COMMISSARS OF CRUSH...

DESPERATELY decelerating from a speed of 100 km per hour, screeching with the sonic power of metal grinding metal, flashing by in its primal hues of blue and yellow, two hundred tonnes of forged steel, dynamo coils, formica and human flesh hits the buffer with split second timing.

This carefully controlled crush collision can mean only one thing — the train's on time.

Also on time, there to meet me in the echoing halts of Leeds railway station, are the bird-of-paradise-bright Age Of
Chancers.

There they are in their luminous, brilliant, phosphorescent, spectacular, lurid, spectroscopic, neon, radiant, day glo, kandy coloured, electric sporto-dynamo-artificial fibro-groovo-sexo-ten speedo hip hopo-cyclo wear!!

And we all know that in this, the original Gotham City, the place where bands of highly trained spike "n' buckle
mystic-rockers have stayed a very successful blockade on the import of all non-black fabrics, such full spectrum,
trans continental chic looks very defiant- indeed.

Ha ha, Mr Eldritch. And so much for your plans for ultimate world domination.

IT'S NO surprise that Age Of Chance are on time because this band are of the moment, up to the i minute, this-instant rockers -these four commissars of crush live every second of their lives and arrange every fragment of their music according to the indispensable sound doctrine. The Thoughts Of Chairman Now.

This attention to the present manifests itself in the way they have adopted hip-hop's ethic of continual evolution, of
taking the sounds of today to create those of tomorrow.

As Neil, the motor mouth guitarist states with his customary finality, "lf you don't move, you're dead".

Age Of Chance can't really be accused of standing still. They nagged their way into our lives with 'Motor City' and
'Bible Of The Beats', two chunks of unrealised, lumpen, Hi-NRG metal-clank which could hardly tell you what was
coming over the horizon. Because, as we all know, it started with a kiss.

Their radical kidnapping, torture and redesigning of 'Kiss' thrust them onto everyone's soundscape. One more small
slice of vinyl for mankind, a giant step for an impoverished 'indie' band from Leeds.

A brazen piece of pop effervesence or a ham fisted manhandling depending on your perspective and the ratio of
Creedence Clearwater to Africa Bambaataa in your record collection, 'Kiss' thrilled or irritated and compelled ten record companies to come prospecting for AOC autographs.

Since that pivotal choice of release, they've followed up with the 'Kiss' sequel, the 'Disco Inferno' spearheaded
'Crush Collision' EP and the fearsome 'Who's Afraid Of the Big Bad Noise'.

Now, they strike out with 'Don't Get Mad. . .Get Even' and debut album, 'One Thousand Years Of Trouble'.

Having discussed travel prices with drummer Jan, and penetrated the AOC endorsed Leeds central shopping complex, we come to Miss Selfridge for affordable fashion and the cafe where you can always get a table for interviews and
where VFM conscious pop stars can have their coffee topped up at no extra charge.

As I once did a SOTW job on 'Big Bad Noise' and in the process hailed it as cheekily piratical, while at the same time
invoking the name of arch AOC superfoe Peter Astor, the band receive me with a hint of suspicion.

I have uncaringly aligned them with the burgeoning legions of all sampling, all daring robbin', stealin' rhymers from
Mantronix to the JAM boys to MARRS.

Age Of Chance create nothing, use everything and in the process fashion great pop records, that is the charge. But
don't worry because up here in Leeds, the hearts are as big as the gap between United and First Division football and
they helpfully seek to correct me.

Geoff, the Liverpudlian bass frequencer, has two interview modes, 'bored distraction' and 'verbal onslaught'. He now selects the latter.

"All that takin' in order to create is a pile of shit. We sit down with guitars or start with a drum beat and we write a
song. We've never come out with all that rhymin' and stealing shit. We use sampling because we like doing that. We use a DJ, but all that hip hop ethic stuff . . .we're not a hip hop band."

But what of the mighty sound collages that you've spoken of?

Geoff: "Yeah we do because hip hop is a general group thread. It's the only vital cutting edge to music at the moment."

Neil: "We're a hip hop band as much as we're a metal band as much as we're a funk band. We go down to the clubs, put
on the radio and buy records, and hip hop is definitely something we listen to.

"As for this rhymin' and stealin' thing, basically if you're going to use cuts and scratches, they've got to work within the
song. I don't think there's any point in writing a song around a cut like most hip hop records do.

