Hate Gallery

Hate Gallery's debut album ?Compassion Fatigue' has fire in its eyes, puke on its shoes and a point to make. It has the ear for an argument as well as the ear for a tune. At a blush over 30 minutes, ?Compassion Fatigue' carries no fat. It gets in, says its piece and gets out. Just how it should be. ?Compassion Fatigue' will be released on November 3rd on The Unit Music Label, distributed by Sony/BMG in Scandinavia and Cargo in the U.K.

Hate Gallery were formed by principal songwriter and driving force Janne Jarvis, who states that ?I want this band to be the kind of group that stands out from the crowd. I don't want us to be associated with any kind of scene, with any other band that happens to be either Swedish or English. I don't want us to be associated with any one place. I don't want us to be thought of in terms of either fashion or trends.?

Vocalist / bassist Janne first tasted rock'n'roll success in great British rock band Radiator, who created a huge rock industry buzz when they emerged at the end of the last Millenninum and disintegrated at the beginning of this one. They signed to EMI Records, who released their debut album to great reviews and they were then fortunate enough to tour with the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age, Motorhead, Backyard Babies, Pitchshifter and countless others. ?Inter-band tensions, tax bills and record company stupidity laid that to waste...? he now recalls.

Janne went on to join Elevation with Pete Vuckovic and Keith Baxter from 3 Colours Red, before a stint as bassist in Queen Adreena; ?Fucking insane band. It was a maelstrom of drinking, post art school pretentiousness and visceral rock and roll. It ended in a drunken fight after a gig in Oxford. I love that band. Perhaps the most interesting musicians I've been involved with and certainly the hardest drinking.?

In 2006 Janne spent four months in Stockholm, disappearing into the city's underground in search of inspiration, before returning to London to attempt to recruit musicians for his new project. Then he got a call from Kory Clarke of legendary New York band Warrior Soul, who he'd first met when he filled in on bass in Kory's last band, Space Age Playboys, when they supported Metallica. Kory asked Janne to play bass in a brand new version of Warrior Soul, and he jumped at the chance; ?Warrior Soul are one of my favourite bands of all time and I considered it a great honour? he states.

Thus it was that he met visceral Swedish guitarist Rille Lundell; ?At the first Warrior Soul rehearsal, we knew we had to do something together. We'd been looking for each other for years. We both share the absolute ambition to make great music, something we have found lacking in previous musicians we have worked with. Rille also happens to be one of the most explosive, exciting guitarists walking the earth? So after Warrior Soul played in Stockholm in April of this year I decided I wasn't leaving.

Within a month of the birth of Hate Gallery, Rille and Janne had recruited crazed Finnish Guitarist Petja Lepola (a virtuoso automaton, affectionately known as 'The Hat' or Petja Ebola ) and sticksman Freddie Cocker, former drummer in Swedish pop-rockers The Callahan, who can kill you with one look; there's a famous saying in Stockholm-'Don't fuck with Freddie.' A month later the band had signed to The Unit Music Label and went into the studio to record ?Compassion Fatigue'.

Janne states that ?This the beginning of a reaction to all the thing we despise. Surveillance, the Orwellian nightmare, corporate decimation of freedom. Not freedom in a patriotic way, just OUR freedom. We are not political and we don't care THAT much, we're a rock'n'roll band after all. We also have a second record written and we intend to release three records within a year. We want to be prolific like our heroes. Bands used to put out a record a year and we are going to do just that. We also have a steadfast belief that we piss on most of the competition...?