"Dark and damaged -- just how I like my rock and roll." -Jim Jarmusch
"...destructive, debauched elegance.  Addictively sinister." -Rock Sound UK
"...The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over is spellbinding." -The Big Takeover
"The Big Cats is an exquisite corpse, a great demonstration of violent decay."  -emusic.com
"These Guys are awesome..." -KFJC FM
PAPER MAGAZINE'S "MOST BEAUTIFUL"
"Underground goth-noise royalty..." - Village Voice

NY PRESS

JUNKMEDIA.ORG  

Bellmer Dolls
Death Becomes Them.

Outside a dive bar in Williamsburg, two towering rockers from New York band Bellmer Dolls alternate between cell phones and cigarettes. The first, Peter Mavrogeorgis, has the air of a Greek Adonis, built and tan with black wavy locks swept over his forehead.

"I'm still shell-shocked" says Mavrogeorgis, the band's frontman, of the deafening level of the jukebox, still audible from inside.

Bassist Anthony Malat, with tattooed arms and a sandy handlebar moustache and goatee, nods. He looks like the sort of guy who might have killed a man in Reno. They mutually conclude that a quieter setting is in order. Malat, who turns out to be much more the lamb than the lion, offers the studio space where he designs menswear under the moniker Sinner/Saint. They climb into Mavrogeorgis's two-door black car, and head out to pick up drummer Daniel Sheerin.

Onstage Sheerin tends to be the most dapper of the bunch, Beatles haircut coupled with Malat's more posh designs, but tonight he wanders out of his building in an oft-washed black skeleton t-shirt, tight jeans, and beat up black boots. He crawls into the backseat as they discuss beverage options.

After much deliberation on beer, the gang settles in at Malat's studio. The mostly bare white room mingles grandmother's sitting room of floral sofa and woven rug with meticulously organized tailor's shop, full of racks of men's jackets featuring contrast stitching, decorative cuffs, and buttons galore.

The three begin to finish each other's sentences while reminiscing on how they began working together. Mavrogeorgis had long admired Malat from various shared bills, Malat playing in Love Life, and Mavrogeorgis in the Vanity Set with Bad Seeds/Grinderman member and Dolls' producer Jim Sclavunos.

"I got to play a show at a silly party called Rubulad with the Vanity Set, and Love Life played their last show there. They were already on the outs, and Anthony was pretty insufferable to the audience onstage, and I just felt love," Mavrogeorgis says. "I never saw anyone treat an audience with that much disrespect and still pull off just a really, really good show."

Malat and Mavrogeorgis joined forces in 2003 and began searching for the right drummer, but were disappointed to find no suitable candidates through word of mouth. After battling writer's block and creating one nonsensical Craigslist ad, the pair posted a classified that simply listed their body of work.

"Ironically, the one that I responded to was actually not in the musicians one but in the Casual Encounters," Sheerin says.

"Oh shut up," Mavrogeorgis laughs.

"That was because we got really desperate," Malat says.

"It was like, 'Two bottom twinks looking for man to take charge.' And I was like - alright, it's Saturday night. I'm lonely. What the hell?" Sheerin smirks.

"Well, no music got played the first time we got together anyway," Mavrogeorgis admits. The two had reached an epiphany while pouring money into testing drummers in their rehearsal space: they decided that they wanted more than just a band. The Dolls have, in fact, recently promoted their van driver up to stage presence due to his chemistry with the already established threesome. Gabriel Guerena now plays anything from the keyboards to the maracas with the band live.

"Because you have to be so in tune with that person that even if that person played their instrument better than anyone, ever... If you can't deal with them, you can't deal with them, and you're going to get out of the band sooner or later," Malat says. "And I feel at this point that I don't want to have a first gig. I don't want to have a first recording session."

Mavrogeorgis nods. "We decided, Anthony and I, that we really weren't going to bring people to the rehearsal studio anymore. I mean, first of all, we didn't have the money," he says. "So what we did was we'd have people to my apartment at the time, and we'd just hang out with them. Dan was the only one that we liked, who made it to actually coming to rehearsal space with us. And he wasn't the best and he wasn't the worst. But he was just the one."

The band were also fortunate in recruiting producer Sclavunos, who they credit with salvaging a lot of the unfinished writing for their upcoming LP Galatea. He fits in seamlessly, but also coaxes out some dysfunction in this tight musical family.

"I think he sees in Dan the son that he probably will never have," Mavrogeorgis says. "I watch him torture Dan."

