HARD ROCK HELL NWOBHM 02 ACADEMY SHEFFIELD

It’s clear that the inaugural HRH NWOBHM festival has piggy-backed on or at least benefited from Brofest’s ability to persuade long-defunct bands to reform. Of the army of acts on the two-day line-up, many have already trodden the Brofest boards. But a good idea is a good idea, and the bands themselves are unlikely to care whether they’re revisiting their glory years in Newcastle, Nuneaton, Newport or – for the next 48 hours – right here in Sheffield. While London has a proud NWOBHM history of its own, it’s somehow fitting to witness this particular event taking place beyond the rapacious event horizon of the Capital. Even during the winter of discontent from which the NWOBHM sprang, the regions – in this case the former mining and heavy industrial hub of South Yorkshire – laboured under an investment and infrastructure deficit when compared to London and the South East in general. Sheffield may have come a long way since 1979, and avoided being nuked a la ‘Threads’, but in the frozen half-light of a December dusk, it’s all too easy for the mind to time-hop back to the bleaker days of Saxon’s ‘Hungry Years’.

As … Read More

BLITZKRIEG LIVE AT THE PENNY GILL, SPENNYMOOR JUNE 18 2016

It’s not very often you see a legendary NWOBHM band play in the back room of a small pub, in a small town, in North East England. Especially one that had such a notable and huge influence on the likes of Metallica, undeniably one of the biggest metal bands ever and even covered and recorded a cover of their self-titled classic anthem on their ‘Creeping Death’ EP way back in the early ’80s, playing it live well into the touring cycle for ‘Master Of Puppets’.

Along with bands such as Angel Witch, Diamond Head, Raven and Venom, Blitzkrieg were at the forefront of the early ’80s burgeoning heavy metal movement and have been recording albums, playing live and touring ever since. This was the second time the band played The Penny Gill, a small lively rock/biker pub in Spennymoor a small ex-mining community in County Durham. This was a no airs, no graces affair, as close and personal as you can get; no stage, barriers or security separating the band from the fans.

There was no support band either, this was merely an intimate warm-up show for the Garage Days Revisited festival in London … Read More

As the celebrated Geordie folk song ‘The Lambton Worm’ kicks off; “Whisht! lads, haad yor gobs, I’ll tell ye aal an aaful story”.

Or for those of us who don’t speak Geordie, the awful story we’re asking you to hold your mouths for concerns an early-‘80s period in which the North-East was an epicentre for a shockwave of pulse-racing Heavy Metal whose influence can still be felt in extremis some thirty-five years on. Whereas The Lambton Worm was a mythical beast that rose to terrorise the North-East, a certain strain of terror was spawned in just such territory by three Tyne & Wear lads ripping apart the metal rulebook in search of shocks, horror and glory galore. This band, of course, was VENOM, and in this issue Iron Fist talk to Cronos on a four-decade mission of life as a blasphemous iconoclast and full-throttle Black Metal bezerker.

What’s more, we travel back in time to the dawn of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal to chart the roots of NEAT RECORDS, harking back to an era in which the upstairs of a bingo hall in Wallsend was the launchpad for a strain of supercharged audial aggro that would inspire a generation. … Read More