Brothers and sisters, sinners and saints of this snake handling, skin bibled congregation, this holy church of rock and roll, I bring you parables of bad wisdom and lessons in sticky joy from our hallowed sinister ministers across the great sea. What’s your ragged soul worth, anyway?

50 miles out of Vatican City with its sleeping pope and ornate solemnity, the Roman night goes on forever, plunging itself into deeper crevices, desperate to fend off the encroaching dawn. In one of the blackest of these nocturnal hiding spots, a serpentine rattle has a clutch of sweaty rockers in it’s grip, charming them like cobras. They shed clothes for skin, their tongues darting out of their thirsty mouths, seeking warmth, flesh, energy, excitement. On stage, Reverends, 3 of them. None of which have been ordained by the Jesus Freaks up the street. In fact, if these cats ever darkened the arches of any cathedrals, they’d be soaking the fucking building down with holy water for a month just to get the stink off. No, these Reverends bow at an entirely different altar, one dedicated to sin, indulgence, and crunching powerchords. They wear robes stained in whiskey and semen, reeking of cigarettes and other pungent smokes. And Communion ? Well, let’s just say it’s a pornographic nightmare. Black Metal, you ask? No. Black Metal’s for pussies. The Reverends play high-octane, triple speed, drug damaged, punk poisoned, metal-fried Rock and Roll- the real Devil’s Music. The Wrong Rev Andrea is the man who’s chugging guitar and phlegm tortured voice leads the twisted flock of the Reverends, and it is he who stands here, under the glaring lights, with a half- inch gash above his forehead. The Perils of Rock and Roll Decadence are in full effect tonight, and one of the faithful have seen fit to worship with a well aimed beer bottle. From the right angle, he appears to be weeping blood. From the wrong angle, it looks like he needs an ambulance. The Reverend, however, is oblivious to his corporeal form. He’s too busy rocking the fuck out. Revs Umberto and Franz flank him with thunderous rhythm as his axe slashes wildly in the air, unsafe at any speed. Buzzing, thrashy cock rock and black-boned voodoo-billy converge in an unholy alliance of swirling noise, AC/DC and the Gun Club battling it out for the last slug of hairy booze. Andrea drops to his knees, enthralled. He grabs the nearest blonde by the hair, and stares deep into her raccoon-mascara eyes. "I used to dance" he croons to her, "When I was alive." Sunlight would never dare crawl into this place.

