Spent 10 years de-mystifying the Independent Metal Industry.Get straight answers on any Earache-related topic without the bullshit.Guaranteed 100% rumour-free. All the news is on Insta & twitter now @earacherecords
Question: Hello Gentlemen. As a Canadian thrash-addict who only recently discovered the greatness of Annihilator, I have this question for you. Why is it that your recent re-issues of Annihilator albums are Euro-only? Since Annihilator is culturally significant in every way, I think it's unfair that us Canadians can't get a copy, considering the originals are hard to find these days. Are you trying to break my heart? From: kkoivisto11@gmail.com
Answer: Simple answer to your question is that the license deal we have struck for re-issues of 6 selected titles from ANNIHILATOR's back catalog, plus the new studio album 'ANNIHILATOR' is strictly for Europe ONLY, so we regret that we are unable to fulfill orders for the Cd and the multi-coloured vinyl editions from countries outside the EU.
I agree that its unfortunate that Canadian and USA fans are forced to purchase the re-issues at hugely inflated import prices from third party European vendors like say Nuclear Blast mailorder (unlike Earache, they have no restrictions who they can sell to) but that's just the way it is.
We believe Jeff Waters is working on striking deals to make the albums available domestically on physical formats, but for now the only official channel is iTunes.
We get constant emails from ANNIHILATOR fans back in their home country of Canada feeling hard done by, but on the flipside, European fans are getting a rare treat.
The new ANNIHILATOR self titled CD marked a real return to form for the thrash veterans and fans responded in great numbers, propelling the CD to enter the German Top 50 National Charts back in July.This has led to renewed interest in the band from concert promotors and fans alike.
This interest has culminated in a full-scale EU touring stint which kicks off next week in Paris. Any self-respecting Thrash fan should come out to a show to see how the maestro Jeff Waters and his band perform countless thrash classics in a live setting. See dates to the right.
Meanwhile worldwide fans of the band can grab a FREE Downloadable compilation of 14 songs from the re-issued albums.This comp is available from http://www.earache.com/totalannihilation Just enter a valid email address and the album can be yours.
As another treat Earache will soon make available for FREE a sturdy bookshelf box which is suitable for housing all 6 of the CD reissues. It comes with a personal message from Jeff Waters and is signed.Any ANNIHILATOR fan will need this to make their CD collection complete, and its completely free. Details on how to obtain it will be revealed in the CDs themselves and on our website soon. Heres a mock up of how it looks.
Finally heres Jeff with message to European fans to come out to a show on the tour- see you there! Come out and Thrash!!
Question: I came across this interview with fat mike of nofx and fat wreck chords owner, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdjzC-Is9F0 . In it he talks about the value of ringtones in respect of labels. In regard to earache having ringtones being a valuble way of making extra money now cd sales are down? From:
Answer: Thanks for the link- I've never actually met Fat Mike but I have seen his band a few times and was thoroughly entertained. Overall I think he's a savvy business-man because to run a record label for over 20 years is no mean feat, you gotta take your hat off to him. For quite a while before Earache started I was partial to some melodic hardcore -bands such as Descendents and Dag Nasty and maybe Bad Religion too, so I have an idea where his label is coming from. It might sound crazy but during the mid 90's Earache flirted with signing a melodic hardcore band called Alligator Gun, sadly Milwaukee was not a hotbed of hardcore at the time- if they were Californians they would have been huge.
There are quite a few parallels with Earache and Fat Wreck - we're both staunchly independent, and have put out a similar number of releases over the years. Unlike Mike, I don't have the talent to write songs and sing for a well known band.I don't get to travel the world on tour, so I'm stuck in the damn office.
Most of his comments about the Biz are spot-on accurate- yes, ringtones in 2007 absolutely were a big money-spinner for labels because cellphones back then weren't customisable as todays are. I remember hearing from a good source that Nickelback were selling $35,000 worth of ringtones per month, which is insane. Earache even had a deal going with a ringtone company at that period and sales - at $3 per time- were decent but nothing like Mike mentions.
Nowadays its totally different and I don't think ringtones even get sold anymore. I know its damn hard to even get a ringtone onto an iphone for instance. Maybe they are just deemed old fashioned by kids nowadays.
His comment of working maybe 8 hours a week on the label shows how relaxed about he is about his work, and about the biz in general.His lfestyle is vastly different to mine at Earache though - I still show up to work in the office every day. I blogged about my typical day last year.
Overall, watching his interview, you can't help but warm to the fella- except when he mentions golf, I'm not a fan.
Question: I've noticed you guys made the Evile tracks for the Rock Band series.
I was wondering if you guys will make more tracks for other bands on the label, such as Bonded By Blood and Morbid Angel? Would appreciate it! From: morbidjared@gmail.com
Answer:Thanks for noticing that there are currently about 7 EVILE songs for sale and play on the Rock Band network. RBN is different from the Rock Band game site-because any band can encode and upload their own music.
Eventually there will be the complete EVILE Infected Nations album on RBN, 9 songs complete with bonus track. Earache is using the talents of Evile guitarist Ol Drake to do the encoding, its a slow laborious process but hopefully the fans will enjoy the results.
As for new material- yeah Earache is a big fan of the game and wants to support it- so we intend to encode and upload many more songs. You must have read our mind because the next uploads will actually be BONDED BY BLOOD Prototype Death machine and also a Morbid Angel track, along with probably WHITE WIZZARD Over The Top.
The Morbid Angel song is complicated to encode because the original audio instrument masters (multi-tracks reels) are pretty vintage now, about 20+ years old, and need a special 2 inch tape machine to play them back on.The machines still exist but are rare and difficult to source. We are in the process of doing this for Blessed Are The Sick, but haven't yet decided which song from that album to release on RBN. Feel free to make a suggestion in the comments for any tracks from Earache you want to play on RBN.
Meanwhile here is BONDED BY BLOOD- coming soon to RBN.
Question: Hi guys I´m reading your blog on regular basis. My question is. Is it true that the place from where is coming the band has big impact on if they get signed or any attention from labels?I know there was a question about big vs small cities bands here already. But I´m speaking internationaly. For example we just recorded EP with well known UK producer (John Mitchell) and recorded it with Roland Grapow BUT we are from far EAST (Slovakia) where is literally no musicbiz. So I´m starting to think if this is one of the disadvantages or reasons why labels are scared to risk sign a band which is basically based in "no scene/no biz territory" compared to west Europe
Thanks Filip www.myspace.com/madcult
Answer: Earache as a rule signs bands first and foremost because we like them musically, location is not that important so long as the songs are killer, and the band is willing to travel & tour. In the 90's we signed bands from Sweden (Entombed) & Poland (Vader) when it was highly unusual to do so, because since almost the beginning of the rock/metal scene there has been an in-built Anglo-American bias. This is mainly due to the fact that the music industry which surrounds the scene is extremely well developed and organised in US & UK. Its been estimated there are over 300 labels just based in New York City, and about 100,000 people in London make their living from the music industry (recording/publishing/concert/touring/venues etc) alone.For some reason, signing bands from our home countries makes them easier to work with, I guess they are just more familiar to those people in the biz.
