Cult Irish alt-rock quartet, Kerbdog, have announced that they will be re-releasing two of their 1990’s albums later this year.
Kerbdog, from Kilkenny, was fronted by Cormac Battle, the 2FM DJ, whose entertainment lineage includes the well-known Battle family from Ballina and Enniscrone.
Other band members were Colin Fennelly (bass), Billy Dalton (guitar) and Darragh Butler (drums).
Cormac and Darragh later went on to form the band Wilt, before Cormac eventually took to the national airwaves as a presenter.
Fellow adjudicators on the night were (seated, right) Eddie Joyce, Danceline Records, and (standing, left) Jackie Hayden, music journalist and co-founder of Hot Press. Also pictured is David Dwane.
Kerbdog have teamed up with Hassle Hindsight, the recently launched re-issue label, to re-release their 1994 self-titled debut and its heralded 1997 follow-up On The Turn their last full studio album before their break-up in 1998.
Available in November, you can pre-order the albums Kerbdog and On The Turn HERE
And watch the video for Sally, the first track from On The Turn:
Despite a small handful of re-union shows over the last decade, working on new material and putting out a live record, Congregation, in 2014, the set lists for those shows have been almost entirely made up with songs from their much-revered two 90’s albums.
On The Turn – which was recorded with Garth Richardson at the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California – was a near perfect album, one that front-man Cormac Battle most recently described as “the right album, at the wrong time”.
Their 1994 self-titled debut was recorded with Jack Endino, the producer of Nirvana’s “Bleach”, at Rockfield Studios, with Sepultura recording Chaos A.D. at the same time next door.
Cormac says of their raw debut record: “I think some of what they were doing seeped into what we were doing. It made the record heavier and more chunky than we intended, but we were happy with the results.”
The band’s songs were powerful and inspired – like those early Dave Grohl songs of the same era – by the likes of Husker Du, and then Bob Mould’s subsequent work in Sugar; both direct and melodic, heavy but immediate. Kerbdog were, to many, their new favourite band.
However the explosive success of Britpop meant that their singles were at odds with daytime radio playlists and the mainstream press of the time, seeing them subsequently dropped by Mercury Records, two albums into a six-album contract. They struggled on for a year before playing their final show in Dublin the following year.
While the band looked initially destined to reside in the footnotes of rock history, their fan base unexpectedly grew and their albums, while out of print, seemed to find their way into the homes of determined rock fans. Recently an LP copy of On The Turn” went for an eye-watering £300 online.
The attendances for their reunion shows, often five times the amount of people they played to while touring On The Turn, and the clear interest from people in hearing these records again, inspired long-term fans Hassle to assist the band, and who will be releasing the records complete with their original artwork and liner notes.
