KINGS OF LONDON POP PUNK the GRISWALDS are one of the few surviving mid 90’s UK pop punk bands . Three Ramones worshipping teenage losers, Ben Nuthink (vocals, bass), Steve Legend (vocals, guitar) and Paul Spazm (vocals, drums) got together in the summer of 1995. We each bought our first instruments the Christmas before and began writing songs about horror and sci-fi movies, drinking and our extensive bad luck and limited good luck with girls. The bands that inspired us were the Ramones, Screeching Weasel, The Queers, The Vindictives, Sloppy Seconds and the short lived, yet legendary, Croydon band Toast. Our songs were fast - very fast, and Mouth From The South fanzine referred to us as “the Ramones on speed“. Who were we to argue with that? It was harder to play slow songs back then and fast songs have always been more fun. Despite the usually drunken chaos of trying to learn our instruments AND play in time together, we were quite prolific in songwriting. Each time we practiced one of us would bring new songs to try out. At that time we sounded like The Queers did when Wimpy sung for them. Our song titles were typical teenage stupidness, our ‘ This Garage Stinks ‘ demo tape had such classics as ‘Wanna See You Naked’, ‘Mr Zombie‘ and ‘Jerk Off’ Jerk Off Yeah Yeah Yeah‘.
Our first gig was on April 4th 1996 at the George IV pub in Brixton. We were asked to headline at the last minute and so we did with a very young (pre-Hellcat Records) Mouthwash opening for us. In 1997 Household Name Records released out first 7” record, a split with THE KENMORES from the U.S. entitled ‘Legalise The Stupid’. Over the next few years we played more shows. 1998 saw the release of another split 7” with CHESTER and FETT on Just Jim/Spanking Herman Records entitled ‘No Need For Wiseguys’ We played up and down the country with some of our favourite bands including TOAST, SKIMMER, THE SMUGGLERS, PANIC, TEEN IDOLS and our hero DEE DEE RAMONE.
In 1999 Paul Spazm left the fold to go travelling and in his words “get some action”. Anyone that knows Spaz knows exactly what that means. We recruited a guy that worked at our local off license, Paul Thresher, to play drums. He lasted two practices. Daz Reject joined the band a few weeks later and is still with us to this day. From this point, the band started writing ‘proper’ songs and we began to take the band more seriously. As in, we started to get drunk after playing as opposed to all day before like we used to. In 2000 Steve self-released our ‘Absoludicrous!?’ CD EP and 2001 saw the release of yet another split 7”. ‘Immature Ejaculation’ was with THE SCREAMING WILLIES on Weird Records. Tours of Europe and more UK shows followed with the likes of HANSON BROTHERS, THE NOBODYS, THE APERS, PAUL COLLINS BEAT and the GROOVIE GHOULIES. The long-awaited debut album “Fall In Line” was eventually recorded in 2005. It was self-released by Daz well over a year later. In 2008 the U.S. label Knowhere Records released the ‘All Roads Lead To Nowhere’ 4-way split CD with us, THE SEDATIONS(U.K.), HOLLYWOOD NIGHTMARES (U.S.), and THE BRICKTOPS (U.S.) each contributing four songs.
The rainy summer of 2008 sees thirteen years of the band’s existence. The songs are better than ever and the releases will keep coming. We have still refused to compromise our sound with what is hip and though the late 90s and early 21st century saw many great bands suffer the cancer of ska and emo, we remain untouched.
Still as “snotty as a hayfever sufferer’s hankerchief” (‘Vision On Zine’) we continue to play our sped up and dumbed down version of good time rock and roll. We still keep the same main influences and write about what we have always written about. Actually, that’s not quite true. Now we also sing about cowboys and spy movies.
