Soggy

Cult heroes Soggy were one of the toughest, most hard-hitting French bands of all time, though they received greater acclaim years after their breakup than they did when they were together. Soggy were formed in 1978, and hailed from Reims, in the Champagne-Ardenne region of northeastern France. Soggy featured Beb (aka Patrick Bertrand) on vocals, Eric Dars on guitar, François Tailleur on bass, and Olivier Hennegrave on drums. The band's style combined the ferocity of punk with the hard guitar attack of hard rock and metal and the hot-wired energy of fabled Detroit bands <a href="spotify:artist:4WquJweZPIK9qcfVFhTKvf">the MC5</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:4BFMTELQyWJU1SwqcXMBm3">the Stooges</a>. French music writers were often at a loss to describe the band, and Soggy came up with their own subgenre, "hard wave." Soggy played extensively in France, booking and organizing their own tours, and also made their way to Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland. In October 1980, Soggy went into the studio to cut a single, "Waiting for the War" b/w "47 Chromosomes." Released by the band in 1981, the 45 sold well in independent record shops in Champagne-Ardenne, and a performance video of "Waiting for the War," documenting Beb's shirtless charisma, racked up airplay on the French television outlet FR3 Reims.

Despite Soggy's regional success, French record companies were wary of the band, and while they got offers to sign with major European labels, Soggy's insistence on performing in English rather than their native tongue proved to be a deal-breaker. The group called it quits in the summer of 1982, despite receiving an offer to open for <a href="spotify:artist:2tRsMl4eGxwoNabM08Dm4I">Judas Priest</a> on a projected tour of France. While Soggy broke up before they could complete an album, a collection of demos and the tracks from the 1981 single was issued by the French Memoire Neuve label in 2008, simply titled Soggy. A more extensive two-LP set of Soggy recordings, Slog, was released by the same label in 2012. The word about Soggy began to spread among collectors of punk and metal rarities, and in 2014 California punk band <a href="spotify:artist:7H3vFudAv1N7YmbnmUGdxn">the Shrine</a> recorded a cover of "Waiting for the War" that they released as a single. When Beb heard <a href="spotify:artist:7H3vFudAv1N7YmbnmUGdxn">the Shrine</a>'s cover, he contacted the group, leading to a meeting between the two. Beb ended up joining <a href="spotify:artist:7H3vFudAv1N7YmbnmUGdxn">the Shrine</a> on-stage for the French Hellfest rock festival in 2016, and at the American Psycho Las Vegas festival the same year. The 2008 Soggy compilation was also released in the United States in 2016, in a limited vinyl edition from <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Outer+Battery+Records%22">Outer Battery Records</a>. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi