By modern standards, Dublin heavy rock quartet Boss Volenti would seem rather lacking in irony. Apocalyptic of guitar and furrowed of brow, the foursome are not exactly in a rush to toast heavy metal’s present infatuation with pantomime and self-parody. In fact, they absolutely recoil from it.
“I hate Wolfmother. They’re absurd. And The Darkness, – they’re a joke, a complete joke,” vents Dan O’Connor, who plays guitar and sports what surely is the maddest metal Afro in all of Ireland. “There’s always been this thing in loud rock where you’ve got to make it in America before people over here are willing to take you seriously. Look at Led Zeppelin – they had to make it in the US before they were accepted in Europe.”
Listening to their guttural, though always tuneful debut Boss Volenti, one has the impression of a band suffering a mildly urgent crisis of identity. Should they ratchet their amps up to ear-splitting volume or get on with the far trickier business of penning pop songs? Actually, they aim to have it both ways. In concert, Boss Volenti wish to rock your world off its axis. On record, however, they’re not above pushing your pop buttons.
Compared with the majority of loud rock outfits knocking around Dublin, they boast proper chops too. Both O’Connor and second guitarist Laura Mackey took jazz classes at college, for example. Today, when the mood strikes, they aren’t above a little noodling on the side.
“You hear about bands who operate in a certain genre and listen only to music in that genre – it’s so pointless because sooner or later you run out of inspiration,” says O’Connor. “I listen to a lot of soul music and I think that comes across on the record. Also, there’s a bit of The Police in there, I think.”
Upon first hitting the capital’s toilet circuit 18 months ago, Boss Volenti’s chief calling card was their drummer Graham Hopkins. One time stickman with Therapy? and custodian of Halite, Hopkins is, by local standards, proper rock royalty – his presence immediately elevated Boss Volenti to contender status.
“It came about by accident,” recalls Mackey. “We were in the studio and needed a drummer. Graham happened to be there. The whole thing gelled straight away. Also, we get on as individuals, so it’s not as if we were intimidated by his reputation.”
Outrageous monikers are currently all the vogue among hard rock bands. What, then, are we to make of a tag as sobre at ‘Boss Volenti’?
“We played one show as Disco Volenti, which was the name of a speedboat in Goldfinger,” O’Connor recalls. “At the same time, someone wanted us to call ourselves Boss Hogg, after the guy in The Dukes Of Hazard. Which I thought was just stupid. So we put them together and have been Boss Volenti ever since.”