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

When we came up with the idea of doing a Mix Tape idea for the Iron Fist website there were three people we knew we needed to ask. Jason Decay and Ian Chains from Cauldron were a given, at least one of them were bound to put Bleak House on there, and the other was Ryan Waste. Now the latter has a brand new album out for his snotty speed metal punks BAT, we knew the time was right to hit him up. Ryan has spent the summer driving a taxi (seriously, read the latest Livin’ Fast column in Iron Fist #17) and on the tarmac in Europe with his thrash comrades Municipal Waste so we know his ear is gonna be trained to the right songs for the right road so we asked him to gather together some of the songs that inspired BAT’s latest album, ‘Wings Of Chains‘. It was through MW that we first met Ryan and got to know just how vast, and how perfect for the party, his music taste is. Buckle up and hit play!

SIDE A:

SLANDER ‘Lonely Nights’ Let’s set the mood here. I feed off the sound of desperation in music, so what better way to … Read More