At last September's New Music Seminar music convention in New York I was given about 30 promotional tapes of new bands. I gave each a good listen. But it was the Shotgun Messiah tape that I played a few weeks later as I covered the tabs on the 29 so they could be used as blanks for interviews in the future.

Shotgun Messiah is that kind of band. I told relativity Records rep how much I liked the Shotgun Messiah tape. I said it was the best thing the label had giving me in a long time - much better than the latest releases from Faith Or Fear and DBC. She laughed in my face.

Shotgun messiah is also that kind of band.

Had I pursued the issue, she probably would have said that Shotgun Messiah is the kind of band you're supposed to make fun of. They don't have a message to get across. They don't have any overly original sound. And they look funny. Logically there is no point in taking them seriously.

She would have been wrong. The bottom line is how a band sounds, not what they set out to accomplish. Some bands try to accomplish so much both lyrically and musically in a 4-minute song that they forget to make the damn thing enjoyable! Shotgun Messiah sounds great - so what if they aren't the only band in the world currently playing their style of commercial rock?

The band was formed in 1986 in Sweden under the moniker of Kingpin by four musicians who held one particular goal high above the rest. (Make money? Get famous? Meet girls?) More than anything else, they just had to get the hell out of Sweden. Guitarist Harry K. Cody elaborates on the situation there, "A scene does exist but it is very different than the one here in the States. That is why rockers drift away from Sweden. The people there are mostly into keyboard sounding, bleached hair outfits like Europe and Whitesnake. We had to get the hell out."

Vocalist Zinny J. San believes that if the band had not left, their sound would have suffered. "A few people make it out of there but most stay and sell out," he says.

Zinny knows that making it out of Sweden is just the beginning of the long climb to stardom. Hanoi Rocks escaped Sweden and released some excellent material but they never gained more than a cult following. "They were never huge in Sweden so they weren't a major influence on the Shotgun Messiah sound," says Zinny. "But I was 14 when I first met Mike Monroe and I had met Andy McCoy long before that. I was in their first band, Nymphomaniacs, as a drummer. I grew up with them and I consider them good friends."

There are some minor musical similarities between the two bands but their attitudes couldn't be more different. Hanoi Rocks were five depressed youths trapped on boulevards of broken dreams. But Shotgun Messiah, who did in fact grow up on those very same streets, have too much spunk to worry about being depressed. Shotgun Messiah knows the future may not hold much, but their attitude will always be on the one they express in the opening track of their debut album, "throw away your self pity ...welcome to Bop City".

Harry: "I always considered Hanoi Rocks as people on downers whereas we would be on the kind of stuff that makes you go. We have more aggression and we have a positive attitude on a depressing situation."

Zinny agrees: "Fuck yeah, it is depressing in Sweden, but you have to do something about it."

And Shotgun Messiah do know about making a bad situation better. Four years ago Harry and Zinny, together with bassist Tim Tim and drummer Stixx Galore were looking for a U.S. record deal. As Kingpin they recorded an album, entitled 'Welcome To Bop City', which was released in Sweden through CMM Records. The sole purpose of the album was to serve as a "vinyl demo" to be distributed to American labels. "We were forced to use it as a demo to promote the band abroad," explains Harry. "Because we couldn't good record deal in Sweden."

The problem was, the band couldn't afford to make the trip overseas even though it would mean a better record deal. But determined to leave at any cost, Zinny took from his girlfriend "all the money she had been saving," and came to the U.S. with Stixx.

Zinny and Stixx then began the full time job of promoting the band. "I went to L.A. and gave the tape to a friend of mine who happened to work for Relativity," reveals Zinny. "When he played the tape at work everybody wanted to know who the fuck it was. After he told them, the Vice president of Relativity went to Sweden to meet Harry and Tim. That impressed us and we knew that Relativity wanted us. He took Harry and Tim to L.A. to see if they liked the country. They loved it, and we are still here!"

The resulting self-titled album, under their new moniker of Shotgun Messiah that is, is a remixed version of that very same two-year-old-album! Fortunately, the songs have aged well. "Shout It Out", with its rap verses, has a real 1990 feel - something that a media-hype project like Mr. Big won't acquire until sometime around 1995.

