Psychobilly
Located in 2 routes
Psychobilly fuses rockabilly's slap bass and twang with punk speed, horror imagery, shouted vocals and a cartoonish sense of danger. The upright bass is often the visual and rhythmic center, clicking through fast two-beat patterns while guitars snarl with surf, country and garage-punk bite. It is greaser music after the graveyard: danceable, aggressive, campy and deliberately outside respectable roots-rock revival.
History
The Cramps supplied the trash-culture blueprint, but The Meteors gave psychobilly its name, scene and "wrecking" identity in early-1980s Britain. Demented Are Go, Guana Batz, Batmobile, Nekromantix, Tiger Army, The Quakes and Reverend Horton Heat expanded the style across Europe and the U.S. Later waves polished the musicianship while keeping the same visual grammar: quiffs, tattoos, horror graphics, hot rods and upright bass as punk weapon.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Psychobilly: The Minx and the Mutants histories
- AllMusic psychobilly overview
- The Meteors and Cramps biographies
- Hellcat psychobilly catalog notes