They all laugh. "There was this one time that I was trying to overdub this strange snare roll and he wasn't pressing record. He kept pressing play on it, and he was like, 'You're fucking up in the same way you fucked up last time.'" Sheerin says. "It happened, like, five times and by the fifth one, I was like - this is insane. Something is wrong!" Mavrogeorgis howls with laughter.

A week before the intimate gathering at Malat's workspace, the Bellmer Dolls packed a set in the cavernous downstairs dungeon of Lit Lounge. Clad head to toe in black, the three blazed through several new tracks and a couple of holdovers from their The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over EP.

Mavrogeorgis, perched upon an amplifier and hanging off of the bar's dingy overhead pipes, purred and pounced his way through the songs, swapping between guitar and a small synthesizer set. His performance hinted at Peter Murphy in the opening of midnight vampire classic The Hunger. Sheerin pounded and punched his drum kit with a quiet fury. Malat spent most of the show with his lanky frame doubled backwards, laying down the basslines that anchor the band, and keeping them from drifting into an all-night orgy of complete musical debauchery.

The Dolls are so dubbed in homage to Hans Bellmer, a German artist who created life-size nude girl dolls as a protest against the Third Reich in the 1930s. The dolls would be in some sense deformed, sometimes headless or their arms would be placed where legs should be, presenting a perfect antithesis to the Aryan ideal.

Bellmer's new namesakes insist that they aren't making a political statement with their title, simply paying tribute to a brilliant artist. "More than it being protest for me was that the nature of his protest was to take something that is grotesque and show it in a new light, which was really more beautiful than anything terrestrial that we might consider beauty to be," Mavrogerogis says. "I guess what we don't like is complacency. We're not complacent. Ever."

There's a definite resistance to pandering among this group, but a grounded acknowledgement of realities. "Protest against the banal. Fine," Mavrogeorgis says. "At the same time, when Jim said, 'Do you mind singing that twice?' We were like, 'Uh, we already sang that part...' Well, can you do it again? It becomes a chorus!"

"Yeah, we're like, chorus?" says Malat. Despite their insistence in avoiding many artistic norms and clichés, the group realizes some concessions must be made.

"You have to gain the audience in order to fuck up the audience," Sheerin says.

With fewer than six degrees of separation between the Dolls and Nick Cave, certain comparisons seem inescapable. "I have been plagued by Birthday Party references since I was 20 or 19. I personally don't see that, but I stopped listening to that band when I was 17," Malat says. "As far as what our influences are, we all come from such a totally different place. Generally, we kind of hate the music that each other like."

The three agree on a Glen Campbell track called "If This Is Love," one mix tape that was stolen along with their van and all of their equipment about five years ago, and almost nothing else. The sound that emerges is a dark and grimy blues-rock that manages to be sonically original while bearing echoes of many predecessors. These ghosts of music past range from 80s Australian post-punkers the Moodists to Robert Johnson to, indeed, the Birthday Party.

Admittedly, the lads do have some quirks that place them in the somewhat eccentric tradition of their influences and peers. Malat, who was ordained as a minister in the Universal Life Church in order to wed some of his former bandmates, for a time owned a skeleton named Cornelius in preparation for his own afterlife.

"He was a really quiet roommate for a good three years," Malat says.

"He even lived at my parents for a while," Mavrogeorgis says of Cornelius's sojourn on Long Island during the construction of their recording studio in his parents' house.

"I guess you would say he was a consultant on the actual layout of the studio."

"I swear he was making noises once when I was upstairs sleeping."

Malat says, without the slightest bit of shock, "That has been told to me."

Mavrogeorgis laughs, "I lost it. I actually drove all the way back to the fucking city."

"You could reach," Sheerin faux yawns, "over and be like, 'Oh, you feel skinny tonight.'"

"Yeah totally. You're a little cold, honey," Mavrogeorgis says. "Talk about the afterlife, you know, Jim was trying to find a website once. He was convinced that there was this website where you could sell your body to necrophilia."

"There isn't? There's gotta be! There is," Sheerin insists.

"Yeah, Jim and I were going to do it and then we just couldn't figure it out," Mavrogeorgis says. "I guess I'm not getting any after I die."

Perhaps necrophilia is not in the cards, but the Bellmer Dolls are satisfied with the lifetimes that they have ahead of them. These three lads have been through a lot together, from psychotic girlfriends to family illnesses to physical altercations in foreign countries. "The music that we come up with and the arguments that we have are amazing," says Malat. "They're very, very colorful and everything, but at the end of the day, we all bail each other out of a whole lot of shit, and we're willing to do that until we all die off."

