Atomic Bride
Seattle, Washington, United States | SELF
Music
Press
Although Electric Order is only four songs long, it feels like it could be a full album. That’s because Atomic Bride takes you on a rollercoaster of super high energy garage rock with fun pop hooks mixed in for good measure. On this EP, the Seattleites create a weird blend of wild psychedelia fully charged with fuzzy electricity.
During leading track “Electric Order” you’ll undergo alien abduction and like it, as dual vocalists Astra Elane and Chris Cool cosmically chant, “Now you are bound by electric order!” like some strange celestial beings. Surfy guitars and trippy, heavy bass lines take you on an industrial, acid-infused adventure on “Americium 241,” a track that’s not your high school teacher’s chemistry lesson. “We’ve Got Muscle” elicits eye-popping freak-outs with its grungy, violent take on doo wop group The Crystal’s hit single “Da Doo Ron Ron.” Atomic Bride finishes off their release with the fierce “Angel of Hell,” where Elane squeals her way through the brash biker anthem in the vein of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O.
Although the EP is a little cheesy at times, Electric Order will make you wish you were in a grimy basement shouting along with Elane and Cool, as they've got an intensity that explodes out of whatever speakers you may be using to listen.
Electric Order is due out September 17th so keep your ears peeled for that ish. And if you live 'round Seattle, get down to Comet Tavern on September 14th to see Atomic Bride put on a raucous live show. - BUST MAGAZINE
Jesus fuggin' CHRIST!! Maybe it's me, I am gettin' up there in age, but Atomic Bride has gotta be possessed; their new EP, Electric Order is a flat out stunner. It's only four songs, but I'm, like, totes AS EXCITED AS WHEN I FIRST HEARD THEIR ALBUM Dead Air!!! Right, so dig this track, "We Got Muscle." It's tense.
atomic-bride_cover.jpg
Where their album, Dead Air, was strung together and hung as a single piece, the jams on Electric Order ain't composed as a single big THING. They're just "individual" songs, um, very theatrical "individual" songs. The songs FEEL like they're li'l aural comic books. Maybe, but I CAN'T SUSS OUT ALL THE WORDS. (sigh) I said it before (and I think I can say it again) they KINDA come across like the Rezillos, but Atomic Bride's dark pop-art vibes and cloudy cartoon imagery are way more creepy and menacing. They're very American in that regard. And also fucking heavy. All their elements are well balanced here, there is zero self-indulgence or over-shooting their songwriting chops; dense, sophisticated, and expansive arrangements is just their thing. Which, natch, equates to smart ROCK and ROLL.
Electric Order comes out September 14, the same day as their record release show at the Comet Taven. Also on the bill that night are Tacocat, Ever-So-Android, and Acapulco Lips. - THE STRANGER
Jesus fuggin' CHRIST!! Maybe it's me, I am gettin' up there in age, but Atomic Bride has gotta be possessed; their new EP, Electric Order is a flat out stunner. It's only four songs, but I'm, like, totes AS EXCITED AS WHEN I FIRST HEARD THEIR ALBUM Dead Air!!! Right, so dig this track, "We Got Muscle." It's tense.
atomic-bride_cover.jpg
Where their album, Dead Air, was strung together and hung as a single piece, the jams on Electric Order ain't composed as a single big THING. They're just "individual" songs, um, very theatrical "individual" songs. The songs FEEL like they're li'l aural comic books. Maybe, but I CAN'T SUSS OUT ALL THE WORDS. (sigh) I said it before (and I think I can say it again) they KINDA come across like the Rezillos, but Atomic Bride's dark pop-art vibes and cloudy cartoon imagery are way more creepy and menacing. They're very American in that regard. And also fucking heavy. All their elements are well balanced here, there is zero self-indulgence or over-shooting their songwriting chops; dense, sophisticated, and expansive arrangements is just their thing. Which, natch, equates to smart ROCK and ROLL.
Electric Order comes out September 14, the same day as their record release show at the Comet Taven. Also on the bill that night are Tacocat, Ever-So-Android, and Acapulco Lips. - THE STRANGER
Psychedelic garage punk that’s part B-52s, part Dead Kennedys, and part Groovie Ghoulies. - Seattle Weekly
It’s a fun and sexy record with catchy choruses and great surf guitar riffs. If The Cramps and Frankie and Annette joined The B-52s to form a supergroup, it might sound something like Atomic Bride. - Another Rainy Saturday
If you're not in the know, Atomic Bride are a Seattle punk/garage band. I know...uh, it's 2012 what the fuck does "punk," much less "garage" mean? Well, Atomic Bride mixes it up, kinda, they know their shit. I'd say they're more of a punk group really 'cause they got a BIG sound AND are adept at ROCKIN' their shit OUT. Um, in the past I've seen 'em get a couple Cramps refs, and a few Rezillos comparisons, but I don't hear the Cramps. However, I'd reckon them Rezillos nods are kinda there. Miss Astra Elaine and Chris Cool switch off vox duty, so the boy vs girl hollerin' could make for the shoehorn. Of course, Miss Astra's inflections have plenty o' Cherrie Curry rock sass. I always thought they sounded like a real smart mid '90s SoCal/Flipside magazine group. Tho' I'd actually say they're way smarter than nearly all the SoCal/Flipside magazine groups, because their songs are written SOOOOOOOOOOOO much better.
