In 1984, drummer Dennis Butler and rough-throated Dawn Crosby form the band Détente, with Jim Tutone on guitar and Rob Farr on bass. Dawn and Dennis had by then already played together in Allies. Dawn had been active even before that, in a band called First Attack in London, 1983.

In April, Détente record their first demo, a three-track effort that includes tracks such as "Shattered Illusions" and "Vultures in the Sky". Song themes primarily revolve around the atrocities of society as opposed to inner horrors that would surface in later recordings. Although Jim Tutone was the principal author of both "Vultures in the Sky" and "Shattered Illusions", it's not him that's on that first demo. Fred Rascon replaces Jim on guitar after both Tutone and Farr leave the band because of a big argument with Dawn. Fred leaves later, too. But Dennis and Dawn persevere, and through adverts in music magazines they attract the attentions of Caleb Quinn (guitar), Ross Robinson (guitar) and Steve Hochheiser (bass). Steve has been on stage before with Lizzy Borden.

'We started to play the club circuit in L.A. a few weeks later, which were the band's first gigs,' Steve Hochheiser recalls from these early days. 'Ross and I wrote the music to "Losers", "Widows Walk" and "Blood I Bleed" around that time.' This is also the line-up that records the second demo, which includes "Shattered Illusions" and "Vultures in the Sky" from the first demo, coupled with "Holy War" and "Widows Walk". This demo tape results in a lot of interest from record labels, including Combat, Noise, Music for Nations, Metal Blade and Roadrunner. A record deal is made with Metal Blade (US) and Roadrunner, the latter because the band reckoned they would be more successful in Europe. A rough version of "Widows Walk" is put on Metal Massacre VII (Metal Blade, 1986), even though, so Steve claims, 'we hated Brian Slagel' [boss of Metal Blade].

Détente play a lot of gigs in the Bay Area until they are banned after a riot breaks out at a gig with Megadeth and Dark Angel. 'Dawn and Dennis had bad feelings towards Dave Mustaine and Dave Ellefson of Megadeth,' Steve remembers, 'they lived together at the same place, where the Dave twins ran up a huge phone bill, refusing to pay for it after they took off.' At this gig, Dawn starts pelting Megadeth with filled beer cans, which ends in a riot. After that, gigs in L.A. are almost impossible to get.

Later that year, the band record "Recognize no Authority". They choose Dana Strum for a producer, due to the fact that he has good contacts with a top recording studio in L.A. called Baby O's. 'We paid him a third of our US$ 12,000 recording budget,' Steve says, 'Dana was an expert at scamming the studio for time. The band always started recording at 10 PM and usually finished at 7 AM, to avoid studio management. We would slip the nighttime workers a twenty each so we could borrow outboard equipment from the other artists (outboard gear from Michael Jackson was used on "Recognize no Authority"). We would also say we used 4 hours despite using 8 or 9. Studio time was US$ 175 per hour, so Dana's large piece of the budget was recovered quickly. I think it took about nine days to record the album'. Around that time, Dawn Crosby and Dennis Butler get married.

In the studio, problems quickly arise. 'Dawn would walk out of the studio after any disagreement,' Steve sighs, 'and after one of these episodes I went to her place and woke her up and started screaming at her.' Dawn goes back to the studio that night, but Steve is not allowed to go near her during her tracks. The result of all these trials and tribulations, however, doesn't fail to impress. Rooted in punk-rock, the tracks on "Recognize no Authority" are pretty straightforward and the politically oriented lyrics a far cry from the masterpieces that were yet to emerge. Reviewers consider the album a fine one.

