Love Grave

Our Love Could Be Your Grave
Noir (vocals) and Jay Ris (guitar) became friends around 1988. Through a mutual acquaintance they met a guy who wanted to start a band, and he asked Noir and Jay Ris to join him. Although he turned out to be a freakish son of a gun they managed to do a couple of shows together. Noir and Jay Ris didn’t feel comfortable in the group, and soon they quit and started to work as a duo, experimenting with drum machines, samplers, and electronic keyboards. Six months later, they were joined by Lene Lore (violin), Wu Wurzer (keyboard), Dorian Otahal (drums), and Kurt Kubesch (bass)—Love Grave was born.
In 1989, the first concerts were booked. Love Grave’s show at Vienna’s famous club U4 brought the band to the attention of music critics and promoters throughout Austria.
After some argy-bargy, the rhythm section—Kubesch and Otahal—left the band in 1990. They were replaced by Michael Wettstein (drums) and Chris Hauer (bass). The new line-up started to record Love Grave’s first demo tape, Spit out Knives. Noir and Jay Ris were not fully satisfied with the results—they felt that the band’s rhythm section needed to be replaced again, and so they brought Frankie Mitschitczek (drums) and Martin Talir (bass) into the group. During all these changes, Wurzer had quit the band, and Love Grave decided to dispense with keyboards altogether—except for a show at Budapest’s Black Hole club where some chummy chap joined them on keys. Getting into the groove with the new members, Love Grave performed live at Vienna’s most important (and notorious) rock venues at the time, WUK, Arena, Bach, and, again, U4. The song “Movement of Blood” was released on a compilation entitled Blut und Blüte (“blood and bloom”) which was distributed in Austria, Scandinavia and the United States. At the end of the year, Love Grave recorded their second demo tape, Now Try to Find Love.
In 1991, Love Grave released one of their early songs, “Falling,” on the Austrian alternative music compilation H.C.O.P. Sampler, as well as the 12 inch 45 rpm single You Always Want. They played in Munich, Regensburg, Dresden, and Berlin, Budapest, Sofia, Salzburg, Graz, and Vienna.
Tired of being in a band, Lene Lore called it quits in 1992 and went back to Graz, her hometown. “Not the End of the War,” a favourite with most concert audiences, was released as a split-single—the other song being “Nothing at all” by The Stand (former drummer Otahal’s band)—for the Chelsea Chronicle, a then popular Austrian fanzine. Promoting the release, both bands performed live at Vienna’s (in)famous Chelsea club. For Ö3, Austria’s most popular radio station, Love Grave played “unplugged.” They released their first CD Why I Always Want Something More, shot music videos for three of the album’s songs and played shows in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. After having completed a short tour with The Stand, bassist Talir decided to stay in Berlin and left the band. His shoes were filled by Fritz Bleyer.
1993 saw the band recording new material in Pressbaum, Lower Austria, for an upcoming album. Everybody was relaxed and in high spirits until the record company supposedly paying for the CD production turned out to be a complete wash-out. This fraud made Mitschitczek take to his heels—after having handed over the drumsticks to Hannes Krebs.
In 1994, Love Grave embarked on a small England tour: the group played in London, Gillingham, Tunbridge Wells, Folkestone, and Maidenhead. Three of the songs they had recorded the previous year were released on the compilation CD C-Side, Vol. 1 which the band promoted through shows in Linz and Vienna. A new demo tape called Crime Light was produced at the end of the year.
After a “factional struggle,” Love Grave disbanded in 1995. Most ex-members are still playing music today.