Intro

Opium Toad are a band based in Radcliffe-on-Trent, a large village just outside Nottingham. When exactly we formed is up for debate, sometime in 2006 is a decent estimate but we only really took on the name Opium Toad in early 2008. What we play could very generally be described as Rock and Metal but we are big fans of other genres which we like to incorporate into our music. Best attempts at describing our genre more specifically has resulted in names such as Melodic Progressive Stoner Rock, which somewhat describes what we do, but in reality we're still going to cover many different areas. Best idea would be to listen to some of stuff (available on the myspace) and make up your own mind.

Line Up

Full Name: Lawrence Lucas
Nickname: Lozz(ypop-pie)
Instrument: Drums
Other Skills: A bit of Flash animation, much confidence
Unofficial Skills: Overactive Fail Gland, Good at guitar hero (we're waiting for someone to destroy him at it)
Mini Bio: Started playing drums all on his own, slowly followed by the other members of the band. Seems to fall over a lot but actually doesn't, it just looks like he does.

Full Name: Krischan Newell-Büll
Nickname: Sharny
Instrument: Vocals / Rhythm Guitar
Other Skills: Web site stuff
Unofficial Skills: Ski instructoring, although technically that's not unofficial...
Mini Bio: Picked up learning to play guitar around half a year after Lawrence's voyage into learning the drums. Despite this, he doesn't practice enough (self admitted) and so is behind his former understudy in terms of guitar skills.

Full Name: Kieren Douglas
Nickname: Tubb / Tubbster / Tubby
Instrument: Lead Guitar
Other Skills: None, just very good at guitar. He did used to have some, but thankfully now it's just guitar.
Unofficial Skills: Grumpiness
Mini Bio: Decided to play guitar half a year after Sharny but through a combination of a much higher level of dedication and probably more inate talent quickly overtook Sharny in terms of guitar skills. Luckily he's not good at anything else otherwise he'd make the rest of us feel bad.

Full Name: Nicholas Holmes
Nickname: Nick
Instrument: Bass Guitar
Other Skills: Photoshop/Art/Design Stuff
Unofficial Skills: Not looking after his picks
Mini Bio: Started playing bass because we needed a bassist. Yes, he is just our bitch (figuratively). Despite this rocky start he is well on his way to bass grooviness.

History

The first sounds of what would become Opium Toad came from the early drum beats of Lawrence who took the first steps by deciding to start playing the drums. He was soon followed by the second member, Krischan, starting to play guitar. Soon this turned Lawrence's bedroom into the practice area that it remains to be to this day and was filled with the sounds of out of time drum beats and ear splitting feedback. After Lawrence and Krischan jammed a few times Tubb decided to pick up a guitar and joined in with the fun. They soon "asked" Nick to join them. By that we mean that we forced him to start playing Bass to fill the gap we had. After a long while of random practising lacking a vocalist Lawrence recruited Harrison Ball to do some vocals. A few practices later we realised that this arrangement wasn't the best for either of us so we parted ways with Harrison. A short while later we grabbed Talyor (the adventurer) to do our vocals and thought that would be us sorted.

Unfortunately this relationship wasn't to last. During Sharny's stint in the US as a Ski Instructor things went on as usual with Opium Toad taking on a more metal sound and feel. Towards the end of this stay however, Taylor unexectantly quit the band. Initially this was put down to him being grounded for a lengthy time by his parents although now many other stories seem to be thrown into the mixture. Either way though, Opium Toad were left distinctly lacking vocals and feeling much like being back at square one. Of course, in reality, we had come a long way from that start and had a decent base of material underneath us. All we needed was vocals. After unsucessfully seeking talent at Lozz's College we then looked inward, and Sharny was appointed as our vocalist.

At this point all our older material was scrapped as we found ourselves unable to feel comfortable playing it, so we went back to the drawing board in terms of writing. It was tough, but we've now come out of it with three completed songs and many more on the way, stronger than ever in the end. We're currently playing and writing as much as we can and are hoping to produce an EP in the coming months.