Interview by Dave Winders
He said new material might emerge in 2004, but we weren’t expecting something quite so soon. We caught up briefly with Dom to find out what he had to say about A Punk Oddity’s latest four track oddity Hogo.
Okay Dom, a new year and a brand new set of songs? What happened to the break in recording?
Good question. You know I have no idea coz since I said that we’ve been writing constantly. It just seemed natural that when we got together again to get something recorded. Although we have enough songs to have recorded a brand new album’s worth of material, we didn’t want to record a new one so soon after Into the Mouth of Whoredom, as we don’t want to draw attention away from that being our core release. Hogo was the logical conclusion, its totally different from anything we’ve done in the past.
That is certainly true, why did you decide to make it that way?
We wanted to do something different; something to show that we’re not a band that’s going to stick to one formula and reproduce it again and again. Hogo is more Funk-come-Punk; it was an experiment to see if we could pull it off and we think that we did. It was never our intention to make this EP sound like the tracks were just Whoredom cast-offs; Hogo isn’t the brand new A Punk Oddity sound, its just an extension of it.
Hogo seems in general to be a lot more serious, especially with the lyrical content. Was there any reason in particular for this?
None at all. It’s true that there’s no ‘Porn Star’ or ‘Eurovision Masturbation Contest’ on Hogo, but that’s not to say that that is the end of those sort of songs, far from it, we’ve got plenty more where those came from. Like I said earlier, A Punk Oddity is always trying out new things, we don’t want to get ourselves comfortable sounding the same way; we’re always looking to explore new areas we can extend into, but at the same time maintain the essence of what A Punk Oddity is. Our music is mirrored by the band’s name; we’re not just Punk, we’re a Punk oddity.
Sure, Hogo has more “mature” lyrics, but it’s not a sign that we’re maturing within ourselves – we’re still the stupid, childish idiots we’ve always been. Like the music, lyrically I was just trying to expore some new areas to write about, rather than re-hash what I’d already covered. On this album there’s a song about suicide, how can you approach a subject like that with childish lyrics and attitude?
So what now? Have your plans for A Punk Oddity changed since we last spoke?
Not in the slightest, we’re still going strong. It’s going smoothly for A Punk Oddity at the moment, which is all good as far as I’m concerned. We have no plans of fucking off just yet, so like it or lump it, you’re stuck with us for the time being.
Dom Speaks appeared in the March 2004 edition of Discharge Zine, a DIY Punk Rock zine from North England. The copyright in this interview belongs to the zine’s writers/publishers.