Imagine a band with the lean, raw aggression of the Monks playing heavy rock music with the force of steel-fisted 18-foot-tall stone giants, pounding tall buildings, large vehicles, and human bodies into slurry. Now imagine this band happening in 1969, and you have Crushed Butler, a London trio whose deafiningly brutal style and rough image was years ahead of its time — and most likely what kept them in the margins of history, till recently. Every last aspect of this band reflects descension, violence, and intensity, welcoming them with open arms and prefiguring punk rock by a number of years.

The group formed in the summer of ’69 as a trio of Jesse “Ray” Hector (gtr, vox), Alan Butler (bass) and Darryl Read (drums), laying waste to their equipment and audience’s minds as they leveled nearly every band they opened for (liners credit Osibisa, UFO, Atomic Rooster and Kevin Ayers as victims).

While most bands of the era were getting heavier, the shift towards appreciation of musical complexity was also in the air. Crushed Butler ran as far from that ideal as possible; if there are any guitar solos on this record, they are rudimentary, and never escape the gravity of the relentless rhythm section. Read reportedly beat his Hayman drum kit so hard it literally fell to pieces, while whoever was in the bass chair at the time matched his assault with a gut-punching, room-enveloping tone of gritty, shook low-end. Roy Hector’s vocals are of a similar stripe; he may not have had the range of a Tony McPhee but could out-belt him by double, adding to the sense of mayhem about the band. Just by looking at their promo photo, you can tell they weren’t fucking around; sneering, clad in black T‑shirts and straight-leg jeans, with hair styles more suited to a band like At the Drive In and a fearsome swagger, the trio stood in the wreckage of a bombed-out church, ready to tear you, hapless funseeker, apart.

The dexterity and ferociousness of their performance is not lost on these six demos, recorded between 1969 and 1971 (with rotating members in the bass playing position — Stan Aldous of Aardvark, and Barry Wyles, who was with Smile, later to become Queen). The songs appear in the order in which they were recorded, and as expected, their earlier material is the most knuckle-draggingly abrasive. “It’s My Life” opens with a mumbed “fuck’n ‘ell” from Read before he launches into a relentless polyrhythm that stays put for the whole track. Guitar and bass struggle to keep up as Hector lets us know that, yes, “it’s (his) life” and fuck off to anyone who might tell him different.

This is followed by “Factory Grime,” their would-be single. Without question one of the heaviest rock songs to crawl out of the 70s, this four-chord, all in-the-red stomper tells us their take on filth and decay in the city — unsurprisingly, they revel in it, as showcased by their lyrics on the subject and pummeling performance therein. This is backed up with “Love Is All Around,” co-written by EMI staff producer Roger Morris and his girlfriend Gloria Macari. It’s Crushed Butler at their most commercial, and still a vicious slugfest, with a snare crack that could split skulls.

With a sound this uncompromising, success for the band would always lay just out of reach, with interest from a handful of record labels disintegrating throughout the year.
The band reformed as Tiger in 1971 in the original Crushed Butler lineup; they recorded one demo (“High School Dropout,” included here) for Bell, which again did not sit well with the style of music at the time (though this attempt pointed more towards the glam-rock tidal wave about to crash ashore). Sadly, this and the other two tracks on the B‑side don’t quite match up to their other feats. These songs (“My Son’s Alive” and “Love Fighter”) were still heavy, and loud, and more ferocious than just about any active bands of the day, but the urgency is somehow absent; probably due to struggles to keep the band intact and with a possible desire to net a contract instilled in them the need to tone it down a bit. Hector and Butler later found that contract with the Hammersmith Gorilla, one of the first legitimate punk bands in England.

Dig the Fuzz issued this 10″ EP on vinyl in 1999 in an edition of 500, with a deluxe gatefold jacket, printed inner sleeve (with a funny and accurate cartoon strip on the life and death of the band) and a poster insert of their bomb site photo. Other demos as well as live performances were recorded, but are to this day lost. Let’s hope they surface and the full story of Crushed Butler can someday be told, as what we have here is not nearly enough.