Rozz Williams interview
Vibe (1997?)

Rozz Williams Talks Till He's Whorse
By Johnny Walker

Former Christian Death singer/lyricist Rozz Williams often gets lumped under the "goth" musical tag, which, given your particular vantage point, could be a good or bad thing, but which in the current rock scene almost certainly delegates you to a "cult" status with little chance at making an impact beyond a certain group of fringe dwellers who hang at places called The Batcave. But while Williams certainly has, throughout his career, delved into the riskier topical areas of "dark" human experience, he has often done so more in the spirit of artists like Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Jim Morrison and Lou Reed than in anything which would connote goth icons like The Sisters of Mercy.

Those familiar with the posthumous album by the Doors, An American Prayer, might recognize the formula here, as Williams breaks from his usual business of rock and rolling to deliver an impressively well-crafted solo album which mixes spoken word with an empathetic musical backing courtesy of his longtime musical cohort, the singularly named Paris. Only Williams goes much further in his transgressions into the darkest recesses of the human mind than The Lizard King ever dared, as he and co-lyricist Ryan Gaumer poetically evoke the apocalyptic psyche of the kicking heroin addict, which both men were at the time of The Whorse's MouthÕs composition.

Raped

"Raped," for example, is certainly one of the most chilling tracks ever committed to disc, in which what can truly be described as the "evil" voice of an actual obscene phone caller "named" Frank Lee--obtained by Paris on a reconnaissance mission through an abandoned California police station--is pasted together with a collage of samples ranging from gay porn advertisements to "Porky Pig" cartoon music to create a striking collision of childhood innocence and total amorality, the Alpha and Omega of the human psyche where good and evil merge into one blinding microcosmic fireball. Lee's ominous final warning, "Be Aware!" is not one that listeners, especially those with children, with soon forget.

Other tracks here impress with the postmodern chamber music that Williams and his collaborators conjure up, featuring shards of classical piano, clanging industrial effects, and eerie flute, with Williams' mannered vocal presentation--a love it or leave it feature, admittedly, which some may find slightly pretentious in tone--riding over the top, creating striking, surrealistic, often excremental imagery along the way.


Who's In Charge Here

"Who's In Charge Here? (Beneath the Triumph of Shadows)" moves narcotically along, its hypnotic percussive undertow cushioning Williams' verbal images of "viral disease" and a decaying, fiery world of "no boundaries, no limits." "A Fire of Uncommon Velocity" features a chamber-like musical setting featuring piano and viola, its ennui-laden aura close to that of An American Prayer, as Williams, in the throes of withdrawal, laments the elements which "gave birth to this unfortunate man-child... denied by those who fake at life."

If any title here sums up Williams' overall stance, it's the bluesy "A Brother of Low Degree," with its "Walk On The Wild Side" bass-line and Genet-like attitude, in which the narrator finds solidarity among those who, by accident or by choice, stand opposed to the bourgeois world which values those only for their use-value in service of the great capitalist machine. "I was hot to trot and ready for action, any action... introduction to the underworld" Williams defiantly intones. And, as he rummages through the wreckage of his existence, cataloguing a litany of hate, self-loathing, and occasionally, bliss, one gets the impression that Williams regards all of his experience as ultimately edifying and instructive, that he really wouldn't have missed it for anything: "Let me assure you that I was a brother of low degree" he