“People want to get onstage and stagedive, but if you run into me, you’re not coming back. There’s a Travis Bean-shaped dent in someone’s head”: Duane Denison on the inspired return of the Jesus Lizard – and that time he tried to sell Steve Howe a guitar

Each time the Jesus Lizard make their way back to the stage, it’s cause for celebration. Even so, when the hard-bruising rock quartet dropped into Nashville’s Blue Room venue within the Third Man Records building this past June, the excitement was markedly different.

Just the day before, the group – who have been maintaining an off-and-on reunion phase since 2008 – officially announced Rack, their first full-length release since the late ’90s. The show likewise featured the live debut of Hide & Seek, the record’s manically concussive lead-off track, which easily proves that the Jesus Lizard’s confrontational spirit remains intact nearly 40 years after the project first got off the ground.

And sure enough, guitarist Duane Denison confirms that sweat-slicked vocalist David Yow was once again surfing his way above their fans, his steel-toe-pointed cowboy boots kicking dangerously against the wind. Something has changed since that first era, though: Yow’s mostly fully clothed now.

“I think he starts off with a shirt these days – he’s not full Iggy – but the boots are still there. He still goes out in the crowd, maybe not quite as much; we worry about that,” Denison says from his Nashville home, alluding to the fact that all four members have now crossed well into their 60s.

“But David Sims is playing his bass; to my left I’ve got Mac [McNeilly] playing drums. Everything’s dialed in, and away we go! The Jesus Lizard takes on a life of its own; I’m a cog in the machine here, but it’s good.”

Denison has been keeping himself well-oiled this whole time. Since Jesus Lizard’s initial dissolution, he’s made five albums of fractiously experimental alt-metal as part of Tomahawk, alongside Mr. Bungle’s Mike Patton; he’s also backed country outlaw Hank Williams III and cut a loose-cannon solo on Morning, Noon and Night from Jack White’s Fear of the Dawn album in 2022. Denison nevertheless admits there was something extra special about getting the Jesus Lizard back in the studio.

Formed in Austin in 1988 by Denison, Sims and Yow, the Jesus Lizard initially delivered art-damaged post-punk subversion with the help of a drum machine.

By the time they moved to Chicago just ahead of the Nineties, they picked up jackhammer percussionist in McNeilly, and together they produced a mean-streaked, unbeatable four-album run with producer Steve Albini, from 1990’s Head through to 1994’s Down.

While heroes within the noise-driven American underground, they also put out a split 7-inch with Nirvana when the latter were at peak-grunge popularity; toured on the mainstage of Lollapalooza in 1995; and by 1996, they’d signed to Capitol Records to deliver Shot.

But then McNeilly left the band before they made 1998’s Blue – which featured drummer Jim Kimball – and while the record teeters toward the bone-grinding intensity of their early work, outliers like the electronica-touched Needles for Teeth seem a little weird to the band, in retrospect.

Conceptualized around 2019 and tracked in late 2023, Rack isn’t exactly a back-to-basics affair for the Jesus Lizard, but Denison’s playing does hold common ground with the decadently slurred jazz licking of Goat’s iconic opening Then Comes Dudley or blues-staggered punch-ups like Puss off of 1992’s Liar. He’s a jazz-trained player who grew up loving prog but was drawn in by the stately post-punk inkiness of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Killing Joke.

Rack reflects all of that and more, whether Denison’s riding a coal-black phosphorescent surf (Dunning Kruger); expressing wide-interval wonkiness (Hide & Seek); or plinking through a newly semi-acoustic kind of creepiness (Swan the Dog).

The album finds the rest of the group in fine, brute form, too. Sims aggressively leans into a series of mid-twonked walking bass freakouts, while his low-end solo on the roadhouse-leveling Lord Godiva is fit with just enough teeth-baring fuzz to show you he means business. Frontman Yow retains his recognizably drawled-and-scratchy, melody-damaged menace. McNeilly’s max-punishment beating is straight but savage.

Indeed, the latest return of the Jesus Lizard – this time in album form – is welcome news to many. To put it as Yow does above the slow-lurching doom-blues of Rack’s Armistice Day, “now the pain is returning.” And damn… does it ever feel good.

There are naturally some similarities between your playing in Tomahawk and the Jesus Lizard. Is there a different kind of consideration you put into the riffs when you’re writing for a vocalist like David Yow, versus someone like Mike Patton?

“In the bigger scene, Britpop was in; techno was in; hip-hop was in. Everything except guitar-driven hard-rock bands. That last album, Blue, was produced by [Gang of Four guitarist] Andy Gill; we were encouraged by the label to ‘modernize,’ so there are samples on that record and touches of drum machines here and there. And… no-one cared!

“Even diehard fans have never heard that record. It’s probably out of print, and Capitol are not going to do anything with it, because it didn’t sell that much. I was glad to see that chapter close. We all went about our business and dispersed from Chicago. One guy went to New York; I went to Nashville; another guy went to L.A.; one guy stayed in Chicago.

“But when we started playing the reunion shows in 2009, it was liberating. It was gratifying that people wanted to hear those old songs, and wanted to see us play – and that we could still deliver!

“It took a while to get us all on the same page to do this album, but I’m hoping that the reaction will be like when we came back and started playing shows, where people go, ‘Wow, I’d figured you’d be good, but not that good.’”

Hide & Seek tees off this phase as the first single and opening track on Rack. The sound of those two dissonant-run lead breaks feels different within your repertoire.

“I loved working with David Sims. He was on the same wavelength. Organized. A ‘plan-your-work-and work-your-plan’ kind of guy. We seemed to hit it off right from the start. Our first rehearsals were in an abandoned house [in Austin] where the electricity hadn’t been shut off yet.

“Oh, it’s the best feeling in the world. You know, I’ve done a lot of stuff since we last did a record – I’ve done five albums with Tomahawk; I did some one-offs with other projects; I’ve played on sessions for other people. But to have the Jesus Lizard back? It seems like there’s a level of excitement I didn’t quite see with the other projects. People are so happy to hear that we’re back. We’re all super-psyched about this album. We want people to hear it, and we want people to come and see us.”

Yow’s still getting out in the crowd, but how much action are you seeing onstage? Any accidents or mishaps?

“There’s been some altercations over the years that we’ve all been involved in – pushing and shoving; maybe the odd punch. I try to avoid that these days, for a lot of reasons, but there was a time when that was part of the job.

“People want to get onstage and stagedive, but if you run into me, you’re not coming back. Like, don’t run into us; don’t trip over the pedals. That’s half the reason I didn’t use pedals for years – it was just chaotic mayhem. I feel like, ‘You know what, if you want to get on stage, go out and get your own band together.’”

Is there a head-shaped dent in one of your old Travis Beans?

“There’s a Travis Bean-shaped dent in someone’s head, more like it. Those things don’t dent easily.”

• Rack is out now via Ipecac.