Knowhere 1992 - ...

Maybe it was fate, maybe it was destiny that we all went to the same high school and had a certain interest in extreme sound. In autumn 1992, one of us had fed his walkman with Napalm Death’s legendary "Scum" and one common thought arose in our brains "We can do that, too!"

Thus on the 1st October 1992, our band "Chemical Death" was born, as we all are chemical assistants, this name appeared suitable for our project. Yet, we had one problem: none of us knew how to tune a guitar or even play one. Despite this obstacle, we wrote lyrics for 20 songs and started having music sessions consisting of noise without any concept. As time went by we understood our instruments better and our first two songs "Chemical Death" and "Homeboy lies on Acid" were created.

Towards the end of 1992 we had enough money to buy a real drum kit and a PA for the vocals and could therefore fully develop our musical potential. The songs "Where the Fire burns" and "Senseless" were written, and as our playing techniques increased we decided to record a demo tape in autumn 1994, after having written another song called "Claviceps Purpurea". Having a demo tape we now also had our first concert to present our music to a real audience.

In the beginning of 1995, we called our band "Knowhere" as the lyrics and the music had changed so much that they did not resemble a chemical death anymore at all. Our music tendencies were rather found in the field of atmospheric black metal...
Besides Knowhere, Zappi and Koff worked on their side project "Aural Frost" and recorded their first CD "music..." using Zappi’s home recording equipment and thus gathered first experiences as music producers. Motivated by their experiences, we recorded the four best Knowhere songs in the same way and burnt the first Knowhere CD. Shortly after the recording we played a little concerts together with Eyes See Red in the Jugi Uster (canton of Zurich, Switzerland).

Half a year later we played at a metal festival in the Dynamo club in Zurich, where we made a pretty positive impression on the audience. Unfortunately, our bass player Dani left the band in the autumn of 1998. Yet, there were already two concerts planned and to be played, so we urgently needed a session bass player to help us out. Zumbi, guitar player of the band "The Crowd", decided to play the bass and so we could begin rehearsing like a bunch of madmen.

It was snowing on Christmas Eve in 1998 as if Nature was aware of the fact that we were the opening band at the GWMP-Dark-X-Mas-Carol-Days ’98 in the Green Wolf Metal Pub in Deitingen.

It came even better. On the 6th of February 1999 we performed at the concert factory Z-7 in Pratteln as part of the festival "Battle of the Bands". Although we had to play as the first band and there weren’t that many people around yet, we had a lot of fun as we were finally on THE stage where usually only major metal acts played their music. Due to lack of time, Zumbi left the band after this concert and thus it was again just the three of us making the show go on.

*** In the summer of 1999, we were invited by our friends and "rehearsal room neighbors" Eyes See Red to be the openers at their CD release party in the Jugi Uster. This time we found Marco (guitarist of Slaine) who was gladly willing to be the session bass player on this evening.

Due to lack of time (a common session bass player sickness, as it appears), Marco also quit playing the bass with Knowhere. At this time, Koff and Zappi were completely involved with the recordings of the "Chemical Death" album which contains the songs of our musical childhood having been newly arranged and recorded.
Thanks to this creativity boost, we had collected several new song ideas for Knowhere and "The Spotlight Men", our fastest song of the whole set, became real. There are some other songs in the musical pipeline and we hope to be capable of performing them live soon.

Since we would like to play concerts more often and also do so in other regions of Switzerland (and in neighboring countries), the ELKS-Syndicate was founded by us and three other bands of the Zurich area. With this association we are able to organize and run concerts, all information about ELKS can be found on their web site.
Thanks to this institution we were able to perform as headliner at the October Bash 1999 in the Dynamo in Zurich on the 23rd of October.

At this concert, "Eiselfe" (ice elf) took care of the bass sound in our music, yet not with a normal bass guitar, but with keyboards. After our performance, people of the audience told us that you could barely hear any difference. Full of new energy, we played another concert just a week later in Rothenturm (SZ) as headliner. During our performance the club got pretty hot due to the positive response of the audience to fast music, and the PA collapsed over the almost tropical heat. After some reanimation with cold air, it survived our set and definitely died when we performed our last song.