I'll Eat Your Face
From metalireland.com
I'll Eat Your Face is a grindcore band from Cork City, Ireland. Comprised of drummer Barrytron and guitarist/vocalist The Boy, the band was formed in 2006. Operating within the underground and alternative music scenes in the South of Ireland, the band is noted for their extremely short songs and frenetic style of playing. The band is known for poking self-deprecating fun at themselves and the grindcore genre, as well as a policy of ridiculing the old and the fat throughout their songs. Ugly women and those with unusual or very large facial features are also targeted for vigorous abuse.
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Early Demo/Formation (2004-2006)
Demo
The initial surfacing of the band came when Barrytron recorded a self-titled demo under the I'll Eat Your Face pseudonym in 2004. The CD was produced on a knackered desktop computer using Who's The Boss? samples to cut through the dense grinding din.
Ratpipe Sewer Mutant '88
2006 saw the second demo, "Rat Pipe Sewer Mutant '88" recorded by Barrytron with the drums recorded/produced by Jer Spillane (formerly of Altar of Plagues and Revolution of a Sun). The CD contained 18 tracks including Judas Priest and Anal Cunt cover versions. It contained many horror and humor samples throughout, introducing songs in a typical grindcore style.
Live band formation
The current form of I'll Eat Your Face came together in 2006, when both members of the band met through mutual acquaintances and a shared love of drinking and talking bollocks. The two decided to rehearse, and finding chemistry, learned all the songs Barrytron had prepared, and embarked on a small tour of Ireland with Cork band Captain Insano to test the waters. The gigs were successes, the band meeting a warm reception almost immediately, and I'll Eat Your Face became an ongoing nuisance. <ref name=drop-d>drop-d.ie, Interview with the band regarding their stint as a band so far.</ref>
Trademark origins
Two of the band's trademarks surfaced on the first tour: the band's tradition of wearing tights on their head in the manner of bank robbers (which has been adapted by some individuals attending gigs), and fans' yelling of the term "Wahey!" at the end of every song, the fascinating reason for which has never quite been clarified. Variants of this exclamation can often be heard at gigs (such as "yahoo" and "hurray").
Fat Box Life Destroyer/CLIT (2007)
In 2007, the band self-released an album (of sorts), Fat Box Life Destroyer, which was accompanied by a DVD, entitled CLIT.
Fat Box Life Destroyer
Fat Box Life Destroyer was recorded in late 2006 at the rehearsal space of Cork black metal band For Ruin, for whom Barrytron was a drummer and The Boy was bassist. The guitars were recorded at Big John Floss' Scarface-style home the following week. Samples were later placed by Barrytron and The Boy on the tracks before release, this time corralled from the well-worn gore genre. It also contains samples from the Michael Jackson movie Moonwalker, which is supposed to be an action-adventure but is actually a disturbing mind-bending experience which frighteningly exposes Michael Jackson for the certified crazyist that everyone figured he was since he went white and started juggling babies. The album features 12 tracks, and runs at approximately ten minutes. It was inspired by a persistent, fat sack that The Boy repeatedly plugged during the summer of 2006 and I think he did her again there recently on the sly.
CLIT
CLIT was a 30-minute DVD video detailing the band's early live exploits, showing live footage from several shows around Ireland, interspersed with various drunken/random hijinks featuring the band and their friends and contains a solid 7 to 9 minutes of stupid laughter and giggling/guffaws.
Live activity, finding hardcore fans
The band gigged at every opportunity from here on, earning a cult following at home and further afield in the process. The band's attitude, much in contrast with the arch seriousness of many well-known grindcore acts, was that of a beer-fuelled party band, and earned them fans from outside the metal community, seeing them often sharing bills with indie and alternative bands. Interestingly, many metallers think that I'll Eat Your Face are irritating eejits, always taking the piss and they shoulda have never been allowed to fuggin play with Unleashed, which they did but fuggin shouldn'ta. It is worth noting that Unleashed thought they were gowls also.
Now That's What I Call Manual Strangulation (2008)
Recording of split CD
In 2008, the band followed up with a much-delayed split E.P. with LAMP, entitled Now That's What I Call Manual Strangulation. The band's share of the CD features twelve songs, split over three tracks, with each song linked with dramatically slowed-down speech samples. These samples actually feature the two band members talking to Phil Cotter about dildos made of concrete, such as the phallic piece of statue onto which Leslie Nielsen clings in Naked Gun 2 1/2.
The release was recorded with (and "Executively Produced" by) Phil Cotter, and is markedly rougher-sounding than the band's initial release, featuring new recordings of earlier songs not included on Fat Box Life Destroyer.
According to the band's MySpace profile, the band had apparently intended to base the whole CD on comedy actor Terry Crews, but "sort of forgot to in the end", noting that "it probably would have been stupid anyway".
