Screaming Down The Hall: The Curious Case of Subtonix

There are some things that man is clearly not meant to wot of. Subtonix were clearly one such thing. Jessie Panic (vocals, bass, drums) met fellow miscreant Cookie (vocals, drums) at the Arkham convent, an all-girls institution that specialized in adolescents with ‘difficult’ behaviour, shortly before both were kicked out by the puritanical staff on suspicion of dark occult practices. Headstrong and with scant respect for authority, the girls rasied money through petty thievery and drug dealing to fund their escape to San Fransisco, picking up Jessie Trashed (vocals, saxophone, bass) on the way, solely because she was tall enough to drive the beaten-up hearse they had stolen from the local undertaker. Arriving in San Francisco in 1999, the girls found themselves penniless. Rather then take up prostitution, they decided to pay their way by forming a band and playing in the local nightclubs. Thus the Subtonix were formed, the guitar-free line up due to the fact that, the girls claim, it is far easier to steal bass guitars and saxophones then it is guitars. None of them had ever so much as touched a musical instrument before, but with the group’s wild stage show, a truly brutal mess of heavy makeup, leather miniskirts, fake blood, alcohol and bizarre antics, the band built up a local following. After months of being heckled by rough and sexist SF audiences and not being taken seriously by anyone, the band decided to expand their lineup to include keyboard player Brandy Oblivious (came with her own keyboards), who bonded with Panic over a shared fascination with Aleister Crowley. In early 2000 they finally found a guitarist in Jenny Hoyston, and this line-up was musically together enough to venture for the first time into a studio and, in a rainy afternoon, record Subtonix’s first single, Trophy b/w Today’s Modern Women. Sounding like X Ray Spex having a violent premonition of The Horrors, Panic out-Banshees Siouxsie herself over deranged saxophone and dirty guitar. The lyrics were a mixture of Hammer horror and savvy post-riot grrrrl politics, and it sounded like nothing else around at the time. The single received enthusiastic praise from the NME, although many were confused by the contrast between the band’s overtly gothic image and their post punk/garage band sound. Local indie label Troubleman Unlimited were impressed enough to offer the group the funding for an album, but the band jeopardized the deal by insisting that it be signed in their own blood under a full moon on the evening of Halloween. Fortunately the confused label concurred, but by the designated date the band was back to a three-piece, Hoyston having left to spend more time with her other band, Erase Errata, who had just been offered support dates for Le Tigre, and Brandy disappearing under mysterious circumstances which were to dog the band throughout the rest of their short career. On the 5th of June 2000, Brandy retired to her room alone, never to be seen again. The press went into overload, fuelled by the band’s flirtations with black magick and with numerous bizarre rumours surrounding the disappearance. Band friend Adrienne was quickly recruited for keyboard duties. Jessie Panic appeared more and more agitated in interviews and gigs became even more intense, with as much real blood spilt as fake.
Nevertheless, in August 2001 the band managed to take time out from their exhausting touring regime to record their only album. Recorded in only 3 weeks, ‘Tarantism’ is dark, disturbing and intense. Panic was, by this stage, too exhausted and strung out to sing on all the songs, so Trashed and Cookie took up the lead vocal duties on some of the songs they had written. The whole record is suffused with a dank darkness, sounding as if the band were trapped in the bottom of a well. The cartoon horror of the band’s songs are twisted into caricatures of adolescent trauma, from the portrait of the bled and spent ‘Ashtray Girl’ to ‘X Rated’’s sardonic look at post-feminist sexual politics. The band sound like they are playing for their lives, songs sprinting for the safety of silence and often collapsing violently in on themselves, only to re-emerge in a deathly crawl. All the girls’ vocal performances are shrill and harsh, sounding both haunted and hunted. However the intensity is offset by the band’s cartoonish sense of humour. It was great, it was a breath of fresh air, it was the end.
Hype around the band had reached fever pitch, with rumours of occult rituals being carried out by the band prior to going onstage, linked by the press to the unfortunate disappearance of goats in every town the band toured in. Subtonix soon found it impossible to tour in the south due to church groups picketing the venues they were scheduled to play at. The release of ‘Tarantism’ was delayed to May 2002 due to a large number of large chain stores refusing to stock it. All this, combined with a disastrous February European tour during which Panic was hospitalized twice, caused internal pressures in the band to combust. Jessie Trashed quit the band to form goth-punks The Vanishing, followed by Adrienne, who complained of being unable to sleep at night anymore due to an ‘unholy presence’ that followed her from hotel room to hotel room, and to which she attributed the curious scratches that had started appearing on her back. Panic and Cookie tried a number of dates with various roadies and friends, but none would play for more then one show, deserting the next morning. They continued as a two-piece for two more gigs before Panic had a nervous breakdown and fled back to Arkham. Subtonix were over and their only album had yet to be released.
Troubleman Unlimited finally released ‘Tarantism’ in May, and the album received a warm response, especially from the British music press, but, without a touring band to promote it, the album quickly sank. A second single, Too Cool For School b/w Rich Boys, recorded during the album sessions, was released in 2002 by the Italian label Vida Loca later in 2002, but, despite being vintage Subtonix material, unsurprisingly failed to chart. Sadly, that was it. All of Subtonix’s material quickly went out of print, and, as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, to be largely forgotten by the press and public alike. However, Subtonix should be remembered fondly: they helped kick-start the post punk revival by sonically referencing the goth-punk music of that era, they added a much-needed sense of fun, darkness and diversity to a po-faced and derivative indie scene, and they left behind them a legacy of a couple of singles and one fantastic album, plus some of the wildest live shows and one of the most curious stories in pop history.










By the way, none of the above is remotely true, apart from the fact that the records exist and are marvelous. I have tried as much as possible to keep the chronological details of releases and line-up changes correct, but, names aside, any resemblances between characters in the above review and persons living, dead or undead is purely coincidental and probably extremely unlikely.