Rainbow Blight of Hate in a Box

Driving on Holy Gasoline

"Stoned baby loves to go ridin', she likes it 'cause she's sick in the head"- Buckcherry

Connecticut is alright if you like cops

It's not all freezing to death in cavernous parking lots or crawling through snarls of angry traffic for hours on end- sometimes I have to 'recover' stolen cars as well, like an extremely low-rent repo man. Most of the time they end up at a police impound lot, or at some greasy garage in the middle of nowhere. The garage racket is always a gas, since they only wrench the wrecks enough so that they can limp off of the lot on their own accord. There's nothing like trying to avoid state troopers while driving a half-dead vehicle that looks like a dragon bit the right side of it's face off through the city streets to keep you awake. And once in awhile, you just have to go right into the belly of the beast, and steal the car back. Ever since George the Fireman snapped his neck rescuing a junkie from a smoke-filled apartment, I've been getting picked to go. I guess this is because I look like a biker, so I must be used to people shooting at me.

One of our cars ended up in Bloomfield, Connecticut. That's pretty much all the information I was given. The head driver told me to just go to the police station when I get there and ask them. I'm still enough of a sleazy character to flinch at such instructions, but I will do a man's job, baby, because I am a man. And anyway, I've had hazier missions. At least they told me what town to go to this time. I grabbed Valerie to come with me and drive the turnaround car back home. Even though her non-stop jabbering would clearly drive a man bug-fuck crazy after awhile, she at least has the keen sense of direction of a 40-something Hawaiian homing pigeon. On speed, even. According to the map, this Bloomfield was a good gulpful away from Hartford, where we usually go when we venture into that jive state, and daylight was wasting, so we put the proverbial pedal to the metal, and headed south. 

I hate Connecticut, by the way. Not only does that measly little state have no rock and roll- and no, straight-edge hardcore does not count as rock and roll - it's also crawling with cops. Cops everywhere, hiding behind trees and in barns, and at the lips of every exit. Last time Val and I were out there, I got nailed with a 37 dollar ticket for not wearing a seatbelt- and I wasn't even driving, she was. Their entire system of roads and highways are a hideous lair of entrapment and extortion. Of course, we still barreled down route 84 at a good 100, 110 miles per hour, but you know, we're pros. 

The other thing that really gets under the Sleazegrinder's skin about Connecticut is the medieval-like class system. In Boston, all the marginal types- the working poor, minorities, rock and roll burnouts- just get squeezed out to the outer edges of the city. They (Me, I married up) get pawn shops and liquor stores and although they're pretty much left to their own devices, at least the city runs a bus line so that the rabble can still stay in the mix with the real citizens for 75 cents a pop. In Connecticut, they herd all the poor folks into their own fuckin' cities, so that the Mercedes driving upper middle class leeches that rule that state never even have to see them. Hence, Bloomfield. I lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts for 2 weeks once. A shitty city full of transients and maniacs, it's one of the top 5 cities in the US for car theft, and it looks like a Detroit a month after being taken over by speed-freak Puerto Rican biker gangs. Crack whores crawled around the avenue, blood flowed, bullets zipped through open windows-and that was just during the day. I worked at night, so who knows what kind of madness they were up to after dark. Anyway, Lawrence was still nicer then Bloomfield. 

The first sign that things were not well in this town was when we slipped down the exit, and the road was lined with car dealerships that looked more like abandoned junkyards. None of the cars looked driveable, and I don't think any of them had price tags over $400. No wonder they were stealing our cars. When we got to the pre-fab strip mall center of town, school had just gotten out, and there was gang of black teenage girls beating the shit out of each other with Lacrosse rackets in the middle of the street, snarling up traffic. Eventually they dispersed, most of them heading over to terrorize the Taco Bell, and we searched for the police station. 

The cop I talked to looked like Nel Carter and called me 'Honey' a lot, which always works with me. She was nice enough to draw me a map to "The Projects", where the car was. Since it wasn't damaged, they had just left it where they arrested the guy that stole it. She handed me the keys, smiled, and said, "Good luck, honey." Good luck? Wait a minute, did she just say "The Projects"? 

