Australian hard rock quartet
Baby Animals were led by vocalist
Suze DeMarchi, who previously recorded for
EMI as a solo act. Frustrated by the experience, she returned from England to her native Perth and in 1989 formed Dee Dee and the Rockmen with drummer
Frank Celenza; a year later, the twosome founded
the Baby Animals with guitarist Dave Leslie and bassist
Eddie Parise. Although the group's self-titled debut LP went multi-platinum down under, international sales paled in comparison, and shortly after the release of their 1993 sophomore effort,
Shaved and Dangerous,
the Baby Animals' American label, Imago, folded. When
DeMarchi's throat surgery also forced the band to cut short its tour,
the Baby Animals soon disbanded;
DeMarchi later wed
Extreme's
Nuno Bettencourt, relocated to the U.S., and mounted a solo career with 1999's Telelove. In 2007, all four original members reunited in the U.S., releasing an acoustic album of their earlier hits called
Il Grande Silenzio the following January. Over the next couple of years
Baby Animals mounted several Australian tours, with both
Celenza and
Parise bowing out in the early 2009. They were replaced by incoming drummer Mick Skelton and bassist
Dario Bortolin, rounding out the quartet that would record 2013's
This Is Not the End, the band's first new album in two decades. In 2016,
Celenza and
Parise rejoined the group for a pair of shows celebrating the 25th anniversary of
Baby Animals' debut, which received a deluxe reissue in May of that year. ~ Jason Ankeny