Up The Down

UP THE DOWN!

Town in panic as rebel yell nears

By Seth Gecko

The usually laidback Bristol suburb of Stokes Croft is full of nervous
energy today from the announcement that notorious death partisans
Driven Down will be arriving to play the world-famed Full Moon venue on
Sunday evening. The band, who for official legal reasons must be
referred to as 'The Down' at least once in every affiliated press
release, have been acting a strategic 'UK Tour', which incorporates
ritual cross burning, parliamentary petrol bombing and the sacrifice of
one native Combat 18 leader immediately before and after the band's
on-stage appearance.

The event and its unique specifications was announced by Driven Down
spokesman Oliver Green and immediately hailed by local enthusiasts as
"heroically brilliant" and "a masterpiece of understated genius".

This unprecedented tour is expected to attract a diverse breed of
cross-cultural dynamos who will combine with the bands regular
followers to be taught humanities through the prophetic power of the
groups music, which lead vocalist Ashley Miller described as being like
"nailed Velcro" with the ability to "literally rip you apart".

Miller, who for several years has trained as an anti-fascist voice
conductor, has reiterated the band's stance on the oppressive forces
who may wish to stop their schooling tour, describing them as "the
pillars of the gateway to Gehenna", and said that any attack of a
physical nature would be met with "a Herculean uprising", where the
band and crowd would unite as one to "beat the resistance round the
ears with their own legs".

Bass guitarist Alex Dobson has been quick to play down any kind of
vicious encounter, insisting the tour is part of a long-term plan for
total UK enlightenment. "I feel wonderful about this thing - it's the
smartest idea I ever had," said Dobson, who claims he will donate over
half the profits to the Skipton based Narcotics Investigation Circle,
to "aid them with their ongoing research and developmental
program".

Dobson, a prominent regional social figure whose personal fortune is
estimated at ?20 million, has maintained the band will bring to their
forthcoming venues "a droplet of amnesty from the grey cloud of
subjugation". A lifetime member of the defiantly private Hanover Int.
Hardcore Appreciation Club, Dobson has continually strived to keep
certain aspects of his individual affairs closely covered underneath a
tightly gripped veil. Indeed, the club is so exclusive that no list of
members is believed to exist, with communication through code names
only and monthly gatherings shrouded in secrecy, conducted in what
spokesman Green described as "effectively utter darkness."

Silsden based freelance poet Rob Noyland is just one of many lifelong
Driven Down supporters who maintains an unforgiving devotion to
attending each and every date of the Driven Down tour. Noyland, who has
recently been successfully defended against a quadruple charge of
"inconceivable public lunacy", is frantically adamant that the major
civic relevance of the band should not be undervalued. In a tediously
scrawled note to lead vocalist Miller, written after their opening tour
date at Newcastle, Noyland hailed the group as "a massive tribute to
kinetic energy", and "genuinely as important as physical matter
itself". When later asked about the mystery surrounding the Hanover
Int. Hardcore Appreciation Club, he argued that "many of the members
are important and extremely beautiful women", which he said would go
some way to explaining the "strong tungsten cage nature" of the
organization.

It remains to be seen whether the caustic spirit of Driven Down can
unruffle the fine feathers of fidelity that the suburban customs
represent, however the band are now over the plateau and seeking the
peak, the final push of energy to break clean over the top and into the
new air of change that their ethics so vehemently chase.

"We are breaking the face of constancy," adds Dobson, "this is what we
repeatedly do. Our musical influence is not an act, but a habit."

--- August 5th, 2002