After snaking through a bunch of muddy, abandoned construction sites, we drove up a steep hill littered with broken glass, and a sprawling concrete housing project bloomed under us like a giant blood flower. The car was behind- seriously- apartment complex number 13, which the cop told me was somewhere in the middle of the project. I started driving slowly around this 9th circle of Hell looking for the stupid car, when I noticed a group of kids following behind us. I stuck my head out the window and one of them, a girl about 8 or 9 years old, tossed a can at me. It was exactly at that point that Valerie decided to stop, right there, for lunch. She put up the windows, locked the doors, and turned up the radio, so that she couldn't hear the kids screaming for us to "Go home!" I got out and decided to find the car on foot. Most of the numbers on the doorways had been removed, and some of them had obviously been changed on purpose, for whatever reason. 419 was right next to 32, that kind of thing. I was standing there in my leather jacket, Marlboro between my teeth, looking like a lost tourist that took the cheap flight to downtown Beirut, when a low-riding, banged-up Mustang with tinted windows crept up behind me. The driver's window zipped down. "Yo! What are you lookin' for?" I walked over to the car. It was full of teenage thugs, of course. "I'm looking for number 13", I said. The window zipped back up. I knocked on the window. "Hey, I'm looking for number 13." The window cracked open a half-inch. "You better get out of here", he said, and up it went again. Now I'm pissed, clicking on the window with my skull rings. "Motherfucker, I'm just asking you a simple fucking question." They just rolled off, barely missing my foot. But then I saw it, Number 13, right in front of me. And in the parking lot, the Goddamn gold minivan that's caused all this trouble. None of the tires were even popped. This must be my lucky day. 

I spoke too soon. As I walked over to the stolen vehicle in question, I heard a door open behind me with a squeak. I didn't even bother to look. "That your car?" The gravely voice asked me. "Matter of fact, it is", I said, fumbling with the keys now. "If you get in that car, I'm gonna blow your fuckin' head off", the voice warned me, before breaking up in a fit of crazy laughter. I got in the car anyway. I mean, I was committed at this point. I jack-knifed out of the lot and tore ass out of the projects. I didn't even bother looking for Valerie, figuring it was every man for himself at this dark hour.

The cops, quite incredibly, stopped me about 20 yards away. After holding me hostage for 15 minutes, the cop gave me my license back. "We just wanted to run a check", he said. "This car was reported stolen." The dispatcher had told him I was picking it up. "Why did you go into the projects by yourself?" He asked me. Good question. I told him that the woman back at the station sent me there. He laughed. Then I told him that some guy back there threatened to kill me. "Yeah", he said. "They have a tendency to do that."

Did I mention that I hate Connecticut? 

The Road is Loud

Acumen Nation - The 5ifth Column
(Invisible) www.invisiblerecords.com

Creepy cool electro-shock from one of the more metallic gangs of tyrants from the post-industrial death twitch rocktronica scene. Acumen Nation have got the digital metal riffs and air of neo-evil decadence of Chem Lab, but they toss some Depeche Mode pop hooks into the mix, putting them somewhere between the dance-floor and the mosh-pit, only without all that tortured redneck nonsense. The bombastic, acid metal choruses slam down heavy, like a hail of clawhammers, which obviously makes you want to spike the gas, so avoid cops, cabs, and coffee when operating under the influence of '5ifth Column'. By the way, there's a live track tagged on here, and although it sounds a little too aggro-nu-metal for me, I still think "What's up, crackwhores?" is a fucking fantastic way to greet your fans. 

