Love Me Butch

Syarul Reza – Vocals Wing Meng – Guitars Kevin Kong – Bass Winder Singh – Drums With a debut album, Enter Posthuman which was released on November 2001, under their belts, the band are riding on the achievement of their victory at the 2002 Anugerah Industri Muzik (Malaysian Music Awards) ceremony as Malaysia’s Best New English Artist, in hopes of better horizons to suit their ambition of taking their music to the international heights. The album was also nominated for the Best Engineered Album and Best Produced English Album categories. Much can be said about this post-hardcore band from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia whose members include four talented, passionate 26-year olds from this country’s various ethnic backgrounds. The common factor of singer Syarul Reza, a traditional Malay, drummer Winder Singh, born into Malaysia’s Sikh community, and Wing Meng and Kevin Kong – the group’s Chinese-born guitarist and bassist respectively. The music of Love Me Butch explores themes as diverse as insecurity, rage, alienation, relationship to serious introspection on global issues such as rape, hatred and humanity. Formed in 1998, two early demos crystallized, the six-track Psychedelic Relic, which featured the earliest known version of the band’s unsung moshpit anthem, “Headfirst (Take Me Down)”, and the split release …With Guns in Our Hands. With those tapes the band culled an early batch of shows around the Kuala Lumpur/Petaling Jaya area and along Malaysia’s west coast, the most important being their onstage debut in Penang, late February 1999. As the momentum picked up in 2000, more mainstream gig organisers began offering the largely underground band a string of bigger shows. To date, they have played in more than 500 shows in various areas in the whole of Malaysia and Singapore from small clubs to festival size concerts. Some of the notable festivals are the Rock The World series, ESPN’s X-Games, Lucky Strike F1 Street Promos, The Rottwailers’ Convention, Asian Youth & Music Festival (Singapore), and Baybeats (Singapore). During that intense period of gigging, the band’s sonic repertoire was becoming more and more refined everyday, each song taking shape into a potential album track. It took more than a year to realise songs such as “Six”, “It’s Over in Space” and “Not the One” onto a full-length album. The major pivotal point came in the middle of 2001, when the New Southern Records subsidiary label Posse Records – a street savvy imprint that had released the groundbreaking urban-English compilation Family Day in 2000 – signed them onto the roster to join Love Me Butch’s similarly-sounding peers, Prana. What entailed from that three-album deal was their debut LP, Enter Posthuman, packed with the band’s raw hard rock catalogue that reached all the way to their early days as a garage band juggling college assignments and band practice in 1997 and 1998. Guitarist Wing Meng had expressed the band’s goal to “make a record that would grow onto the listener with every listen”. Although derivative to a certain extent, Love Me Butch bring colours that are all their own into their potent mix of unconventional hard rock music, sculpting a musical direction that is modern and cutting-edge in its own right. In 2003, the band started to write new materials, and pre production works took place for almost a year until October 2004 where the band recorded the follow up to its award winning debut album in 101 Studios, a home converted recording studio in Kelana Jaya. The album, “This is The New Pop” is produced by Love Me Butch and promises ten intense-heavy-melodic tunes, reminiscent of post hardcore bands such as Glassjaw and The Used. Some of the tracks include Reconcile, Stumble Upon A Glass, Barricade, Fortress of a Million and Pitcher of a Ghost. According to guitarist Wing Meng, “This album is an extension of the previous album, taking heavy tunes and melodic lyrics to its extreme.” As to why the album took so long to complete, “We have written, changed, recycled and destroyed the songs over and over; we almost didn’t make it to the studio until we decided to stop writing and move on. We are more selective and detailed this time as we want to churn out the deeper side of us and at the same time, create more space for Syarul to sing and explore his melody lines, and that took us some time to find the right musical combination,” said the guitarist. The mastering of the album was done by one of L.A.'s top mastering gurus Nancy Matter of Moonlight Mastering. Nancy has been awarded several gold and platinum records and is affiliated with the Recording Academy, the Audio Engineering Society, Society of Professional Audio Services (SPARS) and the Los Angeles Women in Music. Some of Nancy's more recent projects and artists she has worked with are Deftones, Yellowcard, Slash, Dead Kennedys, Paula Cole, and the Sailor Moon Soundtrack. The first single from the album, “Reconcile” is currently on RedRottw 104.9 FM and XFresh FM rotation. The album was released independently under the band’s newly formed label, One Armed Productions. In support of the album release, they opened for the band, Simple Plan when they played a concert here in Kuala Lumpur on March 29th as part of their Still Not Getting Any...Tour. Love Me Butch took this opportunity to promote songs from the album,and at the same time, sold CDs and merchandise to a crowd of 10,000 people. Apart from this, Love Me Butch will be touring the whole of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand for the next 3 months. Love Me Butch will be performing at the Pulp Summer Slam VII on April 28, 2007 at Amoranto Stadium in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. plus performances by HILERA, ANGULO, SPOON, ROCKSTEDDY, SPACEFLOWER, STONEFREE, MOONSTAR 88, MARYZARK, PAROKYA NI EDGAR, URBANDUB, VALLEY OF CHROME, SPONGECOLA, HARDBOILEDEGGAZ, SWITCH, SALAMIN, BLOODSHEDD, FASPITCH, DEATH BY STEREO, PEDICAB, BAMBOO, 6CYCLEMIND, SANDWICH, ITCHYWORMS, CHICOSCI, COG, CALLALILY, SIN, PLANE DIVIDES THE SKY, KAMIKAZEE, LOKOMOTIV, ORANGE N LEMONS, TYPECAST