It started out, as these things often do, as a bit of a laugh. Once a week in Jack’s garage, hammering seven bells out of an old practice drum kit and a bass guitar while Jack howled the lyrics through a £10 plastic microphone.

“Feral kids go howling at the Peugeot headlight moon”

We only had a tiny amp and Dave was using brushes but it was still loud enough to set the estate dogs off; loud enough for the dogs and the curtain twitchers to hound us out of town.  We found a village hall, a drafty shack in the wild flatlands of Cambridgeshire where we could really let rip. It sounded good and felt better. It was like coughing up all the frustrations of life along with the bile. It was a catharsis.  Jack started turning his pen on the things around us, the horrors of the everyday and the sheer terror we felt every time we turned on the television and the nightmares came spewing out.

“Moths flap against the TV screen/soap opera rape and murder"

We had sparked something, something we couldn’t stop if we had wanted to. We didn’t want to. Dave spent every penny he had in the world on a real drum kit. He hits it but it’s still only half tame; it sounds like it would hit him back if he turned his back on it. Dan and his bass had joined when he read some half-finished lyrics in the pub but left to drive a battered car too fast across Australia. Ron took his place. Ron is irreplaceable. The bass lines sound like a train bearing down on you, like a fate you can’t escape.

“The sound you make with nowhere to run/under the cosh and under the thumb”

If anything was missing it was a guitar. When Dan came back from Oz he picked one up and came back to us. We hit the road, roaring our fear and desperation at anyone who’d listen. The world’s on fire! Why won’t you do something?

“Take a big puff on your holy smoke while our holy wars make holy ghosts.”

Then Dan left again. The clock was ticking in his head and he had to keep moving. So we watched him go and the silence crept back in. It was too loud, scratching at the insides of our heads like claws as we took the daily trip to work and back. We couldn’t stop now.  Enter Mills and the return of the brutal, adrenalin rush guitar lines we craved like a drug. Bomb Factory was back in business. We are here. We are going to make you listen...



.RANTING JACK..........

I just wanted to be in a band. A proper band, where it's like a gang and it's you against the world. I just wanted to write songs that were about something, not just that your girlfriend left you (again) 'cos you're an ugly prick or what a sensitive soul you are really underneath that sickly, shit-eating grin.
I just wanted to do something less boring instead. Instead of just sitting in an office like a sack of shit as the life drained out of my eyeballs into the computer screen. Instead of standing in the queue at the supermarket wishing the bomb would drop. Instead of dancing to all the fucking woolworths songs at the niteclub while the DJ plays "Now That's What I Call Bland Pointless Shit 52".
I just wanted to get it off my chest. Pop vomit. Is that too much to ask?

.DAVID..........

It was the total, mind-crushing tedium of working in a battleship grey office which swung it for me. Instead of trying to paper over the boredom of a 9-5 existence with crates of duty free, hitting a drum kit seemed like a better alternative. Seeing pub rock drummers 'dazzle' the drunks with their endless 'fills' I knew how I wanted to sound - the complete opposite. Keep it sparse, hit the thing as hard as possible and kick it off stage if necessary. That's what I like to do. That's why I've had to pay far too much money on new drumsticks, skins, pedals, cymbals and bandages.

.MILLS..........

Joining Bomb Factory meant coming to terms with the fact my guitar may never see the other side of a gig in one piece. But I don’t care anymore? It’s a plank of wood with wires on it. Joining the band also meant having to fill the large, extremely capable and talented shoes that Dan left behind. A challenge for most but, fuck it, I’ll just go bare-foot. Most importantly joining Bomb Factory means I have an escape, an outlet, from all the shitty, day-to-day, run-of-the-mill, week-in, week-out, cliché after cliché after cliché. So here’s to concussion, punk, shouting fuck, bleeding from my hands and ears, hitting the floor, blowing things up, burning things down and kicking them Sir, kicking them ‘til they break.


.RON..........

I started out playing the bongos in Swindon's finest the Purple People Eaters nine years ago but our mix of guitar (made from a wooden bog seat), thumb piano, cheap keyboard and drum machine and anything else we could lay our hands on needed something more.
I discovered a bass guitar in the attic and decided to teach myself how to play it after being told it would be a piece of piss.
After the PPE got knocked on the head in 1997, I thought that would be it until one winter's morn I got the call from John asking if I fancied having a go at the Factory.
I had feared jazz noodlings would be required when I heard poetry mentioned and breathed a sigh of relief when my rawer edges were what were required.
My favourite bands are The Fall, The Happy Mondays and The Pixies and the best tune in the world ever is My Sharona by The Knack.
By the way, Swindon Town are by far the greatest team the world has ever seen. We hate Oxford and we hate Oxford, we hate Oxford and we hate Oxford, we hate Oxford and we hate Oxford, we are the Oxford haters.