Peter laughs. "We get to do this forever."

Jenna Payne

THE RICH GIRLS ARE WEEPING

OK, readers. All of you out there in Kraftwerk's Computer World know that Cindy and I are totally (and regularly) guilty of waxing rhapsodic about our friends in bands. And you know just as well, however, that even though we're both lovely in pink, neither of us are particularly guilty of sporting rose-colored glasses. If anything, we're brutally honest ... even where the Bellmer Dolls are concerned.

It's always a little weird when you see guys who you know as slightly unhinged, loveable doodz morph into a three-headed masculine animal machine that delivers sex, death, aggression, and raw emotion without a hint of irony. We ask now, "Was this what was like to see the Birthday Party?" Oh wait...A. that analogy is as tired as comparing Interpol to Joy Division, and B. the Birthday Party were a four-piece. That being said, Los Bellmers make enough racket for six or eight, hauling an audience further along through Hell's proverbial wringer or meat-grinder in a short set than most bands manage to do in twice as many songs.

In the 11 months since we last saw them (not counting the Fashion Week appearance at Ecko that Cindy was privy to in September) the Bellmers have matured. They have three more weeks to prove us right. We've heard grumblings about complicated set-ups, saxophones bought and sold, extra vocals on live tracks, and some weird, primitive piece of electronic ephemera that comes from India. Blame it on last summer's time on the road with Grinderman, or on time spent working on other projects, or extended studio sessions. At any rate, wherever the fault lies seems to suit them, and every second of the long wait since last spring's final NYC show at the Highline was worth it. Daniel is still driving, with Anthony providing the muscle and funk, but Peter has muzzled the dirty hot preacher man, and the three of them are present together for the otherwordly, not-of-this-plane horror show of ecstasy. Here's hoping they hold it together next week.

It's difficult to talk about the Bellmers without mentioning how fragile the experience is, that -- much like a Trail of Dead set -- they're at their best when they're just far enough from falling apart that they can sneer at the idea with hips-first bravado. It's immediate, devastatingly sexy, and (forgive me for being vivid) leaves me feeling simultaneously turned on and a little violated. A few weeks ago, the Fourelles made an overly precious joke about a "rock'n'roll facial," but I'm sure those nice lawyer ladies were not talking about the kind I'm thinking of after Saturday night at the Charleston.

    

THE RICH GIRLS ARE WEEPING (con't.)

A few picturesque details about the Bellmer Dolls this week: Peter's shirt was hideous, but at least he didn't split his pants. At several points in the set, a staple gun and drumsticks were used as weapons. With love, of course. And, one of the things I love about being crammed into a space that tiny is that you can hear the jangle of Anthony's tiny prayer bell tied to the headstock of his bass, ringing out a demented call to prayer as he bends his instrument into some kind of submission.

A demented call to prayer indeed -- Peter brought the dirty preacher act back. Unlike the nearly rareified comfort of last week's performance, the air was brittle with the itchy, creaky tension of boys who'd been locked in a practice room all day. We knew we were in for something quite different. And from first tight rhythm lines to the last broken holler and squall of feedback in the dark, I was, as ever, transfixed.

It's all at once too much and sometimes not enough ... but as the set progressed, blazing through 2.5 minute messy garage raveups (including "Automation," one of the band's very first songs) to the more eloquent filth of old faves "The Diva" and "Push! Push!" it became clear to me that we were all going down together. Or maybe it was just me; I barely registered the people around me, at one point it felt I was in some sort of Lynchian nightmare: words of fire hung in the air; the band became smudgy shadows behind a wall of distorted sound.

Wait -- not really, but it sounds cool, huh? I mean, it felt like that at least. It did.

The perverse finale of "Push! Push!" really can't be put into words without edging towards ridiculous hyperbole. I always look forward to this moment of performance with sick glee; we all know Peter's going to molest Anthony in some way or another whilst Daniel steers the ship straight into a maelstrom of noisy, feedback-drenched petits-morts. There was a great amount of shoving and hollering and near-destruction of various instruments (keyboards, kick drums, etc.) until the lone, hot light bulb shining on stage was unscrewed and the rest of the lights came down, leaving us in the dark, the air so thick with sinewy, booming feedback that you could nearly taste the sound waves bouncing by. (See, I told you ... ridiculous hyperbole!!)

