyz . In a good mood. In: Rock Hard . No. 58 , February 1992, p. ? .
  4. ^ A b Matthias Prenzel: 24-7 Spyz . 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In: Metal Hammer . No. 19-20 / 1990 , September 21, 1990, pp. 120 .
  5. ↑ a b Detlef Wulbrandt: 24-7 Spyz, Stevie Salas Colorcode . Bochum, colliery. In: Metal Hammer . No. 21-22 / 1990 , October 19, 1990, Live, p. 151 .
  6. ↑ a b Hanno Kress: Sweet togetherness . 24-7 Spyz. In: Rock Hard . No. 95 , April 1995, pp. 76 .
  7. ↑ a b Greg Prato: 24-7 Spyz. Allmusic , accessed November 4, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Colin Larkin (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Popular Music . 3. Edition. 7: Smith, Leo - Wildchild . Macmillan, London 1998, ISBN 0-333-74134-X , 24-7 Spyz, pp. 5542 .
  9. ↑ Holger Stratmann: Rock Hard Encyclopedia . ROCK HARD GmbH, 1998, ISBN 3-9805171-0-1 , p. 428 f .
  10. ^ Martin Popoff : The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal . 2: The Eighties . Collectors Guide Ltd, Burlington, Ontario, Canada 2005, ISBN 978-1-894959-31-5 , pp. 370 .
  11. ^ Mark Sikora: Living Color / 24-7 Spyz . Gumbo Millenium [sic]. In: Spex . August 1990, p. 39 .
  12. ↑ Andrea Nieradzik: 24-7 Spyz . Gumbo Millennium. In: Metal Hammer . July 1990, p. 60 .
  13. ^ Markus Kavka : 24-7 Spyz . Temporarily disconnected. In: Metal Hammer . March 1995, p. 58 .
  14. ^ Markus Kavka: 24-7 Spyz . 6. In: Metal Hammer . March 1996, p. 62 .
  15. ↑ (ek): 24-7-Spyz [sic] . Strength in Numbers. In: Musikexpress . No. 440 , September 1992, pp. 86 .
  16. ^ Markus Wosgien: 247 Spyz [sic] . In: Horror Infernal . May / June, 1996, p. 38 .