On the other side of the coin, Earache has also worked with a higher than normal proportion of bands from our home town of Nottingham, UK- its only a smallish town in the midlands of England, but bands like Iron Monkey, Heresy, Fudge Tunnel and Pitch Shifter were all released and promoted by the label. It's almost a requirement of a local label which is doing well to help out its local bands.
Nowadays in the era of home recording and the internet, I don't think it matters too much where a band is based, - we have in recent years worked with bands from Russia (Forest Stream) and Australia (The Berzerker) and we do find that bands from countries with a less developed Biz do need way more career guidance and instruction on how to build a career than US or UK bands. It's not instinctive to them. Sometimes they think being signed is the pinnacle of their career, and stardom will surely follow, when the reality is its just the beginning, the first step on the ladder. Inking a contract instantly raises the stakes and pressure on the band to succeed and this fact mystifies many bands.
The story of Brasil's SEPULTURA is one of the best examples of a metal band coming out of a country with a less developed Music Biz, and by some lucky breaks they broke out of the country to relocate to USA and became huge stars. Roadrunner took a huge chance on that band and deserve all the credit for their incredible insight.
Question: Hi Dig As a follow on from the new underground metal fan, what's your opinion on heritage acts seemingly milking their audience dry. For example, Peter Hook has been flogging basses made from the Hacienda dance floor and has recently compiled a 10 inch with his book and is asking for £600. http://foruli.co.uk/music Is this justified because of the downturn in legally bought music or is it musicians sticking their arm in? From: neworder2006@hotmail.com
Answer: I really don't think Peter Hook has to justify his actions to you or me, or to anyone for that matter. Don't forget that for the £600 you get some amazing original artifacts from the original Hacienda thrown in- a piece of the wooden dancefloor and a piece of the granite bar top, this is genuine gold for fans and collectors alike, and I reckon the bits from a genuinely historical UK music site make it a bloody bargain.Peter Hook himself in the liner notes says it might appear to be a gouging of fans, but the time and effort put into the project and its rarity value makes the high price justifiable.
I've never met the fella nor did I ever visit the Hacienda club when it was going but after witnessing a really early Joy Division show in Derby Ajanta with Ian Curtis doing his trademark whirling dervish dance, it was obvious they were destined to become pretty huge. Curtis' tragic suicide and the subsequent rise of New Order on the musical map led to them-rightly- becoming global superstars.Hooky and his band(s) literally changed the whole landscape of music in the UK for over 20 years. The club is famous because it ushered in "Dance Music" to the UK masses for the very first time. I really can't fault him for trading on his past as a nostalgia trip for the collectors market.Special editions in limited quantities are the only things selling these day-especially, as you say, nobody buys regular CDs anymore, you can download it or get a legal free stream on Spotify anyway.
His book about the club- The Hacienda- How Not To Run A Club is a genuine must-read for anyone remotely interested in music history. It's brilliant, and after reading it you can't help but admire the bloke. Most bands who sell millions of records typically spend their money on big houses or flash cars, but New Order wanted to build a club and do something for the local friends and early fans instead.
Hooky tells in alarmingly frank detail how the band were so wealthy from record sales that it seemed a wheeze to set up a brand new club in Manchester, more or less on a whim, just so they could have a drink and a laugh with their mates in cool, contemporary surroundings, while listening to the latest house music imported from Chicago.
I never bothered treking up to the North West to see it, because the local Nottingham punk/post-punk club The Garage had DJ Graeme Park- he was among the first to start to play House music in the UK, so what was once a cool hangout to hear decent post-punk switched to this new style House almost overnight. I disliked the scene and the music, it was just 'disco' to my ears, so I stopped going. The Hacienda website has great interviews with Graeme Park and more of the original DJ's. By co-incidence, some of the earliest grindcore shows by Napalm Death and Heresy took place at the same 'Garage' club later in the decade. Nowadays its a late night cocktail bar called `Lizard Lounge'.
Back to the Hacienda - unwittingly the New Order co-owners blew millions on the project because high profile club-running is a seriously cut-throat business.For a few years the club and its policy of flying in DJ's from the early Chicago house scene was achingly hip and fashionable, which led to its worldwide fame and success. On the flipside that fame led to extremely violent gangland/ drug dealer type characters gradually infesting the club. The club didn't keep pace with the rapidly evolving dance music scene either, sticking with an 80s House groove while ignoring the 90's UK jungle or German trance/techno scenes. This along with the regular outbreaks of violence eventually caused its slow downward spiral to bankruptcy.
Hey- if you really have cash to splash on a nostalgia trip, for about £50 you can also watch Hooky and his band playing the entire Unknown Pleasures album at the Vintage event at Goodwood racetrack next weekend August 14th.
And re-live that Hacienda late 80's boom period by checking the Stakker clip below.It was the period when straight up Chicago House music spawned the more radical UK Acid House scene.A new breed of young UK producers sped up the house beat and added squelchy Roland 303 "acid" noises to create 'Acid House'. Stakker defined the sound.
I'm a regular reader of the blog and I would be interested to know what your view is of the state of the live music scene today in underground metal. I attend a lot of small shows and it seems to me that low turnouts, hostile venues and general apathy is the norm nowdays despite some great bands and lineups on gigs across the country, but I remember gigs 10-15 years ago being a different matter altogether. I recall always turning up early to catch all the support bands for shows incase I should uncover something great - now I often see supports play to crowds that consist solely of their girlfriends and the other bands. I know huge festivals and arena metal bands are doing better than ever, but do you think its the case that for todays 'quick-fix' Myspace crowd the small scale gig has lost its lustre, or am I just having a case of rose tinted glasses? Cheers Luke From: evilluke@rock.com
Answer: This is Reanimator Luke asking yeah? Hiya and welcome to the blog.I know exactly where you are coming from dude- apathy has always been there, but there's a new kind of problem at the smaller underground gigs where younger type metal bands play.I've seen the exact same thing as you many times - where a band takes the stage during a multi-band bill, they play a set only to their smattering of friends and girlfriends who go nuts to the band, then they quickly leave the club en masse, almost to show their active dislike of the next act. Meanwhile the next band take the stage, their friends and girlfriends take to the floor and the process repeats. All 'scene unity' as we used to know it is gone from the younger crowd. Teenage bands treat gigs as one big 'battle of the bands' now. Its sickening for me to see, and the root cause is undoubtedly the massive rise and scale of the social networks in the last 5 years.Myspace/Facebook/YouTube have given instant power and information to anyones fingertips.Between them, they have actually changed the way millions of people go about their daily lives, and their cultural impact on the entire music scene is only just unfolding.It's altered what being a 'fan' actually means - clicking the LIKE button on Facebook is the new 'bought it on the day it came out'.