And when it was all over, I found I couldn't speak. Didn't want to speak. I couldn't even tell anyone good night and loitered on a patch of sidewalk outside the Charleston, watching everything through the wrong side of a spyglass; everyone around me was so very, very tiny, and everything inside me was so very, very large. Somewhere in all that bloodletting and hollering, something had rattled loose inside, and I wasn't sure what drawer in my compartmentalized brain it had tumbled out of.

You must understand, it is very unlike me to be this way.

SWAMPLAND

HENRY ROLLINS/ HARMONY IN YOUR HEAD

YOUR FLESH

PLAYLOUDER UK

ROCK SOUND UK

Named after the misshapen and expicitly posed pubescent dolls of surrealist Hans Bellmer, this Brooklyn goth-punk trio pride themselves on being of an equally controversial persuasion.  With pulsing, dirty blues-style bass and pervasively haunting lead lines on both guitar and keys, the overall effect is that of destructive, debauched elegance.  Addictively sinister. [RK]

PLAYLOUDER.COM(live review)

BELLMER DOLLS @ The Old Blue Last, London UK
 
Three years ago I interviewed a man called James Sclavunos. If that name rings a bell, it might be because Sclavunos is the Bad Seeds' drummer, The Horrors' producer and a member of the emergent Grinderman. The subject of our conversation, though, was Sclavunos' own band The Vanity Set, creators of avant-garde music that's equal parts jazzy, progressive, gothic, literary and burlesque. At one point Sclavunos told me about his guitarist Peter Mavrogeorgis. "I quite disliked him when I first met him," recalled the six-foot-eight-inch aristocrat of his six-string accomplice, "but I've come to quite adore him... There's a couple of Greeks in the band; there's some sort of weird magnetism there."

Based in New York City, Bellmer Dolls aim to infuse ugly trash-blues with an air of Weimar decadence. Mavrogeorgis is their singer and guitarist, so it's no surprise to see Sclavunos in the audience. It's even less of a surprise to see Gallon Drunk singer (and erstwhile Bad Seed) James Johnston here, for his is perhaps the band that Bellmer Dolls most resemble.

The week before this gig, I saw the Dolls play a slightly sloppy, indulgent show at Hoxton Bar & Grill. Tonight, it's a different story: they're fierce and focused. Driving the band forward is bassist Anthony Malat who, rather perfectly, runs a New York menswear boutique called Sinner/Saint. Malat looks like he should be in a cowpunk band and, equally, like he could kill with his bare hands, and he plays his bass like he's wrestling an enraged serpent. Yet in sonic terms he's the band's sensible one. His pounding, hypnotic bass-lines provide a solid structure from which Mavrogeorgis (and drummer Daniel Sheerin) can depart on flights of fancy.

Always a restless, twitchy presence, Mavrogeorgis occasionally goes through something like an onstage exorcism. It happens tonight during the penultimate 'Push! Push!' (the fire-and-brimstone sermon that opens debut EP 'The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over'). As the song slow-burningly builds toward climax, Mavrogeorgis flips out. Diving from the stage, he starts screaming the song's titular invocation while swinging his guitar wildly about by the strap. It whizzes within inches of the front row's noses, but nobody moves a muscle. We're transfixed.

Mavrogeorgis here exhibits the same deranged preacher-man intensity in which James Johnston once specialised. Also like Gallon Drunk, Bellmer Dolls are maybe best described as blooze-hounds: their take on old-school rhythm & blues sounds like it's full of strong liquor and tweaked beyond reason. Behind the drumkit, Sheerin is a cyclone of intensity. Out front, Mavrogeorgis frenziedly coaxes noise and feedback (plus the odd shimmering melody line) from his Rickenbacker, while delivering reference-loaded lyrics in a breathless, strangulated croon.

After 'Push! Push!' has provided the set's crescendo, Bellmer Dolls find themselves in the classic Trail of Dead quandary: the stage has pretty much been trashed, but there's still one song to play. They persevere, though: wires are untangled, equipment plugged back in and straps reaffixed to guitars, and during the subsequent set-closer the impression is of a vicious storm dying down and calmness descending. When the Dolls finally take their leave to approving roars, a passing fan records pity for whoever has to follow them.

This, then, is Bellmer Dolls. I disliked them when I first met them, but I've come to quite adore them. There's some sort of weird magnetism there.

