When people talk about WAS - and talk they do, heatedly - certain words can be trusted to surface. Listed, they read like a Who's Who of action verbs: barrel roll, back flip, bikini wax, and others, all beginning with the letter b.

Ask yourself this: ask yourself what you personally would want in a rock band. Would you want a guitar that alternately screams a throaty scream and recites heartbreaking verse? A bass like a bottomless pool of Coke Slurpee - deep, dark, invigorating? Fevered drums crackling like a bowl of Rice Krispies with a megaphone, contagious as even the sexiest of the African airborne viruses? Would you even bother asking for three part harmonies this tight?

Assembled, Voltron-like, in the 2000 Berkeley Spring, WAS soon migrated South on the belief that Hollywood, and her daughters, needed them. Though their logic was sound - Lara Flynn Boyle foundering in the arms of a septuagenarian; Ms. Zeta-Jones trading prenuptual caveats with a man twice her age and at least half-again as sketchy - none of the scientists, not one, managed to secure the disposable vows of a starlet. Severely disillusioned by reality's failure to jibe with statistical certainty (or, for that matter, with a poetic unravelling of fate), WAS pulled up their tent stakes, rented out their mansion, and boarded an East-bound military transport, leaving behind the eager foundations of an empire and many thousands of fans seizing as one.

They touched down with admirable aplomb on the top right coast, and by combining Pinochet's indomitable passion for winning, Margaret Thatcher's bullheaded work ethic, and the Gipper's flair for a nice soft shoe, we are scientists were able to survive the heat of their first New York summer, if narrowly. That fall, as the temperature abdicated its hold on a city's will, WAS rushed to fill the power vacuum. A year and half downstream, rock's none-too-thorny crown is still up for grabs. But odds-makers are calm as a cookie, a stale, lifeless cookie. One look at the website, one listen to the albums, one appraisal of the firmness of each band member's ass... that's all it usually takes. Those in the know have read the writing on the wall, and boy do they like what they see: WAS sell CD/t-shirt combo-deal to every French-man, -woman, and -child; WAS design cheap jeans that fit like designer jeans, sell for designer prices; WAS win presidency in landslide, American people demand recount . . .

we are scientists is a band with one almost strangely simple objective: to play music so raucus and catchy, to do it with such canine intensity and Sinatran panache, that listeners by the millions will be not just enlivened but enlightened, not merely vandalized but broken into and looted, so that, with borderless gratitude and amity, some large, meta-representational world organization, such as NATO or FIFA, suspends from the band's three skinny necks by tricolored ribbon medallions, medallions made of gold or at least convincingly gilded, in a well attended ceremony in a banquet hall built just for this occasion on, like, Earth's moon.

Releases

• Brain Thrust Mastery - album, out 24/03/2008 on Virgin. 1 review (read/post)
• With Love And Squalor - album, out 17/10/2005 on Virgin. 1 review (read/post)
• Great Escape - single, out 03/10/2005 on Virgin. (post review)
• Nobody Move, Nobody Gets Hurt - single, out 27/06/2005 on Virgin. 1 review (read/post)

