The Viletones

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The Viletones were a Canadian punk band from Toronto, led by Steven Leckie, a.k.a. "Nazi Dog" or "Dog" on vocals. Other members from the original line-up were Freddie Pompeii, (some sources list him as 'Frederick DePasquale') on guitar/vocals; Chris Paputts, a.k.a. "Chris Hate" on bass guitar/vocals and Mike Anderson, a.k.a. "Motor X" on the drums/vocals. They were active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their music was similar to that of the Sex Pistols and The Damned except that they were favoured by the gay sect unlike other 'punk' bands at the time. This was partially due to leader Steven Leckie's homosexual background.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Career

For a while, The Viletones were quite infamous in punk circles.^{[citation needed]} Leckie himself was infamous for cutting himself up on stage, à la Iggy Pop. Footage of such can be found at the CBC Archives. They appeared in magazines all over the world. According to music journalist Alan Cross, in 1977, along with The Clash, The Buzzcocks, The Damned, Sex Pistols and The Ramones, The Viletones were one of the few punk bands actually releasing records.

From July 7-10, 1977 the group joined The Diodes and Teenage Head at famed New York punk club CBGB at a showcase featuring "three outrageous punk bands from Toronto, Canada". Eminent rock critic Lester Bangs described the show in an April 29, 1981 article for the Village Voice: "This guy Natzee Dog hung from the rafters, crawled all over the stage, and hurled himself on the first row until his body was one huge sore. Somebody asked me what I thought and I said, 'Fine with me - in 1972 every band in the world was Grand Funk, now every band in the world is the Stooges.' I didn't tell Natzee Dog that, though; I told him: 'You guys were cooler with hockey haircuts.'"

Also that year, The Viletones released their first single, "Screamin (sic) Fist" b/w "Possibilities" and "Rebel" on their own Vile Records.

In 1978, they released Look Back In Anger, which featured the songs "Don't You Lie" and "Dirty Feeling", b/w "Back Door To Hell", "Swastika Girl" and "Danger Boy". The same year Pompeii, Hate and X abrubtly left The Viletones. The now former Viletones joined up with ex-Diode John Hamilton in The Secrets.

In 1983, a reunited Viletones released their first full-length album, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, recorded live at Larry's Hideaway in Toronto. Later that decade, they released a U.S.-only release, Live At Max's. In 1994, a record label, Other Peoples Music, released a retrospective, A Taste Of Honey. In 1998, Leckie released the What It Feels Like To Kill album, which featured among its 18 songs the 1995 Nailed EP, under the Viletones name. He currently runs an art gallery in Toronto called Fleurs Du Mal and made a brief appearance in the film, American Psycho.

A reference to their song, "Screamin Fist", turned up in the pages of Neuromancer, a novel by William Gibson.

The Viletones 2007 line-up consists of Steven Leckie (vocals), Steve Scarlet/The Sinisters/Drunkula (guitar)[1] and Jeff Zurba (drums.)