Back in the recent past, say up to 2006, there was still a cohesive scene where fans felt a belonging to a style of music. A fan felt a natural affinity to a whole scene and pretty much embraced most of the bands within that scene. Not anymore- the new crowd go to a show to see one single band only. Things are getting fragmented to the point of absurdity. Its worth pointing out that in my experience its mostly the new teenage Deathcore bands who seem to act like this- young Thrashers and the new young HM fans do thankfully seem to embrace the whole of the scene, not just one fave band.
Social Networks have also had the the opposite effect aswell- turning people more sheep like in their tastes. People are too lazy to make up their own mind, its just simpler to follow the crowd. The popularity of acts like Lady Gaga is unprecedented and keeps soaring- with 10 Million Facebook friends she is already the biggest Pop Star on the planet and will only get bigger- I think 50 Million is quite possible.The already big bands will keep getting huger, and the outdoor festivals will keep posting record attendance figures. Meanwhile the smaller bands on the circuit suffer from a fragmenting, niche-like fanbase.
The best example yet of this Facebook effect was the 'Rage Against the Machine campaign' for Xmas chart number 1 which was started by a husband and wife team in a suburban house, as a bit of a gimmick. This was so effective that 500,000 people bought the download, including me, and to the horror of Simon Cowell, the campaign placed Rage at the top spot of the charts -with a decades old song. It all seemed so effortless.
That campaign was a glimpse into the future and it changed everything. I honestly do not think the Uk charts will ever have a predictable Xmas number one again.For years to come, you can bet that a succession of faddish viral campaigns will be vying for the attention of the casual music buyers, and will fight it out come Christmas time.
Question: Is that true that back in the days, even before starting Earache, you had a "band" who consisted in you shouting over Crude S.S., Raw Power, B.G.K. loops from their songs that was called Genocide Association? From: larshaarman@hotmail.com
Answer: Yes that was my "band" in the early 80's, I arranged and assembled a collection of riffs looped from other HC punk bands' demos, and then myself and my buddy Dave from local punk hopefuls Verbal Warning would shout - mostly short quickfire slogans- over the songs. The idea was to create our own multi-song demo because we were in awe of bands like say Mob 47 or DRI's first seven inchers with dozens of tracks on them, and I wanted to join in the fun, and do something similar but with a whopping 100+ songs.Lack of money or skill on an instrument thwarted our attempts to form a real band, so I resorted to what the early hip hoppers were doing with turnables, 'scratching' and so creating new music by sampling/looping others. The story was explained on the Shit-Fi website a few years back.
Nowadays you'd call it sampling, but afforable samplers did'nt exist back then! It was done on home hifi equipment, using a cassette tape-to-tape machine, the songs were crafted and stitched together, riff by riff, play/record/pause, change tape, repeat. It was a real labour of love, the process took months, then when the instrumentals were finally done, we'd roll the completed tape for a final time, with a mic plugged into the hi fi, and shouted lyrics over the top, live, to make the demo complete.
The bands looped were at the very cutting edge of the best hardcore punk, which was a seriously underground pursuit at the time, and include faves like Terveet Kädet, Crude SS, Urban Waste,BGK, Raw Power, Kansan Uutiset, Impact Unit, Riistetyt- if you were tape trading with me at the time, these were the bands I was massively into.I think even Minor Threat got sampled/looped into the mix aswell, they were the nearest to a huge band in that early 80s punk scene. I recall adding them to make it plain that this was a spoof demo, but even with recognisable, mega-famous riffage included, not many people at the time figured out how it was created. It remained a mysterious demo and band, and thats the way we preferred it.
Genocide Association did break cover and actually played one show though- supporting Black Flag no less,- the line up was Myself and Dave (Verbal Warning) on shouts, Kalv (Heresy) bass, Tim (Skum Dribbluurz) Guitars and a drummer i cant recall. We just played random noise. Note the long set list on the mic stand ha ha!
The first person to get a copy of the final demo tape with sleeve etc was a mate called Johnny Barry who was running a local fanzine at the time- we figured he'd be taken in by the spoof and sure enough he proclaimed it the best, fastest demo of the issue, and that really was as far as we had hoped to take it, we found a bit of fame in our local scene, and that was good enough for us. Interestingly, Johnny ended up becoming label manager for a time at my label Earache in the early 90's.
Looking back, the whole idea and concept behind the band's music- was pretty much a precursor to the Earache label I would form a few years later.
Question: Hello, I was reading your blog and saw that the Cathedral video for witchfinder general cost 25 grand to produce. That must have been quite a large cheque for Earache to sign off in the early 90's. How did you decide to go with that song, from Cathedral? Also, what was the plan for making that kind of money back as 25 grand is allot of money for an indie label to spend on a song which would never sell the number of singles needed to recoup that cost (I assume anyway). From: williampellett@gmail.com
Answer: Yes I agree, the label spending approx £25,000 for that Cathedral video to be made was total madness, but that was the standard, reasonable, mid-size budget for a decent metal video at that time. Everything about the scene was different in the early 90s, death metal and grindcore was hip and new, and the bands were regularly selling 100,000+ copies in America alone. MTV actually still played videos, even on occasion death metal videos, so MTV was the reason these kind of videos were made in the first place, because back then, even a handful of spins on MTV/ Headbangers Ball could launch or seriously boost a bands career.
It was a heady time for the death metal/grind scene- big money was spent, all with the expectation that the Earache bands would form the next wave of Platinum Rock acts. This was Earache's intention, but sadly things didn't quite pan out that way. Its worth noting that labels rarely get artists calling a halt to the stupidity of spending vast sums of money on videos for them- apart from Bolt Thrower who hated videos, I've yet to come across it- mainly because vanity takes precedence over financial common sense a lot of the time.
Earache for a while had 7 bands licensed to major companies, Cathedral was one of them, they were licensed to Sony/Columbia in USA between 93-95, so luckily the major bankrolled a lot of these costs, making it easier for Earache, as a genuine Indie, to swallow. Bands nowadays can make clips suitable for MTV on budgets of £3000 or significantly less, easily.
