These Immortal Souls

These Immortal Souls were a short-lived band who nonetheless created an indelible space for themselves thanks to the intense songwriting and slashing guitar work of Rowland S. Howard. His previous groups (the Birthday Party and Crime & the City Solution) made the most of his latter skills; this was his first chance to take the lead and show off his desperate vocals and darkly atmospheric songs. Over the course of one EP and two albums, the band often evoked the spirit of Southern Gothic literature, both in the murkily explosive music and the twisted, mythical storytelling. 1992's I'm Never Gonna Die Again is the equal of anything any band Howard played with did -- either with him in the line-up or after -- and stands a both a fitting testament to his art, a brilliant example of Epic Soundtracks' genius as a drummer, and one of the finest albums of the era. The Australian-born Howard had risen to prominence as the lead guitarist in the Birthday Party, after which he co-founded Crime & the City Solution, which also included his bass-playing brother Harry Howard and, later, drummer Epic Soundtracks (ex-Swell Maps and Jacobites). In 1987, Soundtracks and the Howard brothers left to form These Immortal Souls, a band where Rowland's songs and vocals would take the lead. Also joining the band was Genevieve McGuckin, a keyboardist who had co-written songs with Rowland for the Birthday Party and contributed to the record he made with Lydia Lunch titled Honeymoon in Red. The band quickly landed a deal with the seminal American underground label SST, and issued their debut EP Marry Me (Lie! Lie!) in early 1987, before they had played any live gigs. By the end of the year -- a busy one for Rowland that saw him collaborating with Jeremy Gluck and Nikki Sudden -- the first full-length These Immortal Souls album Get Lost (Don't Lie), was released on SST. Shortly after, the band went out on a lengthy tour in 1988 to support the release. When they got back home, the band fell silent for several years, mostly thanks to a crippling case of writer's block suffered by Rowland. He did stay busy working with Lydia Lunch however, and the duo issued the Shotgun Wedding album in 1991. Finally, in late 1992, These Immortal Souls returned with the single "King of Kalifornia," which was released on the Mute label. On it, and their subsequent second album I'm Never Gonna Die Again, the band played with a much more focused and controlled fury that imbued the songs with even more drama than before. Soundtracks left the band to embark on a solo career before the album was even released; Chris Hughes took his place for live shows. The group moved to Melbourne in their native Australia and settled on a new lineup with Craig Williamson on drums and Beasts of Bourbon member Spencer P. Jones on second guitar. This crew recorded a Tom Waits song ("You Can't Unring a Bell") for the 1994 tribute album Step Right Up and then continued to play shows locally and work on new material. The band split in mid-1988 and the members went their separate ways, with Rowland sporadically pursuing a solo career that included a reunion with McGuckin on 2009's Teenage Snuff Film. The band's catalog was rolled out digitally in the years following their dissolution, but it wasn't until 2024 that they received proper reissue treatment. Mute released both albums in remastered form, as well as EXTRA, a collection made up of tracks from the Marry Me (Lie! Lie!) EP, a previously unreleased cover of Alice Cooper's "Luny Tune," and songs from an incendiary live performance.
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