Gorilla

This mini article was in the April 1998 Metal Hammer

The roots of simian sluggers Gorilla lie in early 90's act The Beyond. The Derbyshire band recorded two critically acclaimed albums - 1991's Crawl and Chasm ('93) - but their songs were just too complex for mass consumption, and after parting with EMI Records they broke up. Although three quarters of Gorilla were Beyond-sters, the bands last single 'Who Wants To Save The World Anyway?' assured us that the lessons of the past have been learned and gained the band some valuable airplay on XFM's daytime schedule into the bargain. "Absolutely" says guitarist Andy Gatford. "We can now see what people were talking about and we realise that at times we had our heads up our arses. But Gorilla are a completely new thing and we know that great musicianship doesn't necessarily make for a good song. We just play to our other strengths."

Nevertheless, ask Gatford to describe the band's music and he still fumbles. Finally he say: "it's just noisy, but I'd like to think that it also has the potential to cross over barriers between, say Coal Chamber at one end of the field and Radiohead at the other."

However you choose to define it, the trimmed down sound of Gatford, John Whitby (vocals), David Petty (bass) and Neil Cooper (drums/samples) is finally in the right place at the right time; it's good to be heavy and experimental in 1998. "There's no reason for anybody who hated The Beyond not to like Gorilla," Gatford agrees. "There's such a variety of things going on at the moment, with the Prodigy smashing everything wide open. People now tend to like several different styles of music, and that can only work to our benefit."

A new single, "Outside" is out on April 6 and the band's debut album follows in September.

Dave Ling

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