Braindead Soundmachine

Braindead Soundmachine
Braindead Soundmachine: Yoshi, Reality, Coonce
Background information
Origin	Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres	metaldisco Industrial rock
Years active	1989–1993
Labels	Wax Trax! Nitronic Research Play It Again Sam Shiver Artlos
Associated acts	Prozac Pop Machine
Website	http://www.kerosenebomb.com/braindead/

Braindead Soundmachine were an industrial rock band and the brainchild of founding members Cole Coonce, Warren Croyle (aka "Mr. Reality"), and the late Ikky Shivers. Eschewing the industrial genre, they coined the name metaldisco in reference to their musical style.

Braindead Soundmachine was founded in Los Angeles, California, United States, in 1989 as a joint effort between Coonce and speed metal record producer Croyle, as they conceptualized "metaldisco," a genre that melded Black Sabbath riffs topped by disco-y rhythm guitar and ethereal female vocals. The band was rounded out by Shivers, a Los Angeles sound engineer, whose aural contribution consisted of non-musical screeching noises coerced out of his collections of refurbished vintage analog synthesizers.

Following Coonce's edict that "singers are like spark plugs, you screw them in and then you screw them out," Braindead utilized the services of sundry female vocalists, including those of Joan Jones from Sun 60, Khalsoum Salloum and JenJen (Jenny Homer from Downy Mildew).

As "a band obsessed with drag racing, drag queens and the apocalyptic downfall of the entertainment industry," Braindead reveled in the absurdity of life in Los Angeles, as well as in its own anarchy.

The band followed a simple ethos that "there are no mistakes", with only one rule: "no chord changes".

The band's zen anarchic approach to making music was also informed by its insistence that Yoshi, a transplanted Japanese transvestite working as a cocktail waitress in East Hollywood, was in fact "Dogvillasan", a deity (or "Coyote God") summoned by the group in the song of the same name.

In 1990, and with the band's theology, philosophy and musical approach finalized, Braindead procured a recording contract with Chicago's Wax Trax! Records, which put out the band's first long-playing compact disc, Come Down from the Hills and Make My Baby.

Singles from that album included "I'm in Jail", and a throbbing, discordant cover of Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight" (whose release included remixes of the song produced by KMFDM founder Sascha Konietzko).