The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

There’s a bit in ‘Torrential Abuse’, an Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster tune from 2002, where the music falls away, there’s a brief interlude of echoing guitar and then suddenly (Jesus Christ!) the track explodes back into life. When the band played the song to a packed Camden Electric Ballroom in the summer of 2003, they executed its mushroom-cloud dynamics so perfectly that, in the excitement surging through the room, anything seemed possible. Why couldn’t this band be massive? In Andy Huxley they had their very own guitar genius; in Guy McKnight, they had a frontman with charisma to burn and a voice that could raze rainforests. And they had great hair, wore great shoes and were cocky in exactly the right way. They deserved to crossover with their unique music - a gothic blend of rockabilly, blues-punk and thrash metal. What’s more, they had the might of the world’s biggest record label behind them.

Subsequently, it all went to pot. Universal lost faith, sitting on the band’s second album The Royal Society for months before releasing it in the quietest way imaginable. Next thing you knew, the band had been dropped and Andy Huxley was gone. Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster seemed dead in the water. Now, more than two years later, they’re back. There are fears to allay and doubters to convince.

Eighties Matchbox are painfully aware of how long they’ve been away. “I was coming to wonder if I ever was in the band, or whether I was just in the middle of a bender playing air guitar in the mirror,” admits bassist Sym Gharial, who seems equal parts tough guy and aristocrat gone to seed. “We didn’t intentionally stay away for two and a half years, but because everything has somehow taken so fucking long it’s been really frustrating…”

Rhythm guitarist Marc Norris confesses that the question, “Didn’t you used to be in that band?” has become the bane of his life.

Why the long absence? According to rumour, they’ve been holding out for a big major label deal along the lines of their last one. They flatly deny this. Indeed, they seem to regard their former paymasters with amused contempt.

“I think they had it in their heads that we were going to be the next U2 or something,” says drummer Tom Diamantopoulo.

Sym remembers it slightly differently. “I didn’t see anyone from the label after the band was signed.”

By their own account the Brighton-based band are perfectly content to release their records themselves. Hence it seems the sabbatical had less to do with label shenanigans than with adapting to life post-Andy Huxley. The man left big shoes to fill and his replacement, With Scissors’ guitarist Rich Fownes, freely admits it. “I wasn’t sure, a year and a half ago, that I was doing a good job, and I was ready to leave,” he says. “I didn’t want to be the guy that fucked it up. Now I’m quite confident that that’s not going to happen.”

The decision to bring in Fownes initially seemed a touch perverse. At one of his early gigs with the band (at Brighton’s Concorde 2 in December 2005), he appeared to be doing an outright impression of Andy, even mimicking his trademark stiff-legged stomp. I found myself standing next to Andy at the show. It was very weird. You wondered if Eighties Matchbox had followed the Suede route of recruiting a fan to replace a vital member.

At the merest mention of the Concorde gig, Fownes gets defensive: “I think that was definitely an example of how much I hadn’t acclimatised at that point.” Later, he sums up the dilemma he faced: “You don’t want to imitate him but you don’t want to lose what he brought to the band. I was very conscious of what he does, definitely. You’re bound to get some of his rhythms in your arms.”

It’s easy to assume that while Andy chose to pursue death jazz with the Vile Imbeciles, Eighties Matchbox plunged into a songwriting crisis. After all, Andy wrote the majority of their storming first album Horse of the Dog (major themes: machismo, cunnilingus), while The Royal Society, which featured only a four of his songs (out of 13), was a patchier affair.

Yet Eighties Matchbox were never fully reliant on one man. Of the singles drawn from their debut, ‘Celebrate Your Mother’, was written by Guy, ‘Psychosis Safari’ by Marc and ‘Chicken’ by Tom, who also contributed some of second album’s best moments, including ‘I Could Be An Angle’ and ‘Mister Mental’.

Guy reckons he’s grateful to Andy for leaving when he did, on the basis that it forced him to be creative, something he’d previously been “too drunk and too lazy and too depressed” to attempt. After a miserable 2005, he spent 2006 (“the best year of my life”) writing songs with Sym, while Rich and Marc, friends since childhood, formed another songwriting duo. Is it working? The new EP, ‘In the Garden’, sends a mixed message. The Tom-penned title track is a fine slice of biblical melodrama, but its three b-sides sound like, well, b-sides. They’re formulaic and unmemorable.

Thankfully, there’s evidence that better stuff is being held in reserve. ‘Get Lost’ and ‘Eureka’, highlights of the sporadic shows they played in 2005 and 2006, still await release, as does ‘Kemptown Animal’, the pick of the new songs aired more recently.

What are they writing about these days? “Same old stuff really!” laughs Tom. “Psychosis, paranoia, anxiety, darkness, hell.”

The band’s cheery obsessions are rooted in the “hardcore drug use” of their youth. “As much as I wouldn’t advocate or promote or support drug use,” begins Guy, promisingly, “at the same time it’s definitely been an undeniable, huge part of my adult existence. Suffering is an inescapable part of life. Everyone has their own struggles and their own problems and it’s just a matter of fact that I’ve struggled with drugs and alcohol for a long time… I would say that the Buddhism is helping me to make the choices that I want to make and enabling me to be a free person.”

Would you say you were an addict at one point? “I wouldn’t say physically… mentally, yes.”

You stayed off the smack, in other words? “Oh yeah. I’ve never touched it.”

A few hours after our chat, Eighties Matchbox take the stage at London’s Scala and play a show that’s intense, dramatic and powerful enough to overcome woeful sound. Rich takes it easy on the Andy impressions while Guy is an altogether more aggressive monster than the soft-spoken man who earlier told me, “I believe that the only way to become happy is by contributing to the happiness of our fellow human beings.”

Music misses the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. For evidence of that, look no further than the stir created by The Horrors, who at times veer into pure homage. Tonight, as a chaotic ‘Chicken’ gives way to the two-note riff of ‘Psychosis Safari’, you realise you can accept no substitute.

The show’s not perfect. They play ‘Torrential Abuse’ and, this time, they make a mess of it. There’s no question that, where their third album is concerned, they’ve still got plenty to prove. But give them a chance, people. With their perseverance and inimitability, they’ve earned that much.