The Armadillo Grave Robbers are a band who has come back from horrible tragedy to become one of the best loved bands of the horror rock genre. They have often been compared to bands like the Misfits, the Damned, 45 Grave, and the Cramps. The band was originally a hardcore punk band called the Jackflaps which formed in January of 2006. In May 2006, they recorded their debut CD called “Snake Culture”. They immediately scored an underground hit with their first single entitled “Meet Me by the Dumpster”. The band quickly began receiving airplay on both conventional radio and internet radio stations alike. They kicked off their first and only tour of the United States On July 2nd, 2006. The tour was going exceptionally well and they were receiving rave reviews from the press and fans alike. All of this would come to a quick and abrupt end on October 31st, 2006. The band had just finished performing a Halloween concert in Falls, Arkansas. The show proved to be one of their best performances yet. After visiting with fans and signing autographs for several hours they began driving back to their hotel just outside the town of Cold Bluff, Arkansas. The band often listened to Elvis Presley songs as road music and this night was no exception. At approximately 3:33 AM, while “Suspicious Minds” blasted out of the speakers, their vehicle went out of control, rolled over three times and plunged over a steep embankment almost 30 yards from the edge of the highway where it eventually rested, upside down. Rick Lectum, the bass player was driving the vehicle and was killed instantly. Also among the dead was Josh Story the original drummer for the band. Trapped inside the crushed vehicle were the guitar player Dee Louis and Robert Carr, vocalist for the band. They would spend almost eight hours trapped in the car with the corpses of their former friends and band mates before being eventually discovered and rescued. The two surviving members would later describe the events of that night as hellish. Throughout that night, numerous wild animals scurried around the wreckage. At one point during the night, an armadillo crawled through the broken glass of the driver’s side door and chewed off several fingers of one of the dead band members. This event would eventually be the origin of the name of their new band, The Armadillo Grave Robbers. After surviving the accident both Louis and Carr make a pact to carry on as a band, as a tribute to their late friends. The two began by starting over, both musically and stylistically. After enduring their own personal horror, they created alter egos reflecting death and horror. Carr became Skelvis the king of the undead rock world, a combination of the word skeleton and the name “Elvis”, wearing a trademark leather jacket and a skull mask adorned with a cowboy hat. Louis became El Chupacabra, taken from the Mexican legend of the same name. El Chupacabra is a vampire like mythical creature of status similar to the North American Bigfoot legend. Musically, they evolved into a mix of punk, rockabilly, and metal, while the vocal style reflects their admiration for none other than the king of rock n’ roll, Elvis Presley.
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