Cubanate

Cubanate is an industrial band from London, founded in 1992 by Marc Heal and Graham Rayner with Phil Barry and Steve Etheridge. The group became well-known known for its early fusion of distorted metal guitars, and techno percussion (later incorporating breakbeats).

History

Cubanate played their first UK tour in November 1992 supporting left-field UK techno duo Sheep on Drugs. The group signed to Berlin's Dynamica Records shortly afterwards. Rayner and Etheridge departed after the first Machinery single, Body Burn (1993). The pair were replaced by Julian Beeston (ex - Nitzer Ebb drummer).

In May 1994 the Metal EP was Single of the Week in Melody Maker magazine and later that year Cubanate received media attention when they were weirdly paired with Carcass for what turned out to be a notoriously violent UK tour ending in death threats to Heal and an on-air confrontation on the Radio One Rock Show with Bruce Dickinson.^[2] The second album Cyberia (1995) spawned the hit single Oxyacetylene, generally considered Cubanate's creative peak. Oxyacetylene featured on the 1996 compilation album Mortal Kombat: More Kombat and was later used on the soundtrack of the best-selling 1998 PlayStation game Gran Turismo. Apart from Oxyacetylene, three other Cubanate songs were used on Gran Turismo and the single Body Burn can be heard at length in episode eighty two of The Sopranos, from the final season of the show.

For live work around the Cyberia tour the band hired Shep Ashton on guitar and Darren Bennett on keyboards. After '96 Ashton and Bennett were replaced by Roddy Stone (currently fronting UK metal act Viking Skull) and David Bianchi (who later went on to become manager of rock bands The Enemy and Boy Kill Boy).

The third album, Barbarossa (1996) continued the crossover format, and despite being name-checked as influences by bands such as The Prodigy ^{[citation needed]} the group clearly decided a change was needed.

Signed in the U.S. to Wax Trax! Recordings for the act's fourth and final album to date, Interference (1998) was a departure from Cubanate's earlier techno experiments with a strong drum and bass influence that alienated some of their traditionalist fans but was heralded as revelatory by others . The album was co-produced by Rhys Fulber. However, Interference proved to be the band's swansong.

Although the act is not very well known outside the crossover scene, Cubanate had a brief vogue in heavy metal circles. The band toured with acts such as Fear Factory, The Sisters of Mercy, Rammstein and other rock acts, whilst Body Burn and Oxyacetylene were both Single of the Week in UK rock weekly Kerrang! and a number of early nu metal acts have cited Cubanate as an influence.

No new material has been released by Cubanate since 1998, and the band has not performed live since December 1999. However, in October 2010 the band announced that they were recording again and would be releasing new material in 2011. A new track "We are Crowd", has been released on Alfa-Matrix's compilation "EBM1".

In a posting on his Facebook page Marc Heal stated "Marc here. I should have posted this a while back, but I wanted to let everyone know that I have decided conclusively not to do another Cubanate album. It was a real blast getting back into studio with Phil - and he came up with some brilliant music. But I'm doing something different with my life now and I've come to the conclusion to leave it. Thanks for all your support, I really appreciate it. I'll keep posting. M" ^[3]

On June 8, 2012 Heal revealed a demo version of "the first new PIG track in eight years" entitled Drugzilla (Rough As A Hog's Arse Mix) via Cubanate's Official Facebook page and providing their followers a link to his personal SoundCloud page. The link was reposted by Raymond Watts a few hours later.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} A second demo entitled Shake was released on July 15, 2012; again via Heal's Soundcloud page, this time also noting Dan Abela as engineer.^[10]

Discography

Albums and EPs

Singles

References

External links

• Cubanate at AllMusic
• Marc Heal 2006 Interview "Breaking The Silence"
• Cubanate biography by VH1.com
• Cubanate biography at The Syndicate
• Official Cubanate & Marc Heal Website
• Antimatter Universe: Retrospective Analysis From the Mind of Marc Heal Heal, Marc. "Reposting this...". Official Cubanate on Facebook. Retrieved 22 July 2012. 
• Cubanate Facebook Page