SLOUGH FEG - Hard-Boiled Eggheads
by Martin Popoff

Eye-winked metal heady of tradition... that's where the legendary Mike Scalzi and his San Francisco consortium of mad, meticulous scientists live and breathe. Shocking to connoisseurs of the form however, Mike has left brethren band Hammers Of Misfortune to work the Feg full time - amidst stints as bartender and first-year philosophy prof (at the Master's level, but never to go beyond, says he). Ergo, look for the band to raise up its profile, in celebration of their sixth album Hardworlder, a pageant of Celtic-tinged NWOBHM gorgeosity in keeping with the band's substantive and substance-heavy catalogue of Lizzy-licked songs of spacey triumph.

And even though Hammers leader John Cobbett is no longer co-guitarist with Mike in Slough Feg (his replacement is J Mascis-look-alike "Don" Angelo Tringali), Mike insists there's no problem with his former creative foil.

"It doesn't really change the sound that much," marvels a 37-year-old and intensely fit Mike. "Because I wrote most of the stuff again. I wrote most of it then and I write most of it now. And Angelo contributes about as much as John did, as far as actually writing songs. In fact, I didn't think it would be as similar as it was. Because John would be much more sporadic; he would be very productive but he wasn't able to be around, although he was in the city and he was around pretty frequently. In fact some of the stuff about John got kind of bloated. People wanted... I've gotten this attitude from people so much about the last Hammers album, with people talking. Because they really wanted it to be like a James Hetfield/Dave Mustaine thing. 'You guys hate each other' etc. But right after he left Slough Feg and I quit Hammers, we saw each other three days later and drank beers together. I'm a bartender and he comes into my bar. We're probably better friends now than we were back then. So that whole end of things is a bunch of bullshit."

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