MusicRadar

Feeling the Urge once again are bandmates (from left to right) Nash Kato, Mike 'Hadji' Hodgkiss, Brian 'Bon' Quast and Eddie 'King' Roeser.

"There's so much to Urge Overkill that hasn't been said," claims singer-guitarist Eddie 'King' Roeser, "so we finally decided to say it. It might have taken us a while to make a new record, but we're really happy with what we've done, and we can't wait for everybody to check it out."

That will happen on 10 May, when Rock & Roll Submarine, Urge Overkill's first CD in 15 years, hits stores, digital outlets and everywhere else people manage to grab music from these days. Released on the band's own UO Records label, the disc reunites Roeser with his original Urge partner, singer-guitarist Nash Kato, and sees two new faces entering the fold, drummer Brian 'Bon' Quast and bassist Mike 'Hadji' Hodgkiss.

Brimming with stomping songs such as Effigy and Niteliner and remaining true to the Urge signature sound, a restless blend of power pop, punk, with a hint of soul, Rock & Roll Submarine is a satisfying listen. Whether it restores the Chicago-based band to its mid-'90s glory days, when they were riding high on the success of Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon, their Neil Diamond cover that figured prominently in the zeitgeist that was Pulp Fiction, remains to be seen.

There's much baggage in the land of Urge Overkill, and according to Roeser, "it took us a while to get rid of all the emotional weight." Once touted as the Next Big Thing, the Windy City trio (which also consisted of drummer Blackie Onassis) had scored critical hits on a series of indie releases produced by the likes of Steve Albini and Butch Vig. A mega-bucks move to Geffen Records should be been Urge's ticket to global dominance, but 1993's Saturation and 1995's Exit The Dragon failed to deliver the multi-platinum. And then came Pulp Fiction.

The band's two-year-old cover tune worked like a charm in a pivotal scene in a movie that was full of them. But the Pulp Fiction success, combined with Onassis' heroin addiction, exacerbated the growing tension that was already brewing between Roeser and Kato, and in 1996, Roeser split. "Something had to give," Roeser says, "and in the end, it was me."

Flash-forward to 2011 and Roeser and Kato are making nice again. The expanded Urge lineup has played a series of recent warm-up gigs, and last December they even revisited their Pulp Fiction past by playing at a Friars' Club Roast of Quentin Tarantino in New York City. MusicRadar caught up with Roeser to get the skinny on the Urge reunion and to pose that all important musical question...

So Eddie, do we call this a comeback?

[laughs] "You can call it anything you want. A comeback? That would be nice. We're just hoping to have a career and not have the kinds of problems that we once had. Stability would be cool."

You left the band in '96. What were the reasons for your exit, and how did you and Nash finally agree to put the group back together?

"At the time, we were at the height of our career. We had done Exit The Dragon, which we were very proud of. Already, though, there were problems. We were told by Geffen that our previous album, Saturation, was going to break us big. But what happened was, a couple of groups that they weren't planning on – Weezer and Counting Crows - started settling records.

Suddenly, Urge Overkill, which was a priority at the label, started looking like a tough sell. People were wondering why we weren't selling records like Weezer. So we did Exit The Dragon, and there was a bit of enmity between certain members of the band. Also, there were drug problems, which were far worse than I was led to believe at the time..."

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