Next up, it's the band that had the most “deaths” and “rebirths” of any in the NWOBHM, perhaps appropriately, given its supernatural name. Formed in 1977 under the name Lucifer, the band went through some lineup changes, eventually ending up with founder members Kevin Heybourne (guitar and vocals) and Rob Downing (guitar), joined by Dave Hogg (drums) and Kevin Riddles (bass). They also changed their name to Angel Witch, under which name they recorded a single, their first, and this was included on the metal compilation album of the day,
Metal for Muthas. The single, “Baphomet”, brought them some success and a recording deal with EMI, but this quickly soured and the label dropped them on foot of extremely disappointing chart performance (their single “Sweet danger” lasted just one solitary week in the charts).
In 1980 they were signed to Bronze records, and released their debut self-titled album, which was well-received and critically acclaimed. But internal problems within Angel Witch surfaced, and the band quickly fell apart, leading to the breakup and the first “death”. It wasn't till 1982 that they got back together again, although the lineup had changed considerably by now: Riddles and Hogg were gone, replaced by Jerry Cunningham and Ricky Bruce, Rob Downing having left prior even to the recording of the debut album. However the band did not gell and nothing happened on the recording front, leaving Angel Witch to suffer their second “death”, and the following year, their second “rebirth”.
With a lineup now consisting of Peter Gordellier (bass), Dave Tattum (vocals), and with Dave Hogg back behind the drumkit, Kevin Heybourne led the third incarnation of the band, who then recorded their second album, 1985's
Screamin' and Bleedin', but once again the lineup failed and Hogg was again fired, replaced by Spencer Hollman, and in 1986 they released what was a much more melodic and AOR-styled album,
Frontal Assault. After the album was recorded, though, Tattum was sacked and Angel Witch performed as a trio, until the mid-nineties, when Heybourne decided to try to make it in the States.
None of the other band members were willing or able to uproot themselves and make the trip, so Heybourne went on his own and recruited new musicians to form a new Angel Witch, and brought about the third death and third rebirth of the band. In 1998 they released the appropriately titled
Resurrection, but soon after Heybourne was arrested on issues of immigration violation in the US and deported, which brought about the
fourth death of the band.
Back in the UK in 2000, Kevin Heybourne assembled yet another lineup, giving the band their fourth (and to date, final) rebirth. They don't seem to have an official website, but their MySpace page makes a reference to a Japan tour of 2009, so it's assumed they're still around, in one form or another.
So what about their body of work? Well, where else would we start but with the debut album?
Angel Witch - Angel Witch - 1980 (Bronze)
Now
this is more the kind of thing you expect from a band around that era! Fast, heavy and hard, with squealing guitars, somewhat hesitant it has to be said vocals, sort of amateur sounding, all of which describe the opening and title track. Not a keyboard in sight. Of course, the lack of keys does make the sound seem a little less polished, but it's a good opener. Not great, but good. The song features some sort of shouted group vocals, which no doubt were taken up by audiences when the band played live, and the track fades out on a pretty good guitar solo, to bring in “Atlantis”, another fast headshaker, the vocals on this a little clearer and better defined. Kind of punk elements to this one - fast, furious, powerful, but with some good backing vocals.
Founder and guitarist/vocalist Kevin Heybourne takes songwriting duties for every song on this album, which is quite a feat, and none of them are epics. “White witch”, up next, is one of only two tracks just under five minutes, and one of five that are over four minutes. It's a bit of a cruncher, which speeds up and slows down as it goes on, a good rocker, solid. Shades of Iron Maiden in there. The rocking continues with “Confused”, but I have to admit, I'm not seeing much in the way of variation on this album, so far. I guess that's acceptable and understandable on a debut, but I would like to hear something different: we're now four tracks in, and most have sounded to me very similar. There's no doubting Heybourne's guitar prowess, though perhaps his songwriting skill needed to be honed a little at this early stage?
“Sorceress” starts things off in a slightly different way, with a spacy Iron Maiden intro to a Black Sabbath-inspired cruncher - you can almost hear the doomy church bells tolling in the distance. But at least it's a step away from the heads-down rockers they've presented so far. To their artistic credit, it becomes something of a Southern Rock-fest towards the end, finishing well. It's followed by another slowburner, “Gorgon”, which suddenly explodes into guitar mayhem! Probably one of the best tracks on the album, so far.
More Maidenesque rocking in “Sweet danger” - this was the single that EMI hated so much, that fell out of the charts after one week. It's not hard to see why: it really hasn't got anything special or unique going for it; good guitar solo, but even on their debut Iron Maiden were already doing this so much better. “Free man” starts off much more promisingly, with again a very Maiden-like guitar line, and reveals itself in fact as their first ballad. Doesn't stop Heybourne from piling on the heavy guitar, though!
Back to the hard rockin' for penultimate track, “Angel of death”, which sadly promises more than it delivers, but that's more than made up for with the closer, the sublime “Devil's tower”, with its lovely slide guitar intro which then punches you in the face and rocks all over the place. It's an instrumental, nothing more or less than a showcase for the considerable guitar talent of Mr. Heybourne, and a really cool way to close the album.
TRACK LISTING
1. Angel Witch
2. Atlantis
3. White witch
4. Confused
5. Sorceress
6. Gorgon
7. Sweet danger
8. Free man
9. Angel of death
10. Devil's tower
As detailed above, Angel Witch went through two “deaths” and two “rebirths” after this album, resulting along the way in their second release, “Screamin' & bleedin'”, however it's their third effort I want to concentrate on, as it is noted for being far more melodic and AOR than the previous two. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't that impressed with the debut (haven't listened to the second one), and wonder how this band figured so prominently in the NWOBHM movement, so perhaps their third album will shed some light on this, show me something that has heretofore been obscured about Angel Witch.
