1033 fans
Whitehouse was formed in 1980 in the United Kingdom by William Bennett, a former guitarist of Essential Logic, who adopted the name as a mock tribute to the British morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse and to a pornographic magazine of the same title; William Bennett, born in 1960, served as the band’s sole constant member and primary vocalist throughout its existence. The group’s first breakthrough came with the self‑released Birthdeath Experience in 1980, immediately followed by Total Sex the same year, both issued on William Bennett’s Come Organisation label and establishing Whitehouse’s reputation for extreme electronic sound; the following year the band released Erector, which introduced a new sonic palette featuring subsonic frequencies and high‑pitched screeches. Whitehouse began performing live in 1982, with early appearances featuring guest musicians such as Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio and Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound, and the lineup stabilized in the mid‑1980s with the addition of Philip Best on electronics and Peter Sotos on synth in 1983, forming a trio that would produce most of the group’s output until 2003. The discography expanded with Dedicated to Peter Kurten (1981), Buchenwald (1981), New Britain (1982), Psychopathia Sexualis (1982), Right to Kill (1983), and Great White Death (1985), before a hiatus in the late 1980s; the band resurfaced in 1990 with Thank Your Lucky Stars, produced by Steve Albini, and continued with Twice Is Not Enough (1992), Never Forget Death (1992), Halogen (1994), Quality Time (1995), Mummy and Daddy (1998), Cruise (2001), Bird Seed (2003), Asceticists (2006), and Racket (2007). Whitehouse’s work was frequently released on the Susan Lawly label, and the band also issued several live albums and compilations, including Live Actions – Volume 24 (2000) and History Of Abuse series (2000). The group’s controversial lyrics and imagery, which portrayed sadistic themes from the perspectives of notorious serial killers, led to widespread notoriety and influenced the development of the power electronics genre; their status was recognized in 1996 when Alternative Press listed them among the 100 underground inspirations of the past 20 years, and in 2003 the album Bird Seed received an honourable mention in the digital music category of Austria’s Prix Ars Electronica. After a final tour in 2007, William Bennett announced the dissolution of Whitehouse in 2008 to focus on his Cut Hands project, and the band’s catalogue has since been reissued by various independent labels, cementing its legacy within the extreme electronic and noise music communities.
