Galloping Coroners

Did You Know?

• The band's name was chosen by Attila Grandpierre to express that people on Earth live like 'living deads', and the band acts as coroners diagnosing that state.
• VHK was officially banned in Hungary for 11 years and became the No.1 banned rock band under the communist regime.
• Dutch Queen Beatrix personally pressured Hungarian authorities to grant passports so VHK could perform in Amsterdam in 1986.
• The band's first international manager was Dietmar Lupfer, and their first three LPs were released on Alternative Tentacles in the US.
• In 2009 Grandpierre renamed the band to 'Galloping Life Power' to reflect a fully positive life attitude.

History

Galloping Coroners, also known as VHK, came together in Budapest in 1975. The band was started by singer Attila Grandpierre and his friends, and it developed on its own, without any connection to the Western punk scene that emerged a year or two later. The first members were Grandpierre on vocals, Sándor Czakó on guitar, László Ipacs on drums, Tamás Pócs on bass, and Molnár György on lead guitar. Many of them held advanced degrees. Grandpierre is an astrophysicist and a candidate of physical sciences who works at the Hungarian Mathematics Institute. Czakó is a nuclear physicist who later handled safety systems at the Paks Nuclear Power Plant. Ipacs is also a physicist, and Lajos Soós is a teacher. In the early 1970s, young people in Budapest told stories about Grandpierre as a strange, eccentric teenager who did outrageous things with his friends, like building homemade rockets. While studying physics, Grandpierre tutored Ipacs, who was five years younger and still in high school. The two became friends and, along with others, formed a creative subcultural group driven by Grandpierre’s unusual ideas about life and music. When Ipacs and Czakó started an amateur band, Grandpierre first helped out with musical suggestions from the outside. To their surprise, the group won the army’s nationwide amateur rock contest. By then, Grandpierre was a well-known figure in Budapest’s underground scene and was asked to sing for several bands, but only the Ipacs-Czakó group impressed him enough. He joined them in 1975. Grandpierre came up with the name Vágtázó Halottkémek, or Galloping Coroners. He wanted a two-word name that captured the band’s philosophy: that people should connect with the basic, elemental power of the universe and, charged by that energy, live a more active and perfect life. “Galloping” stood for energy and action, while “Coroners” reflected the feeling that most people live like the living dead, and the band’s role was to diagnose that condition.

Musical style

In 1975 Galloping Coroners started with basic rock instruments: three electronic guitars and a drum, enriched with a kettle drum to enhance a roaming tribal sound. By the 1990s the band kept its psychedelic-shaman-punk musical ideology while developing more complex instrumentation. On the 1997 Reconquering Eden I LP they used tablas, kettle drums, roto, earthen drum, acoustic guitar, reed pipe, whistle, percussion, bass, electric guitar, and vocals, with guests adding violin, flute, double bass, hurdy gurdy, and vocals. Galloping Coroners, including their international career, have sung exclusively Hungarian lyrics. Their music may best be described as 'shaman punk' or 'psychedelic hardcore', categories created by Western critics in the 1980s to define the band's original sound. Historically the band started one to two years before the punk movement in 1975, from independent roots. The music was mainly determined by founder Attila Grandpierre's vision of music and the Universe. He said he was not interested in music like Western punk bands or Iggy & The Stooges; he was impressed by psychedelic and progressive rock music, particularly early Pink Floyd, the first Blue Cheer album Vincebus Eruptum, and the song 'Out of Focus'. He was also influenced by German progressive rock, especially krautrock (early Amon Düül, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel).

Live performances

Galloping Coroners concerts were famous for their trance-like, ecstatic shows that pulled the audience into the experience. In Hungary’s first underground scene of the 1970s, these gigs often caused scandals and were cut short by police. By the 1980s, the band was bringing its wild, high-energy performances to Western Europe. Onstage, the musicians wore ancient shamanic outfits made of leather and feathers, with backdrops like an Inuit design taken from Siberian art. Their shows featured extreme physical acts: band members would roll in honey and feathers while playing in a frenzy, or hang fish from their bodies and leap into a fishing net set up onstage. Frontman Grandpierre remembered one concert where he got hurt during an ecstatic state, kept performing while bleeding, and lost a lot of blood by the end.

Legacy

Galloping Coroners never achieved worldwide fame. Their first nine to ten years in Hungary were spent banned and underground due to the country's Eastern European political situation, and their entry into the Western European music market came late and with obstacles. Despite this, critics and fellow musicians have long celebrated them as a highly important band. Maximum Rock'N Roll described them as having spirit and grit equal to Sonic Youth or Big Black, but with a unique identity. Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra, and Einstürzende Neubauten are among their admirers.