Late GRIP INC. Singer GUS CHAMBERS Featured In New MANTRA SECT Video

October 21, 2008

Coventry, UK punk band MANTRA SECT has uploaded a new video (see below) for the song "Jesus Slaves" featuring the group's late vocalist Gus Chambers — a former member of the acclaimed late '90s metal band GRIP INC. — who passed away on October 13, 2008 at the age of 52. Chambers reportedly took his own life.

The clip features performance footage that was shot on May 8, 2008 at The Three Tuns in Coventry. MANTRA SECT bassist Wendy X said in an online posting, "What Gus did at the beginning while we were rehearsing was very typical of him! I thought he would ask me to change that bit but he loved the clip being on there. He made us laugh a lot."

According to the Coventry Telegraph, Chambers made a name for himself in the UK punk scene as the frontman for SQUAD in the late '70s. He later took his skills as a top notch front-man to the new band 21 GUNS. They released the single "Ambition Rock" on Neville Staples's Shack Records.

Gus later moved to America and formed SONS OF DAMNATION before hooking up with SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo and German guitarist Waldemar Sorychta in GRIP INC. They released three acclaimed albums in the mid-to-late '90s — "Power of Inner Strength" (1995),"Nemesis" (1997),and "Solidify" (1999) — and finally came back with a fourth entitled "Incorporated" in 2004, which was greeted as a true return to form by the critics.

In an October 15, 2008 online posting, MANTRA SECT bassist Wendy X stated about Gus' decision to take his own life, "My emotions are swimming round and round in my head, trying to comprehend it all, so I will not say too much on here except to say to everyone that has asked why, as I do myself, that we were always, as normal, constantly in contact with him (myself virtually daily) yet none of us saw this coming. Nor many other friends that also constantly kept in touch with him either. We are at a loss about why. My usual daily phone calls with Gus all the days leading up to this didn't give any clue whatsoever that anything was THIS wrong."

"I've been very lucky in my career," Gus once said, according to the Coventry Telegraph. "I have had the privilege of playing in front of thousands of people at festivals like Rock in Rio and the Dynamo festival in Holland. Nothing though brings back fonder memories than playing in front of maybe 20 or 30 people in The Hand and Heart or the back room of The Swanswell."

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