What you have to remember is that film technology in the early 90s was analogue, bulky, expensive and basically crap. Filming took place on actual reels of film, all editing equipment was hardware, not software. Nowadays my iPhone can shoot HD video - anyone with a creative imagination can make a decent music clip for $300 now, but as ever its the creative vision of the director which is of the most premium value to any clip.
I remember a famous Michael Jackson video at the time reportedly cost over $1,000,000 and this cost was mostly due to the buying of scarce computer time to render a sequence where his image shatters into a million pieces across the screen. Nowadays this effect come as a free preset on even the most basic video editing software.That's how much technology has leveled the playing field.
The Cathedral clip features footage from the Vincent Price movie aswell, which I think was a bargain to acquire from the copyright holders, maybe £1000 tops. Then the cost of the studio hire, lighting, stage set and decoration, wardrobe, plus the hire of actors and actresses appearing alongside the band. Did you see a horse in the clip? that's definately not easy or cheap to hire! Plus the director fee on top, it all adds up.By far the most expensive part of the clip would have been the film camera hire and film stock, and the costs of tape transfers and subsequent editing time at a film editing suite, though.
Hope this explains the thinking behind the costs of the clip.
While we are talking about clips, here's UNKLE : Rabbit in The Headlights, which is widely regarded as one of the best music clips ever made.
Question: I had to ask this since morning again (pictured) are reforming and earache has your demise on the books. When you were looking at the death metal bands from tampa in the 90s did you pay any attention to the heavy hardcore scene that was going on in florida at the same time? by that i mean the bands such as culture, shai hulud, morning again, poison the well, remembering never etc, im curious that there were two very heavy music scenes going on in the same state but they never seemed to interact. From:
Answer: Glad you appreciate Your Demise, its a straight-up heavy Hardcore band which is making waves right now- the album also has thunderous Drum n Bass interludes which actually the band are dropping we think, as it was the idea of old singer George. The CD was issued by Earache in the USA under license from Visible Noise.
But back in the 90s, yes you are right, it wasn't common for Death Metal kids to mix at all with Hardcore kids back then, in fact they were two seperate scenes, with different cultures and "rules". Ha ha its funny that a scene which declares it abides by "no rules" sure had a LOT of them- like how you dress, what music you play, even - this is the vegan hardcore and straight edge hardcore scenes I'm talking about- the food and drink you choose to enjoy. Luckily things are more relaxed these days in Hardcore.
But by far most heinous crime for a Hardcore band at the time was to play metal - that was a total no no and indicated a willingness to 'sell-out' which marked you down as a traitor to the very values of hardcore.Notable HC Bands of the 80s like Gang Green, DYS and SSD all started playing a sort of streetwise rock/metal and within a few years their fanbase had evaporated and the bands split up.
To answer your question, I visited Florida tons of times during the explosive rise of Death Metal 89-94 and I was vaguely aware of a coming HC scene in Florida during those years, but the bands you mention really formed and hit their stride a good few years later in mid-90's, so most of them signed with pure-play HC labels like Revelation or Good Life in Europe. To be honest the scene was tiny and didn't really compare in size to the Death Metal scene, which was also fresher sounding to my ears.
I do remember coming across EARTH CRISIS - Scott Burns of Morrisound gave me the demo tape he'd recorded by the band and I did like the band, the militant straight edge stance of the band was cool. I assumed they were a local Florida band, and so kept an eye out for their later activities- but never made an offer to sign them.
If you want the lowdown on the Florida 90's HC scene bands try this great blog xSTUCKINTHEPASTx
Question: Hi, I have been a fan of White Wizzard from the High Speed GTO video, which contains original singer Luna, and i also personally like the new White Wizzard clip Over The Top aswell, which is even better. I know Luna is now in Holy Grail and he has a beef against White Wizzard. I would like to know what happened to cause the war of words between Holy Grail and White Wizzard?
Answer: It's just local band rivalry really, sparked by the spotlight which is slowly coming on both bands, in fact both bands just played Download festival in UK, and the bad blood was evident, even though both bands were backstage at the famous Donington - home of the Monsters of Rock in the 80's, I don't think the bands spoke much.
White Wizzard's mainman and chief songwriter has always been bassist Jon Leon, and his search for the perfect musicians to give voice to his vision of playing Classic-era Heavy Metal has led him through 3 different band line-ups so far.
But first a quick history lesson- Jon Leon and James Luna's roots go back to Los Angeles Hard Rock band Jetfuel, which was a fairly average band but were notable for their mutual love of playing classic- era Hard Rock, as opposed to the deathy-inspired modern metal which has prevailed since the turn of the 90s.
Heres a young Jon and Luna in the clip for Beat Paradise (2007)
Jetfuel disbanded, soon regrouping with Jon around the moniker White Wizzard. Jon also shifted the songwriting to be more straight up early Heavy Metal influenced, and the band quickly recorded a 7 song EP, which they self-released in 2007 as 50 hand burnt CDRs, complete with specially commissioned Derek Riggs artwork, with the intention of hoping to attract the attention of labels.
Jon Leon explains the transition:
"Jet Fuel was an LA band and I actually joined them in Los Angeles and that band was near it's end, because of a beef between Luna and the founder (guitar player in beat parasite video named Chris Naab). He had a bunch of issues with Luna and the band split because of those issues right after that video was shot. I was already working on some songs for what would become WW, and I contacted James and Tyler to come listen to some demos a couple months after that band split, because we got on well back then and I thought James had alot of talent and I felt it could be a good fit. They listened to them, liked them and I hunted for a guitar player....and I found James Larue on craigslist and auditioned him 1 on 1 a couple times. Then through some rehearsals I set up, line up 1 was born and we recorded the songs 2 months later of which became high speed GTO"
Unhappily for the band, no labels were interested,so they could hardly score any gigs, and for the 2007-8 period, White Wizzard languished in the doldrums. With no outside interest the band looked destined to follow the fate of most young hopefuls - ie a short career, before disbanding back into obscurity.
That was until Earache happened across the band in mid 2008, during our search for up and coming Heavy Metal acts to showcase on a new compilation we were planning, which led to the song High Speed GTO being a last minute addition to Various Artists :'Heavy Metal Killers' in Jan 2009.It was so last minute, it didn't even make it onto the advance promotional copies of that album.
During the discussions for the sampler, we learned the unhappy news- Luna replied that White Wizzard had recently dissolved and he was soon to begin working with some of the ex-members on an as yet unnamed new project - this became known as Sorceror a few months later.