The Spitts - Cut the Circulation Off
(People Like You) www.peoplelikeyou.de 

The Spitts- who really couldn't be confused with the Seattle band of the same name, unless they moved to Seattle to Sweden- are a lot like their label-mates, Germany's Revolvers, in that they are a totally fuckin' boss confection of sleazy punked-out kicks and shameless pop thrills. Equal parts early Sweet, even earlier Aerosmith, and just about any era of Cheap Trick throwing back a few and getting friendly with latter-day cocksmen like the Backyard Babies and Hardcore Superstar. "Cut the Circulation Off" is primo-swagger rock, a collection of hard luck anthems from a gang of leather clad fist fighters with a gold plated sweet tooth who're fierce enough for the motorcycle cowboys and arrive alive with enough rock star flash to please the cheetah skin crowd, as well. If I've got any complaints, it's that the Spitts trip over the same wires as candy-eared biker metal thugs The Almighty. Like those normally bad ass motherfuckers, some of their songs are just so pop you might ruin your teeth just listening to them. "I'm in Love", for example, sounds like some radio-ready mixture of the London Quireboys boogie woogie and the Mighty Bosstones' bras section in full swing, and that, my brothers and sisters, is not sleazy at all. But you know, maybe I just need to grow up. For less be-fanged enthusiasts of the Manly Arts, 'Circulation' is a whole pile of catchy, kicky pop hits wrapped in wolf's clothing, and it practically begs to be played loud and often.

Blood Red Throne - Monument of Death
(Hammerheart/Martyr) www.martyrmusicgroup.com

A paint peeling, ear bleeding assault of blistering thrash n' roll, "Monument of Death" is the aural equivalent of one of those crazed, sped-up Kung Fu movies where they strap on metal claws and tear each other to pieces at triple speed. Thematically, every song is about some form of corporal punishment, as narrated by one Mr. Hustler, who vomits out the atrocity exhibition with one part death metal bark, one part Witchery-styled lupine rasp, all snapping teeth and serial killer intensity. Dod and Tchort- that's what it says here, citizen- are the twin axe slingers, the iron clawed arms of this bloody throne, and they're like Mustaine and Hammet's younger, meaner doppelgangers, executing riff after razor sharp, precision crafted riff, attacking from all sides until you feel like General Custer on a ver bad day. These two oddly named motherfuckers are a lethal guitar villain team indeed, and they propel Blood Red Throne right out of the crowded waiting room of Cannibal Corpse wannabe's and straight into the big leagues, baby, with an exhaustive pummeling of superior Satan-shred. Make no mistake about it, this is violence personified, but it's also a rattlesnake mean rock and roll record. Black, death, thrash- call it whatever pleases you, but I think Chuck Berry would be just as pleased and impressed by this display of affordable firepower as Evil Chuck would be. 

Kody - The 4 AM EP
www.kody.co.uk

I can't listen to black metal in the car anymore. My nerves can't take it, man. I turn a corner and I'm imagining a giant monster truck with a grill full of snapping teeth looking to eat me lurking there. That's why I specifically brought the new Kody EP with me today, because they're English, and therefore more civilized then all that European howling dog satanic terror music. Kody play a mellow style of post-grunge indie-punk. With furrowed brow and serious intent, they are young and clean-shaven like angst heroes Silverchair, but with less inclination to dissolve in walls of Marshall-fried feedback. No, these cats are more medicated, lubricated, blissed out. The angular melodies take to wandering like pick-pockets into exotic neighborhoods, grabbing clandestine influences from Seattle to shoegazer, and calling them their own. Gareth's vocals are a plaintive wail that's as folky-earnest as it is rock star howl, somewhere between Billy Bragg's street corner protest and Gavin Rosdale's mock-tortured longing, and Simon's drums are like a tribal tattoo keeping all the rapidly evolving mood swings in check. The whole affair is like a raspy breath of alterna-chug, expanding and contracting at will. '4 AM' is the sound of a band trying out several different bowls of porridge, but something tells me that whichever one Kody eventually chooses, it will be just right. 

Like a Lollipop that Burns:
Rainbow Blight keeps her Hate in the Box

"This girl threw her panties at me. It was so cool. I felt like a rock god."

