Lords of Acid

While it seems implausible, Lords of Acid have not always been the mega-cool super cult we know and love. Yes, there was a time where they were not the bulwark of sex, substance, style, and nether-darkness. There were simpler, more innocent times ...

Back in the primitive days of yore - somewhat after the waterwheel was brought to Europe, a uniquely gifted group of somehow different, yet fated, individuals were brought forth onto The Continent - as they called it then - by an unknowing group of parents.

Maurice Engelen, whom we all know better as Praga Khan, was born to a father who was a Noble winning mathematician and astrophysicist, with a penchant for absinthe, along with strange, skunky cigarettes. Yes, Mom was there, too! And what a mom! Praga's mother was a rebel for her times and worked to support the family as a migrant construction worker.

Praga's fascination with industrial sounds and rhythm laid its entwined roots in his early childhood while strapped to his mother's back as she performed her welding work in buildings towering high above the earth, echoing with the sounds of jackhammers, big trucks burrowing, and the soulful singing of the workers. Its harkening thought today still brings tears to his eyes.

His father passed to his son his fascination with numbers and alternate realities. Praga notes being to many different worlds during his travels. He understands his music, when he can be coaxed into an explanation, to explore varied perceptions of the mathematical impossibility of two objects being in the same time, place, and dimension. He attributes a correct comprehension of the harmonic convergences implied in their musical themata, to be a key in the explanation of the freak and random disappearance of a number of noted Lords enthusiasts. (The suits being pressed have been settled, though. It was Marilyn Manson, not the Lords. And they were nowhere near Colorado.)

Nikkie Van Lierop, as everyone knows, "Darling Nikkie" - or "Nikkie Darling" in Japan, came from a family decanted from the glory days of the Imperial Russian court. It is believed that her father was the illegitimate offspring of the scourge of Moscow - perhaps all Russia, Rasputin. Her mother was one of the foremost followers of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. It is felt that Nikkie's unusual powers of persuasion and animal magnetism derived from that genetic matter imbued with the superhuman abilities manifested by Rasputin, and that her mother provided the insight and experience in guiding her development.

Following what was recounted to her as being a slight matter of family, her family quietly, but hurriedly, slipped out of Mother Russia in the very tender years of her infancy, so she remembers little of its regal flame. She grew up amidst the Belgian countryside, learning its language and customs. As she entered her early teens she became increasingly headstrong, and equally obsessed with the sexual darkness that was - Mick Jagger. Following a major brouhaha with her family and the sound of her heart, she set off to London in search of him. Unfortunately, Mick had found Bianca and was in the midst of their big American tour. This was how Nikkie ultimately found herself a regular of King's Road and became one of the reigning queens of the punk scene. If you can name them - she was with them. Yes. All of them. She took up music, forming several high profile, glorious, but ultimately failed bands, X-Rated Specs, The Sex Pistils, and The Talking Head. As Punk turned to New Wave, enchantment turned to disgust and she found herself returning home to Belgium to start her own scene and do further bands.

Oliver Adams, whom we all know as Oliver Adams, is the heir to the Stella fortune. Stella, being Belgium's premium connoisseur brew, has been exported throughout the world. So has Oliver. Oliver's childhood, too, was an unusual one. His parents, ever vigilant against the perils of war, took up residence beneath the earth. They seized upon a project of burrowing deep into the earth's bowels and, using layers of aging tanks for their beer, built an airtight underworld infrastructure, the inside of which they inhabited during most of his younger years. His mother was a master pianist and their hutch regularly resonated with the eerie sounds of her piano or clavinet echoing throughout the long empty metal halls. His father, Lorre Adams, because of his profile and note as a world traveler, was sought out by the Belgian ruling council to act as a surreptitious examiner of foreign evils - in short a spy on behalf of the Belgian King.

Due to his family's prominence and his father's not so covert activities, Oliver and his twin brother Ferdy, were abducted several times during Oliver's rise to young adulthood. When Mother, as he so lovingly nicknamed her, began losing the battle with age, Oliver determined it was best to sprout wings and leave the roost so as not to be a source of leverage against his wearied family. Fo