The band continued touring heavily (including a spell opening for Slayer ). Their next album, Occupational Hazard , was released by Relapse Records in 1998. Later that same year, Spencer was attacked by four people after playing a concert in Vienna, Austria . He was hospitalized with internal bleeding and…
Read More
In 1998 Blindside released the Empty Box EP on Day-Glo Records.
After touring with Lords of Acid , Jack Off Jill headed to Los Angeles to complete 1998’s Covetouse Creature , a remix EP of songs from Sexless Demons and Scars , with the help of Scott Putesky (a founding member of Marilyn Manson) and new drummer Claudia Rossi. Jack Off…
Read More
Guitarist and founding member of Swing Kids and Unbroken Eric Allen committed suicide in 1998. The remaining members had the opportunity to play two benefit shows in Southern California raising thousands of dollars for charity. The shows or “funerals”, as the band members looked at it, displayed that the band’s…
Read More
Despite stronger sales with their second Capitol album, the band’s relationship with the label grew increasingly strained. A planned 1998 album, After the Astronaut , was scrapped, and the Butthole Surfers parted ways acrimoniously with their manager, Tom Bunch.
The band projected an enigmatic presence to the public. While supporting Diary , the band allowed only one publicity photo and granted just a single interview (though, strangely, the band posed for an advertisement for department-store chain Nordstrom ). In a 1998 interview with Norm Arenas of Texas Is the…
Read More
Released on April 28, 1998, the album was commercially successful and marked one of the band’s highest debuts yet on Billboard ‘ s charts. Critical reaction to End Hits was mixed. Many critics praised its heavier tracks, while others questioned the inclusion of the group’s longer, more experimental songs. Fugazi…
Read More
By the end of the year, the band had only sold 30,000 copies of the album.
By the time that the band were due to begin recording their second album, Flipside had stopped releasing new material and Offtime was financially unable to, “so the band figuratively approached almost every indie label they could think of” but could not find one willing to work with them. Eventually,…
Read More
In September 1997, drummer Timothy Kirkpatrick (formerly of the emo band Roosevelt) replaced Dooley in both As Friends Rust and Culture. Though Looker and Kirkpatrick wrote a handful of new As Friends Rust songs together between Culture tours, the reformed band came to a halt when Looker quit both As…
Read More