Manhattan must be an island full of vampires, because I have never made a rock star phone call to Gotham City at the right time. It's always too early, whenever it is. When I call the twinkling little star at hand, industro-goth cybervixen Rainbow Blight, it's 1 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, the sun shining brightly in both of our cities. "I don't think she's up yet", the voice on the other end tells me. "Let me go check." Perhaps that was none other than Optimus Crime, Rainbow's chief co-pirate. Besides cleverly naming himself after one of those toys-turned-Saturday morning cartoons from the 80's- Transformers, or Decepticons, or whatever they are- he's the muscle and the hustle behind the rolling blackout digital terror of Hate in the Box. Originally conceived as a sort of 'Pianosaurus' from Hell- children's toy instruments wired in blood and amplified a thousand-fold, every berserk childhood fantasy of playground warfare run amuck- nowadays they're simply big, mean, heavy, loud, and lesbian cheerleader sexy, pure state of the art apocalypse rock fueled as much by Satan as they are by a Geiger-esque sense of bio-mechanical high fashion. 

HITB are not staples of NYC's typical sweaty rock trenches, avoiding genre tags like punk or metal or even Psycho-delic supersexthrash as much as they do sunlight, preferring to operate like clandestine stealth bombers, launching high concept art attacks at more elegant and profane events like NYC's notorious fetish balls, a latex bull in a semi-precious China shop of unwary, ill-prepared goth kids, injecting some much needed heat into an otherwise morgue-slab cold scene. And while Optimus plugs the sockets and sounds the sirens, Rainbow Blight is the bleeding midnight sunshine up front, a riot of black leather and screaming day-glo- part pin-up, part vampire from outer space, part rock and roll killing machine. Prone to extravagant, complicated, even robotic states of dress and with a mouth for war, she's a whole new breed of front woman- she's beyond sexy, beyond violent, she's pure electricity -out of control technology and 21st century panic made flesh. And she's finally waking up. I apologize for calling too early. "It's ok, I was kind of half awake anyway. I just didn't want to get up", she yawns. And so it begins. 

Should I call you Rainbow? Does everybody call you Rainbow?

People usually call me 'Blight' for short.

Is that the name you use all the time?

I have a lot of adopted names.

Did somebody give you the name?

No, I came up with the name myself. I was a big fan of the cartoon.

Because it just seems, given your image, that...

That's where the Blight comes in.

I'm obviously taking the wrong tact with Rainbow, so I exit, stage left, on the name game, and dive into the latest news on the HITB front. "We're kicking ass all over the place", she say happily. "We're 'Band of the month' at the Power-Goth Girls website (www.powergothgirls.com). It's a really funny little cartoon." While we're on the issue of proto-feminist cartoons, I ask her if there's message of 'Girl Power' in her music. "It's more just about power for everyone, not just girls", she says. What Rainbow really wants to talk about today, though, is their next show, a fetish ball blowout that she's been preparing for months. "It's a really cool annual party", she tells me, "and it's basically a bunch of crazy fetishists and people of all sorts getting together. There's a shitload of performances and bands that play, and there's, like, fetish performances and piercing performances. There's lots of cool fashion shows too- not just the typical halter-top and miniskirt stuff. They kind of go for the unusual with this party, which is why they want us." In many prior late night e-mail correspondences, she's told me about the wildly high-concept costume she'd been constructing for the big night, and I ask her if she's finally finished it. "Oh yeah", she says, and I can almost hear her shaking her head at the thought of all the work it took to complete. "Oh, man. This thing took me months to do. It took a lot of cuts, and a lot of blood and sweat to make. It's really cool, though. It's four fully articulated robot arms that attach to a harness. Even though they look mechanical, they're more like puppets, because basically they attach to my arm, and then they follow the movement of my arm. I got the idea because they decided to call this party "Temple of Kali", and I'd always admired the goddess Kali, and I thought, why not give my own interpretation of her for the party? So I was determined- I'd already made one robot arm in the past, so I thought, I'm going to make four now." Think about that statement for a second- how many people do you know that can lay claim to that? "The first robot arm I made was electrically powered", she explains. "It was a claw from one of those games, you know, where the claw comes down and grabs the teddy bear? I got one of those claws from the metal surplus store, and made a robot arm. It had a little button inside the arm, and when you pressed it, you either made the arm move or you electrocuted yourself." She laughs. "You just never knew." One is trouble enough, but four extra arms sound awfully heavy, in both the metaphysical, and just plain physical meaning of the word. "Absolutely", she agrees. "I've been working out, to prepare for wearing it. I tested it out, to see how it feels when I'm dancing around, and I had to adjust a few things, but now I'm ready. I tell you, they look pretty damn evil."