"We start with the songs first and if there's anything that Powercut (Noel Watson, The Delirium and AOC's DJ) has, then he bangs it in. We don't sample much, we use a DJ. It's a much more vital way to get things across. It's facile if you do it without creative thought."

Jan: "It's very easy to use cuts that are invalid subjectively and soundwise to the rest of the track."

Steven, the resident mob orator chips in with some cafe oratory: "Sampling and scratching are completely different things. It's like the difference between Mantronix and, say, LL Cool J's first record. Mantronix is completely step
written, completely mechanical and the Cool J stuff is live cutting. It's the more exciting for it."

Sampling morons! Invalid cut selection! Surely the methodical AOC team are homing in on one particular outfit, the
devil may care record-robbers known as the Justified Ancients Of MuMu.

Geoff: "If you want to be opportunist, you do what the JAMs did - you do 'All You Need Is Love'. They ripped off our
'Kisspower' which is the remix we put together with The MC5, Trouble Funk, Janet Jackson and all our fave records
along with both us and Prince doing 'Kiss'. There was such an air of condescension about the JAMS record whereas we did 'Kisspower' because we loved all those records and we wanted to make something where we appeared with them all.

"I just think the JAMs was a real second rate version of what we'd done eight months earlier. Basically as a record it's dull."

AFTER THE first two singles, which amount to AOC prototypes, this band have never yet released a dull record. Following 'Kiss' and 'Big Bad Noise', the new single and album pairing have a lot to live up to. 'Don't Get Mad' gives the impression that Age Of Chance have recently staged a raid on the bountiful Stock Aitken and Waterman recording vaults, such is the similarity to a cut fuelled Dead Or Alive backing track.

This is house music coming to Yorkshire and ending up a bit semi-detached.

Having said that, pop kids, it is considerably chart compatible.

'One Thousand Years Of Trouble' isn't an album of kissalte quality. It's got 'Big Bad Noise' and its blasting close relative
'We Got Trouble' and their most refined moment to date, the saccharine-vocal coated 'Learn To Pray' but as a whole it
grinds rather than lacerates, its sheer deciamatory power brutalising the listener rather than transfixing them.

Like the majority of hip hop, AOC are at their best when deployed over 45 rpm, flaming out in a few minutes of sustained energy. What stuns in single capacity dulls over an album, the sheer force inevitably suffering intermediate
power loss.

The record company was pleasantly surprised by 'One Thousand Years Of Trouble', having battened down their ears in anticipation of a brutal noise onslaught.

Despite a lessening of decibels, AOC do continue to organise sound outputs from US Army helicopters to factories as
they declare marshalI noise on any desirable sonic occurrence. The use of industrial noise could be seen as a bit
nostalgic at a time when Britain is becoming a service industry and when machinery is slowing to a halt.

Neil: "There's nothing backward looking about us. We're always looking to the future for our inspiration in virtually every sense."

Steve: "We just feel that the industrial noise conveys a sense of us."

Neil: "The areas where we live are pretty much like inner city areas. We've got motorways outside the front door.
You wake up with it every morning. The way we use those noises is to colour our music in the way that a Motown record
might use a tambourine.

"We've never thought of noise as being purely white noise. It's always been something more than that. It's like the
atmosphere on Papa Was A Rolling Stone' or 'Seven Rooms Of Gloom' by The Four Tops. There's noise, there's
atmosphere on those records but I bet if you asked the guys at Motown how they did it they wouldn't have a clue.
"lt's like everything coming together and there's a certain point where everything might overspill and you get this whirring sound coming off the hi hat. It's very hard to define what makes something that great."

And as they proclaim with one of many slogans ('Leeds, Detroit, Berlin, New York'), AOC are attempting to create
something "that great" in Leeds.

Neil: "I admire New Order and Cabaret Voltaire for the same reason. They've managed to keep what they do together and not to come to London every week."

Jan: "It makes what you do a lot more specific, makes it more focussed. We're not pro-Northerners but it does make a
difference that we've never been part of the London scene."

Neil: "I know parts of Leeds very well. Walking around them gives you a special feeling. You're not going to get that
walking around Hampstead."

Where will AOC pop up next? Not Leeds, Detroit, Berlin or New York but Barcelona.

Neil: "Over the last year we've moved up a league. We've graduated from the Three A's and are now going for the
Olympics. We want to be in there with A-ha and Bon Jovi."