A GUIDE TO THE WORLD’S NOISIEST CITIES

A GUIDE TO THE WORLD’S NOISIEST CITIES

Harold DeMuir

Among the hordes of ambitious young turks populating America’s underground metal scene, Cities is one band with a difference: they’re from Staten Island. That may not seem like much to you, but Staten Island (officially a borough of New York City, but anyone with half a brain knows it’s really part of New Jersey) is not exactly noteworthy as a breeding ground for enduring rock talent. Author Paul Zindel, ’50s baseball star Bobby Thompson and Central Park designer Frederick Olmstead all hail from this exotic isle— but not a whole lot of bands.

From this cultural hotbed comes Cities. Singer Ron Angell, bassist Sal Mayne and guitarist Steve Mironovich have been playing together for five years. Drummer Scott DuBois is a more recent addition, filling a seat previously occupied by A.J. Pero, who left Cities to join that other modest combo, Twisted Sister.

The presently-unsigned (but looking) Cities leaves its career guidance to the Manhattanbased Concrete firm, who also manage the startlingly brilliant and original Grim Reaper (see The Ten Worst New Acts of the ’80s, CREEM May ’85). Last year, Concrete hooked Cities up with England’s independent Metal Masters label to produce a six-song import EP, Annihilation Absolute. The EP has helped build the band an international cult following (they get lots of fan mail from Europe), and also serves as a handy intro for lazy American execs who can’t be bothered to listen to some dinky cassette with stuff scribbled on it.

For the time being, Cities is drawing its support from the metal cult scene, which, according to bassist Mayne, is ‘‘pretty powerful. Look at all the bands that are surviving independently, without major deals. The potential of the underground is major, but it doesn’t get picked up by the big companies, so it just thrives on its own. I think it’s always gonna stay underground, because it’s not something that can be commercialized—if you try and commercialize it, the underground people are not gonna listen to it.”

While Annihilation Absolute's cover depicts the band members strutting through a post-nuke urban landscape, Mayne claims that Cities makes an effort to steer clear of the thud-and-blunder stuff. ‘‘This metal’s clean,” he states, ‘‘and we think about what the words are saying. You don’t have to preach death and gore and blood and guts to write a song, and too many bands are relying on that. Even if these bands who sing about the satanic thing aren’t serious about it, the fact is that some of these kids might take it seriously. Just the fact that you’re in the public eye makes you a role model, and we’re aware of that.

‘‘We want to give the kids something to think about, and maybe by some chance it will change their attitude,” he continues, explaining that ‘‘Innocent Victim” is intended as an expression of outrage over violent street crime, and that ‘‘Stop The Race” is a nonpartisan protest against the nuclear-arms buildup.

Mayne admits that, if and when Cities scores a majorlabel deal, they wouldn’t be averse to toning down their musical attack to produce a few radio-digestible tracks: ‘‘If we had to do something a little more straightforward to please a record company, the fans might say that we’re selling out, but I don’t look at it that way. If a record company will give us a record deal and get us out to a bigger market, then I’d sacrifice two or three songs of an album for them, to let the other seven or eight songs get out there and be heard.

‘‘If you live in fear of your audience saying, ‘Oh, that’s really wimpy compared to what they normally do,’ then you’re limiting your creativity, and we don’t want to do that. We don’t want to be a band that just gets the 12-to-16-year-olds, or just the 16-to-25-year-olds, or just an all-male audience. I don’t want us to be the kind of band that gets locked into one mold. This music has something to say, and I think it’s for everybody.”