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Sturm Group
Century Ho!
Green Fuse - 1985
Michael Panontin
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Toronto's punk scene exploded sooner and bigger than anywhere else in Canada. Its post-punk scene seemed on the verge of the same success. Today, however, it is littered with forgotten bands whose scratchy vinyl records - alas, there were very few CD reissues - languish in the back corners of used record shops.
Sturm Group probably came as close as anyone to actually 'making it', which is not really a surprise given that they were blessed with equal parts talent and luck. The four - singer Bill Mahoney, guitarist Tod Cutler, bassist Walter Sobczak and drummer Hugo von Levetzow - seemed to hit it off with Toronto audiences almost from the get-go. "We played a couple of successfully crowded shows at Larry's Hideaway, who asked us to be the house band on Tuesday nights for a few months in the spring of 1982," Sobczak told CM. "At that time we were introducing originals into our repertoire and were called the rather generic name of Modern Language."
Another gig at George Brown College brought them even more fortuity. "We played a pub night there where an engineer from Sounds Interchange Studios saw us and offered to take us in during downtime and weekends and record us. We jumped on the opportunity.and went in on a weekend and recorded 4 or 5 songs in one day."
That was when Sobczak and the others really started to take this post-punk thing seriously. The first course of action was a name change to the hipper sounding Sturm Group, an amalgam of German expressionist art magazine Der Sturm ("the subject matter was in line with the music we were trying to create") and the Pop Group ("at the time one of my most favourite bands").
Of course, to those with their ears to the underground, Toronto in 1982 was a really happening place. In any given week, Sobczak recalls, you could catch the Rent Boys at the Queen City Tavern, Screamin' Sam at the Hotel Isabella, and the Woods Are Full of Cuckoos and L'Etranger at the Cabana Room. In fact, it was at one particular Rent Boys gig that they presented their demo tape to local scenester and zinester Dave MacIntosh, who loved it so much he offered to manage them.
With MacIntosh's pull, the ride up was swift.
"Dave offered us a slot on his Sounds from the Streets Festival at 100 Bond Street in December 1982," Sobczak explained. "The lineup included most of our favourite local bands, so we jumped on it, making this the first show under our new name, Sturm Group." That show went off so well that Sturm Group suddenly found their name on a host of prestigious bills across town. "We opened for L'Etranger at the Cabana Room in January, followed by numerous shows at the Beverley, and opening slots for Rent Boys, Tulpa and Vital Sines at the Rivoli."
With all that gigging, Sturm Group got good. Really good. A seven-track cassette EP was well received (including, as Sobczak notes, "a most positive rejection letter in the UK from Dick O'Dell of Y Records"). In 1984, after parting ways with MacIntosh, they recorded a self-titled LP at Wellesley Sound Studio. By '85, Sturm Group were poised to make what many consider to be their finest record.
Century Ho! was recorded at Wellesley Sound (where, as luck would have it, Cutler was now working, netting the band lots of extra studio time on the side). It was issued in December and is very much a product of its time. There is very little subtlety here, with the listener virtually mauled by Mahoney's primal singing, von Levetzow's thunderous percussion and, especially, Sobczak's deep, loping basslines. Add to that sax overdubs by the recently repatriated John Lennard (ex-Theatre of Hate/Spear of Destiny and Big Audio Dynamite), tape loops and samples and the result is a thrilling post-punk tour de force that is miles ahead of the group's earlier material.
Searching for a high-water mark on Century Ho! is nearly futile, as there is so much to choose from. For sheer thrills, nothing beats the title track, where jolting tape effects (Sobczak: "an AMS 15-80s digital delay") and a meandering sax are held together by the most muscular bass you have ever heard. Ditto for the swell 'A Better Man', which wisely sticks to the same formula. Other tracks ease up on the throttle a bit, like the woozy 'To the Baltic', with its backward tape effects that seem to edge towards the hallucinogenic.
Century Ho! got more than its share of ink in the press. Locally, Now magazine gushed that "the collective angst here could drive a turbine", while the Toronto Star took aim at local radio station CFNY, which trashed the album on air, writing that "when your music upsets the hip local deejay, you're on to something". Across the pond, none other than the NME's Andy Gill pronounced it "a highly impressive debut [sic]".
Everything seemed to be falling into place. With a new singer - Colin Archibald of the band Norda had replaced Mahoney just as they were finishing up Century Ho! - Sturm Group set off on a lengthy tour in May of '86. There were some choice support slots opening for Siouxsie and the Banshees and then John Cale in Vancouver as well as for the Screaming Blue Messiahs and the Cramps back home that summer in Toronto.
Later that year, the boys headed back into the studio to record a follow-up. But the wind was starting to come out of Sturm Group's sails. For one thing, the boys were, well, no longer boys, having started full-time careers that were keeping them busy. It would take a good three years for 1989's Grind to finally see the light of day. What's more, Sobczak laments, "post-punk was kind of dying out, the eighties were ending, and early album sales were disappointing". Still, with some positive reviews, Sturm Group had planned a cross-Canada tour to support it, but they unfortunately broke up before it could get off the ground.
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