Reign

Cosmic Hearse reader and friend, Jay Harlow, was cool enough to share with us his old band Reign. Jay now operates the very excellent Black Metal band, Jabladav. I decided it best to let the man himself give you the lowdown on Reign . I'm taking the day off to catch up on some schoolwork. Thanks, Mr. Harlow, and if any other readers want to share their band with us send stuff (graphic included) to joinedattheass@hotmail.com. If it's to my liking it'll turn up here eventually, be patient. All submissions will be listened to in full.

Reign was based out of Winston-Salem NC and lasted from 92-94. NC was kind of a hotbed of its own at that time with COC blowing up and killer bands like Messiah/Confessor/Perpetual Iniquity and False Prophet to name a few.The internet basically didn't exist in our mindsets and everything was word of mouth and all the bands listed above were super competitive so it really was exciting to be part of that scene. No one tried to sound like anyone else and I think that was what put Reign apart from those other guys. With that being said, Wanting a band to sound like early Fates Warning/Queensryche wasn't a very in vogue thing to aspire to. We didn't really tour outside of the Carolinas due to our drummer was/is a professional photographer and wasn't really into cramming in a van and living off McDonalds. At this point Shane Puttman the vocalist starting sending out tapes to Confessor when Scott(Confessor) left to tryout for Watchtower! and Shane was also contacted by Kurdt Vanderhoof to tryout for his project. As you can imagine, finding a singer with Shane's range wasn't something you were going to find in the Carolinas. Things kinda feel apart after that with Gurnge blowing up and I wanted to tap backing into my punk roots. The bassist and I started a band called the Swinging Richards(not knowing the gay reference DOHH) we just thought of ourselves as dick-heads. That didn't last long and then I got into a jazz band called Branch Quartet. We recorded a demo at NC school of the arts and then the drummer and cellist moved to CA where Blake(drummer) teaches at Cal-arts now. During that time I was really into Mick Karn the bassist and me(JA) and the drummer(BLA) and guitar player(DAV) would jam when Gwen was gone and that was how the JABLADAV name came about. So that is it in a nutshell.

JH: guitar/backing vocals

Jon Pugh: guitar/vocals

Shane Puttman: lead vocals/keys

Jeff McMahan: bass/backing vocals

Dave Admundson: Drums

Live master DAT tape soundboard recorded at the now gone ZIGGY's Nightclub.

Here