The Wine is Blood

Although the core of Hate in the Box remains Crime and Rainbow, the band has quietly and steadily gained new recruits to their devious cause, now leveling off as a 5 headed serpent of rock and roll damnation. "Oh yeah, we've been a five piece for a while now, we just haven't posted the bios for the new members yet", she says. "Still seeing how everything goes, you know. But the music's changed as well, it's more layered now. Having a bass, having more people, changes things. It hasn't changed to the point where you'd say, "Oh, it doesn't sound like Hate in the Box anymore", it's just more like, 'Oh, there's a little something extra in there.' Our new songs are a lot more thrashy, and a lot more focused, I would think, because before we would have to split the duties on everything. Before, (Optimus) Crime had to compose, he had to play guitar, and he had to play keyboards. So now, he can just concentrate on what he does best, and it really adds to the music." I ask her if she's seen the sound of the band evolve, as they add members and layers of throbbing sound, into something much different than her original vision . "I think we've always had this idea in mind to sound more thrashy and 'live', but we couldn't do it because we didn't have the people. But now we have the sound that we wanted. It's more raw, more in your face. Now, it's more of a kick in the face than a kick in the shins", she deadpans. But how did she find these mysterious new soldiers? "We're very do-it-yourself", she explains. "I know that's kind of a punk thing to do, and you know, we never wanted to stick ourselves in one genre, but basically, we've done everything ourselves from the beginning. I mean, we made our CD, and we labeled them too, stomped them out, we do everything. We decided to do music, and we weren't going to be limited by not having enough people, so we just went ahead and did it. Crime just said "Fuck this, I'm going to compose everything", and he was just a madman, and he did that. We had a couple of people help out on guitar and things, and after we had a bunch of tracks recorded, we'd just meet people and be like 'Hey, here's this awesome CD, and here's what we're doing' and they'd be like "Wow! I want to be part of that!' so you know, it was just a bunch of encounters with different cool people." Of course, it's not really that easy. Fledgling members must endure secret hazing rituals, often whispered about, but never revealed. "Well, you know. If I told you, I'd have to kill you, right?" Right. "We just jam out, and after the ritual sacrifices are over, then we know if they belong or not", she laughs.

