The Chemists were fuelled by a diet of Queens Of The Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Pixies and The Police, but underpinned by vocalist Johnny Benns unique way with words and turbo-charged vocals and lead guitarist Sam James heart-on-sleeve love of a heroic melody, they rehearsed in an old aircraft hangar and emerged with a startlingly magnificent debut album packed with enormous tunes, manly guitar riffs and sharply incisive lyrics.
Album ‘The Theories of Dr. Lovelock’ opens with an introduction by the much revered British actor Richard E Grant, whose signature vocals lead into the opening track This City, which details what happens when drugs and drink meet jet lag and hookers in Hong Kong, as experienced by vocalist Johnny Benn firsthand. The album title refers to the bands admiration for the independent scientist James Lovelock who is known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of super -organism. He first formulated the theory in the 1960s as a result of work for NASA concerned with detecting life on Mars, the Gaia hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism. Originally this concept was much discredited but now with climate change on the agenda, the scientific community has revalued his proposal. He also was the inventor of the electron capture detector (which made possible the detection of CFCs and other atmospheric nano-pollutants) and of the microwave oven!
The Chemists have toured with Feeder, Boxer Rebellion and The Music, amongst others.
