Artist: PRONG
Album: "RUDE AWAKENING RE-RELEASE (DIGI)"

Year: 1996/ 2008
Media type: CD

If ‘Rude Awakening’ was the album that turned you on to Prong on its release in 1996, then you’d been asleep for a mighty long time! In many respects it was the band’s swansong, as they broke up shortly afterwards. Yet it had entered the US charts at Number 74 and reportedly sold 10,000 copies in the States alone in its first week on sale. Not bad for an ‘alternative’ rock band…

In fact, Prong would return to duty in the next millennium, when their pioneering work in inspiring the likes of Korn and Nine Inch Nails would be more adequately recognised. But their story started exactly a decade before ‘Rude Awakening’ – in 1986, when Tommy Victor and Mike Kirkland, who’d both put in time as employees of legendary New York punk club CBGB’s, decided to swap their respective roles as sound man and doorman for places on the stage.

Another exchange of roles took place at the outset. Victor, who had started his career in music as a bass player with local R&B, ska and funk bands, switched to six-string guitar and took on lead vocal duties, which he’d never undertaken before, leaving Kirkland, a former member of Damage, to pick up the bass. Drummer Ted Parsons, who’d played with the Swans and studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, was recruited shortly afterwards to complete a deliberately basic three-piece line-up.

Prong’s hardcore sound was first offered for inspection on ‘Primitive Origins’ and ‘Force Fed’. These albums, released in 1987 and ‘88 respectively, appeared on the independent Spigot and In Effect labels. In 1989, four re-recorded tracks from those albums appeared on Britain’s Strange Fruit label as ‘The Peel Sessions’, the BBC having earlier broadcast them on John Peel’s Radio One show.

From the start, Tommy Victor was keen to avoid being pigeonholed into a particular musical or sociological category. ‘I don't want to align myself with some kind of subculture in order to get popular. I just want to feel good about myself and avoid these classifications.’ It seems to have worked, Chris Gill of Guitar Player writing: ‘In a world where music is segmented into countless sub-genres, Prong defies categorization.’

Prong finally signed to a major label in 1989 after appearing at CBGB’s in June where they opened for White Zombie – a show that was, in Victor’s words, ‘pandemonium from start to finish’. It clearly impressed the representative of Epic Records, who had just captured the similarly adventurous Suicidal Tendencies; they added Prong to their roster alongside the unlikely likes of George Michael and Michael Jackson.

The band’s first Epic offering, ‘Beg To Differ’, appeared the following year, at which time Victor and Kirkland still held down their jobs at CBGB's. The album included one live track, ‘Third From The Sun,’ which was recorded at the venue as a tip of the hat to their alma mater. As Kim Neely wrote in Rolling Stone, ‘Prong's musical approach is a schizophrenic minimalism; the band pares its songs down to skeletal form and then grafts meat back onto the bone.’

Kirkland left in 1991 to be replaced by Troy Gregory of Flotsam and Jetsam, the thrash metal band famous for producing Metallica man Jason Newsted. Gregory in turn was replaced in Prong after ‘Prove You Wrong’ by Paul Raven from Killing Joke, ironically taking his place in the British outfit in a ‘job swap’. Raven arrived in company with keyboardist John Bechdel of Murder Inc. Producer was Mark Dodson, best known for his work with Anthrax, who had also been engaged by Epic to work with Suicidal Tendencies.

The 1995 release ‘Cleansing’ seemed to be the breakthrough Prong had been waiting for. It exhibited mature songwriting that brought high praise from Entertainment Weekly: ‘Prong prove that metal and melody don't have to be mutually exclusive.’

MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball show adopted them as one of their favourites, and the videos for two songs from the album, ‘Broken Peace’ and ‘Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck’ were both heavily rotated. Indeed, the latter was adopted by ECW wrestler Justin Credible as his theme for entering the ring. The band attracted a growing throng of devotees, ranging from metal fans to techno devotees. Ice-T, Nitzer Ebb and Pantera were among fellow artists seen at their shows.

So far so good. But Victor’s ego took a blow after he got involved in a Trent (Nine Inch Nails) Reznor side project called Tapeworm. ‘I went down to New Orleans and worked on some stuff, but I never heard any finished product,’ he told Rolling Stone. He later claimed to have heard some of the ideas he came up with on a Marilyn Manson release. An upside to the experience came in the shape of Charlie Clouser, keyboardist with Nine Inch Nails, who would be brought in to supply a new musical element to the sound on Prong’s new album.