Niall O'Keeffe (playlouder.com)

DORFDISCO DE

Zillo DE(Translation) Art punk/ noise goth from NY, just how we know it and love it. The Bellmer Dolls have already played with the likes of Jon Spencer's Blue Explosion and Jarboe (Swans) and move in musically similar fields as Nick Cave or Lydia Lunch circa Teenage Jesus and 8 Eyed Spy. Dark, excessive, and damaged noise- the blues for modern times. The singer manages to pack confusion and depression into his melodies. In addition you get raw guitars and buzzing rhythm that burn into your entrails-- emotional music that won't leave anyone cold. The opener "Push!Push!" sounds like it's from a soundtrack to a Jim Jarmush film, in black and white of course. Aside from that, a heavy Nick Cave-vibe exemplified in "the Diva" or "L'Condition Humaine"; otherwise a dark, threatening atmosphere like Lydia Lunch cultivated on her 13:13 album ("Every Angel.." "There is No Oblivion"). In the Big Cats, the Bellmer Dolls achieved an absolutely fantastic EP. On top of that, the whole thing was produced and perfected by Jim Sclavunous who already worked with Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, and the Cramps. This is music that's as fascinating and disturbing as Hans Bellmer's dolls. This band will get huge. Consider this your insider's tip!

Dorfdisco DE(Translation)
New Yorkers The Bellmer Dolls don't directly embody the influence of their namesake, but the point of reference isn't exactly misleading either. Just as the 1930's era artist and  anarchist Hans Bellmer simultaneously revolted against politics, the art scene, and the gaze of the voyeur with his bizarre and swollen dolls, one could describe the Bellmer Dolls’ sound as an obsessive investigation into the anatomy of the unconscious. Heavy, gothic-punk styled bass and anarchic drumming develop the foundation for the suggestive guitars and soulful, uncannily spat vocals; something that Jim Jarmusch called "dark and damaged - just like I like it". Produced by New York's milestone Jim Sclavunos (Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Sonic Youth, Cramps, and the drummer of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) and released on the stylish maverick label Hungry Eye out of New York(Phantom Limbs, Weegs, Sixteens, etc), Bellmer Dolls are a melancholic inside edition of carnal lust. They were recently voted into Paper Magazine's top Beautiful people; now they just need commence a German tour for the first time.

Die New Yorker Bellmer Dolls verkörpern nicht direkt ihren namensgebenden Einfluss des deutschen Surrealisten Hans Bellmer, doch führt dieser Fixpunkt auch nicht gerade von ihnen weg. So wie der deutsche Künstler und 30ger Jahre Anarchist Hans Bellmer mit Skulpturen verdrehter, aufgequollenen Puppen gegen die Politik wie Kunstszene und Schaulust des Voyeurs gleichsam revoltierte, könnte man den Sound der Bellmer Dolls gleichsam als obsessive Erkundung der Anatomie des Unbekannten bezeichnen. Schwerer, gothic-punk artiger Bass und archaisches Schlagzeug bilden die Grundlage für suggestiv hypnotischer Gitarre und seelenvoll unheimlich spukendem Gesang, etwas das Jim Jarmusch "dunkel und kaputt - so wie ich es mag" nannte. Produziert von New Yorks Meilenstein Jim Sclavunos (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Sonic Youth, Cramps, Schlagzeuger bei Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) und auf dem stilistischen Aussenseiter Label Hungry Eye (Phantom Libs, Weegs, Sixteens etc.) sind sie sowas wie die melancholische Insider Ausgabe adretter Fleicheslust. Dafür wurden sie unlängst ins Paper Magazine's Top Beautiful People gewählt und sollen demnächst auch zum ersten Mal in Deutschland touren.

Orkus DE(Translation)
Harter Tobak(?) sure, but what a grandiose debut EP. The Bellmer Dolls out of the Big Apple on the east coast of the United States combine all that that you just have to love the arty post-punk scene for: forceful compositions, manic vocals, heavy guitars, dense percussion, and a song writing that just makes its way under your skin and makes you wonder if the Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over really is the NY trio's first work. The Bellmer Dolls were given a little production assistance by Jim Sclavunos, who already worked with such illustrious musicians as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Cramps, Lydia Lunch, and Sonic Youth.  Sonic Youth is a good point of reference as well, since [Bellmer Dolls’] wall-of-sound guitars might remind you of some of the compositions by these fellow East Coast Art Punks. And if you listen carefully, you might also draw parallels to Bauhaus's early material, who just as freely and totally eluded any sort of compartmentalized comparisons with their music. No wonder, then, that the Bellmer Dolls already shared the stage with the Bravery, Pretty Girls Make Graves, and Jarboe. With a little bit of luck we might see the Bellmer Dolls' full length some time this year. And with a little more luck we'll also see them soon on these shores. Extraordinary!

