45 Grave’s ‘Pick Your Poison’ turns 14 on 14 August
45 Grave released the album “Pick Your Poison” on 14 August 2012 via Frontier Records. The album turns 14 this year.
Cover art courtesy of Frontier Records / Bandcamp
45 Grave released the album “Pick Your Poison” on 14 August 2012 through Frontier Records. The Los Angeles deathrock band’s album turns 14 this year and stood as its first collection of new material in 27 years, following the group’s 1985 breakup after “Sleep in Safety.”
Dinah Cancer had reformed 45 Grave in 2004 and rebuilt the lineup several times over the following years. By 2010, the band settled into a configuration of Cancer on vocals, guitarist Frank Agnew (the Adolescents, T.S.O.L.), bassist Brandden Blackwell and drummer Tom Coyne, the lineup that recorded “Pick Your Poison.” The album mixes newly written songs with older, previously unrecorded material and a re-worked version of “Night of the Demons,” for which a video was produced.
“Pick Your Poison” contains ten tracks: “Pick Your Poison,” “Night of the Demons,” “Child of Fear,” “Akira,” “A Desert Dream,” “Lucky 214,” “Highway 666,” “Johnny,” “Sorceress” and “Winds of Change.” Frontier Records issued the album on CD and vinyl.
About 45 Grave
45 Grave formed in Los Angeles in 1979, growing out of a related project called Vox Pop. The original lineup paired vocalist Dinah Cancer, formerly of Castration Squad, with guitarist Paul B. Cutler, bassist Rob Graves (also known as Rob Ritter, formerly of the Bags and the Gun Club) and drummer Don Bolles of the Germs. The band’s name came from a thrift-store button reading “WE DIG 45 GRAVE.” Alongside Christian Death, 45 Grave is recognized as one of the earliest American gothic rock acts, developing a hybrid of horror punk and gothic rock that came to be known as deathrock.
The band’s sole studio album from its original run, “Sleep in Safety,” followed the 1981 single “Black Cross” and built on the earlier fast-paced version of “Partytime,” later slowed down and reworked for the album. A remixed version of “Partytime” appeared on the soundtrack to the 1985 film “The Return of the Living Dead” and became an MTV staple. 45 Grave broke up in 1985. A brief reunion in 1988 produced the live album “Only the Good Die Young,” but the band split again after bassist Rob Graves died in 1990.
Dinah Cancer revived 45 Grave in 2004 to mark the band’s 25th anniversary, working through several lineup changes before settling by 2010 on guitarist Frank Agnew, bassist Brandden Blackwell and drummer Tom Coyne. That lineup recorded “Pick Your Poison,” released on Frontier Records on 14 August 2012 as the band’s first collection of new material in 27 years. Guitarist Dylan Thomas, formerly of the Dickies, joined in 2014, and the band has continued to perform since, including a two-day billing at the Cruel World festival in Pasadena in 2022 alongside Bauhaus, Devo, Blondie and Morrissey.
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