THE SHEEP RECORDS STORY #14: HELLSUCKERS "ROCK'N'ROLL LICENCE" (2000)

Sheep Records was a Swiss underground label specialized in Garage-Rock, Surf, Lounge and other Rock'n'Roll oddities. Run by Christian Müller from Zürich, along with friends Andi Frick and Andreas Egi, it was active from 1996 to 2004 and published about 30 releases, mostly on 7" vinyl singles.



In october 2006, after about two years of hiatus, all the contents of the now defunct Sheep Records website were deleted from the Internet, and replaced with a blank page announcing that "Der Kebab ist gegessen" ("The kebab is eaten"), a last goodbye and a reference to the label's cataloguing system that included the prefix "kebab" for vinyl releases and "gigot" for CD releases.



The fourteenth Sheep Records release was a 7" EP by young French rockers Hellsuckers from Schiltigheim, Alsace. "Rock'n'Roll Licence" was released in July 2000 and was limited to 300 copies on red vinyl and 200 copies on black vinyl, for a total of 500 copies.

All the songs were previously included on their debut MiniLP "Everything Sucks Except Rock'n'Roll", released in Japan in 1999. Since the EP reports a "January 2000" recording date on the back cover, I assume that these versions are different from those released on the MiniLP... Or is it just a typo?

«The Hellsuckers capture elements of metal, punk and rockabilly, squish 'em together and create a sound that's somewhere between The Hellacopters, AC/DC and The Bones. Loud, swaggering, fast and as catchy as they come.»





Here's the track list and the personnel/credits list for this 7" EP. Tracks were originally listed in wrong order both on the back cover and on the record labels: the graphics appearing on this page were edited to include the correct running order.

01. Phantom Creeps (3:27)
02. Snakerace (2:17)
03. Fast Bullit (1:53)
04. Helldriver (1:52)

Recorded and mixed in January 2000 at Downtown Studio by Zephir.

Produced by Revell Yell Music.

Design by Manusion.

All tracks were remastered in April 2014 and are available in FLAC lossless format or high-quality 320 Kbps MP3 files; both formats include scans of the complete original artwork.

Please have a look at the comments for the download links.

«The Hellsuckers rock and trash everything and everyone to the ground. Nothing is sacred here, no mercy for the weak. Just a fist-in-your-face-rock.»

Originally called Johnny Nountchak and The Hellsuckers, the band was formed in 1998 and originates from Schiltigheim, Alsace, France.

Founding members were Johnny Nountchak (vocals), Rich Road (guitar), Dean Blondin (bass) and Jim Bullit (drums). Over the years, the Hellsuckers family has grown to also include two more guitarists: Randy Zephyr and Nikki Five.

They debuted with the MiniLP "Everything Sucks Except Rock'n'Roll", released in Japan by Revel Yell Music in 1999. Three albums followed, namely "Rock'n'Roll Venom" (2001), "Tonite Destruction" (2003) and "Total Satan" (2006), before the band disbanded sometimes in 2007 or 2008.

Dave Blondin and Jim Bullit went on to form the Rock'n'Roll / Psychobilly act The Wolfgangs along with Cha and Lothar Von Wolfgang.

The Hellsuckers, circa 2000

The following video offers a preview of the remastered single, enjoy "Phantom Creeps"!

More information about Sheep Records and Hellsuckers is available here:

http://www.surfnroll.de/interviews/sheep/sheep.html

https://myspace.com/hellsuckers1

http://www.discogs.com/artist/1111087-Hellsuckers

http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/groupe-groupe-Hellsuckers-l-en.html

http://www.w-fenec.org/rock/hellsuckers.html

http://schoelcke.org/thewolfgangs/

The Sheep Records story will continue in the next months. All your inputs are more than welcome, if you want to get in touch please write to stereocandies [at] hotmail [dot] com or leave a comment in the box below, thank you!