MARC BURROWS, SPECIAL TO TVD | Sometimes you take a wrong turn, fall face-first through the back of the wardrobe and discover an entire world happening just the other side of the wall. That’s what happened with me and Steampunk.
My friend and fellow (more successful) comedian Andrew O’Neill was telling me about the “Victorian punk band” he was putting together, which sounded like such a brilliant idea—especially if it involved Andrew’s magnificently twisted imagination—I immediately offered my services as bass player. It was the moment I smashed through the back of the wardrobe, fell down the rabbit hole, took the red pill, was bodily picked up by a tornado and deposited over the other side of the rainbow, or possibly got pulled through the comic book page like out of that A-ha video. It was the moment I discovered the Other World—I joined a Steampunk band called The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing.
I knew what Steampunk meant, of course. I knew it was a mash-up of Victoriana and future or present day images. I knew it came from literature and Cyberpunk, I knew it had bugger all to do with actual punk rock. I thought it existed in Alan Moore comics, in Doctor Who and on youtube videos where people made their laptops look like they were made out of brass and wood. I hadn’t expected it to be a living, breathing subculture stretching across the world, combining comic book nerds, Amanda-Palmer aping cabaret starlets, engineering enthusiasts with incredible beards, and goths who’d grown out of PVC and wanted something a bit smarter to dress up in at the Whitby weekend.
I certainly didn’t expect it to have bands. But that was the point—Andrew and his friend Andy Heintz, our singer, had stumbled across the Steampunk subculture and immediately searched for the music associated with it, which as it turns out was about 80% awful. Because that “punk” part of the word “Steampunk” has never really meant punk rock, the movement had no obvious musical soundtrack, the result of which was the scene adopting any artist with the right kind of Victorian costume regardless of what they sounded like, or whether they were actually any good.
Andrew and Andy’s idea was fairly simple—“put the punk into steampunk.” It was such an obvious tagline it was amazing no-one else had thought of it before. The reaction was immediate—that other world had been crying out for a band that served the faster, heavier, sillier end of the market. We joined that world too—we were embraced by it. In fact, we very quickly became the market leaders when it came to Victorian themed, silly-hat wearing rock: the UK’s official “biggest steampunk band.”
It wasn’t that simple though. Almost immediately we realised this other world wasn’t entirely for us. We were working class boys, politically-aware and historically knowledgeable enough to be uncomfortable with a subculture that was largely built around the fetishisation of the British Empire. Role play and dress-up were fine, but the character most often chosen seemed to be “upper class posho.” People shouted “huzzah.” A lot. This didn’t sit well with us—the band was geared around the grimier, darker end of Victorian culture. We were singing about the gin-swigging common man, not “The Right Honourable Sir Cogsworth Von Goggle.”
We were making traction outside of the Steampunk world though—our “Punk Rock Music Hall” schtick has brought in a LOT of new fans across our two albums. We may be singing about 19th Century engineering, we may have songs with proper jokes in them, but we don’t like to think of ourselves as a comedy or novelty band—we take the music very seriously, and pride ourselves on being a tight, loud, fast, punk band. Many of our fans frankly find the steampunk thing a bit weird. The result has been a brilliantly diverse following of cosplaying Steampunk enthusiasts and metalheads, goths and comedy fans, middle-aged engineers and spiky haired, gob flecked punks. It makes our shows genuinely odd experiences.
At its heart what we’re doing isn’t really Steampunk anymore. We like to think it’s another world entirely—a parallel universe where the Victorians invented punk and Music Hall evolved to include rock music and alternative comedy rather than being eclipsed by both of them. At this years’ Bestival we played an acoustic set in the “Knees Up Tent” to great response, then a full on punk set so loud the neighbouring gigantic dance stage asked us to turn down (we count that as a win.)
Whatever it is we’re doing, it does seem to be working—word spreads after every show, and though we’re always fighting to be taken seriously while doing our best to rarely be serious, it’s getting to the point where people are taking notice. Five years in, and it feels like we’ve built our own world at the back of the wardrobe. You should visit it sometime.
The Men That Will Not Be Blamed play their biggest headline show to date on October 4th at The Garage in London. Tickets are available here.