So...the album?!? On Dead Air, their driving songs are all fucking GO-GO-GO, and the slow weird bits are moody and a little creepy—it works well. They keep dynamic variety balanced without shifting the vibe, and the songs are hung/strung together concept style. Whether or not there IS a concept, to me, don't matter, but it creates a mood and pulse that just WORKS. Dead Air is fantastic beginning to almost end. Speaking of the ending—my only problem, like, the ONE thing I wish was different—is IT NEEDED TO BE LONGER. Seriously, I want more. Dead Air clocks in at just under thirty-eight minutes...CRAP. I!! Want!!! More!!!!!! Next time, if y'all make a record THIS good, make it last twice as long...please!! Whatever, I'm quite stoked on this record. Really, I've almost worn the 0's 'n' 1's off'a my copy of the advance CD. - The Stranger
I don't even know where to begin. This band blindsided me & it's been on repeat at home & work for a few months now. Sleaze-ridden psychedelic space/surf/spy/cowboy punk from Seattle - Chris Cool, Astra, Avtar, Collin Monoxide & Rachy Baby. Where did these people come from & where have they been all my life? The CD's best in 1 sitting - all the pieces fit together just like that. I NEED to see this band live. -Jeffrey Larson - Sonic Recollections
The debut record by Seattle’s Atomic Bride is full of twists and turns and surprises - a bona fide thrill ride of rock. Remember the U-Men? How they turned the early Seattle punk scene upside down and inside out? Well, Atomic Bride share some of the same qualities. They take an arty post-punk base and proceed to throw in several monkey wrenches to stir up the trouble, as they wind through a punk’s garage into the heavy metal parking lot, and stop for a spaghetti western lunch along the way before capping off the night in a haunted house – maybe in the same song. Sound busy? It is…but it is also awesome. Chris Cool and our friend/contributor Astra share vocal duties, and their call/response moments often sound like a snottier John Doe offset by a sassier Exene. “She’s So Atomic” veers into quirky B-52’s territory but the lo-fi production keeps it all real and the explosive ending blows all fuses in sight. On “Reap” they get all hopped-up junglebilly in the verse, as Chris implores Astra to “roll me like a wagon wheel,” only to hear her retort that she doesn’t like him or his stupid song! Stupid? Nah...any song that can conjure up vibes of Gun Club, Cramps, 45 Grave, Meatloaf, and Nino Rota all in just over four minutes is pretty damn brainy in my book. But “Oxycloud” is the mindblower here – over nine minutes of psych-garage-punk insanity that is catchy as all get out and, despite my lame attempts, defies categorization. -Rod Moody - Easy Street Records
Discography
Electric Order - 2013 EP
Dead Air - 2012 LP
Crush Vaccine - 2012 Single
Music for the Man Made - 2009 EP
Photos
Bio
Punk godfather Jon Langford loves to tell the story of first seeing the Rezillos in the streets of Leeds, where he was going to art school with other members of his band The Mekons. When he met them before opening for them, they seemed shockingly brilliant, glamorous, mad, sexy, linking the androgyny of depraved glitter rock with the apocalyptic swell of punk. But completely dapper in doing so as underground pop stars.
Atomic Bride inspires that intensity in their fans. A hormonal, angry-sex-music craving. “Yes!” the band rhapsodizes, “Aggression, fury and entertainment! And hormones! Hormones that rage because the music makes you feel like SUCH a badass. We like to play music that's tough, but that turns people on too!”
Their second album Dead Air is for fans of rock music of a time when it was considered a revolution in itself, Atomic Bride evokes that LSD-coated apocalypse bopping Vietnam psycho beach party sugar-lipped hall of mirror end of time favorites in your mind already after just one spin. It's a Robert Williams pop surrealist drag race to the strip bar at the edge of a Roger Corman carnival death-trap. It's America in a blender set to “dangerous fun.”
Based in Seattle, Astra and co-lead vocalist and lead guitarist Chris Cool, Avtar on bass, Rachael on keys, and drummer Chris Coutsourdis are using their demonic Golem to release a soul-rattling recorded work of art as that shows how they have sensually dominated the secret world of real Seattle rock with their stage shows. Parts of the album were recorded at Bob Lang Studios, Clatter and Din, and Earwig. The rest were recorded at Atomic Bride's home studio and completely produced by them. It sounds like the work of eager art-terrorists meticulously crafting a punk opera to shatter the nerves of the stodgy moral guards of the West.
Stoking at their junked-up punk/metal/psyche roots, Chris and Astra's songwriting has mutated-evolved since birth in 2006 into real players tapping even more from the garage-surf-psyche fetish aesthetic. Now their bold anthems flourish with the fine details and full on frenzy of family values at an LA-burning Manson beach party at the end of time. In 2012 they've created a musical work of pop art that expands their vision into Wagnerian levels of beauty and terror, and features John and Exene level vocal exchanges.
Dead Air (“Avtar came up with it -- we love noise and all apocalyptic shit!”) features armageddon time anthems more ambitious than their parts, and the parts to their songs burn and swing: Words snarled and sweetly sung about entropy and empire failure, existential trials and transgressions; an STP-and-absinthe blur of well-played but utterly passionate bomp. If movies like Wizards, Mad Max, Django Kill, and The Hills Have Eyes needed new scoring, Atomic Bride would be the best to do the soundtracks for them.
The record features elaborately musical intros, outros, and between-song experiments that “come influenced in part the masterful interludes of 90s gangsta rap records,” because “We appreciate the concept of listening to an album from beginning to end. I like it when there is connectivity, even if the songs don't directly relate to one another.” As for the specific topics that make up the epic Dead Air: “We write about stuff we think is cool; sci-fi, westerns, hit men, twilight zone episodes, the 70s, people going crazy, cult, and old movies and books!”
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