Earache held talks with Luna and Jon at the same time, and I strongly suggested they reform the band back to the High Speed GTO line up and carry on with label backing. The pair of them had become too estranged by that point, and had developed very different visions about their future musical paths. We quickly formed the opinion that we'd sign Jon Leon as he was the chief songwriter and visionary, and indeed was holding the White Wizzard name and rights. Plus, Jon convinced us that he could easily pick up the pieces and recruit a new singer and guitarist, recruiting rookie screamer Wyatt Anderson from Florida and Erik Klieber from Detroit (ex-Overloaded) on guitar in record time, and even demoed 3 brand new songs to prove his intent.
This led to Earache signing White Wizzard to a long-term recording deal.We most probably would have signed James Luna's outfit too, but because he had no music or even band name, it seemed better to wait.When he found out we had decided to sign White Wizzard, Luna flipped out- he tried to sabotage the pending White Wizzard deal by sending me scandalous emails full of misinformation about Jon, which was pretty dumb.
Because he was the more web-savvy member, Luna held the log in details for their official website. After the split, Luna refused to hand over the domain registration info for the site whitewizzard.com, instead using it to promote his new outfit .To this day it displays a holding page dedicated to his band HOLY GRAIL.
This is the origin of the bad blood.
Within 6 months Luna had changed Sorceror to Holy Grail and then scored a deal themselves with LA's Prosthetic label. Holy Grail music is a more thrashy style of modern metal, with HM touches,its quite removed from where White Wizzard is at, musically.
White Wizzard Mk 3 was born after Wyatt and Erik - who played on the Over The Top album -both left to persue different paths, leaving Jon to recruit new members once again. In June 2010 it was announced that ex-Cellador (Metal Blade Power Metal act 2005-7) screamer Mike Gremio and rookie guitarist Lewis Stephans had come into the fold, they performed their first show at Download festival 2010.
Question: Dig, speaking about the future of metal, and extreme music. Do you SEE one? Earache is focusing on the thrash revival movement, a conservative throwback that is very fundamentalist in its approach to composition and music, it brings back the radicalism, narrow-mindedness and intolerance of the 80s with a vengeance (and sees that narrow mindedness as something to be confused with "pride" for the music and a kind of "trueness" and loyalty to the music) and pretty much only allows for music to be made in the way it was made during roughly 7, 8 years, from 1982 to 1990. Any growth, experimentation or evolution that took place after this very specific tiny period is seriously frowned upon by the conservative, reactionary thrashers. I think this scene is now as set and marked in stone as other revivals, mainly like rockabilly and we will see the aging thrashers and their followers doing and playing exactly the same type of music over and over again, with the same riffs, themes, clothes, album covers, etc, in the decades to come. Is Earache prepared to be the label for that movement?
And if intense music is to grow, do you see or can you predict WHERE it can go after all these years of experimentation with punk, hip hop, electronic, faster, slower, stonier, more bass, colder, etc types of metal and hardcore have already been done?
Would you sign, nowadays, a band like Shining (not the black metal, the Norway one) which is apparently attempting to take heavy sounds to new places?
Answer: Maybe you missed this particular memo dude, but the future of 'Extreme Metal' is already being written into history by a generation of young bands playing whats loosely an amalgam of Death Metal brutality & hardcore style knuckle-dragging chug chug breakdowns, its called 'Deathcore'. It was never predicted by any journalist or blogger but was created by teenagers seeking to make the most extreme music imaginable. The scene built its success due to those bands early adoption and fanatical use of the power of the then newly-launched social networking site MySpace. From 2004 onwards, they were all over it, networking with, and building a fanbase 24/7. Curtis who is a member of Sheffield, UK band Bring Me The Horizon was so quick off the mark, he nabbed the Myspace pages of both At The Gates and The Haunted for his own private use.
The success of Deathcore bands like Job For A Cowboy, Suicide Silence and newer names like Whitechapel is proven by their high USA Billboard chart placings.They have genuine fans who still -gasp - actually buy CDs, and they are changing the landscape of extreme metal, in fact they have done so for a few years now. If there is one flaw in this theory, then its the bands' relative lack of success in the heavy metal strongholds of Europe. Deathcore bands are huge in USA but make barely a blip on the radar in say Sweden or Germany. Their success story seems to echo that of Myspace itself.
Back to your point about the Thrash bands being retro- I disgree, because I think the bands are merely using Thrash and NWOBHM as a reference point to start over again. Basically to many of the young bands we deal with, Destruction is just cooler than say Cradle of Filth. Bringing Thrash & 80s Heavy Metal elements back into the metal picture is just as valid and probably more contemporary than the abominations we have had to endure over the years- Hip Hop, Goth, Electronica and even bloody Opera have all been added to the metallic palette with short-term success, but I'm sorry, for me, Jazz becoming a big thing in metal will be the final nail in the coffin.
Its all about demolishing the ensconsed. Last week NME magazine- not known for having a finger on the pulse of metal trends- actually recognised that ENFORCER were pushing the metallic envelope and named them as among the Top 50 risk-takers in music. They were right to compare ENFORCER to Bjork, Jack White or Lady Gaga, because in 21 year old Olof Wikstrand the band boast a True Heavy Metal singer who wants to be, first and foremost a showman, and put on a show for his fans.
Fenriz from Darkthrone agrees. He knows a thing or two about decent music- he's just reviewed ENFORCER 'Diamonds' with a 9.5/10 mark in Rock Hard magazine:
ENFORCER "Diamonds" Heavy Artillery/Earache 2010
I am 12 years old again! WO HO!!! it's the early 80s and the more i listen to this album the more i realize that 2010 will be THE SUMMER OF ENFORCER for me (along with THE PAST and Kate Bush, by some freaky coincidence).
First of all i started my promo shouts for darkthrone proclaiming that we start the new decade with REAL heavy metal, and i guess i knew this album would come along and solidify my stance with ease - it even has that studio production that only THOSE WHO KNOW use these days - it is that of heavy metal like 3 first DIO, the guitars taking up very little impact on the parametres and with no comprimation, Enforcer have the balls to DO IT RIGHT and even minimize the fuzz on the guitars. Yes in the fashion of old they have understood that the drums and vocals drive this type of metal best for all time, with the bass supporting the drums like they should. I am thrilled that Earache decided to stand behind this release, because it will have a huge signal-effect to EVERYONE - and now the kids can finally understand how it was in the 80s again, by getting THIS album and not all those other heavy metal bands with the modern sound but old riffs. they are mostly sad to me compared to this firework.
Many will like their straight ahead speed metal pounders, I for one adore their beautiful songs - like KATANA or WALK WITH ME. I swear those songs gave me goosebumps the FIRST time i heard them, and it gets stronger every time - so far i got around to hearing the album 7 times and in Fenriz-time that means 70 times. ELDERS AND KIDS, BREAK YOUR CHAINS AND OPEN YOUR HEARTS TO THE SUMMER OF ENFORCER!!!