Harry: "We put a little rap into it, but it's still rock and roll. people say "Don't Care About Nothing" has a rap feel during the spoken part, but that song is really old. I had never heard of rap when I wrote it. "Shout It Out" is a little more conscious effort to incorporate rap.

A lot of bands make a conscious effort to perfect a certain look. Was that the case with Shotgun Messiah? harry: "No, what we look like now is an extention of what we looked like when we first met. And I think the reason we all drifted together in the first place is because we were the weirdoes. I was the first one in my hometown to dye my hair black - most Swedes have blonde hair. If someone wanted to read something feminine into the fact that I have black spike hair, forget about it. The girls don't look like that where I come from!"

Not only has Shotgun Messiah allowed their image to develop naturally, they haven't even put much effort into developing the precise Shotgun Messiah sound. That sort of advance planning doesn't come naturally to this band. Harry: "We try to make the kind of music we want to hear."

This is an important point and even Tim Tim has something to say on the subject.

"We are not trying to do something totally new. We are trying to do the best rock and roll we know. We wouldn't do anything that would not make us happy."

Don't let this talk about standard rock and roll mislead you into thinking that Shotgun Messiah writes throwaway songs. They do not. Harry's guitar work is excellent (too bad his best fretwork is buried underneath the "na na" chorus in "Nowhere Fast"), and Tim's bass is bestial. Tracks like, "Bop City", and "I'm Your Love" have a lot of pep and pack a strong punch for such supposedly commercial material.

Tim chooses not to comment on his own playing, but doesn't hesitate to give Harry his due, "We have an awesome guitar player and we can' keep him down. He pops up all the time whether we want him or not!"

The Talent, the Look and the Attitude should make for one exciting live band. But from the two Shotgun Messiah shows I witnessed, I know that that is not always the case with this band.

The first show was at L'amour in Brooklyn. Candidly speaking, the band has severe problems. The sexy bass sounds from the album were muddy, and all the drum beats were going 'thud' instead of 'smack'. Zinny sludged his way around the stage rather than strutting. The few people who happened to be in the club didn't really seem to care too much about what was taking place on stage.

The following night at Sundance in Long Island attracted only a slightly larger audience, but many of them had come to see the band. During the opener, "Squeezin' Teazin" they screamed and tried to touch the band. Zinny and Tim took notice of the response and thereafter both were performing for the crowd. Zinny was all over the club - he even sang one verse from the back bar! Tim was bouncing and twirling about and using his bass as an all-purpose stage prop. It looked and sounded like a totally different band than had played the previous night.

Still, Shotgun Messiah will need extensive touring so they can develop a consistently satisfying live performance.

Harry concedes that Shotgun Messiah has not had all that much road experience. "We are all experienced musicians, but we were all in different bands. As Shotgun Messiah we haven't toured a lot yet. We do what I consider to be the perfect band, but it's not like we sit down and say, what will the crowd like?"

The band will have finished their co-headlining dates with Pretty Boy Floyd by the time this is in print. A short series of shows with EZO on the east Coast should follow. The low turnout at L'amour and Sundance notwithstanding, harry says the U.S. tour has gone extremely well so far. "We've been everywhere from classy theatres all the way down to the smallest dives you can imagine," he conforms.

Zinny: "In Detroit we played in a place that had Echo And The Bunnymen-music on one floor and death metal on another."

Harry reckons clubs and audiences with a tolerance for different types of music will be the key to this band's success. "We know we can get the kind of people who are willing to make a crossover. We can get the people who like good musicianship and good looks."

Because of their look and sound, relativity had a little trouble finding the right niche for the band. "They've got people like Joe Satriani who musicians love, and then they've got bands like Forbidden that the thrashers love. We are caught in between," admits harry. "You don't have those types of division in Sweden. Over there most of the bands that look good can't play to save their lives. Then there are the musicians who play great, but don't care at all how they look. We decided to cross the borders and that caused us problems."

Tim agrees: "We are like the mutants. We don't fit in, so we just play for ourselves."

Zinny: "We had a magazine ask us where should they place us - as a metal band, a glam band, a commercial band? We say we don't give a fuck where you put us. We'll make the music, you can give it whatever label you like."

But what if the band never finds its niche? How long will the members continue to be a part of Shotgun Messiah should that occur? harry: "If there were anything else that we are good at maybe we could think about that. But for us, this is it. besides, we are happy right now."