Living Like a Lover With a Radar Phone

"I do a lot of the make-up and costuming, except for our drummer, he's got a pretty good sense of what he wants to do himself, but yeah, I do the make-up for photo shoots and that kind of thing." Rainbow's talking about her band's unique look- grave robbers from outer space? Post-apocalyptic superheroes? Drug crazed sex fiends? "It's not like we have a uniform or anything, we all have our own personalities and our own kind of look down, but it's good to try and figure out who's doing what, you know." For Rainbow, it's an S&M version of her favorite girlie cartoon, innocence lost and then taken back, by force. But nobody gets to be a Rainbow everyday. "Not yet, anyway", she confesses. I'd like to be. But I do get to be myself all the time. I don't choose jobs where I have to get in a suit or anything like that, but you know, I don't wear the wigs all time either. Because, you know, it would hurt." Apparently, it ain't easy being so beautiful, and so deadly, all at once. "That's the thing", she says, "I sacrifice my comfort every time I go on stage. Do you have any idea how much those arms hurt to carry around? They cut you and scrape you in all different places. I'm not really a metal worker of any sort, so they kind of have all these sharp edges that cut you, especially when you start to move around. There's wire and sharp pieces of metal sticking out all over the place cutting me to bits, but I just keep telling myself that I have to wear it, just because it looks so damn cool." And looking cool is all part of the plan. So is shredding the audience's mind with a hyper-delic, horror-fried theatre of dementia. "First of all, I think the band should be better dressed than the audience", Rainbow begins. "There's got to be something big going on. You've got to look up at the stage and go, 'Holy shit, what the hell is happening here?' It shouldn't be anything ordinary. I think you go to a show to get away from the ordinary. So yeah, there's definitely a sense of theatre. Optimus Crime is the guy that's always reinforced that idea, you know, 'This is a show. We're going to make things crazy here.' Like for this upcoming show, we're going to have Steelow and Octopussy grinding metal sparks everywhere to introduce us, so we're going in with a bang, and we're not going to stop until it's over." Given such spectacle, it's no wonder they don't bother with playing 3rd on the bill at CB's on Wednesday nights. "We just kind of wait for people to come to us", Rainbow says about how the band books shows. "We don't want to be that band singing their hearts out, and there's like 6 people there and one guy in the back going "Play some Def Leppard!" or something like that. We're definitely not that kind of band. Crime has been in a lot of bands before this one, more rock oriented stuff, so he's already done the 'band' thing, playing every single rock club in New York for weeks on end, where it's like the parents of the band there, and he's just like "No, we're going to do it a little differently this time.' It's kind of the same way that we recruit members is how we get shows. People have the cd, and they just say, "Hey, this would be really appropriate for this crazy show", or whatever, and we're like "Ok, we'll do that." It's more fun, it leaves us more freedom to work- like right now, we're going easy on shows so that we can work on our full-length record, things like that. I mean, playing a show is so incredible, I really enjoy being on stage and everything, but it's also a lot of trouble, a lot of expense, it's getting 5 people to commit to one day, which is a trial in itself. So, we try to limit our live shows. And we've got such a crazy global audience. They're always going, "When are you going to come to Buffalo? Or Texas? Or Alaska?" and it's like, whoa, slow down! We'll get to you sooner or later. If there's a demand, we'll come."

But what of the girl behind the day-glo wig and robot arms? Where, if not the darkest reaches of inky black galaxy, did Rainbow Blight come from? "I'm an army brat, so I'm kind of from everywhere", she says." I'm an everywhere kind of girl. I was born in this crazy place, and I was rocketed from Alaska to wherever when I was really young, and then my mom basically settled in New York. I lived in pretty much every borough of New York. I feel like a little ping pong ball. I've lived on the bases, I've lived in the little shit-holes, you know, because my parent divorced when I was young, but I definitely consider myself a New Yorker." I ask her if Hate in the Box is her first band. "For me? Yeah." Then she thinks about it for a second, and amends her answer. "Well, there was another band, but it was little girl band in high school called 'Imminent Demise'." She laughs. "It was kind of an angry...it had a death metal name, but it was...well, it wasn't like Riot Grrl, it was just...an all girl rock band", she finally decides. One thing's for sure, there's no girl pop skeletons in Rainbow Blight's closet. "No, no! I'm very anti-pop", she almost shouts."I can't stand anybody that even attaches the word 'pop' to their music, and I hope it never happens to mine. No, no. Pop sucks. It makes me sick. I would never, ever write a pop song." Fair enough, but you can't keep this kinda Hate boxed up for too long. What if the Blight cult catches on? What if corporate rock smells the next big thing and starts chasing Rainbows? "Oh, I'm not interested in all that", she says with a laugh. "They always try to clean and polish you, make you all shiny. We don't want to be shiny. We want to be our own nuts and bolts, Elmer's glue selves."

For information on upcoming shows and the latest recordings, go to the official Hate in the Box Website: www.hateinthebox.com

Next issue - She's beautiful, she's French, she's heavy fuckin' metal - Brigitte LA.
I am the one, baby, that's for sure - Sleazegrinder, 5.24.02