Imagine the scene. It is 1985. Queen, of all mainstream rock bands, haven’t even played their famous concert at Budapest’s Népstadion. Test Dept, radical bashers from south-east London, have just broken through the Iron Curtain, bringing their clattering form of industrial music. Their aural and visual assault has already been staged in the railway arches and church crypts of London. Shortly before collecting their visas to appear at more conventional concert venues in Socialist capitals, the pioneers of the Stakhanovite Sound have played benefits around the UK to support striking miners.
“We had a show at the Petőfi Csarnok,” remembers Jamrozy. “Before we set up, we had to present our material to the promoter to convince him that we weren’t doing anything subversive. He was OK with the music” – thrashed out on bits of metal the band had found around the post-industrial wastelands of London – “but then he asked to see the visuals…”
Unhappy with the revolutionary collages created by Brett Turnbull, the promoter forced the later sought-after video producer to splice out images of martial law in Poland, a painstaking process with the primitive Super 8 film used back then.
“But Budapest felt more liberal than, say, Czechoslovakia,” says Jamrozy. “And they wouldn’t even let us into East Germany!”
The band also had ties with the seminal Hungarian punk/industrial outfit Art Deco and their leader, György Soós, whom Jamrozy recently met when Test Dept played Los Angeles on their current world tour to promote latest release, Disturbance.
A lot of murky water has flowed under the bridge since 1985. The Berlin Wall fell and Test Dept, after embracing the new electronic dance culture, went their different ways. Jamrozy worked on a musical project with young offenders in Reading Gaol to create a contemporary sonic rendition inspired by former inmate Oscar Wilde. C33 refers to the poet’s cell number.
All the while, though, Test Dept rumbled in the undergrowth. “We took part in a special production along the Tyne in Newcastle to mark the anniversary of the Miners’ Strike,” says Jamrozy, “and we also raked over a lot of old material for the limited-edition archive book about the band, Total State Machine”.
Jamrozy and fellow founding member, Graham Cunnington, having tried out a show with laptops, “realised that we needed a real live experience”.
Upped popped Austrian video director David Altweger and drummer Zel Kaute, and soon Test Dept were a going concern again.
Releasing Disturbance earlier this year, the band have just played across America for the first time since the 1990s. The current European tour takes in Portugal, Prague, Poland, Budapest, Italy and Switzerland.
“Once we get back, we’ll be looking to write new material and then take that out on the road,” says Jamrozy. Certainly, the social and political conditions that drove the band to pick up piping in 1981 haven’t gone away – if anything, Test Dept are needed more than ever.
Test Dept A38 Ship District XI. Petőfi híd budai hídfő Thursday, 7 November Tickets here
