Biography
Enigmatic noise rock trio Steel Pole Bath Tub built a gritty, humming, unconventional style using distorted bass lines, bursts of guitar noise, tape manipulations, and a collection of quirky yet unsettling spoken excerpts taken from old television programs and films. The group also showed a taste for fragmenting and reworking classic rock numbers, with certain takes appearing solely on 7-inch singles. Reviewers divided over how well their frequently looping structures worked, as some praised the inventive approach while others faulted uneven refinement in the songcraft. Though an improbable candidate for mainstream breakthrough, Steel Pole Bath Tub secured a brief major-label deal amid the alternative rock surge of the mid-1990s.
Steel Pole Bath Tub formed in Bozeman, MT, during 1986 when guitarist/vocalist Mike Morasky and bassist/vocalist Dale Flattum came together. After relocating to Seattle they added drummer Dorothy Kent, already experienced from the early-1980s local hardcore outfit Mr. Epp that later included future members of Green River and Mudhoney. The trio drew their name from a true-crime magazine item that paired a murder weapon with a location in the manner of a Clue game, then moved once more, this time settling in San Francisco.
Steel Pole Bath Tub signed with the Bay Area indie imprint Boner, home at the time to the Melvins before their Atlantic period. Their first album, Butterfly Love, surfaced in 1989, followed the next year by the Lurch EP; both later combined for a CD reissue. Those initial releases showcased the band’s interest in pop-culture allusions and television dialogue fragments, prompting several regional side projects: Morasky collaborated with Boner head Tom Flynn in Duh (aka Death’s Ugly Head), and the full trio worked with Jello Biafra under the name Tumor Circus.
Listeners and writers generally concurred that Steel Pole Bath Tub reached fuller stride with 1991’s Tulip and its 1993 successor The Miracle of Sound in Motion. Around the same span Morasky and Flattum formed an electronics-focused side project called Milk Cult, adopting the aliases C.C. Nova and Bumblebee, which channeled their sampling interests into fresh territory. The 1994 EP Some Cocktail Suggestions became their final Boner release. Slash Records, then a Warner subsidiary soon shifting to London, extended a major-label contract, apparently influenced by parallel moves made by Steel Pole Bath Tub’s stylistic touchstones the Butthole Surfers and labelmates the Melvins.
The band’s major-label debut, Scars from Falling Down, arrived in 1995. Copyright worries forced restraint on their signature dialogue samples, shifting emphasis onto the music itself. In 1996 they began tracking a follow-up, initially planning to record the Cars’ debut album in full. Slash rejected the postmodern gesture along with the accompanying new demos, dropping the group from the roster. Left in limbo, Steel Pole Bath Tub slowly faded from view. The members stayed busy: in 1997 Milk Cult earned a French government grant to join an artists’ collective in Marseilles, where they cut an album issued in 2000 as Project M-13. Morasky later traveled to New Zealand to serve as a special-effects technician on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, while Flattum settled in North Carolina to focus on visual art alongside software work. Morasky, now performing as Agent Nova, and Kent regrouped as Novex in 2002, exploring a direction akin to Milk Cult on their debut Kleptophonica. Steel Pole Bath Tub eventually regained rights to the unreleased major-label follow-up and issued the recordings in 2002 on the 0 to 1 label under the title Unlistenable, taken from a Slash executive’s description of the tapes. The band played a short reunion set that year at the Beyond the Pale festival. Silence held until 2023, when they released Skull Tapes, a compilation of their earliest trio recordings, and performed a reunion show in Texas with Neurosis member Noah Landis guesting. They appeared for a one-off date in the San Francisco area in 2024.
Steel Pole Bath Tub formed in Bozeman, MT, during 1986 when guitarist/vocalist Mike Morasky and bassist/vocalist Dale Flattum came together. After relocating to Seattle they added drummer Dorothy Kent, already experienced from the early-1980s local hardcore outfit Mr. Epp that later included future members of Green River and Mudhoney. The trio drew their name from a true-crime magazine item that paired a murder weapon with a location in the manner of a Clue game, then moved once more, this time settling in San Francisco.
Steel Pole Bath Tub signed with the Bay Area indie imprint Boner, home at the time to the Melvins before their Atlantic period. Their first album, Butterfly Love, surfaced in 1989, followed the next year by the Lurch EP; both later combined for a CD reissue. Those initial releases showcased the band’s interest in pop-culture allusions and television dialogue fragments, prompting several regional side projects: Morasky collaborated with Boner head Tom Flynn in Duh (aka Death’s Ugly Head), and the full trio worked with Jello Biafra under the name Tumor Circus.
Listeners and writers generally concurred that Steel Pole Bath Tub reached fuller stride with 1991’s Tulip and its 1993 successor The Miracle of Sound in Motion. Around the same span Morasky and Flattum formed an electronics-focused side project called Milk Cult, adopting the aliases C.C. Nova and Bumblebee, which channeled their sampling interests into fresh territory. The 1994 EP Some Cocktail Suggestions became their final Boner release. Slash Records, then a Warner subsidiary soon shifting to London, extended a major-label contract, apparently influenced by parallel moves made by Steel Pole Bath Tub’s stylistic touchstones the Butthole Surfers and labelmates the Melvins.
The band’s major-label debut, Scars from Falling Down, arrived in 1995. Copyright worries forced restraint on their signature dialogue samples, shifting emphasis onto the music itself. In 1996 they began tracking a follow-up, initially planning to record the Cars’ debut album in full. Slash rejected the postmodern gesture along with the accompanying new demos, dropping the group from the roster. Left in limbo, Steel Pole Bath Tub slowly faded from view. The members stayed busy: in 1997 Milk Cult earned a French government grant to join an artists’ collective in Marseilles, where they cut an album issued in 2000 as Project M-13. Morasky later traveled to New Zealand to serve as a special-effects technician on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, while Flattum settled in North Carolina to focus on visual art alongside software work. Morasky, now performing as Agent Nova, and Kent regrouped as Novex in 2002, exploring a direction akin to Milk Cult on their debut Kleptophonica. Steel Pole Bath Tub eventually regained rights to the unreleased major-label follow-up and issued the recordings in 2002 on the 0 to 1 label under the title Unlistenable, taken from a Slash executive’s description of the tapes. The band played a short reunion set that year at the Beyond the Pale festival. Silence held until 2023, when they released Skull Tapes, a compilation of their earliest trio recordings, and performed a reunion show in Texas with Neurosis member Noah Landis guesting. They appeared for a one-off date in the San Francisco area in 2024.
Albums
Singles
