1995. Faced with mounting debts left by their management and perhaps the notion that things were reaching a natural conclusion of some sort, Martin Metcalfe and the remaining members of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie set to work in their living room, recording a series of demos that were to provide a farewell to a career which, while it had gained them some amount of success, hadn’t exactly set the charts alight.
Reading the GBM backstory on Wikipedia, I’m surprised to learn that their probably best known song ‘The Rattler’ eventually made the top 40 in 1989 as I’m certain I had heard it about four years before then, although that’s probably part and parcel of their experience as a whole. Six years later, the songs on ‘The Glory Hole’ are overall more abrasive and just plain loud than much of their other output.
Garbage were very much in the ascendant right when ‘The Glory Hole’ was being recorded, with Shirley Manson having jumped ship several months previously, and it’s difficult not to hear shared influences at work, particularly on ‘Ugly Child’ and ‘Troubling You’ among others, the tightly meshed guitars and vitriolic lyrics sounding as if they would have easily slipped into those early Garbage sessions unnoticed. ‘Space Neurotic’ sounds a bit ahead of its time in that context, 90s glam metal given an electronic recharge, and those final shows GBM performed must’ve been something to witness.
Now reformed and touring this year, the 2022 GBM set might not be the sustained exercise in pyrotechnics that ‘The Glory Hole’ represents, or there again it might. I’d suggest turning up for the experience if you can.