Victims Family

Formed in Santa Rosa, California, during 1984, Victim's Family began with guitarist and vocalist Ralph Spight, bassist Larry Boothroyd, and drummer Devon VrMeer comprising the initial roster. From the outset the trio deliberately avoided confinement to any single genre, blending hardcore punk, jazz, funk, hard rock, and noise into a demanding sonic approach. After joining the independent roster of Mordam Records in the mid-1980s—a label already home to the similarly uncategorizable Faith No More—the band delivered three albums: its 1986 debut Voltage & Violets, 1989’s Things I Hate to Admit, and 1990’s White Bread Blues, the last produced by No Means No drummer John Wright. Shortly thereafter the group moved to Alternative Tentacles, the label founded by the Dead Kennedys. Its first release for the new imprint, The Germ, appeared in 1992, yet Victim’s Family chose to enter a hiatus just as underground and alternative rock began reaching mainstream audiences.

The pause proved brief. The band resurfaced in 1994 with Headache Remedy and followed it a year later with the live EP Four Great Thrash Songs, after which the members again parted ways. Back in California, Boothroyd launched Saturn’s Flea Collar, a project that also featured Spight; the outfit issued a single and the 1997 album Monosyllabic before evolving into Hellworms, which likewise released a single and the full-length Crowd Repellent in 1998. Boothroyd and Spight soon revived Victim’s Family, adding former My Name drummer David Gleza, and the reactivated lineup produced the group’s first new album in six years, Apocalicious, issued in September 2001.