9.5 out of ten points for doing this in 2010. MAXI BALLS! TAXI!!!
I'll leave it to the blog readers to make their own mind up.Which do you prefer- a new NWOTHM band with a Heavy Metal singer or an instrumental jazz-metal skronk outfit? Leave your comments.
Question: Im wondering for you which type of scene would produce the better or more focused bands? By this i mean the large city scene or the small town scene, two examples i can give which are both down under ( recently came back from a gap year in australia) is byron bay home to parkway drive and geelong which is home to the red shore. It seems to me that kids from the smaller scenes do more to keep their bands alive eg not getting rid of members as is could be difficult them and also keeping shows going because there seems to be the feeling that if they stop booking them the scene will die. Im wondering are bands from smaller scenes generally more business savy and hands on that a band from a large city where they can obtain things proffesionally quicker? From:
Answer: This is a great question, and you sum up this perplexing, but little-known fact - that the biggest bands do not seem to come from the major cities, as you might expect. Most often the biggest talents do hail from the smallest cities or towns. I'll try to explain why below.
Look at Nirvana from Seattle (Aberdeen, actually which is tiny) or Slipknot from Des Moines, or the countless bands coming out of Wales in recent years here in UK.It is a proven fact that in the Music Biz, the biggest bands, and certainly the ones who have the most impact on the scene, simply do not come from the major cities. No one has the definative answer for why this is. It defies logic. Every armchair pundit and blogger has their own pet theory, so feel free to comment below.
I think in the 70's to 80's era, bands in major cities did have all the advantages- they had a head start because they were closer to the media and record companies, and so got opportunities to be visible to the notoriously lazy A&R scouts, which the out of towners would not get. That's why so many of the 70's and 80's top tier Rock acts hailed from London, LA or New York. Its not like that nowadays of course.
I'm talking generally of course, but my own experience of running a label bears this out. Earache as a label has signed over 150 acts over the years from all over the world, and I'm pretty sure we've only signed 2 London bands - Pulkas and Akercocke - and that makes it less than 1% of our signings hail from the biggest UK city.We never planned it that way. Its weird when you think about.
As for the causes, I think its to do with the fact that musicians in major cities have a lot of options, they will probably hold down a decent job to be able to even afford to live in a comfortable metropolitan lifestyle. Much as they would hate to admit it, musicians I know from big cities all seem to be highly fashion conscious, and so make music with one eye on the prevailing trends. Bands from unfashionable towns have no such qualms, often they make music just for fun.They are unconcerned about trends, and can perfect their songs and style far away from the gaze of the metropolitan elite.
In this always-on, always socially-connected era, many bands are building their fame and fanbase via the internet, so actual location is rapidly becoming even less important. I also think that the rise of the affordable budget airlines in the last 2 decades has meant that new bands can travel much further distances in search of a receptive audience.
Question: Other than being awesome and two of the bands being canadian. is there really a link between rammer, toxic holocaust and earache\'s own cauldron? I heard they shared members once. Im wondering if you guys can confirm as wikipedia isnt the most reliable source of info. From:
Answer: I've never been to Toronto but there's no denying the city's influence on the worldwide metal scene. Rush is probably the biggest rock band to come from the city, not forgetting the immense Anvil, right up to the modern day HC bands like Career Suicide and Cancer Bats.From afar, it certainly seems to me that the Toronto scene always has something quirky and peculiar about it, it doesn't follow any prevailing American trend, usually it starts its own.
In the underground metal scene, its common for many members of bands to swap around and I think the connection between the bands you mention is drummer Al 'Biddle' Chambers. He was in two of the most influential Toronto bands in recent years, who both sadly split before gaining much international fame. Al wielded the stix in early pre-Cauldron band Goat Horn, who were a stoner-doomy Heavy Metal act, before that he occupied the drum stool for local thrash-speed-crossover merchants Rammer who were amazing aswell.
Earache had our eyes on both of those bands for quite a while, but we didn't offer any record deals at that time. Eventually when Rammer split around 2007 or so, the entire rhythm section decamped to join Joel's Toxic Holocaust which was a smart move for both of them.Meanwhile after Goat Horn split, mainman Jason Decay swiftly assembled Cauldron with the aim to bash out some NWOBHM-inspired Heavy Metal.After hearing the Cauldron debut EP, Earache finally stepped in to sign the band. Cauldron write an amazing tour blog which is well worth checking out for behind the scenes stories, pics and clips of their life on the road.Reading it will crack you up- go HERE and HERE and HERE.
Another weird Toronto band connection is the big selling Indie-rock band Crystal Castles now have the most recent former Cauldron drummer Chris Rites in their ranks. In fact when Cauldron played London Old Blue Last pub last week with Enforcer, Chris, Alice and Ethan from the Crystal Castles came out to watch and support the band, which I thought was pretty cool!
STOP PRESS: I asked Cauldron mainman to give me more info and here's his explanation of the connection: When Goat Horn first moved to Toronto in 2001 Rammer was one of the first bands we hooked up with to do gigs with. Over the years we became quite good friends with them and when Steelrider left Goat Horn in February 2006, Al from Rammer offered to fill the drum slot. Al continued on with me into Cauldron and had also started playing with Toxic Holocaust at this point. He became very spread thin between the 3 bands and eventually chose to do the Toxic thing full time. Phil (Rammer bassist) also ended up going to Toxic which ultimately became the end of Rammer. Al has since quit Toxic and now plays with Toronto band Diemonds. Cauldron has since had 3 drummers and Al has come back a couple of time in between to fill in.
Jason
Heres RAMMER with "Uprising of Death", I never get tired of this clip, its great!
Heres Cauldron,filmed playing at the famous Toronto Opera House for their official clip "Chained up In Chains"
I would add Goat Horn's legendary video but YouTube makes it a private clip now for some stupid reason.
Question: Hi Dig, I've asked and had answered (cheers!) a few questions on here before but im sure you get so much of this these days so if this never gets answered then I'll understand! I was just wondering if you had the spare time if you would possibly be able to tell us your personal opinion (holding nothing back!) of the 2 songs my band Red XIII has online from our forthcoming debut album, the songs are on our myspace @ http://www.myspace.com/screamredxiii I thought of doing this when I was reading through old questions answered on here and you had done a somewhat similar thing a few years ago, and personally I would just really like to hear your opinion on our music as someone who is the owner of a reputable record label and has signed and launched some bands that influence us massively! You can also download the 2 songs for free @ http://rapidshare.com/files/373494418/FREE_SONGS.zip Thanks for your time! From: redxiiibooking@hotmail.com
Answer: OK if you read this blog on a regular basis, you'll know that probably 75% of the questions I get are from bands searching for a deal, and "just want an opinion".Its drives me nuts. I avoid all such questions because its not a free A&R service.You couldn't resist asking it though could you? Too bad- you think its clever and will get your band into the spotlight, instead you are now in the cross hairs, dude....
