Uncle Meat

When you look at the Psychobilly movement of the 1980’s, Ireland is not a country that springs to mind as having played much of a part. However, in 1986 the bars and clubs of Dublin were quite literally crawling with demented rockabillies and quiffed-up mutants.
There were plenty of live bands for them to follow too (for those, at least, who weren’t making the weekly trek to psychobilly ‘Mecca’ The KLUBFOOT at London’s Hammersmith Clarendon), The Klingonz (who quickly moved to London to save on bus fares!), Sharkbait (who disbanded at their peak when lead singer Dave Finnegan landed a leading role in Alan Parker’s motion picture ‘The Commitments’),there were Punky and ‘Cramp-ish’ bands like The Gorehounds, Kill-Devil Hill and the Boneshakers, while The Kroozers, Those Handsome Devils and The Crazy Wolves stayed closer to a ‘traditional’ 1950’s sound.
Spellbound was formed in 1986 by brothers Frankie and Adrian Hayes, who came from Bray, Co Wicklow, 15 miles south of Dublin City. Unlike other Irish bands of their time, Spellbound decided to head directly to mainland Europe, where their 1988 debut album ‘Mystical Madness’ was very well received and notched up many thousands in sales (amazingly, that album was never released in their home country). The boys blazed a brief trail across the rockabilly and psychobilly festivals of Germany and Scandanavia before, it seemed, vanishing back into the ‘Hellfire’ woods of County Wicklow.
Their most recent album, ‘A Fistful of Spells’ is the result of ever-increasing calls from fans for that long-awaited follow-up to ‘Mystical Madness’. The 2005 Spellbound line-up, while remaining true to the style and spirit of the original, brings the band bang-up-to-date with a new batch of original songs, alongside some (previously unrecorded) versions of old-school, rockin’-psycho classics.