Star Sex

Background

Armed with nothing but a 90-minute cassette packed to the gills with songs co-written and performed by original Abysmal Crucifix member Robin Kelley, Girth McDürchstein drove to Los Angeles with hopes of making his heavy-metal dream a reality. He had the songs — all he needed was the band and the record deal.

Girth assembled a new Abysmal Crucifix line-up from Hollywood's finest musicians, plus Mikey Parker on bass. While spending his nights playing the L.A. club scene with middling success, Girth spent his days generating label interest in Abysmal Crucifix. After being turned down by several record labels — both major and indie — Girth had a fateful meeting with Karen Hofstadt, a prominent talent and business manager.

Initially reluctant to take Girth on, Hofstadt found herself pleased and bewildered by Girth's ingenuity and drive to make it in the business. "Of course I didn't know this kid from Adam," she recalls with a laugh. "He just happened to be standing next to me at...I think it was at the Roxy, and he started making small talk. The second he found out I managed bands, he handed me a demo tape and asked me to listen."

Listen she did, but Hofstadt remained unimpressed. "I still wouldn't represent his band," she says now. "Girth has always had a...unique voice, to say the least, but I didn't think any of what I heard on that demo tape was commercially viable. I wasn't optimistic I could sell them to a label."

But Girth wouldn't take "wasn't optimistic she could sell them to a label" for an answer. At the time, Girth was dating indie-rock princess Sarah Goss. Her band, Redstain Attack!, had just completed work on their fifth album, fulfilling a contract they had signed with Milwaukee's Mildew Records in 1993. Goss opted out of the contract, instead agreeing to join up with Girth's upstart label: Kelleystein Recordings.

"I guess time has told that the move was brilliant, not insane," Goss remembers with fondness in her eyes, "but his first order of business after 'founding' Kelleystein was to sink his entire life savings into buying Redstain's back catalog, and then he used the royalties from that to produce Star Sex [and the other Kelleystein 'launch' albums]."

Abysmal Crucifix went into the studio in September of 1995. After a long — but smooth — recording process, they burst back onto the Strip in December with copies of Star Sex in tow. An album consisting of the 10 best tracks from that original 90-minute demo tape, all rerecorded with the wild verve for which the "Hollywood" line-up became renowned. Star Sex originally had a pressing of 500 copies, and the album was sold out by February.

Early critical reception was mixed but positive. Much of the negativity stemmed from general confusion about the band's identity. "They're too lurid to be corporate, too corporate to be indie, too heavy to be arty, and too arty to be metal," Graham Kerrington wrote in London's Guardian newspaper. "What the hell are Abysmal Crucifix?"

They would find out in four short months, when Abysmal Crucifix rushed the release of their follow-up, Two Berries on a Twig.