Harter Tobak, okay, aber was für eine grandiose Debüt-EP. The Bellmer Dolls aus dem Big Apple an der Ostküste der Vereinigten Staaten bündeln all das, wofür man die arty-farty Post Punk-Szene einfach lieben muss: Durchdringende Kompositionen, manischer Gesang, schwere Gitarren, dichte Percussions und ein Songwriting, das dermaßen unter die Haut geht, dass man zurecht anzweifeln könnte, ob es The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over tatsächlich das Erstlingswerk des Trio aus New York City ist. Produktionstechnisch wurde den Bellmer Dolls von Jim Sclavunos unter die Arme gegriffen, der immerhin schon mit illustren Musikern, wie z.B. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Cramps, Lydia Lunch und Sonic Youth zusammengearbeitet hat. Sonic Youth sind eh ein gutes Stichwort, denn an deren Wall Of Sound-Gitarren erinnern manche Kompositionen der East Coast-Art-Punks durchaus, wohingegen man, wenn man genau hinhört, hier und da auch Parallelen zu den Frühwerken von Bauhaus ziehen könnte, die ebenso frei und fernab jegliches Schubladendenkens an ihre Musik herangegangen sind. Kein Wunder daher auch, dass The Bellmer Dolls bereits mit The Bravery, Pretty Girls Make Graves oder Jarboe auf der Bühne standen. Mit ein bisschen Glück erscheint noch in diesem Jahr die Full-Length-CD. Und mit noch mehr Glück sind The Bellmer Dolls dann auch hoffentlich bald hierzulande zu sehen. Großartig! (9) Thomas Thyssen

The Big Takeover

The spare growling groove of "Push! Push!" kicks off the gritty, slithering art-punk on the Bellmer Dolls' debut EP splendidly. What follows is a Birthday Party-influenced set of songs that happen to be produced by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Sonic Youth alum Jim Sclavunos. A healthy sense of drama is ever present, and the band knows when to exercise restraint, when to launch into a crescendo of dissonance, and when to simply rock out. "There Is No Oblivion" hints at Fugazi and "Pictures" brings Jon Spencer's damaged rockabilly to mind (the band was actually hand-picked by Spencer to tour with the Blues Explosion a while back), but the Bellmer Dolls nevertheless retain a unique flair. Peter Mavrogeorgis pulls off the whispering, shouting, creaking and crooning quite well - the prickly gothic doom that he gives voice to on The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over is spellbinding. (www.hungryeyerecords.com).
by Kristen Sollee

XLR8R

You can affix the label post-punk, goth, or noise to this trio, but the fact is that these passionate mystics make artful jams with more soul than your average gloomy outfit. Featuring members of Love Life, Universal Order of Armageddon, et al., The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over is the aural equivalent of a weeklong bender in the most seedy, sensual nightclub this side of Babylon.

emusic.com

Evoking equally the manic insanity of the Birthday Party and the grim insistence of Swans, New York City's Bellmer Dolls make vicious Weimar rock & roll that's steeped in shadow and stinks of blood. It's no surprise that bassist Anthony Malat used to be in LoveLife (the goth/horror band that also spun-off Celebration) or that singer Peter Mavrogeorgis played guitar for Angels of Light; like those bands, the Bellmer Dolls push terror to its extreme, creating songs that shriek and twitch and howl. The tension comes from the balancing of contrasts: the bass is low and creeps like a fever while the guitar lines are spastic and spiky. But it's never just throttle-and-screech: there's a passage at the center of the preciously-titled "L'Condition Humaine" where the guitars indulge in a harrowing highwire act, twitching and wobbling anxiously. There's a cold horror at the core of these songs that nags and unsettles. The Big Cats is an exquisite corpse, a great demonstration of violent decay.  
-J. Edward Keyes  

Indie Workshop

Outside of New York City there are not too many people fawning over the dark sounds of the Bellmer Dolls, but i'm pretty confident all that will change. About a year ago we picked up this band's last 7" (The Diva) for the distro. Well now with the release of The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over we get to see (or rather hear) a full EP's worth of material from the group the Village Voice called "Brooklyn noise-goth royalty".

Six songs, two of them being from that 7", bleed out of your stereo like some ritualistic bloodletting. Dark songs that lurch back and forth with a fixed and malicious stare. Basically, it's creepy. But the songs are also solid works of bleak pop. It's not just creepy to be creepy, it's just the vibe that the Bellmer Dolls give of. And with a full-length in the works, I'll be sitting here, somewhat scared, waiting for the next batch of songs they have to offer.

