INTERVIEW
Photos by Amy K Swan
The Effigies made their homecoming appearance at COD, on Friday February 26. After touring the West coast for two months, mixed feelings were present with the four band members. John, the lead singer commented, "It was okay, but I don't really like California, but I'm sure we made an impression. People out there are real provincial, they just like local bands a lot and if you're an outside band you have a hard time."
While out west the Effigies, John, Oil on guitar, Paul Z on bass, and Stev on drums, played in a reformed bowling alley called Godzillas and opened for Anti-Pasti, the Dead Kennedys and Flipper on New Year's eve. Seattle and Vancouver were also given a taste of Chicago hardcore when the foursome performed there.
Returning to Chicago the Effigies did two shows. Both were well done and created so much energy that there were young men diving into the audience from the stage. Performing songs like Below the Drop and Strong Box, the group kept a smooth flow to both sets. They included some new material like Body Bag, an upcoming single, and Infiltrator, a song off their forthcoming album. There is some uncertainty to the release date as John remarked, "It's the next thing we do, but we haven't even had our single, Body Bag, released yet. We need to recuperate financially from the tour. We need to work up a little money to get the art work pressed. We got all the records. We just don't got the sleeves for them and once we get them, we should have the albums out on the shelves."
The only previous release is an EP called 'Haunted Town', which was one of the better releases by a Chicago band. Asked about the reason they released an EP John replied, "Your first record you want to put put out your best foot forward and as much as it is seven inch singles don't have much impact anywhere. Like, a lot of distributors won't take them by unknown bands because they just get lost real easy, like record stores are just chock full of singles, so an EP we figured our five best songs really stood out and provided a good variety of material as they are representative of our set as it stood a year ago. Now I'd say we got some better numbers." The Effigies are constantly improving. For a Chicago hardcore band they've a glorious future.
