Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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First and only album produced by the American band Pompeii 99, led by Valor Kand and Gitane DeMone, before they were incorporated into Christian Death.

Tracklist:
00:00 Metamorphosis
04:01 Love Me For My Mind
07:19 Sitting In This Room
11:10 Nothing!
11:51 The Nothing Song
14:02 Android Police
18:18 The Curse Of A Gypsies Son
23:27 Look At Yourself
26:13 Ignorance Is The Control (Album Cut)
27:36 Ignorance Is The Control (Single Version)

Twist of fate? Joke of destiny? It always seems strange to me, listening to an album by Gitane Demone or Christian Death led by Valor, to tell myself that it all started like this...Pompeii 99, funny combo, so musically distant from what will follow that it's almost a mystery. Closer to the Nina Hagen Band than to any Deathrock, its influences rather cross between New Wave ("Android Police"), Ska ('Metamorphosis'), Pop, Rockabilly, and even hispanic Folk (the finale of "The Curse Of A Gypsies Son") for kitsch, crazy atmospheres where the voice of the young Gitane Demone already imposes itself in an ultra-credible way, certainly crazier than what she will later accustom us to but immediately identifiable by this timbre particular which is his. For the rest, it's a happy mess, a sort of musical tool shed filled with brass instruments, bongos, vicious little organs, piano and other strange noises (toilet flushing, muffled conversations, rubbing, coughing). A bag of tricks that moves in all directions, inhabited by an offbeat humor light years away from the obscurity of Christian Death, even contrasting the tragic reference of his surname...in short, at that time, Valor, Gitane, David Glass and the others are a bunch of happy, well-lit guys (the cries of "Look At Yourself"), but this album with a very ugly cover will earn them a start of success in the Los Angeles area. The rest of the story will demonstrate that Valor was not entirely satisfied since the simple mention of the name of a combo that he has never listened to, Christian Death, will be enough to excite his curiosity enough to want him to play with them. The meeting with their singer Rozz Williams will seal the destiny of one of the most cult projects of the obscure scene, relegating Pompeii 99 to the rank of a funny and delirious object with which we don't really know what to do with...difficult indeed to listen to "Look At Yourself" with complete objectivity.

Lineup:
Valor Kand: vocals, guitars
Gitane DeMone: vocals, guitars
Cram Netod: bass, piano, guitars, vocals
Poli-Sci: vocals, organ, synth
David Glass: drums

#Pompeii99#NewWave#Experimental#USA