King Snake Roost: From Barbarism to Christian Manhood
Mutating from the drug-addled ashes of Grong Grong, Sydney’s King Snake Roost breached earholes with a perverse blend of acid-fried jazz, punk, and mind-altering barbarism.
A maniacal skeleton adorns his throne, golden crown encrusting a demented head. Arms, weaponised and crucifixed, shadow his regal threads, an open cloak seaming into gothic armholes. A nest of hungry beaks bleat at the foot of the demonic king, obscuring a presumably impressive appendage. To the king’s right is a golden snake, phallic, glorious, erect. To his left, a sinister rooster perches with cocksure manifest, suggesting a cautious mindset be deployed upon entrance of this abysmal fortress. For the green-gilled, the artwork is a biblical mayday. For the King Snake Roost aficionado, it’s par for the course.
Led by anti-guitarist Charlie Tolnay, King Snake Roost menaced Sydney pubs, joining Lubricated Goat, The Splatterheads, and Nunbait on the notorious circuit. Inner-city grit and poverty dictated the manifesto, angular, offensive riffs typed the mission statement.
1987, and King Snake Roost release debut LP From Barbarism to Christian Manhood. This is the switchblade experience virgin ears must endure if they’re to transition to discordant epiphany.
To understand King Snake Roost, we must journey to a mystical land of yore, where churches rule the domain, foul water pummels the uvula, and the unemployed dead turn up in barrels of acid. Adelaide, home of Grong Grong, a calamitous combo who soundtracked the poverty-stricken northern suburbs for a decade.
Bubbling from a government-subsidised welfare kingdom, two brothers of Hungarian immigrants accompanied two Greek friends in forming one of the most incendiary acts in Australia’s history. Charlie Tolnay, Michael Farkas, David Taskas, and George Klestinis dubbed the moniker of grunge unto their abrasiveness, thus pioneering a genre that would one day take the rock world by storm.
Whittling their act to a dystopian pantomime, Grong Grong blew audiences away, as singer Michael Farkas convulsed on stage in a gimp mask, while half-brother Tolnay menaced his guitar from the back end of a dying cigarette.
In 1987, with Farkas hospitalised due to a heroin-induced coma, Grong Grong disbanded. But in crisis comes opportunity, and before long, a new Tolnay project called King Snake Roost rose from the ashes.
“I lay awake for two nights after seeing Grong Grong, wondering if I actually saw what I saw.”
Migrating from sleepy Adelaide to the hustle of Sydney proved a master stroke as King Snake Roost breached the colon of the city’s Stooges-obsessed music scene. The scuzzy quartet blew a hole into the ceiling of the Australian underground, and were promptly signed to Bruce Griffith’s Aberrant Records label.Following From Barbarism to Christian Manhood, a split 7” with feedtime was released, capturing the label-mates as they covered each other’s material. The result is a breathtaking clatter of contradiction, with calamitous screechiness juxtaposing the melodic bliss.In 1988, King Snake Roost released the perv-o-jazz interlope of Things That Play Themselves. With a bend of sophistication, the album features Tolnay’s hacksaw sanded to a coarse art. And the brass section? Oh, the brass sectionThe release of 1990’s Ground Into the Dirt, plus the inclusion of My Zippo on Dope, Guns ‘n’ Fucking in the Streets, saw Jello Biafra’s attention captured once more. Inviting Tolnay to collaborate on side project Tumor Circus, the anal probe of Take Me Back Or I’ll Drown Our Dog is released.
Sadly, it is here where King Snake Roost departs this mortal coil. Over the ensuing decades, Charlie Tolnay and Michael Farkas moved back to Adelaide’s northern suburbs, living together with their cats, and spending time mulling over the legacy of lifelong drug dependence. Tolnay died in 2017.
© Chuck Hagen
