South Wales Argus
Title: Chang - Grievous Bodily Charm
Date: April 2001,
Author: Matthew Blythe
Web site: www.thisisgwent.co.uk

Chang will either make your day or ruin a perfectly good evening. They're crushing, awesome and scary to behold and behind the scenes they're just a little bit unhinged. Based in Newport, they've been a band for two years, gelling fully in the last 12 months. Neither Dave (vocals), Neal (guitar), George (drums) nor Keith (bass) live in Newport, having fled to smaller towns or Cardiff, but it's where their pedigree is rooted.

The four have spread themselves between bands such as Rhino Key, Guinea Worm and Hang Ups and all have previously been in a band with another member but Chang is the first time they've all been in the same band. Keith and George have known each other since primary school while Keith and Dave have been messing around in bands for five years.

Living in Newport, their musical education can be blamed on purveyors of hardcore extremities Cheap Sweaty Fun to whom they give much praise. "There're so many different influences on Chang; if you look at the gigs in TJs over the years from Butt Hole Surfers to Jesus Lizard, a lot of the American stuff, I suppose, there've been some cracking gigs," said Neal. "The more interesting stuff that goes through TJ's are the quieter gigs (less people not volume). I suppose it brushes off on you."

"But there's not a lot of alternative bands in Newport," moans Dave. "Just loads playing catchy melodic stuff, s**te." Chang could be boiled down to a prickly concoction of Captain Beefheart's zig zag rhythms and Minor Threat. Like Shellac but with hammers and concrete or Godlfesh without the pretence. "Shellac are rhythmically similar," says Dave."There're one of the best bands I saw in TJ's," added Neal.

Like Shellac, Chang play complicated tunes. The first split second of Shark, the opener on their debut recording, Strike Softly Away from Face, is as confusing as your teeth being knocked to the back of your mouth and you run away still clutching a bag of crisps wondering how your going to eat them, now. A churning bass and skin wrinkling drum pattern introduce an alarm like guitar followed by Dead Kennedy like posturing... what'd ever I do to you... Dave emits a tortured yet highly focused vocal attack, brooding while the world caves in under the barrage of Chang. The ringmaster to the apocalypse, he sings, cackles and hyperventilates around the wall of rhythm as it ploughs through suburb after suburb. "I used to play bass so I sing like a bassist would play bass patterns, I guess," he said.

His lyrics are audiable in nerve shattering clatters, like the creeping Spare Room... "Were you ever naughty as a kid?" Asks Dave. "Did you ever get sent to your bedroom or to a room. The room I was sent to, there was dead people in there. Well, I figured there was, I couldn't see them but I could feel them looking at you." Twisted with an unnerving sense of fun!

Various members of the band know the meanings in Dave's lyrics, others don't. Then some band members know different meanings to the same song. "We like to be spiteful to one another now and again," says Dave. "Keeps us on our toes."

The music's aggressive; there's no doubt about that. Live, they take it too extremes. Supporting Mclusky in Le Pub, Dave made a cranial assault on the stage; the fight was called off when neither would cave in. "I often end up with strange bruises," he said. "At the last gig we did I had a yellow knee and my inner thigh had small round bruise and I don't know where it came from. I remember trying to knock myself out because I figured it might be funny. You've got to have a bit of spontaneity, haven't you."

Months before, at a gig in Sam's Bar, a sacrificial like clutch of High Street clubbers strayed in from Cardiff's row of Latino bars and restaurants, Mill Lane, as Dave curled into Strike Softly's and every gig's punishing climax, Your Mother complete with the mantra, 'go away, go away,' fled into the night.

"We're as interested in people's reactions to us as they are interested in us," explained Dave. "But I don't get a lot of people talking to me after a gig. Whether people are wary that I'll bite them or something, I'm not sure. But Neal does."

Neal, while he doesn't head-butt stages, grins maniacally. He looks unhinged and in need of care at the bar. "We don't set out to intimidate people but when people do get that out of it, it must say something about us as people," he said. "It's not contrived, it's quite natural. We're just doing what we do."

"I wouldn't call it intentional," agrees Dave. "The best thing about the gigs is that people enjoy it but they don't know why. We get a lot of that."

"Some people hate it and think it's a noise and we're just making up as we go along," added Neal. "Someone thought we were a progressive rock group and it was all one big composition! "If people hate us, then great, it's a good reaction."

Chang's frantic four pronged mix belie their sense of fun and hate. Although they don't practice everyday there's a great discipline in the band and attention to detail. They are clinical without cleanliness, like a man of concrete moving with absolute grace. "Because it's all so complicated, we put a lot of stuff down on cassette to learn from," explained Neal. "And because we've been playing in bands for goodness knows however many years, you sort of know the others' reactions. I could go off on one, but George, Keith and Dave know what I'm doing and we can lock back in again."

"We could do a gig now," stated Dave. "Most of it's rehearsed and stays that way but there's always something else that creeps in depending on how I feel."

Strike Softly Away From Face is available from the band and is in the post to Madonna and Frank Bough but the band don't bank on quitting the day jobs. The CD was recorded in one day in Newport's Le Mons where the songs were done in one take. They could do an album in four days, says Dave. "Once we've got the sound right it was just a case of banging it out. "We'd like, in ten years time, for the next big thing to cite us an influence. That's the ultimate buzz for me."

CHANG - "it's a gift to everyone, really." (Dave)

[back]