I decided to have some fun with your band-thought it might be fun to review you in the style of a big-shot Major label A&R guy, like youtube A&R guy phenomenon Bertie "Big" Balls.In reality his opinion would not be too different from a snotty puerile Lambgoaters one. Hope you enjoy Berties letter!
From the desk of Bertie "Big" Balls:
" Red XIII? What kind of a shit name is that? From Blackpool I see? That's hilarious! Lads- do us all a favour and jump off the famous Blackpool fucking Tower because that's the only way it seems you'll ever get anyones attention.
I checked your twitter feed and it has exactly zero tweets! Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of terminally lazy fuckwits are you? Let me put it this way- fucking Lady Gaga has sold 10 million albums and is the biggest Pop Star on the planet, yet SHE can still be bothered to tweet to her fans on a daily basis. Meanwhile you retards just sit on your arses and expect fans to flock to you. NOT.GONNA.HAPPEN.
Same thing on Youtube- I checked you out, and found 2 clips of your shitty, no-hope band online. Fucking hell, you really are sad bastards- my neighbourhood pets are more famous than you, and one of them is a goldfish. Even my local cat has got more youtube views than you, and it doesn't think the music industry owes it a living.
I bet you boy-geniuses all think you got wicked sick hairstyles, well let me tell you something - fringes went out in 2007, and now its 2010 so stop copying Oli Sykes for gods sake.You look like ponces. I know its hard, but try looking fucking metal for once, get some Possessed and Maiden shirts, buzz it off, or better yet, grow your hair long. To be fair at least drummer Greg doesn't look like an emo faggot. Good on him.
I see you are actually active on Facebonk- the famous 'Social Notworking' site. Congratulations, you and 400 million others now spend hours handing over your personal data to the government for free. Suckers.
The art- OMG?! are you kidding me!!? Who did that gorilla stuff? A 5 year old?
Now we get onto the really fun stuff-- the music. You proudly put "Metalcore" as genre, which is so out of date its not even funny. Trouble is- I don't hear any metal- just shitty no talent chug chug riffs. Hey-where are the shredding guitar solos? No solos means no metal. The truth is, you are not a metal band, period.
I don't know why you wasted 10 minutes of my precious time.
Goodbye and good luck.
Kindly yours,
Bertie Big Balls, Chief A&R Scout, Bigshot Records Ltd."
OK- I'm out of character now- I repeat the above review is harmless fun,a joke, no harm intended, it's just to liven up the blog a bit. I do hope you got a sense of humour!
Heres Bertie Big Balls himself starring in 'A&R, The Movie'. Its so true!
Question: do you think its possible the guitar is an over used instrument in rock music? by that i mean its now become the convention. do you see it as a possibility that band that use the bass as the main instrument eg lightning bolt, death from above 1979(when they were around), exit international and palehorse are actually reshaping rock music because they are using a different instrument as the lead or is it possible thease bands are being seen as gimmick bands. im curious as to your opinion on this its just 90 percent of bands seem to have the guitar/bass/drums line up and im wondering is there is room for going from that whilst still being taken seriously? From:
Answer: When it comes to bass-lines versus riffs, riffs win every time for me dude.But I agree it pretty cool to listen to bands with a different slant from time to time.This group of bands you mention, well I've never really seen them as connected or as being part of a common scene, just because they choose to have bass-guitar as lead instrument, but I take your point about how it breaks the convention of the traditional drums/bass/guitar/vocals set up.The reason the conventional set up is so successful is because it offers the full palette of sonic frequencies, in my opinion, it just "works".
From the 70's onwards,the dub and reggae scenes have had bass-lines taking the lead and some of the biggest post-punk rock bands at that time also built their songs around bass-lines - undoubtedly by taking major influence from the dub scene- the guitar was somehow relegated to the role of providing flourishes or fragments of noise instead of riffs. Bands like Talking Heads, Killing Joke spring to mind. Public Image Limited might well have been the first to spearhead this singleminded fixation on basslines, because at the time John Lydon often proclaimed Dub was his main influence, after Sex Pistols folded.
Nowadays of course the bands you mention have ditched the guitar all together.For me personally its an interesting diversion to listen to them for a while, so cheers for the cool question!
Here's Lightning Bolt- 2morro Morro land. Watch the amazing drummer - he's just killing it on the kit.Awesome display.
Public Image Limited- Careering
I remember London's Palehorse well, because we had a connection to their label. I saw them many times as they were constantly supporting every band in the UK between 2002-5 or so. With two bassists going at it, they were pretty heavy, but it was more a dirge than anything memorable. In 2003 they had an album out "Gee That Ain't Swell" on UK indie Dry Run Recordings which was the label run by Earache's former sales manager Raffi Ouzounian. Raffi was the biggest Godflesh fan around, and compiled their best-of set "In All Languages' for Earache. His label also released the first post-Godflesh material from Justin Broadrick, Jesu's 'Heartache'.
Question: Since its argubly the most iconic video earache ever made, how easy was getting the footage and audio samples of the 1968 occult horror classic witchfinder general for the cathedral song/video? was it quite hard being as ive read before of how you've asked bands to remove samples of records before eg entombed because of trouble clearing them. From:
Answer: Cathedral got lucky because the UK film industry is more or less a cottage industry when compared to the behemoth that is Hollywood, so dealing with UK companies for clearance and permissions can often be relatively simple.By contrast, dealing with the Hollywood blockbuster movie studios is a nightmare to clear anything. Even seemingly obscure B-movies are a legal minefield of copyrights, and actors rights, directors rights, its simply too costly and troublesome to obtain permissions.
Most of the time, the only way major movie action appears in bands' video clips is when they happen to be signed to a major record company which also has affiliation to a major Movie studio. Sony records and Sony pictures, or Universal records and Universal Studios for instance. It's common for a movie studio to use material from an album by the affiliate label to promote each others projects.This synergy explains how Hatebreed's music ended up with Punisher War Zone movie
The distinctive voice dialogue of actor Vincent Price which Cathedral used in the song was lifted from the Hammer Horror (CORRECTION: Tigon Film's) flick 'Witchfinder General' from 1968. It was left up to the label to make the calls and obtain clearance, and rather suprisingly to us, the copyrights were at the time still in hands of mid-sized British entrepreneurs, who were happy to co-operate with the label on the Cathedral album and video, for a small fee. They were kind enough to supply a pristine copy of the movie for the director to incoporate into the clip. I guess its down to the fact that even recognised giants of UK cinema- actors and films which are household names here - haven't actually been huge money-spinners around the globbe and so are not repped by teams of highly paid and dubious lawyers.Polite requests to UK film companies are treated pretty favourably.
