Denial of Death
If you thought you knew Brain Surgeons NYC or any of its members in any other life, Denial of Death screams: THINK AGAIN. Nothing these people have done with or without one another prepared even themselves for the songs or the shows (and this is a band that must be experienced live to be fully appreciated) they’ve created since the night Deborah Frost, after working on 2005’s To Helen With Love: The Concert DVD and confronting the chemical reaction between herself and another New York native, throttled Albert Bouchard awake insisting, “I have only one thing to say to you: ROSS THE BOSS!” To which Albert replied, “Why didn’t I think of that?”  Actually, he had. From the very first lick he heard Ross whip out one afternoon in a Fillmore East rehearsal before the Dictators even had a name, much less a reputation or record deal, Blue Öyster Cult founder Bouchard (the dude who, contrary to the hilarious Saturday Night Live skit, really put the cowbell in “Don’t Fear the Reaper”) wanted the humongously ballsy chops of the former violin prodigy from the Bronx in HIS band. And when Bouchard and Frost, in response to fans’ requests to showcase their songwriting collaborations (adrift and ploughing the unmapped terroir somewhere between Gerry, Carole, Lars and James) put together the first edition of the band, Ross was committed either to Manowar and various Dictators resurrections, all of which have merely thrust a hardcore cult of his own upon him in the interim. The stars aligned when Bouchard and Frost, who’d toured as a trio with bassist David Hirschberg since the Surgeons’ early 5 piece line-up succumbed to the terminal illness of one guitarist and subsequent retirement of the other, invited Ross to participate in a European tour to coincide with the Paris-based Bad Reputation label’s compilation of the Surgeons’ critically acclaimed first decade, Black Hearts of Soul. And the jams just kept kicking. Denial of Death (yes, we know it’s a book, but Deborah had actually written the opening lines of “Constantine’s Sword,” before reading it) is a furious set of fresh meditations on the state of the world and the lives of the participants. But you will no doubt have ideas of your own. So let’s hear ‘em.  More info is also available at www.cellsum.com and MySpace link.