Biography
-
Members
- H.O. Morgan
Gonga is a British stoner metal band from Bristol formed 1998 by Will Smalley, Thomas Elgie and George Elgie (and originally called Octane Bud). They cite their influences as "Iron Monkey, Earth, Jimi Hendrix, Melvins, The Who, Obituary, Kyuss, Burning Witch and many other earth/soul moving bands/thoughts….." They were originally a purely instrumental group until they were joined Joe Volk, who became their part-time vocalist.
Their self-titled debut album was released in 2003 through Invada Records with Volk as full-time vocalist. In early 2004, one of their founding members, Will Smalley, left the band to be replaced by The Heads bass player Hugo Morgan. However, due to band committments with The Heads later in the year, Morgan left. Another bass player, Hallam Kite, stepped into the position in 2006, but left later in the year as their eagerly awaited second album was being mixed. The open bass position briefly went to Chris West (of Taint), before being filled by Peter Theobalds (ex-Akercocke) in mid 2007.
After recording sophomore album II: Transmigration, lead vocalist Joe Volk left the band in 2007 and joined Crippled Black Phoenix. As an instrumental three-piece, full-length album Concrescence followed in 2013 through new imprint ToneHenge Recordings.
For Record Store Day 2014 the band released 12" single "Black Sabbeth" containing a cover of Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath" featuring guest vocals by Beth Gibbons of Portishead.
The current line up is:
George Elgie- Guitar
Thomas Elgie- Drums
Latch Manghat - Bass
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