Even before the album is released, Dana Strum has the potential to round up acts for the "Trick or Treat" soundtrack. 'Because Dana refused to work with Dawn after having worked with her on "Recognize no Authority"', says Steve, 'we inquired about the availability of a couple of singers and were planning on using Dennis on drums if it came to pass.' They tell Dennis of their plans, and Dawn reacts heavily to that. The Détente recording line-up plays a few more gigs, ending with a show at the Country Club in Reseda. Then the band decides to take a break. Dennis has a work-related accident with some type of acid, getting burned over a large part of his body. Dawn goes to Europe on a promotional tour. The individual members of the band go their own ways. This eventually leads to Steve and Ross leaving to form Catalepsy (called after the instrumental on "Recognize no Authority" that they'd written). They are replaced by LSN member Greg Cekalovich (guitar), George Robb (ex-Agent Steel and ex-LSN too, bass) and Mike Carlino (guitar). 'Dennis was asleep on the floor, it was about 2 AM,' says Mike, 'and Dawn and me started jamming until, like, 6 AM. That's how we wrote "Diseased", and I was in.' In March 1987 the band play a show in San Francisco (Country Club) without Greg (Greg had run into a little trouble with the law, nothing serious, but it did mean he couldn't show up to play that show). Greg leaves the band to re-form/join LSN, taking George with him. The band decide to continue with one guitarist. Mike's friend Blair Darby, originally a guitarist who works in a music shop, is asked to join the band to play bass.

Slowly, the magic that became the classic Fear of God line-up started to form. Mike Carlino had played in several New Jersey cover bands in the early eighties as a highschool senior, then moved to L.A. in 1985. When he got Ross' position in the band, he and Dawn couldn't get along at all. Mike and Dennis got along really well; 'we were like brothers,' Mike remembers fondly.

In 1987, the band records another demo, a pretty low-budget job. It does not succeed in enchanting the people at Roadrunner, resulting in the band getting dropped. While writing for the second demo (that would eventually surface as the "'89 Demo"), Mike and Dawn start to click. 'One evening the two of us sat down and started to jam, and we wrote "Red to Gray" in something like 10 minutes,' Mike says. 'Dawn had this organised footlocker filled with colour-coded notebooks containing ideas, snippets of songs, and poems. She just pulled out one of those notebooks and we had the song.' Working closely together on the songs, Mike and Dawn get involved with each other. Understandably, this leads to conflict within the band. The last show with Dennis is played at the Troubadour in L.A. Shortly after that, Dawn and Dennis get divorced, and Dennis leaves the band. He is replaced by former Raven drummer Rob "Wacko" Hunter.

This line-up records the next demo, entitled "'89 Demo", at Pyramid Sound, Ithaca, New York, with Alex Perialis. Although Blair is a good live bassist, Rob Hunter recognizes that he doesn't cut it in the studio, not with the faster parts. Mike plays bass on the demo (as, eventually, he would do on the debut album). Dawn and Mike become very much the unit from which the creativy of Détente flows. 'One evening we were actually fighting and there's this phone call,' Mike recalls. 'Dawn answered, listened, looked at me and then grinned the whole time. It turned out to be a call from Roberta Peterson, A&R person of Warner Brothers who'd been looking for us for over a year, because of the '87 demo and good stuff she'd heard of that Country Club gig.' The reason why Warner Brothers had been looking for so long was because the band had relocated to the east coast without telling too many people. Warner saw a lot in the combination of Mike and Dawn. What ensued were 9 months of negotations, during which it was also discovered that there was already a band called Détente. They were willing to part with the name, though there was a price tag attached to that. Somewhere around this time, Rob Hunter leaves and is replaced by Eric Alpert from New Jersey. He doesn't stick around for long, though, and it's Steve Cordova who we find playing on the seminal "Within the Veil". The album was recorded at Pat Regan's studio; Pat was also hired as an engineer. The end result is flawlessly recorded but somehow doesn't sound right at all. Mike and people from Warner Brothers sit listening to a lot of CDs for a day and decide they like what they hear whenever Andy Wallace turned out to have been mixing. So Andy Wallace is hired, who saves the day. The final version of the album is sent to Warner Records under the band name of 'Sedition'. Then, one day, Mike sits leafing through the bible and comes up with 'Fear God'. Dawn thinks 'Fear of God' would be better, so that becomes the new band name.

Official Biography: http://www.fear-of-god.com