Interviews by Xastur and Jeda Photographs by Walter
1)Introduce yourself and members of the Electric Hellfire Club.
I’m Thomas Thorn, I’m the singer, I write our music basically throw in my own rhythms and do all the musical arrangements. As the band stands right now, we have Will Han Hearse on keyboards, we have Adam Evol on the guitar.
2)What other bands have you been in? What happened with My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult?
Well since they’re going out of their way to say I was never in the band I’m not gonna disagree with them becuase what they are creating right now is pretty shitty and I don’t want to be associated with them, but I heard a rumor that I used to be in that band. (laughs) I’ve been in a few other things but basically that’s the only thing of significance.
3)What type of other music do you listen to?
I listen to all styles of music. Everything from lounge music to Black Metal.
4)What do you think about the current state of Industrial music?
I think that they are truly people that are trying to re-do what’s been done over and over again. There are people out there acting like they’re hot shit, like they just reinvented the wheel and they’re doing the same thing that were going on around 86’, 87’.
5)I heard you covered Charles in Charge?
Yeah, Reconstriction Records put out a demo CD of all bands doing TV theme songs. And Chase called me and asked me to do it and we thought "Yeah, we could do that song and make it like this big Manson thing." It’s just like a minute long song and it’s just like something we did real quick int he studio didn’t spend a lot of time on it but then we heard it got played on MTV.
6)At the Oct. 29th show with Type O, you played two new songs, please elaborate?
The first one that we do is called D.W.S.O.B. which stands for Devil Woshipping Son Of a Bitch. That’s off a demo movie soundtrack it’s called D.O.M.M.O, it’s a movie thats done by the same guy tht did the movie KIDS. This one is set up in the Midwest and it’s about fucked up teenagers int he Midwest and the soundtrack is out on London records and that’s the only place where that song will be available. The other new song weve been playing is Unholy Roller, which is the title track off the new EP, which will be out in January. (Actually it will be out on April 14, 1998).
7)What’s been the response so far for Calling Dr. Luv?
It’s been great. The best selling record that we’ve ever done. It sold twice as many copies, twice as fast and it’s been a really phenomenal response. We’re pretty happy with it.
8)What are some of the best shows? Bands to play with?
It depends who we’re playing with I mean whenever you do opening slots there’s always gonna be some meatheads that are just there see the headlining band. Type O was good but at GWAR they’re were a lot of little punks like "fuck you". Umm Danzig, the response was great, really good tour. But at the same time you may have 10 or 12 kids yelling "You Suck", you turn around and sell $700 worth in t-shirts. It’s one of those things were it only takes a handfull to think that the crowd doesn’t like you and actually there a lot of kids getting turned on to the music which is why we do these opening slots.
9)What’s the weirdest story you have about this tour?
The weirdest story is that because the way this tour is routed we’ve been traveling up and down. We always run out of gas at the same place by the same gas station. The same guy pumps gas for us, this is in NJ. So they pump it for you. This guys on work release or something because he always goes "Ya’ll got any weeed". (Hysterical laughter from us) So we nicknamed him Fendwick. So everyone’s like "Yeah we’re gonna go get gas from Fendwick."
It could be anytime day or night it could be 3 in the morning and he’d be like "Ya’ll got any weeed this time."
10)How long have you been a member of the Church of Satan?
A little over a year.
11)How did you take the news about Anton’s death?
I just met with the people from the Church, which is were I was. I just heard about it yesterday and it hit me pretty hard, they just released it to the public yesterday. He’s been dead for a week. But what they wanted to do was avoid the media circus and things like that. I think the most ridiculous part of the whole thing is that his daughter zeena is claiming responsability for his death saying she put a curse on him and thats why he died. Things like that. They had a falling out a while back. For somebody like that, that he cared for so deeply saying tht immediately after his death, it is the lowest form of human life that exist. And as Peter Gilmour said, "In any civilized society she would be killed in a public square."
12)Jeda – I heard the name of your band used to be a real club?
It was an 18th century gentlemens club and basically it was a bunch of rich guys that a lot of them were members of Parliament they had more money and more power then they knew what to do with and they would go around get drunk, blasphemy against the government, against the God, the church, everything like that. Started dressing up as monsters and bought and old abandoned church and used to hold satanic rituals and get prostitutes to dress up as nuns and have orgies and things like that. So we were like these are our kind of guys.
13)Any last words?
As far as last words thank you very much for the interview. I love your zine.
ELECTRIC HELLFIRE CLUB
P.O. Box 4170
Kenosha, WI 53141-4170
(send stamps for merchandise and fan
club information)
6)At the Oct. 29th show with Type O, you played two new songs, please elaborate?
