Teenage Mutant

Pictured above is a band called Teenage Mutant from Alor Star, Kedah in 1987. Second from left is Fathullah Luqman AKA Fathul Maggots AKA Fathul Spiral AKA Romatikarat. I’ve heard about this band for a long, long time but has never seen a picture or anything else to substantiate the existence of this band. According to Fathul then, this is his first band, way before he came to KL and got heavily involved in the scene via so many bands active in the early 90s.

I remember Fathul telling me that band was playing a mixture of Crossover HC (DRI, Suicidals etc.) and also straight up early punk rock covers. This makes Teenage Mutant one of the earliest punk bands in Malaysia; in the same school as pioneers such as Terengganu’s Mallaria & Stoned Crows and also Kuantan’s Hijrah (which later later morphed into The Pilgrims).

And in terms of Crossover (or now more popularly termed as “Bandana Thrash”), there was only one other band who was playing a lot of DRI, and they were known as The Colourful Bullets from Seberang Prai, Penang. But Colourful Bullets only started at the end of the 80s and played in KL in 1990.

Have Teenage Mutant ever recorded anything? Well, I have to ask Fathul to be sure but I doubt it. The band also never came to KL to play; I also doubt that the band ever did a gig. Still, for a bunch of kids tackling punk/HC in 1987, Teenage Mutant is surely a rare group.

Fathul, as many of us have known, went on to work with Flowers Decay, Deflowered, Spiral Kinetic Circus and Infectious Maggots, before stopping to concentrate on being a visual artist and also dabbling in comics.

Currently, the man is back in the music scene. First via becoming a successful songwriter for now mainstream names such as Flop Poppy, Def-Gab-C and more. As of recent, Fathul has started to record again. Now he’s a solo recording artist known as Romantikarat.

To those interested to hear the man in his new guise, go here:

Romantikarat on MySpace