"I rode over the mountains to Huddersfield. A wilder people I never saw in England. The men, women and children filled the streets and seemed just ready to devour us." - John Wesley (Methodist Church Preacher & Founder) 1757.
And on that jovial note, I bid you all Good evening, morning and whatever else. It's been a while since the last large update regarding our activities as a band, and since then, there have been a couple of line up changes for the better we feel, bringing in individuals more attuned to what we are about musically, and also bringing with them a greater talent that can only add to the overall epic metal holocaust that we are aiming to deliver on the next album.
First we have a new bass player, and it be none other than our old comrade Mr Ian "Geezer" Buxton (Aka Izak Gloom) also of MONOLITH and LAZARUS BLACKSTAR (And previously with local legends CHORUS OF RUIN and THE DEAD RESURRECTED. Ian's credentials are impeccable, and more importantly he likes a fucking good booze up as well as making a loud noise with his bass guitar. The more eagle eyed among you will have spotted him performing his duties at the HAMMER OF DOOM festival in Germany earlier this month, which for having had only a few weeks to learn the songs he performed admirably we feel.
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| Mr. Ian "Geezer" Buxton, yesterday. |
Our next addition is our now new drummer, Mr James Ashbey, also of London power/thrash gods DECEPTOR and CIMMERIAN SHADOWS fanzine fame. All of you who know James, will know he is a drummer of phenomenal capability and talent, and having only had a few rehearsals with him we are already able to gig should we so desire, such is his playing. Any man who turns up, already knowing the songs and pounding the living hell out of his kit gets our vote of approval. James has finally bought the tightness and power we have been sorely missing for the past 12 months with his empathy to this style of music. I am currently looking for a suitable picture of James, but my search has proved fruitless, but should any of you so desire you can find his likeness on the DECEPTOR bandcamp page of Facebook etc.
And so, Myself, Andy and Paul would like to welcome both into the band, and raise a toast to both fellows and look forward to getting down to the real business of writing and recording now we have a clear 6 -8 months or so of no live gigs booked. Naturally this is what we have been aiming for for the past 20 months, but with the hinderance of disinterest from certain quarters it was apparent that nothing was happening and we were struggling to even honour our commitments to live appearances. A pretty sorry state of affairs when looking on the online sewer that is Facebook on ones mobile phone takes higher priority than learning new songs. Despite that, the weight from around our neck has been disposed of, and we feel confident of entering into a studio just as soon as our engineer and producer have free time and we more importantly, have finished the final versions of the songs we will demo. There is however some debate as whether we will actually release the recordings in advance of the album versions as a limited cassette, purely on the ground when we see shitty labels like Rise Above trying to jump on the tape bandwagon, we know that releasing tapes HAS become a trend rather than a love of this most noble of formats. Something will be out there shortly, though what format it is released in now has to be decided at the annual SOLSTICE Yuletide booze up on December 21st in Huddersfield.
On the live front, we have a couple of shows booked already for next summer, and naturally are always interested in hearing from people looking to book us, our booking contact is Paul, and his details are to be found on the Faecesbook page (Search for "Solstice-Englander"). Locally we may play in the West Yorkshire area after Yule just for the hell of it, in small drinking establishments purely for our own enjoyment, and there is talk of a small 5 band festival in the Bradford area with DESOLATION ANGELS and DEEP MACHINE also in attendance. However, these small "unofficial" shows are not set in concrete, and may not happen at all, it's purely conjecture on my part as to what might happen should the stars align and we are all in the area at the time for rehearsals and the chance of making an unholy racket in a Public house arises. As I have said before, our high priority is now writing and recording, and we have promised ourselves that we will make the "ENGLANDER" album a reality as soon as we possibly can. As well of course, as updating our live set, which I personally have thought has become a little stagnant of late. But, heres a small clip of "The Sleeping Tyrant" live at the Hammer Of Doom
Finally, thanks are due to everyone who has turned up to this years batch of shows in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Denmark, England etc and shown us their support. You cannot imagine how much it means to us all, we are simply overwhelmed by the positive response we have recieved, especially that now Paul is finally hitting his stride as the frontman we knew he could be, no further proof is needed by the mindblowing response to the show in Dublin. So all there is to say really is, buy a shirt, turn up to the shows, watch the skies, and if all else fails, drink thyselves blind and turn it fucking up!!!
