Known more for its noise rock and hip-hop scenes, Chicago had one group that bucked the t-shirt and jeans combo that was a staple of indie rock. Formed in 1984, Urge Overkill released its early albums on the local independent label Touch & Go, before signing to the Nirvana-approved Geffen/DGC in 1993. The group would also tour with the band in North America and Europe during the Nevermind tour cycle. UO also hit the road with Pearl Jam during the Vs. tour. On its own headlining tour in the summer of 1993, Grand Royal Records’ Luscious Jackson opened the tour.
“Looking good as much as sounding good is sort of what brought us together,” the band’s gangly, flaxen-haired, perennially wraparound-shaded hipster co-frontman, Nash Kato, told fanzine Porkchops & Applesauce in 1995, as he recalled the kinship he felt with his bandmates and fellow pop provocateurs, Eddie “King” Roeser and Onassis. “They seemed to uphold a certain fashion sense in the midst of this sort of strange, fascist, industrial-techno, Anglophilic, homophobic, misogynistic punk-rock look and scene. We all seemed to be displaced or switched at birth or something. As far as I could tell, Ed and Blackie were the only two motherf***ers who were not happy with the [Chicago] situation. So, we jumped in some magic suits and started playing pop songs on 11. Needless to say, that didn’t go over too well. We were sort of exiled for a while — exiled in Guyville.”
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Released a full year before the Beastie Boys’ epic 70s crime caper video for Sabatoge, Sister Havana would land in heavy rotation on MuchMusic and MTV in 1993. An early recording of the group’s cover of Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon from its Stull EP ended up on the popular Pulp Fiction soundtrack, cementing the band firmly in the zeitgeist of the times. Having spent time in the studio with Steve Albini (Pixies, Nirvana, Shellac) and Butch Vig (Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Garbage), UO decided to bring in hip-hop producers Joe and Phil Nicolo aka The Butcher Brothers (Ruffhouse Records, Cypress Hill, Schooly D.) to get the most out of its major label deal and make sure they had the biggest sounding record on the block.
“We wanted to have a very big-sounding record,” explained Nash Kato. “Our early recordings sounded pretty small, then you’d go see us live and it was a very big sound; we were always trying to capture that live sound on tape. So, we thought, ‘What’s the biggest-sounding stuff out right now?’ All this indie crap wasn’t sounding very big — and this sort of recent glorification of lo-fi, I don’t get it myself. The biggest-sounding stuff seemed to be in hip-hop, and the better-sounding hip-hop seemed to be coming from the Butchers’ laboratories: Cypress Hill, Schoolly D. We all agreed that was the toughest shit out there. We were floored when they agreed to do the project. They’d never recorded rock bands before.”
“We had gotten [punk] out of our system,” said Eddie “King” Roeser. “Chicago is sort of seen as more of industrial, like noise rock, and we were working with [Big Black’s] Steve Albini, who's known for, like, sheets of violent noise. And we always wanted to hear the vocals on our record; our records always turned out sounding more sludgy than we wanted them to. … So, when we were signed, we were like, ‘OK, we're gonna turn towards something that we couldn't do before.’ Sure, it was pretty easy to do a noise record over a weekend, but the type of multi-layered pop we were trying to achieve took a while to make. We were like, ‘Well, if we're gonna sign to a major, we’re gonna use the time to get it exactly right, how we want it.’ Our dream was to make some records that could be listened to anywhere and everywhere, even at the grocery store. We just wanted to be on the radio.”
Saturation may be one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated albums of the era.
In typical ‘90s fashion, UO featured a hidden track that would play after the last song, Heaven 90210, if left playing. If you like some stompin’ ZZ-Top style guitar rock, be sure to check out the hidden cut Operation Kissinger below.
The group released Oui in 2022, its first new album in a decade.
