Monday, September 24, 2007

The Horror/Voorhees on Earache?


Question: Im wondering since earache has signed SSS, Are you looking into any other members of the thrashgig crew at all eg the horror? Speaking of the horror, I heard that earache offered to sign them back in the day when they were voorhess but the band said no because of their DIY ethics is this true? id be suprised if earache showed no interest as they were one of the main ukhc punk bands back in the 90s. From:

Answer: Earache has a strong Hardcore punk background- after all, its the music that I grew up with, the first 80's wave of US and UKHC bands, but Earache hasnt done too many of those straight up HC bands since HERESY.While I am all in favour of the DIY ethics (hell,I still kinda consider Earache a DIY label)sadly, the purist holier-than-thou attitudes of a lot of current HC bands means they don't want to work with us, and I can accept that, we are just fine with that.

In the 90's Earache spoke to quite a few of the UKHC bands- I honestly dont remember talking to Voorhees, but I recall Knuckledust were one of my faves because they sounded crushingly heavier- but they were always happy enough with their current situation and did'nt fancy working with a bigger label.Fair enough.As a consequence,most of the bands Earache prefers to sign have got to have a much more 'crossover' mindset- meaning a love of all things metal aswell as punk.Iron Monkey for a time were like that, till Steve Watson left, a lot of the 'metalhead' attitude left with him, so they reverted to operating like a traditional HC punk outfit.

SSS fit the crossover bill- thats why we work with them, but even tho I never checked them out properly,I assume The Horror & Voorhees before them are/were steeped 100% in the HC scene and while I applaud their principles and their DIY efforts,its something we dont go for as a label, to be honest, with one exception of
Career Suicide cos they are outstandingly brilliant.

Heres Voorhees in 1995 live at bradford:

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Could SLEEP have been massive, like Wolfmother?


Question: do you think if sleep had stayed together they would have been alot more comercially successful than they were? im asking this because they are listed as a main influence of wolfmother on wolfmother\'s who are a band who have made it very big with a similer sound. Im just wondering do you think the orginals could have had the same success? From:


Answer: I know what you mean- on the face of it Sleep were sounding remarkably like Wolfmother, but a decade beforehand.The truth is both bands were influenced by the 70's Hard Rock originators, Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Led Zep etc but Wolfmother came out in 2005 to a more mature rock-friendly record buying climate that Sleep didnt benefit from back in the 90's.Sleep did have the chance for stardom when they signed to a major label-London records- but they blew it by wilfully making a 73 minute one song/one riff of an album that the major shelved because it was totally uncommercial.In short, Sleep didnt pander to the corporate Industry game, and you have to applaud them for that.Wolfmother also have more obvious Robert plant vocals that Sleep lacked.So yeah i think if Sleep had cared about making it big, they would have done it, sure..but they just did not give a shit.

make your own mind up by viewing the video we shot of them in 1993:

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Earache & The Prodigy connection


Question: I read somewhere that earache tried to sign the prodigy back in the day is this true? also is this the reason why during the 90s earache picked up the side project of gizz and also why jim ended up in pitchshifter?
Also does earache have any interest in the power violence scene at all, I remember once reading in a fanzine that dropdead had contacted you but it didnt get very far, to which im quite suprised being as dave witte whos in an earache band is a leading figure of the genre. From:

Answer: Funny you should mention The Prodigy- they are one of my favourite bands of all time (along with Slayer).In the early-mid 90's they were responsible for turning me onto Rave/techno music which was coming out of the underground in the UK.The band had banging beats and a certain punky attitude which i thought was fantastic, they still have it to this day.We never got the chance to sign The Prodigy, but the time would have been a year ago when they finished with long-term label XL to go with their own imprint under Cooking Vinyl umbrella.A bold move again from a very savvy band.
In about 1997 Earache was due to sign the English Dogs, a hardcore punk band led by Gizz Butt, himself a scene stalwart, and as we did the signing, he informed us of some weird news- Liam Howlett had hand picked him to be the new live guitarist for The Prodigy, replacing Jim Davies who had famously played guitar on the "firestarter" track and had appeared on and off at live events with them too, but who it seems Liam decided didnt cut it onstage as well as Gizz.Jim was out and Gizz was in. The irony was that English Dogs (who quickly changed name to Janus Stark) made an album for Earache but never toured properly in support of it, since Gizz was wanted by The Prodigy.Jim soon hooked up with Pitchshifter (who were on Earache previously) and had pioneered rave/drumnbass mashed up with metal at around the same time as prodigy, but with less success. So yeah it was weird that the guitarists Earache was working with were both chosen by Liam.

As for Drop Dead, yeah that first pressing of the debut album was a total fave round here, and i think we made contact to try to work with them, but the band were too DIY in their outlook to consider working with Earache, so it never happened. We certainly tried tho!

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Scorn- Vae Solis cover explained.

Question: Scorn\'s \"Vae Solis\" is one of the most masterful pieces of intense industrial music ever placed onto plastic. It\'s unique blend of dub, industrial and metal-driven riffs ala Godflesh (Justin Broadrick did play on the CD of course!) yet it\'s still such a mystery to me.

I tried asking Mick Harris himself online about lyrics for the CD but he didn\'t have any. Also, I always wondered what the album title \"Vae Solis\" means, or what exactly is it? Also, what is that on the album cover?

Great CD, but such a mysterious album. From:

Answer:Yeah Scorn's debut Vae Solis is a terrific album, which stands repeated listens even 15 years later, but i think it is merely a hint of the greatness which was soon to come from the duo of Mick Harris and Nik Bullen on 1994's Evanescence album., which is revolutionary. As for the lyrics, Nik used to carry round a small pocket notebook everywhere with him and was constantly writing new ideas/lyrics etc into it..this formed the basis of many of the themes in his works.The cover of Vae Solis (which i think strictly means 'Woeful Sun' in latin- or Black Sun more likely) is a collage of 2 medical photographs superimposed. One photo is an open throat, probably diseased, the other is a cancerous cell, taken with microscope, if memory serves.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Concrete Sox on Earache -80s HC band.


Question: Why didn\'t Earache or has the label ever thought of signing Concrete Sox to their legion of hardcore bands back in the 80\'s? Indeed they did a split album with Heresy but why didn\'t Earache try grabbing in Concrete Sox for a record deal?

In my humble opinion, Concrete Sox were a gem in the hardcore/crossover movement of the 80\'s and sadly, their legacy isn\'t carried on much today other than through P2P mp3 sharing programs (like Soulseek, etc). It would\'ve been great to see Concrete Sox get their own record/CD released on Earache so at least people can get better access to the band (of course, that is if the label decided to reissue their CD\'s.) From:


Answer: Earache's Mosh 2 release was actually my first proper release and as you say was a split LP between 2 of Nottingham's crossover/HC/metal bands at the time,late 80's, HERESY and CONCRETE SOX. It soon became clear that heresy were the much better received by fans at the time, probably because of the amount of touring they undertook. CS tended to stay at home.Also Earache didnt really want to work with CS anymore after the success of Napalm death's scum LP, the label took on a very different course and I signed much more metalcore acts, CS were more a political punk band who loved a bit of metal.As time went on, CS recorded a few more releases and survive in some form to this day, but have always suffered from line up problems.