VIA PRESS RELEASE | Formed from putrefying remnants of The Germs, The Consumers, The Bags, The Gun Club, and The Screamers among other LA punk outfits, 45 Grave were arguably the first American Goth/deathrock band and inarguably one of the best.
Fronted by the Exene-meets-Barbarella vocal and visual stylings of Dinah Cancer (still one of the greatest stage names in a punk rock genre full of ‘em), 45 Grave also featured Paul B. Cutler on guitar, Don Bolles on drums, Rob (Ritter) Graves on bass, and Paul Roessler on keyboards, and from that all-star line-up came 1983’s Sleep in Safety, their lone studio release and only recording with the band’s original members.
Probably most famous for the first appearance of the horrifyingly graphic, true-crime track “Partytime,” the single version of which was subsequently cut in 1985 and featured on The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack, Sleep in Safety also offered the early MTV track “Evil” and the band “theme song” “45 Grave” among other blandishments for those who like their rock and roll with a side of the macabre.
For our Real Gone Music exhumation of this classic record, we have “embalmed” a very special edition, preserving the original album’s gatefold jacket complete with lyrics and adding a custom inner sleeve drawn from the band’s very rare “A Tale of Strange Phenomena” press release—purple with black streaks vinyl! Folks have been dying for this one!
