Bonnie Tyler is like Nostradamus. Even though she’s cheesier than mozzarella, Bonnie sure predicted it right with her 80s smash-hit Holding Out For A Hero – especially after this year’s SAMAs, we might need a crime fighter or two, as well (oh save us, Batman)! Jokes aside, the local rock scene requires bravery. We need someone to jump out of the shadows and save us from mediocrity and the lack of originality – not just rely on a label’s off-cuts. We need risk takers; musicians with balls, who’ll leave it all on the line or die trying. We need a City of Heroes.
Catching the eye
Music publications receive millions (okay, I lie, maybe thousands) of submissions from bands. Unfortunately, quite often, we do receive the expected scribbled CD-R with a ghastly standard of music, which will make you want to die twice. However, Pretoria-based post-punk outfit, City of Heroes, have caught the industry’s attention, for the right reasons, with their ingenious press kit, which consists of a CD/DVD combo of their debut release The Great Unknown, postcards featuring the band members’ parallel universe characters, and an all-round clever concept, all neatly folded and packaged into a labelled tin box. Considering these guys don’t have a major label’s backing, this is a pretty mean DIY feat.
“We’d all played together in another band before, and when we started City of Heroes about two years ago, we wanted to do everything bigger and better from the start,” says guitarist Jéan Lombard. “We understand that if you create a band now, it isn’t just about playing live shows; you need to run it as a business and market yourself properly from the start, because first impressions are a huge thing. We wanted to give out a professional product that people might not have necessarily expected.”
Wait… did I just hear right? An independent, new band talking about marketing and a business plan? “Before we even started this band, we sat with my brother, who is a business consultant, and he ran us through some proper marketing strategies. Look, the music needs to be good anyway – no question about it – but the marketing just adds to it. Especially in the music scene here, you need that differentiating factor. All your different aspects need to give the same message and feel to whoever sees it. So, whichever part of your band – for example, your web presence or music – the person sees [or hears], must give the same message you want to portray. The better you do this, the more control you have over how people perceive your band,” the guitarist affirms.
The Great Unknown
As Jéan pointed out, the music needs to be good, too – and, thankfully, it is. The songs on The Great Unknown are well put together, extremely visual, and, ultimately, shake up a pirate ship. Impressively, the recording quality is also classy.
So, it leaves me with just one question: how the hell did these guys manage to get everything just so right? “That’s one of the reasons why we took forever to release this record,” he laughs. “We worked on this album for nearly 2 years. Luckily, our vocalist Karl [Müller] runs his own recording studio, so we recorded everything ourselves. The good thing about that is, we recorded first and did pre-production on it, listened to it and saw what worked and what didn’t, and then re-recorded it. Whilst in the past, we went into a studio for a week – or whatever we could afford – and then had to run our stuff like that.”
Painting a picture
Not wasting any time, the band has released two music videos for the singles Traces of Light and Thief in the Night (filmed with Brendan Barnes of Crash Car Burn fame) off The Great Unknown. Indisputably, all this DIY work is expensive, so it must be asked – are City of Heroes broke yet? Jéan laughs. “Whenever people ask you ‘what’s your budget?’, there really isn’t one! If you don’t have a big budget, you really do have to pull in favours from people.”
Judging by the videos, the visual imagery of the songs and overall image of the band, there is a certain theatrical charm in City of Heroes. Is this something they plan on incorporating into their stage shows? “Yeah, definitely,” he declares. “With our album launch, we did a whole setup with stage props, etc. Wherever we can, we’d like to incorporate these props and rotating scenes into our shows. Once we start playing on bigger stages or festivals – it’s often hard in smaller clubs, where there is hardly even space for your amp – we’d like to bring in a more theatrical setup with props.”
Taking the scene by the horns
In less than a year since they started performing live, the band hasn’t been mucking about either, touring with some local heavyweights such as The Narrow, Knave and Dance, You’re On Fire. A lot of bands can spend years playing to dead pubs and empty garages, yet these dudes are making some serious strides in no time. “We played for 4 years with our other band, and we didn’t achieve a quarter of what we did in a year now. All the planning helped. We got all our stuff into place before we even started playing – and that’s why it also took so long,” Jéan says, before dishing out some valuable advice to his peers and younger bands. “Rather take your time and put out the best product you can. Get your marketing strategy for your band ready, establish what you want to say with your band and then see that everything fits into that vision.”
This vision is unquestionably one of their driving forces, as he explains their future plans. “We plan on shooting another video for Fight or Flight with Brendan [Barnes] – basically, we’re looking to release another 3 videos from this album. We’re also going to start working on the next album within the next 2 months, hopefully to be released by the end of next year, and try to get a proper booking agent, as we’ve been doing everything independently so far.”
Frankly, if City of Heroes continue to work as impressively as they have, they might soon need more than one booking agent.
Check out City of Heroes – The Great Unknown album review
For more information on City of Heroes, visit www.city-of-heroes.net.
Written By : Sergio Pereira
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