Like its predecessor, 1996’s ‘Rude Awakening’ was produced by Terry Date, who had worked with Pantera and Soundgarden, yet it was clearly an advance from that album. ‘I'm just looking to reinvent the group constantly, without completely abandoning all that we've done,’ Victor told the Rocknet website. He had also spent time taking singing lessons, having originally leapt into the vocalist role with no training whatsoever, and his increased vocal prowess would be evident throughout the album.

The songwriting was exceptional and produced a quartet of live classics in the title track (now used to open the set), ‘Controller’, ‘Dark Signs’ and ‘Close The Door’. ‘Mansruin’ was one of the few tracks to hark back to straight metal, but, as with the remainder of the album, the assured trippy rhythms provided by Raven and Parsons helped elevate the music out of run of the mill. (Tommy Victor would later help industrial supergroup Argyle Park rework ‘Controller’ as ‘Doomsayer’.)

We add four single mixes of the album’s title track as bonus cuts. These were released as a CD EP prior to the album itself, British dance act the Orb being allowed to come up with the final ‘Detrimental Remix’ alongside two hard-hitting ‘Doc Martin’ versions. This release echoed ‘Whose Fist Is This Anyway’, a Prong project of two years previously which had featured five remixed versions of earlier songs and pioneered the ‘guest mixer’ concept since used by countless others.

After the release of the ‘Rude Awakening’ album on CD and 12-inch red vinyl, Prong embarked on a world tour, following up dates in the United States and Japan with festivals in Europe. Tommy Victor, understandably elated at his vocal advances, hired a guitarist to allow him to concentrate on his singing. But bassist Paul Raven was injured and was temporarily replaced by World of Pain bass player Vince Dennis. More importantly, Epic decided that their dalliance with alternative rock was not paying off as they had hoped. Just like Suicidal Tendencies, Prong were summarily cut adrift – and a demoralised Victor reacted by throwing in the towel.

‘Epic dropped us and I just didn’t want to have anything to do with Prong and the guys. There were just too many disappointments. I spent a lot of time on the “Rude Awakening” record and it was only out for three weeks and Epic dropped us. Actually, I was planning on getting a regular job…’

The split saw Prong’s members scatter to the four corners of the musical world. Tommy Victor relegated himself to the role of guitar player for Glen Danzig’s eponymous band, a role he would continue on and off until 2005. (Victor: ‘Danzig has allowed me to stretch out in another way, doing things I can't do with Prong.’) A rehabilitated Paul Raven returned to Killing Joke, while Ted Parsons’ next port of call was Godflesh – though he too would end up in Killing Joke.

Prong’s profile since re-forming in 2000 was relatively low-key at first but worked up to a Grammy nomination in 2007. That same year they’d signed with Ministry man Al Jourgensen’s 13th Planet label, the versatile Victor having toured in 2006 as Ministry’s guitarist. But the release of their album ‘Power Of The Damager’ was tinged with sadness. Paul Raven, who had reunited with Ted Parsons to form the rhythm section of French act Treponem Pal, died age 46 of a heart attack, depriving the music world of a major instrumental talent.

Tommy Victor’s motivation in keeping the Prong name going was purely and simply to make sure they got the respect they deserved. ‘It really hurts me when I get snubbed by bands that wouldn't be around today if it wasn't for the bold or extreme approach Prong took years ago,’ he said, adding that the band’s lack of image had contributed to their downfall. ‘But Prong's career is more honestly in line with me as a person. I've never been into cliques, gangs or genres. I never fit in, so be it.’

TRACKLIST:

01. Controller
02. Caprice
03. Rude Awakening
04. Unfortunately
05. Face Value
06. Avenue Of The Finest
07. Slicing
08. Without Hope
09. Mansrun
10. Innocence Gone
11. Dark Signs
12. Close The Door
13. Proud Division

Bonus Tracks:

14. Rude Awakening
15. Rude Awakening (Subtle as a Velvet Doc Martin – Left)
16. Rude Awakening (Subtle as a Velvet Doc Martin – Right)
17. Rude Awakening (Detrimental Mix – Clean Version)

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