CAKE IS A LIE’S SECRET RECIPE

by Des Naughton
photos by Anse Bernard
Rock Yag July 2009

(Reprinted by permission.)

The Cake is a Lie UK are playing somewhere tonight. But for the moment, they’re lounging around one of the smaller suites at Manhattan’s Hotel Nevin, watching So You Think You Can Dance or playing Fallout 3 on their travel Playstation.

You may think that with a name derived from a video game, The Cake is aLie UK would be a bunch of pasty, bespectacled, cardigan-wrapped nerdcore twats who roll d20’s backstage. Well you’d only be half wrong.

Turns out immaculately styled lead singer Detroyt first met one of the other band members doing exactly that. “Yeah, I was living in London at the time,” she recalls, “and I was doing a show with Dwarf Toss Tragedy and we were bored waiting to get on. Here comes Garsus [Garsus Tannen from Blind Idiot God at the Center of the Universe – Ed.] and he folds out this mat and starts a pick-up D&D game. I saw this hot chick with pigtails playing with them and she like knew all the rules and shit and was like totally into it. I was like wtf?? So I started playing too.”

Lo and behold, the other babe who liked to throw bones with the nerds was none other than Akillina Azathotha, gothic empress and also drummer for BIGATCOTU. “I told her I totally dug her big ass black boots,” Detroyt says with a smile, “and she couldn’t stop talking about my glasses.” Yes, Detroyt is never found without her cheap stereoscopic 3Dglasses, something she picked up in a Chicago knickknackery to go with one of her more elaborate ensembles. Little did she know they would evolve into her distinctive trademark. “Ohmigod, all the girls at the shows wear them.And some of them are totally customized! It’s hilarious!”

 Detroyt and Akillina became instant friends, hitting it off spectacularly. Within a week, they had given each of their respective bands the finger and started focusing exclusively on their own joint projects. “It was awesome!” raves Akillina while chomping on a banana from a nearby fruitbowl. “We just started coming up with all this stuff and then making it happen. We had this one dolphin-based fashion show, and there was the lego movie, and you know…some songs here and there.” Akillina finishes this with an impish grin, knowing she’s modestly downplaying the success she’s had partnering with Detroyt: over 54 songs written in just a few sessions, and boutiques in New York and Camden already carry their uniquely bizarre clothing line, ‘Allah Provide’.

Last October they headed into The Wasteland, Lord Humungus‘ home studio,for some rehearsing. Akillina called up one of her vampire chums, Vlad(of Les Chic Impalers) to handle guitars. “He’s sick!” she rants, banging the table for emphasis, “Plus he dresses like a god. A hot goth god.” Not a man of many words, Vlad nods slowly, accepting this description with approving aplomb. Despite the zillions of songs and the giga-ergs of pent-up energy, the trio decided against spending time locked away in the studio, opting instead to take their newly hewn tunes on the road.

Lacking a decent bassplayer, they randomly ran into one while dancing at London hotspot, Forever Midnight. “I was bopping away,” recalls Detroyt,”and didn’t see anyone behind me and then whoops, there goes my trailersmash drink all over this dude.” The dude being, Fraz, five-star general of garage funk , Lord of Light and bass player for Orangello. “Fraz…yeah, Fraz is a little different. I can’t even say he’s outthere, coz I don’t even know where there is. But he’s the dopest bassplayer as long as we keep him off the psychotropic bus.” Together, they coughed up a name in about 60 seconds (“See! It’s coz we’re brilliant!”asserts Akillina), having to add the “UK” to avoid conflicts with a similarly named American band (“Losers,” quips Detroyt). With the quartet complete and ready to go, they headed out on tour, crisscrossing Europe relentlessly and even adding a second U.S. leg in March 2010.

When do they think they’ll take a break? “When my dogs run the gate,”answers Akillina cryptically. There you have it, straight from the Cake’s mouth.