Past events

• Reading Festival Saturday, Sat 23 Aug at Reading Richfield Avenue. (post review)
• Wed 20 Aug at Glasgow Carling Academy. (post review)
• Tue 15 Jul at London Somerset House. (post review)
• T In The Park Saturday, Sat 12 Jul at Kinross T In The Park. (post review)
• Glastonbury Firday, Fri 27 Jun at Glastonbury Festival. (post review)
• Sun 27 Apr at Paris Nouveau Casino. (post review)
• Fri 25 Apr at London Shepherds Bush Empire. (post review)
• Thu 24 Apr at London Shepherds Bush Empire. (post review)
• Wed 23 Apr at Bristol Academy. (post review)
• Tue 22 Apr at Southampton Guildhall. (post review)
• Sun 20 Apr at Norwich UEA. (post review)
• Sat 19 Apr at Nottingham Rock City. (post review)
• Fri 18 Apr at Birmingham Academy. (post review)
• Thu 17 Apr at Sheffield Octagon at Sheffield University. (post review)
• Tue 15 Apr at Manchester Academy. (post review)
• Mon 14 Apr at Newcastle upon Tyne Northumbria University. (post review)
• Sun 13 Apr at Aberdeen The Music Hall. (post review)
• Sat 12 Apr at Glasgow Barrowlands. (post review)
• Thu 13 Dec at Northampton New Roadmender. (post review)
• Fri 07 Dec at Dundee Fat Sam's. (post review)
• Thu 29 Nov at Bangor University of Wales. (post review)
• Sun 25 Nov at Oxford Morals Bar (Oxford Brookes SU). (post review)
• Little Noise Sessions, Fri 23 Nov at London Union Chapel. (post review)
• Tue 20 Nov at Swansea University SU. (post review)
• Sun 18 Nov at Southampton University SU. 1 review (read/post)
• Sat 17 Nov at Plymouth University Student Union. (post review)
• Fri 16 Nov at Derby Sub Bar. (post review)
• Thu 15 Nov at Peterborough The Cressett. (post review)
• Tue 13 Nov at Norwich UEA. (post review)
• Mon 12 Nov at Keele University. (post review)
• Sun 11 Nov at Leicester DeMontfort Uni.. (post review)
• Sat 10 Nov at Guildford University of Surrey SU. (post review)
• Thu 08 Nov at Leeds Metropolitan University Union. (post review)
• Wed 07 Nov at Edinburgh Potter Row (Edinburgh University SU). (post review)
• Wed 07 Nov at Inverness Ironworks. (post review)
• Tue 06 Nov at Whitehaven Civic Hall. (post review)
• Mon 05 Nov at Preston 53 Degrees. (post review)
• Sat 03 Nov at Middlesbrough Empire. (post review)
• Carling Weekend Leeds Festival - Sunday, Sun 26 Aug at Leeds Bramham Park. (post review)
• Carling Weekend Reading Festival - Saturday, Sat 25 Aug at Reading Little John's Farm. (post review)
• Wed 28 Feb at Bournemouth Old Fire Station. (post review)
• NME Chart Show, Tue 27 Feb at London Astoria. (post review)
• Sun 25 Feb at Loughborough University. (post review)
• Fri 10 Nov at London Brixton Academy. (post review)
• Thu 09 Nov at London Brixton Academy. (post review)
• Tue 07 Nov at Southampton Guildhall. (post review)
• Sat 04 Nov at Nottingham Rock City. (post review)
• Fri 03 Nov at Birmingham Academy. 1 review (read/post)
• Thu 02 Nov at Reading Hexagon. (post review)
• Fri 20 Oct at Norwich UEA. (post review)
• Festival Internacional de Benicassim, Thu 20 Jul at Spain Benicassim. 1 review (read/post)
• Thu 06 Apr at Bristol Anson Rooms. (post review)
• NME Bus Tour, Fri 17 Feb at London Brixton Academy. (post review)
• NME Awards Tour, Wed 15 Feb at Portsmouth Guildhall. 1 review (read/post)
• Tue 14 Feb at Reading Fez Club. (post review)
• Sat 08 Oct at Oxford Zodiac / Academy 2. 1 review (read/post)
• Mon 22 Aug at Manchester Bierkeller. 1 review (read/post)
• Mon 04 Apr at London Islington Bar Academy. 1 review (read/post)

News

• 16/06/2008: Chart round-up: departed members
• 12/05/2008: Adele, Duffy, Justice and more for Somerset House concert series
• 24/03/2008: Chart round-up: bite-size Bank Holiday edition
• 24/01/2008: We are tourists: is this colon necessary?
• 07/11/2007: Clarification: We Are Scientists self-help sessions
• 02/11/2007: I Was Scientist: tour unaffected, says band, as drummer quits
• 29/10/2007: Animal testing: Frightened Rabbit tour with We Are Scientists
• 30/08/2007: We Are Scientists: November tour announced
• 29/01/2007: We Are Scientists. We are on tour. Almost...
• 17/10/2006: We Are Scientists launch their Crap Attack

Features

• 09/06/2008: Singles Round-up (09/06/08)
• 21/05/2008: The Great Escape 2008: the DiS review
• 20/05/2008: In Photos special: The Great Escape 2008
• 21/03/2008: Brain Trust: We Are Scientists embrace band-life a second time around
• 07/11/2005: A Month in Records: October 2005

Links

• WAS Online - official site

User ratings