Frontal Assault - Angel Witch - 1986 (Killerwatt)
With a title like that, you should expect a hard and heavy, loud and fast, no-compromises metal album. Is that what we get? Let's see. Certainly the opener, and title track, is a heavy guitar-driven rocker, and the addition of David Tattum on vocals has given the band more of a voice: he seems, to be fair, a much better singer than Heybourne (maybe that's why he was fired after this album!). The rocking continues on “Dream world”, one of only three tracks on the album not penned exclusively by Heybourne. I can see the reason why this is considered more commercial, and more melodic than the debut: the songs are much more fleshed out, the playing tighter and with Tattum on vocals, Heybourne can concentrate on spitting out those solos he's become known for.
The music may have more melody, but there's no compromising on the heavy side of things! Angel Witch know how to rock, and rock they do - this is no Journey album! “Rendezvous with the blade” is another hard rocker, galloping along to meet “Religion (born again)”, borrowing from the Dio songbook for a real slow-paced cruncher, the vocals on this seeming somehow distant, echoey, as if Tattum is singing in a tunnel. Weird. Speeds up near the end as it gets going with a good guitar solo; perhaps should have happened sooner in the song?
“Straight from Hell” opens with what sounds like keyboards, though none are credited on the album, a slow, atmospheric beginning which soon smashes into another hard rocker. Disappointing, in a way. More of the same, when it looked like they were trying something different. “She don't lie” is a little more towards the AOR end of the spectrum, while “Take to the wing” is another unremarkable rocker, but “Something wrong” opens on lovely piano (there
have to be keyboards on this album, guess they're just not credited) and becomes a semi-ballad, with guitar crashing in, in a way I wish they didn't always feel they have to do: sometimes piano with just a little acoustic guitar can work wonders. This kind of loses its way halfway in though. Pity.
Closer “Underpants” - sorry, “Undergods”! - is no surprise, more of the same, which isn't bad but isn't original either. I see a certain progression in melody here, but
Frontal Assault is not that hugely different to
Angel Witch, and there have been six years in between the albums, not to mention all the lineup changes. I would have expected a much more polished band at this stage, with a clear idea as to which direction they are heading in. I don't get that from this album, and maybe that's why Angel Witch went through so many incarnations.
TRACK LISTING
1. Frontal assault
2. Dream world
3. Rendezvous with the blade
4. Religion (born again)
5. Straight from Hell
6. She don't lie
7. Take to the wing
8. Something wrong
9. Undergods
I would not have placed Angel Witch at the top of the NWOBHM tree, but I guess they had some sort of appeal. Personally, I found their basic brand of heavy metal very derivative, as I have mentioned in the reviews, and frankly, a band that can't keep its lineup together for more than a year at a time has some major problems! The fact that Heybourne emigrated to the US to try to bring the music of Angel Witch to the Land of the Free must have meant that he knew he was getting, and would get, nowhere here on this side of the pond. I don't know what the “American” Angel Witch were like, but if they were anything like the UK version, then I really feel there would have been, at that time, hundreds of metal bands over there doing this far better than this somewhat ill-fated bunch of Brits.
The last outfit I want to look at in this first part of the series is a band you probably have never heard of. They released no albums, had no hits and essentially faded away as the NWOBHM gained momentum, why is never clear. Information on Trespass is hard to find, not least due to the common use of the word, and of course the Genesis album of the same name, but it seems that they first recorded in 1979, and were broken up shortly after 1982. During that time they put out two singles, had two of their songs included on the rated metal compilation album
Metal for Muthas, Volume 2 - which is where I heard their music, and never again - but completely failed to make it. On the strength of their music I fail to see why, though I've outlined some possible reasons below, and I believe it's one of the great injustices of the NWOBHM time that a band like Angel Witch, above, who to me were vastly inferior in every way to Trespass, went on to record albums and gain something of a following, while Trespass faded into the mists of metal history.
Formed in 1979 by Mark and Paul Sutcliffe (Mark played guitar and sang, his brother drummed), with Dave Crawte on guitar and Richard Penny on bass, Trespass were never a viable band, all holding down day jobs. They never got any of the plum support gigs other bands did, and so were never exposed to a wider audience, and though they were promised an album deal it seems to have fallen through, though they did record a session for Tommy Vance's Friday Rock radio show, which saw them included on another compilation album,
Metal Explosion.
The two songs I heard from them were “One of these days”, which was their first single, and the vastly, vastly superior “Stormchild”, which seems to get ignored. Even when the compilation album
NWOBHM Revisited was put together, the former track was included as Trespass's only contribution, why I don't know: perhaps on the basis of it being their first single and therefore their most recognisable song.
At any rate, unlike the other two bands reviewed above, there are sadly no albums from Trespass to study or comment on, and it's only thanks to YouTube that we have any material at all for this section from them, but I feel it such an injustice that Trespass did not make it that I wanted to make sure they were included in this article, so below are the two songs from them which I know, plus two others I have not heard up to now. You make up your own mind if they should have been more successful than they were.
And that's it for our first look at some of the bands from the movement that shook up heavy metal in about the same way punk did to rock music, but with, I think, more a lasting impression left behind. If it hadn't been for some of these bands, and many others like them - some of whom made it, some who did not - many of the bigger UK and indeed US bands may not today have existed, never mind been successful and famous. Metallica famously attribute much of their
raison d'etre to a reaction to the new sound that was coming from England's shores in the 1980s, and no doubt they are not the only ones who owe a huge debt to the trailblazers of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
Next time, I'll be looking at Cloven Hoof, Raven and Venom, who coined and indeed created not only the term, but the idea and theme known today as Black Metal. Leave your crucifixes at home...