This week we are throwing back to Mark Spence's previous band before starting Royal Chant. Back in the mid naughties Mr Spence fronted an Atlanta based three piece named Sickboy. The name inspired by the 1996 film Trainspotting. As both releases were EPs, we're featuring both to provide an album's worth of music in aggregate.
The band's first release was "Vanity and velocity".
Following this release Mark relocated to Australia. Shortly after the move, Mark explained that "After Vanity & Velocity came out, some good things were starting to happen with the band, but we kept dropping the ball, both musically and personally. Most of it, if not all, was my fault, but there was always this inherent crippled nature in the way Sickboy functioned as a band in the States. Eventually, I sort of threw the towel in (or many towels), and accepted an offer to play drums on a cruise ship. I was in a pretty bad way, rather wrecked, and mostly kept to myself. After I licked my wounds a bit I opened my eyes and found my other half. It just so happens that she's an Aussie. After that, deciding where to live was an easy choice. Australia was the only answer."
Soon after landing in Australia, Mark started up a new Sickboy and put together another collection of songs in the form of "Water never waits".
"As soon as we were gone Sickboy evaporated, said Mark at the time. "By the end of the band in the US we were in such shambles, it wasn't going to continue anyway. But we took everything positive from the US and applied it to Australia and it's really paid off! I think that it was the feeling of invincibility that gave us so much success!"
Following the release of EP number two, Sickboy changed their name to Royal Chant to avoid confusion with the Irish band of the same name. Thankfully, despite the name change, they haven't deleted the music from existence on the internet, so you can still listen to it all!