We had similar luck with dialogue samples from the legendary 70's UK movie "Scum" which was used on the debut SSS album.On payment of a small fee, it was cleared.
Heres Cathedral- Hopkins - The Witchfinder General (1993) clip, Directed by Nigel Wingrove of UK horror specialist Redemption Films, and featuring vampire/horror cult actress Eileen Daly. Budget approx £25,000.
Question: Have you ever let a band go from the label and then thought "oh shit maybe that was a bad idea"? Main example I can give as it was the last record i bought was lost soul. For me an amazing polish band superior to decapitated in some ways, I was listening to their newest album and for some reason I had the nagging feeling in my head "why the fuck doesnt this have a mosh number attached to it!". From:
Answer: Luckily for us, it doesn't happen too often. There aren't too many bands we have let go from Earache, only to see them thrive and succeed on another label, so mostly we are confident in our decisions. Dub War spring to mind- we let them go after 2 albums,then three quarters of the members regrouped 3-4 years later as Skindred, and instantly scored a high profile management deal, then a major record deal, got on US radio, then promptly sold 200,000 records on their debut, playing a similar style. We didn't feel like egg was on our face, we actually were chuffed for them.
Yes, Lost Soul are amazing, they seem to have evolved from being a straight-up Morbid Angel type of band to some kind of cosmic hyperspeed Death Metal band. We signed them to Wicked World/Earache for 2005's Chaostream album, and had high hopes they could follow in Decapitated's footsteps, as the band were undoubtedly very talented, and on the live shows we saw, they were just outstanding, on a par with many bigger bands, but even though they had everything going for them, and even toured Europe a little bit, for some reason nothing much happened for them sales wise. The music industry at the highest level still rates bands in a pecking order based on how many albums they have sold, so Lost Soul's poor sales meant it was inevitable they'd be dropped from the sub-label.
Bands can go from average to devastating in as little as 3 months, and this magical creative boost can strike at anytime, and for any reason. For Lost Soul it just took 5 years.
Question: Dig, Your probably could have guessed this was coming since the latest issue of terrorizer went to press. Alex Newport said and due to the controversial nature of the quote i will write it in full " We were never really part of that grindcore scene, I remember Napalm Death asking earache to drop us, saying that if the didnt they'd leave, they were offended because we werent a "true metal" band, We're like yeah we arnt a metal band at all you brummie dipshits!" Im curious is this true? as they are quite serious accusations im wondering if you could clear the story up a bit of what went on. From:
Answer: Yeah I read that feature on Fudge Tunnel's 'Creep Diets' album and the most suprising thing to me is that Terrorizer featured Fudge Tunnel at all, because the band's music has not really aged that well, the only mentions I get are from readers of this blog, we never get asked for their CDs from retailers for instance.
Terrorizer, as per usual, went digging for dirt by asking their standard leading question which all our old bands get asked: "How horrible was it for you, being on Earache back in the day?" or some such nonsense, so it was pretty refreshing to read Alex Newport actually give an honest, even-handed, you could call it mature, appraisal for once. Alex speaks frankly about the bands woes, and blames the bands own shortcomings as the reason for their split.
Back to the question- one thing the feature does highlight is that not all the Earache bands back in the day were one big happy grindcore/death metal family. Far from it, there were rivalries and factions, outbreaks of double dealing and clashes going on all over the place, which for the most part have remained unreported, despite the couple of books and numerous magazine articles written about the early extreme music scene,the real cloak-and-dagger stuff remains untold.
I could tell you stuff that would make your hair curl - examples of hypocrisy, dirty tricks, and underhand dealings which would shatter most fans' long held beliefs about some of the leading grindcore bands. Stuff they've done which quite simply mocks their own lyrics and contradicts their pronouncements to the press, and undermines the lofty banner under which some of the bands ply their trade.
It's not in my interest to expose any band because most of their back catalogue remains on Earache, and to do so would be pretty dumb of me. Anyway its mostly just examples of human frailty, or ego-driven ambition - common stuff which can and does affect anyone,really.
Earache became involved with Fudge Tunnel because of a few lucky events. Earache's in-house art guy Johnny Barry became Label Manager, and his personal tastes were far from the Death Metal/Grindcore the label was known for. Johnny had been in a local Hardcore band called Filler, and so his network of contacts were definately more on the hardcore side than metal. Johnny was - and still is I think- Fugazi's UK booking agent.
Johnny steered Earache in a more HC direction for a while. His best buddies in the local Nottingham scene were an up and coming trio called Fudge Tunnel who were making serious waves whenever they played in London with the then-very-hip Sub-Pop/ Amp-Rep scenesters. The band had a 7inch out on the Pigboy label, which was operated from above the legendary Portobello Road record shop 'Vinyl Solution' which back then was home to the UK's leading HC band, The Stupids.Nowadays its the location of the platinum-selling Visible Noise label.
By early 90's I'd become keen for the label to branch out a bit from the Grindcore/Death metal scene, Helmet's "Strap It On" album was a fave of mine at that time, so it seemed logical to snap up the buzzworthy locals Fudge Tunnel to the label.
The signing did cause some friction- from memory, it was Fudge Tunnel who were more antagonistic to Napalm Death than vice-versa - Alex, Dave and Adrian just weren't impressed with Repulsion or chuffed with Napalm Death's music. In truth they were typical Indie-Rockers, influenced by bands which were deemed cool by their peers- Big Black, Helmet and Nirvana.Its fair to say, Fudge Tunnel pretty much looked down on the underground extreme metal scene which Earache was spearheading, and for some of those bands in that scene, the hostility was mutual.
Fudge Tunnel were the ones who insisted that Earache give them a different label identity so they weren't lumped in with the DM bands. It was a sensible request, given the narrow minded tastes of most grind/Death Metallers,and come to think of it, most Indie-Rockers are equally as narrow-minded, so Earache changed its own logo into a slicker 50s era style to appease them.
The irony of course is that Alex Newport's first proper European tour for Fudge Tunnel was with Brazilian metallers Sepultura, this was where he met and ended up marrying one of Gloria Cavalera's daughters. Being part of the Cavalera family spurred his relocation to the USA and being part of the successful Nailbomb project for Roadrunner.It was undoubtedly a metal band, but I assume the more punky aspects of the group was mostly Alex's input.
Alex nowadays is a successful producer- his claim to fame is the recording of System Of A Down's first demo which led to their signing to Rick Rubin's American Recordings.
