History of Guns - Little Miss Suicide (25)
UK industrial-postpunk legends History Of Guns kick off 2025 with the single 'Little Miss Suicide (25)'. Released via the Liquid Len Recording Company, this fresh take on the band's debut single from 2000. The accompanying video uses footage, originally filmed by Danni Cutmore on a VHS camera, of the band writing and performing the song at Earthworks studio in Barnet in 1998.
Based in Hertfordshire, History Of Guns were frontrunners of the UK's Wasp Factory / FuturePunk scene of the early 2000s and are still crafting their unique meta-modernist Industrial sound 29 years after forming in Cheshunt. Aiming to create a strange alternative world where people can feel safe, HoG embraces the dark as well as the light, bleakness as well as hope - as openly and honestly as possible.
Produced by Max Rael, this single was mixed by Max Rael and Caden Clarkson, using all the original audio recorded back in 1999, and mastered by Pete Maher (U2, Pixies, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails). Written in 1998 by founding members Del Alien, Max Rael and Stagger Lee, alongside regular contributor Gary Hughes (who also plays the lead guitar melody), the rougher original version of this song was released in February 2000.
Stagger Lee's lyrics challenged the stigma surrounding mental health and suicide that prevailed at that time - an environment where openly discussing one's personal struggles was discouraged. Projecting his own depression and suicidal thoughts on to an imagined female character, Stagger relays the character's experience of not being taken seriously, as reflected in the title - a nod towards the popular "Mr. Men and Little Miss" series by British author Roger Hargreaves back in the 70s and 80s.
“This was our first song to really feature major chords, which Del wasn’t at all convinced by. In the end Stagger and I won him round by assuring him we were only using happy chords ironically to contrast with the dark subject matter. It’s probably the closest we’ve ever come to an actual proper pop song," recalls Max Rael.
Del Alien adds, "We knew all too well that sincerity wasn't respected or valued in the 90s, so from early on we'd incorporate humour amongst the darkness, we said because we wanted to reflect the whole of life and experience, the good and the bad, but it also gave us a way of talking about the terrible things that were happening to us and our friends, but we could never be accused of taking ourselves too seriously, or being emo or whatever. We may, at times, have taken this a bit too far at times. "
Last year, the band released their widely acclaimed eighth album 'Half Light', a sonic exploration of modern society, addiction, abandonment, different levels of reality and the struggle to keep going. But it is also a reminder that, through this darkness, there remains underneath, a core of hope.
Del Alien - an original punk turned goth - is an anti-authority seeker of truth and the questions behind the questions. Max Rael is in love with the idea of using music to create a separate universe for creating stories and escaping into, was an autistic, music-obsessed child, absorbing a dozen genres before diving into trance after Britpop ruined the alternative scene.
History of Guns' 2004 single 'Your Obedient Servant' was championed by The Quietus and Mick Mercer among the “30 best goth singles of all time”. Taking hiatus in 2012, they released the album 'Forever Dying In Your Eyes' in 2022. Influenced by Killing Joke, PWEI, Bauhaus, Coil, Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, Nine Inch Nails and Swans, History of Guns have played Whitby Gothic Weekend, as well as Futurepunk and Back to the Futurepunk events.
'Little Miss Suicide (25)' is out now, available to download for next-to-nothing, alongside the B-side 'I Am Defective' and a trance remix by Gary Hughes, at Bandcamp.
