They were awesome live! This is one band I would love to see Frontiers records or any other label work on getting them to release another album. I must have worn out 3 copies of the cassette back in the day. The influence of this band and its Finlandian predecessor, Hanoi Rocks is still resonating today. Even more surprising is that this style of music survives, thrives and is very much alive in Scandinavia, particularly Sweden. It was very unusual to find a Swedish band playing this type of music at the time. After drafting some hired-gun replacement players for a brief tour in support of the disc, Shotgun Messiah quietly dissolved. The album probably would've been doomed either way, because Relativity Records was busily dropping all of the hard rock/heavy metal artists from their roster at this time and shifting the label's focus towards hip-hop.
Therefore Violent New Breed sank without a trace, which is a shame because it's actually a pretty damn fine example of early '90s aggro-rock. Ultimately, Violent New Breed was too weird and radical for S.M.'s old fan base, but the Wax Trax crowd that they were openly courting wouldn't give it the time of day either, due to the band's "hair metal" past. of jumping on the then-trendy industrial bandwagon popularized by the likes of Ministry and White Zombie. album with Swedish producer Ulf "Cybersank" Sandquist and produced a slab of heavy-as-hell machine-assisted metal which was ultimately met with cries of "sell-out." Harry Cody's still-impressive guitar heroics maintained a link to the band's old vibe, but the programmed drums, heavily processed vocals, and angrier/more political lyrical direction caused fans to accuse S.M. Reduced to a duo, Skold and Cody collaborated on the V.N.B. Some fans say it's their best work, while others say it's an abomination that shouldn't have been released under the S.M. Violent New Breed is still the most hotly debated album in the Shotgun Messiah canon. Welcome to Bop City was remixed, repackaged, and re-released worldwide as Shotgun Messiah's self-titled debut album in 1989.ġ0 Greatest Jazz Bassists "I'm a GUN! Second to none!" After a trans-Atlantic flight, a name change (there was already a band called "Kingpin" in L.A.) and a much-needed image makeover-more black leather and denim, way less neon-the newly christened Shotgun Messiah signed a deal with Relativity Records, a well established indie label known mainly for the many underground thrash and death metal bands (Megadeth, Exodus, Forbidden, Possessed, etc.) signed to its Combat Records imprint. The album was mostly ignored in their homeland, where clean-cut melodic rock acts like Europe were ruling the roost…so Kingpin decided to head to America and try their sleazy luck in Los Angeles, the Glam Metal capital of the world at the time. Shotgun Messiah originally formed in Sweden in 1985 as "Kingpin"-an outrageously over-the-top glam-to-the-max act whose neon stage costumes (and unintentionally hilarious band photos) completely overshadowed the music on their debut album, 1988's Welcome to Bop City.