One of the crop of great bands to surface for 1992’s Operation Music Storm competition 147 Swordfish made the finals coming second and impressing judges and audience with their well crafted sound and strongly melodic undercurrent. Songs like ‘love’ are upliftingly pop while other tracks such as ‘Hang’ drive solidly with it’s distorted bass backbone and deep ringing guitars. 147 Swordfish are melodic and smooth or poundingly tough depending on where in the song you catch them – definitely dynamic. The band consisted of David Wernham (Guitar/Vocals), Mark Tyler (Bass), Dave Deacons (Drums).
The band cut an unusual shape live with the wiry frame of Tyler standing motionless to the right, Deacons animatedly enjoying playing drums, and the hulking figure of Wernham looming over his guitar, usually extruding rivers of sweat. The band recorded 7 songs with Rob Mayes and Failsafe records for the Avalanche and Good Things project. 2 songs were left unfinished and one track remains unreleased. The band were recorded live which included a version of sublime new song ‘Freeze’, also unreleased.
Dave Wernham was at times a difficult character to deal with, but there was no denying his deft hang with a cool melody and driving song. The band were performing a number of excellent songs before they gave up 147 Swordfish for other projects, Tyler and Deacon to Salmonella Dub and Wernham to his sound engineering, eventually touring with bands like Shihad. As good a live engineer as Dave Wernham is it’s a loss to the pop world that he hasn’t pursued his song writing any further. the bands last performances were in 1994.
-Rob Mayes (Failsafe)