Bellmer Dolls' music is like dark pulsating dance beats that simmer over howling vocals. Their music is so intense and emotional that you easily find yourself engulfed instantly. Fans of Nick Cave, Bauhaus, and 80s B-Line Matchbox Disaster will instantly love what they are doing. They have also in with the acclaimed bands Vanity Set and Love Life.

KFJC FM Radio

These New York “Dolls” aren’t fronted by David Johansen. Nope, the Bellmer Dolls are from Brooklyn, emerging 35 years after the early proto-punk glam era and featuring ex-members of Angels of Light, Love Life, and U.O.A. They certainly aren’t the first band to adopt “Dolls” as part of their namesake, but the New York punk scenes’ lingering ethic, essence & vitality still courses through their veins. Admittedly, their dramatically theatric vibe resonates more raucous art & post-punk subgenre traits with a predisposition towards the macabre & dark hued goth aesthetic. Sometimes I swear I almost hear Lux Interior, with a touch of Glenn Danzig or Ian Astbury coming through Peter Mavrogerorgis’ semi-distorted vocals but it’s certainly no imitation. Phat punchy bass lines and attack fractured guitar lines decay & sustain beautifully melancholic modulations. Heavy syncopated rhythms & gloomy lyrics provide perfect cathartic bleakness. These guys are awesome, exerting enough mysterious explosive energy to attract the attention of Jon Spencer (Blues Explosion) on stage and Jim Sclavunos’ (ex-Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Cramps, Sonic Youth, and currently Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) production savvy on their Hungry Eye debut! Badabing!
— Guy Montag

L.A. Alternative

During the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany in the 1930s, a sculptor named Hans Bellmer began to create pubescent, life-sized, explicitly sexual dolls; their surreal, awkward forms presented as a kind of protest against the Nazi cult of the perfect body. The Bellmer Dolls, a New York goth-punk trio, translate their namesake's mutant sculptures into music, crafting malformed songs around harsh guitar chords and punchy basslines.

Portland Mercury

Who made the rule that sex cheapens one's music? (If the Bellmer Dolls were selling actual sex, it would not be cheap—they were recently picked for Paper Magazine's Top Beautiful People list and featured on the cover page of the New York Times' fashion section.) Their recent EP, The Big Cats Will Throw Themselves Over, is the first clearly recorded material that flaunts Peter Mavrogeorgis' seductively heart-squeezing and irascible vocals, conjoined with moan-y guitars that end up sounding like Interpol (minus the asinine lyrics) meets Pulp Fiction meets Celebration meets a cheap cigarette dangling off pouty lips. The year spent on this EP and the pristine production by Jim Sclavunos (Sonic Youth, Nick Cave) is a sweet, dark, glam rock laurel for the Brooklyn goth assemblage to rest upon for some time to come. JENNA ROADMAN

S.F. Chronicle

Come hear them play, but don't expect a soothing set that will take your cares away.   In fact, you'll probably be exhausted afterward.  Like Hans Bellmer the artist, Bellmer Dolls will infect you with the intense emotion they dedicate to their art.

PAPER MAGAZINE (http://www.papermag.com/?section=article&parid=1243)

Photograph by Cass Bird

The Bellmer Dolls' compulsion to create music knows no bounds. "I should have quit music at least a hundred times," says bassist Anthony S. Malat (center). "If you knock me down I'll get back up. Unfortunately, that's the way we all are." Malat, who also provides the band's sharp look with his successful menswear line Sinner/Saint, and Peter Mavrogeorgis (vocals, guitar) met five years ago when they were playing in the bands Love Life and Vanity Set, respectively, finding drummer Daniel Sheerin through a Craigslist posting. Sheerin (right) was surprised by but ultimately down with the approach the other two took to his "audition," which didn't involve music but was instead a drinking session -- an endurance test of sorts. After a year of writing and fine-tuning, the New York�based band self-released their debut in 2005, Never Sates Nor Palls, after which they began recording anew with old pal Jim Sclavunos as producer. Meanwhile, they toured, supporting bands such as the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pretty Girls Make Graves and the Bravery.