<ref name=facespace>Band MySpace, Contains info on the band.</ref>
Tsunami Fest and launch concert
The release was launched in November 2008 at a special gig at the now-defunct Whisky venue in Cork City, one of the last major concerts there. The venue was entirely sold out, and the members of both I'll Eat Your Face and Lamp, as well as support act Sea Area Forecast (billed as Sea Area Foreskin), marked the occasion by playing in drag. I'll Eat Your Face have played in drag on many occasions, and Barrytron sometimes walks the busy Saturday afternoon streets wearing a dress and more besides. I'm tellin ya I seen him.
Shortly before the release show, the band played a set at Tsunami Fest in Amsterdam, Holland, before setting off to film their exploits in the city's Red Light District, which later resurfaced on YouTube. It is worth noting that The Boy is a fucking lightweight and fannied out really early and totally killed everyone's buzz.
CLIT 2: The Clittening (2009)
The Clittening
The band plans to issue a follow-up DVD to CLIT in early 2009, featuring footage from Ireland, Holland and the US, the recording of and launch gig for Manual Strangulation and other gigs, as well as the inebriated mayhem the band has become known for and lashings of balls and even an exposed tisn't from The Boy.
Gigging expands
The band also played a number of big shows throughout 2009, most notably 15th anniversary edition of Cork alternative nightclub Freakscene and a wedding in the Crane Lane where they changed all their song titles to love-themed romance ditties.
IEYF/Hands Up Who Wants to Die 10" Split
A vinyl split with HUWWTD was released in October 2009 with a tour supporting German band Don Vito around Ireland. This record is available from the band's myspace. It features artwork by reknowned shit-for-brains Jonny Burger Pimp.
New Album 2010
Irritant
Image:Http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn101/illeatyourfaceireland/FaceWeb-2.jpg
BOY and BIG HOT PAUL drove down to DATA studios on the beach in Kerry to record Irritant, their first properly mastered studio recording. Ross O'Donovan, Tadgh the engineer and the two fools spent three days blasting, fiddling with digitech pedals, crab-core walking, sun-bathing and drinking in order to squeeze out an album which is a clear and satisfying with surprisingly little muffled aftertaste. The band then released the album for free online (http://www.ill-eat-your-face.com) in January 2010. The album contains 12 tracks, two of which appear on the 10" split with Hands Up Who Wants to Die. Also appearing on the album is a grinded-up cover of Mike Oldfield's classic flying-into-a-storm 1982 hit Five Miles Out from the crazy (and highly recommended) album of the same name.
Reviews to be updated as they appear.
"vital" [[1]]
"9.5 out of 10" [[2]]
"a raw bayscht of powerhouse grinding" [[3]]
"An awesome piece of sonic mayhem" Hot Press
"I feel like I am falling woefully short of describing just how brilliantly demented this album is. It will blow your mind." [[4]]
"...feels like you’ve entered a fight that you’re most definitely going to lose." [[5]]
"...how these boys slipped below the radar for so long is beyond me, although plenty of others here tonight seem well aware of them. Jamming an obscene amount of songs into as short a space as possible might be nothing new, but they manage it with such precision and a wicked sense of humour. More!" www.blistering.com
"we just can’t stop playing this record...it's thirty odd minutes of assault" [[6]]
"9/10" [[7]]
"...they could certainly never be described as boring. Except perhaps in the drilling sense - puncturing the underground scene like the Large Hard-on Collider." [[8]]
"They are a phenomenon but hard to describe. You'd kind of have to be there, you'd kind of have to know where they are coming from......You just got to love 'em and people do!" [[9]]
"This is a delightful clusterfuck of music. Very addictive, always interesting...you can't go wrong." [[10]]
"a great technical piece of grindcore " [[11]]
"My recommendation is to use them as an alarm clock." [[12]]
"I’ll Eat Your Face are no joke, they really bring the heat with a healthy dose of originality. Those of us who want something a bit off kilter in our diets need apply, because I think you may find something worth visiting Ireland over (not that Guinness, a lack of snakes and green rolling hillsides aren’t enough)." [[13]]
""A tip of very short instrumentals leave us all the time with his ears glued to the speaker listening to the incredible changes of pace that pass through" VERY loosely translated from: http:/fromthepaganvastlands.blogspot.com/
"...there’s something almost catchy about the material while keeping a unique identity, making them completely worthwhile" [[14]]
Tsunami Fest 2010
The lads played the fest again this year to all their Dutch friends. A further European tour is to be booked for 2010, and another release.
Miscellaneous
Pseudonym usage
Use of pseudonyms has been an established trademark of the band, wishing to differentiate it from the members' other projects, which range from more traditional metal to electro-pop. While Barrytron has always stayed under his pseudonym or alter-ego PAUL, The Boy has cycled through a number of stagenames, including "The Automatic Boy", "The Druid", "Chin Omelette", 'Bum Dust", "Desperate Dan", "Big Red Brendan", "Legohead", "The Swan", "Hoofs" and "Lovechin". Other artists that collaborate with the band will also adapt pseudonyms, such as the band's friend "Mervin Von Moosechild", who contributed vocals to The Haunted Cunt on Manual Strangulation.
References
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