Hours later, maybe days. Many bottles of red wine have been sacrificed to unruly gods as Andrea and I lay down the heavy gospel. The rest of the band has gone missing, on some search and destroy mission most likely, leaving Andrea to deal with the pushy American. He assures me, however, that the band are a cohesive unit on and off the stage. " We're friends", he says. " We meet when we're not playing, but not so often, in the end. Everyone has a thousand shitty things going on in their lives." I stare at a drink list that I cannot read. I am a stranger in a strange land here, so I ask Andrea what the best part of rocking Italia is. "The best part..." he snorts. "There's no best part, thinking about it. It's just something you do because you feel you have to, but you always lose money, get mad, don't sleep, don't eat and play in shitty places." Just like everywhere else, then. Except for one crucial point. The women. The stunning Italian women. After witnessing his righteous display of seduction skills on stage, it appears that being a Reverend works well in the lust arena. Certainly, it gets the chicks. "No, unfortunately no." Andrea admits. " Not at all, until now. But they smile when I put on my priest dress, so I guess there's hope." As he says this, more drinks arrive at our table, courtesy of a smiling vampiress across the bar. Things are looking up, at least to me. Andrea, on the other hand, is not impressed. " I only had crazy girlfriends", he sighs. " One liked to be fucked with a little rubber toy shaped like a piece of bread, I swear. One other brought me to fucking England with her and then kicked me out of her home for being too silent... whatever... the list is long and painful." One such example is immortalized in ‘I Used to Dance When I Was Alive’. "It’s about being hungover in a bar and seeing your ex girlfriend with a jerk while a jazz band is playing on stage." We both laugh, and he tells me about his favorite Reverends song. "I really like ‘Bring Me a Doctor I Need Fun’, from our upcoming split single with Superhelicopter. It's a Stones\Dead Boys-like tune about needing drugs, finding a closed chemist's and thinking about killing your girlfriend." We switch subjects, quickly. Impressed by the adrenaline-crazed show, I wonder if any band has been able to out-rock the mighty Reverends. " To tell the truth we always crushed ourselves with beer and drugs, so it's a bit difficult to tell about the other bands." Andrea laughs, a throaty sound, thick with darkness. "Anyway, we played with a lot of dickheads this year. Pop punk brats, freaks with sandals and bongos, crust bands. It's hard to get a good gig with another rock'n'roll band." Andrea wipes some of the dried blood from his forehead, almost as an afterthought. Although not written into the contract, it’s a common occurrence with the band. "We usually end with bloody hands because we fuck a lot with our guitars, so... we cut our fingers and wrists." Thus far, however, the band has kept the bloodletting relegated to the stage. "I don't remember any fistfights, anyway... but we hope to see some soon, since they always add a little bit of rock'n'roll to the whole scenery." Given their flagrant disregard for personal safety, I ask Andrea if anything scares the Reverends. "We're difficult to scare. I don't know... maybe running out of beer in the middle of nowhere." He lights a complicated European cigarette as a memory pops into his head. " I killed a rabbit once. It just ran under the wheels of my car. Not too rock'n'roll, I know." He sips his wine, scanning the room with blood shot eyes. "But I think I'll kill someone soon, since I'm going out of my head. Life sucks, and I need fun." Fun to the Reverends can only mean one thing. Actually, it can mean several, but it means a killer rock show in this instance, anyway. Andrea remembers a couple of stand-outs. "The best one was in La Spezia, at a cool r'n'r club called La Skaletta." He smiles. "Cool people, good sound and it was just one of those evenings when everything falls into the right place without even thinking about it." Of Course, they’re not all like that. "The worst one was in Rome, with a trio of fucking bongo players, in front of 6 people." Those kind of bitter defeats are a thing of the past, however. With a new single, "Whiskey River", in better jukeboxes everywhere, and a slew of new wax on the way, the band plan on spreading their particularly snarly brand of rock-as-religion even further next year. Check out the Reverends website for more information (http://stage.vitaminic.com/main/the_reverends/). There are many more tales to tell, but not tonight. Tonight, things are getting out of hand. ‘Can you drink too much, or is that impossible?’ I ask my Italian friend. "It's possible, but it'd cost us a fortune." With last call gone for good, we get up to leave. I wake up in Belgium.

Yeah, sure, they eat waffles by the fistful. They occasionally lapse into a complicated Dutch tongue filled with too many vowels and syllables. They traipse from country to country like they own the whole damned continent on a wild search for sleazy kicks and gasoline fumed thrills. They are the Bad Preachers, Belgium’s loudest, fastest rockers, formed in 1982 with no sign of letting up. In a civilized country with a 98% literacy rate, they are the 2 percenters that blow the curve, channeling primal urges and Motorhead riffs with such ferocity and velocity, you’d swear they were rampaging Americans were it not for the accents. El Toro is the guitar player, and presumably, the bull fighter. Gil Vicious plays the bass. And my cleverly named friend HDSB? Not since Canadian proto-speed metallers Exciter has a band so flawlessly executed the impossibly tricky drummer/vocalist maneuver. The Bad Preachers are Super Rock on the move, the killer shrews of power and volume. Bear witness, brothers and sisters. "In the Czech Republic, we toured with local punk band ‘N.V.V.’, which means ‘I don’t give a fuck’. At least, that’s what they told me." HDSB is recounting a typical week for the Bad Preachers. "We played in some underground clubs and a big venue, and had a real cool time. That is, until we met a brew called ‘Shivovitch’ I could have told them to stay way from anything with a name like that. "Wild party ensued. The hangover the day after was a killer." Alcohol is the fuel of the Bad Preaching machine. And although it’s debatable whether you could call what happens when their tanks are full ‘good fun’, or even sane, one things for sure- it gets the fucking job done. "We played with Electric Wildness’, a German band, here in Belgium some years ago", HD says.

