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Kick The Raven weren't always tolerable. They used to be quite intolerable. In fact, intolerable is putting it mildly. They used to be bloody awful. Kick The Raven (KTR) came to life in early 2001 when it became clear that they could "sing" their own alternative lyrics over the top of other peoples songs. Their music taste being somewhat limited back then, fans were often treated to different renditions of Faith No More, Rammstein, The Offspring and Sonic Adventure game music. Clearly a drastically different Kick The Raven to the one we have today.
Their nefarious schemes were launched in May 2001, with the release of "Dave Benson-Phillips", named so in honour of the hilarious childrens television presenter. With tedious lyrics about sex and power showers, "Dave Benson-Phillips" grated on the nerves, going on for far too long and suffering from a severe lack of talent and humour. Sales peaked at the grand amount of five; an adequate summary of just how good the album was.
In September of the same year, however, Kick The Raven were back, promising a much better album than the last one. Unfortunately, "Bungle and Ogg" was still unspeakably dire. Not only were the lyrics as bad as ever, the quality of the sound was only slightly worse than one of Emperor's first demos. However, the band had moved away from completely sex-orientated lyrics and began to regale us with songs of how Arron couldn't come on a family trip to Edinburgh, the delightful class C narcotic marijuana, and Flapper Jack The Friendly Fish.
Almost immediately, writing began for the third album, which was to be titled "Jurassic Japes and Colossal Capers". But something happened which changed Kick The Raven for good. Arron had begun to play electric guitar- this meant that Kick The Raven could leap out into the harsh world of self-song-writing! Delighted, the duo practiced songs for over a year and eventually they came out with what should probably be considered as their first real album.
"Good Is Evil Spelt Backwards" was released in April 2003. Armed now with a drum machine, guitar, microphone and analogue four track recorder, KTR churned out a half an hour long album, complete with the trademark interludes and nonsense. Just before the release, the band warned that it wasn't really all that great- but that didn't put anyone off. "Good Is Evil Spelt Backwards" received a very warm welcome from all that heard it, much to the surprise of Arron and Simon. However, the album wasnt without its flaws. The recording quality was still very poor, with Simon sounding like he was singing through a flower pot. Having said that, however, the album was a massive step forward for the band.
Exactly a year after the release of GIESB, KTR announced the release of their 4th album, entitled Cosmetic Dentistry. This was another major step forward for the band as this record was on the almighty medium of the CD. This meant that the record was much more accessible (ie. you could skip the stuff you didn't like) and the sound quality had also greatly improved over the hissy sound of the previous offering. The CD was also a lot longer, running at 42 minutes. This length was achieved by adding on 6 re-worked tracks from GIESB. As expected this CD sold much better and should really be thought of as the definitive Kick The Raven release... so far