Holy Rollers (band)

History

Before Holy Rollers, Aronstamn and Lambiotte had been bandmates in the D.C. punk group Grand Mal, which put out the album Binge Purge in 1985 and was active from 1983 to 1985. They later looked for a new project, trying out several drummers before they found Micozzi. It was Micozzi who came up with the name Holy Rollers, taking inspiration from how Malcolm X used that phrase in his autobiography. The band played its first show on March 24, 1989, opening for Fugazi, Swiz, and Edsel at the Wilson Center, a former church in D.C.'s Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

That year, Holy Rollers shared bills with acts like Jawbox, Fidelity Jones, and Shudder to Think. Their first EP, Origami Sessions, came out in 1989 on both Dischord Records and Adult Swim Records, the latter a label started by Dischord co-founder Jeff Nelson. Around the same time, the band often worked with poet Juliana Luecking on stage and in the studio. Their first full-length album, As Is, was released by Dischord in 1990.

It was co-produced by the band and Geoff Turner of Gray Matter. Aronstamn later said the record didn't match the energy of their live shows, and that the basic tracks lacked the power he wanted. A 1990 benefit concert organized by the Positive Force DC activist group got a rave from The Washington Post, which called the performance "jamming with meaning" and praised its "awesome and unutterable power." Trouser Press noted that Holy Rollers showed a wide musical knowledge that made up for their technical limits.

In another Post review, Mark Jenkins pointed out the band's similarity to Fugazi, but also highlighted tracks like "Ode to Sabine County," about a Black prisoner killed in a Texas jail, and "Johnny Greed," which starts like the Weavers and ends like Sonic Youth, as signs of their own direction.