Cherubs

by Patrick Kennedy
Formed in 1992 by Ed Hall, expatriate drummer Kevin Whitley, Owen McMahon (bass), and Brent Prager (drums), the Cherubs emerged on the Austin, TX, LSD punk scene with a jackhammer of nightmarish, rhythm-driven song structures and plenty of Butthole Surfers whimsy and terror to keep things more than interesting. Later that year, King Koffey of the Butthole Surfers released the bands first album, Icing, on his Trance Syndicate label. Icing proved a strange concoction of repetitive, hypnotic beats, frosted with Kevin Whitleys high-pitched howl. In 1993, the band issued the Carjack Fairy single, each of the thousand pressed sleeved in a different piece of wallpaper samples; an interesting concept, and one certainly not alien to the musical climate of Austin, TX. By the time the bands magnum opus, Heroin Man, was issued in 1994, the Cherubs had called it quits, leaving a hell of an album in its wake, one of the most distorted, red-lined, oddball noise rock records ever made. Two years later, Trance released Short of Popular, a collection of singles, odds and ends, and outtakes from previous sessions.