Band's success set to erupt

A rock band featuring University of Teesside lecturer Alex Gillett is celebrating glowing praise from the national music press.

The Eruptors - featuring the part-time lecturer in the University's Business School on guitar - are celebrating the release of their first album Bad Time To Be Having a Good Time.

The album, released through independent record label Maniac Squat, has earned instant critical praise, with Kerrang! magazine proclaiming it 'a turbo-injected, ozone burning blast of garage-rock.'

Alex, 30, of Nunthorpe, has two degrees from the University, a BA (Hons) Business Studies and an MSc Marketing Management and is currently completing a Business PhD, so has been able to draw on his own expertise to help promote the band.

He said: 'It's a good feeling to finally have the album released. It's taken a lot of effort, but it has been worth every ounce of energy that we have put into this.

'Teesside Business School has always been supportive and enabled me to pursue my music career around the work that I do here. I've been able to use and develop the knowledge I've learned from my studies and now that I lecture, I am able to give a bit back as I have used some of my experiences in the music business and examples in lectures.'

He added: 'We sent out lots of demos and did a lot of groundwork and eventually our CD was passed on to a record company. We've been building up to this for a few years.'

They recorded their album at their Eruptors HQ recording studios in Ireland. The band's growing popularity has also secured them worldwide album sales through the likes of iTunes, Amazon, hmv.com and play.com.

Alex, with drummer Gareth Smith and singer/bassist Jeff Irwin, have played shows in America and worked with Skelton artist Andy Tilley, of Sumpdoggy Designs, to create T-shirts and underwear modelled on their website by glamour model Nancy Fleur.

Andy's artwork can be seen in the collectable six-panel CD packaging and picture CD with the initial 1,000 pressings of the album. The concept album has a sci-fi theme based on war in space which damages the solar system, leaving its survivors to deal with a post-apocalyptic existence.

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