Together they produce a sound that is pulled taut from long nights of rehearsal and a die- hard self-sufficiency that comes from many years on the road. Onstage, their dark, bass-driven, depths-of-hell music emerges with an intense physical energy. "We're very disciplined," explains Mavrogeorgis (left). "When we're onstage, it doesn't matter what happened to us the day before, we're there in the moment performing our role." Hear their music at www.bellmerdolls.com.
Alex Zafiris

NYC.com

A trip to the land of Trash was in order last night. I went out to Williamsburg to listen to the angst that is dubbed the Bellmer Dolls. A trio, guitar, bass and drums, the lead singer Peter apologized for the delay as they set up stating, “We don’t sound check anymore. No one offers us it.” The bassist, his back heel stomping on a kick tambourine stand, kept a steady beat with the drummer throughout the energetic performance. Playing with a borrowed guitar, he broke his own in the days before, the singer kept the self-deprecating humor throughout. At one point he muttered, “The sound is shit,” and someone from the crowd responded, “ It sounds great.” He answered jokingly with, “What do you know? You should all be wearing masks. No one should know you’re here.” With a frenzied energy they attacked their instruments and the lead singer got tangled all up in the guitar stands knocking them all over the place. With friends from the crowd asking, “Can I help you?” He sarcastically replied, “No one can help me.” A short, jarring, sweet set, the music helped the world last night. Check them out around town.
-Grasshopper, Music Editor, nyc.com

THE DELI MAGAZINE

We saw this band by mistake and honestly they scared the shit out of us. Sure, we though, three tall, skinny, miserable looking guys in tight black clothes - a New York City band. Time to go smoke a cigarette. Imagine our surprise when they started playing and had such a huge sound that it was near impossible to escape (not that we wanted to at that point). I think they consider themselves a punk band of some sort, but they're most accurately described on their web site, as "the despairing wail of an exposed nerve." That pretty much sums it up. Only three songs are available (on this EP, and on their site), but they show their range (which is just about as much range as a band with such a defined aesthetic could possibly hope to muster), from the first track's pulsating industrial clamor - the syncopation of which would provide the perfect soundtrack for a massive goth orgy if you ask us, to the second track which threatens to burst into a straight surf groove (of course you'd have to dye the water red to really get the right effect) until you realize that that would just be way too cheery for these guys, to the final brooding "Every Angel is a Terror," the best macabre high school prom song ever.




NYLON

In the 30's, German Surrealist Hans Bellmer began dismembering doll parts, only to reassemble the lose appendages into seductively Surrealist sculptures. He was surely on the track to something good, but little did he know he would, years later, bring influence to NYC's rebellious, obscure, underground music scene. Fast forward and meet THE BELLMER DOLLS, whose name was not only inspired by Bellmer's twisted works, but who translate Bellmer's similar ability to reinvent the past. Their "sold out" North Six gig is breathing new life into an audience desperately in need of resuscitation. The Brooklyn based trio of misfits: Peter Mavrogeorgis, Anthony Malat and Daniel Sheerin have been creating a barrage of tormented sounds filled with poetic longing and leaving it's remains along both coasts. Bellmer Dolls spew out a sight-n-sound treat as delicious as the ones you find in your goody bag on Hallow's Night. The band is busy assembling their own pile of discombobulated parts and making it their musical whole. In the studio as we speak working on their sophomore effort with Jim Sclavunos (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Lydia Lunch, Sonic Youth) set to produce. These Lost Boys will merge again with musical comrades, Lion Fever (Dim Mak) for their second tour together starting July 2005. Papa Hans would be so proud.

OH MY ROCKNESS
The brutal Brooklyn band Bellmer Dolls (named for the disturbing anti-fascist sculptures of Hans Bellmer... a hint that this isn't slow, pretty stuff) features Anthony S. Malat, formerly of the underrated band Love Life. Those brave enough to witness Bellmer Dolls' intense live performance (envision a trio of Ichabod Cranes rocking out) may be riddled with dark visions for days to come. They have taken their twisted goth-punk-noise debauchery on the road supporting bands like Prosaics, Pretty Girls Make Graves and Enon. These guys are so spooky that their new 7" was limited to 666 copies. Yikes! Go to a Bellmer Dolls show, but if you see these guys at the bar... slowly back the fuck away.

BLACKBOOK MAGAZINE




NY TIMES


Indie Designers Pin Hopes (And Clothes) on Indie Singers
By JULIA CHAPLIN (NYT) words
Late Edition - Final , Section 9 , Page 1 , Column 3

COVERED with sticky beer spills, the floor at the Orchard Bar on the Lower East Side bears no resemblance to the pristine
red carpet at the Academy Awards.  But that was not how the Bellmer Dolls, an all-male punk band from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, saw it on a recent Thursday ......(first 50 words posted)

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