"After the second gig me and El Toro got into a wild ‘dance act’. El Toro ended up with a broken leg. He was so drunk he didn’t feel a thing. The day after, we had to play a third gig, and of course, everybody was wondering how El Toro would feel. After some time, he showed up. He was plastered, still drunk, and ready to rock. This guy is one hell of a party beast." Indeed. Not everyone has the stamina of the Bull, however. There have been Bad Preacher casualties along the way. "When we toured Switzerland in 1993 our bass player was hooked on heroin, alcohol, and sex." Well, two out of three ain’t bad. "He was so horny that after the first gig he fucked the girl that fixed all the dates for us. Since this lady managed to come along with us for the whole tour, it was live action pussy each night." Debauchery? Yes. Addiction?

"After we got back to Belgium, we gave him the choice, dope or the band. He took the first option, and he’s still a loser now." Even werewolves have standards. Heroin boy was replaced by Gil Vicious. He fit right in. "During one of Gil’s first gigs, he invented the ‘Canbash’. He invited a guy on stage, told him to kneel down, put a beer can on his head, and told the dude not to move. Gil forgot for a moment that he was already pretty loaded, took his bass in his two hands, gave it a big swing, and ‘Bam!’ smashed it right into the dude’s head. Al Beer, our long time roadie, driver and friend, took him backstage. He looked at the damage, and took the guy to the hospital to get stitched up." Suitably crazed bass player on deck, the band continued their highway chaos. "After we got Gil in 1997 we toured Norway." Norway is a large and brutal terrain, pockets of civilization separated by miles and miles of ice and darkness. "It was a tour with long car rides, and way to much beer", HD remembers. "We played in a disco in a town called ‘Os’. The place had the whole enchilada of lights, lasers, and bimbos. We played loud, fast, and wild, as usual. After the show we wanted to drink, but due to some silly law the place had to close and stop selling beer after midnight. There we were, all wound up and thirsty as hell." As you can imagine, this situation would not stand. "Finally, the manager of the disco came down with one beer. He was shitting in his pants, worried about police control. We spilled the beer, went to a creepy hotel, and got loose on beer and nose candy." Memories aren’t the only thing the Bad Preachers brought back from Norway. "Last date in Norway we played at the Ashoy Motorclub, one of the weirdest places we’ve ever been to. Here in this club packed with drunk, doped, and ready-for-some-fist-swinging-action Vikings, Gil met this Norwegian beauty and flew her over to Belgium." That wasn’t the only time the Bad Preachers found love, or at least lust, on the road. "Same thing happened some years ago in Switzerland", HD tells me. "Shef, an ex-roadie of ours, met a weird girl in Zurich, had a night of wild Salsa dancing, and got her over to Belgium. Turned out that the lady was an S&M mistress. Shef got his ass whipped. He liked it, and both are now leading people in the Belgian S&M scene. Who said our music isn’t romantic?"

As HD spins his stories of rock on the road, it strikes me that the European touring experience bears almost no relation to it’s American counterpart. Here in the US, gigs get cancelled and you’re fucked, left to eat beef jerky or each other. Not so, across the water. "Once we had to do a gig in France. We hit the road for a 10 hour drive to get to the pub where we had to play. When we showed up, the owner looked at us like we were a bunch of aliens and asked us what the hell this was all about. The gig had been rescheduled for the next week, and no one from his staff had called us. He was really pissed off and felt sorry for us, so he got us a nice meal, clean hotel and lots of beer. A week later, we returned, and played the fucking roof down." France may have been good to the band, but they don’t call them ‘Bad Preachers’ for nothing. "The Hot Rod Honeys are another band from Belgium that we toured with in France. At one gig, the Honeys had done their set and we were on stage kicking ass. A member of the Honeys saw some stupid dick steal our merchandise. He got kicked in the head by a Honey, followed by a blitzkrieg from all of us. The sucker didn’t buy a shirt, he went to see a doctor." 20 years of life on the road. It’s a hell of a thing. "I could go on for hours telling stories", HD says. "Still, the best thing to do is try to catch us at a gig and come have a party with us. You never know what can happen." That’s an open invitation, so next time you’re blowing through Brussels, look the Bad Preachers up. (http://users.compaqnet.be/badpreachers/bpweb.htm) They’re never home, of course, but they’re easy to find. They leave a trail of empty bottles and broken bass players behind them wherever they go.