Issue 15/2013
£ FREE
DOWNLOAD SPECIAL: review, photos, interviews MORE FESTIVALS: Slam Dunk, Rocklahoma, Camden Rocks INTERVIEWS: Status Quo, Tarja, Vintage Trouble, Black Star Riders, Amon Amarth, Hacktivist, Huntress, Hardcore Superstar, The Crunch, Terrorvision, Wild Lies, Thunder, All Time Low, Goldblade, Korn, Itch, XP8, Hardline, Moonspell MOVIES: interviews with Jack Hill, Fabrizio Federico, Campbell X, Patricia Budd + Tilt’s reviews CLUBS: Ibiza - IMS and clubs opening parties reviewed - interview with DJ Alfredo LIVE: Rush, Muse, Danzig & Doyle
Defying genre, age barriers and weather forecast
throws a party for 90,000
Carry on Rocking
but don’t touch the tour bus
By Becki Kremer - Photos Cristina Massei
Where on earth can you find a variety of fancy dress, people happily throwing around bottles of piss, a four slice pizza that costs £7, and constant moshpits? Only at Download Festival of course! With my wellies at the ready and my sunscreen firmly left at home, I was fully expecting the sky to open and for it to turn into Downpour Festival, but it seemed the sun was out to play this year. If only temporarily. So with the amps turned up full, and after running into a guy dressed in a giant penis costume, both of the Super Mario brothers, a woman with a bionic leg and one of my ex boyfriends within the first ten minutes of being in the arena, I knew it was going to be an interesting weekend...
It’s quite a honour meeting Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt in London as they’re about to launch their first feature movie ‘Bula Quo’. On a sunny London morning we talk about gnocchi, freedom, family and life on the road...
The Rise and Fall of
This month saw the untimely passing of Mr Jeff Hanneman, guitarist and songwriter from US metal band Slayer. Regarded by many as being one of the finest musicians spawned from the world of extreme music, we thought we’d have at look at the scene that made him a household name all around the globe. The scene in question was - and still is - Thrash Metal. Exploding onto the music scene in the early eighties, thrash metal was seen as a refuse for the heavy metal music fan with a love of all things punk and all things fast. At the time, the heavier bands of day like Sabbath and Deep Purple had lost their appeal to a younger generation, this coupled with the rise of “so called” Glam Metal, left many bands and fans seeking something new, something exciting, something street; what they got was something that would change the course of extreme music forever. Mixing exemplary musicianship with a gutsy street level sound was the plan, and this plan was lead by the “so called big 4” from across the pond: Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth and Anthrax embraced these ideals in various guises, and through a custom known as “Tape Trading” (the thing we used to do in the days before the internet), demos and live recordings were soon
THRASH METAL
spreading around the globe at break neck speed; other bands from Europe and beyond soon joined the fold and the rest as they say was history. Aside from the well above average musicianship, what really helped Thrash Metal was its identity, with musicians of the time abandoning the “them and us” attitude held by many bands back in the day, often wearing the same clothes and having the same values as the fans. This made Thrash a very important part of several music fans development, and a melting pot for Punk fans and traditional Metal fans to fuse together in a way not seen before. By the mid to late Eighties, Slayer had released “Reign in Blood” and Metallica had given us “Master of Puppets”, two albums that were, and still are, regarded as Classics of any generation. With an ever growing fan base and an ever increasing growth of independent labels and fanzines, thrash metal moved up a level that nobody expected. Gigs had moved from the sweaty clubs of their births and into the stadiums and arenas usually reserved to the musical elite. Demos and albums had been replaced with high budget MTV friendly videos, and that my friends, is where it all went wrong... As with Punk, and in fact any kind of street music, Thrash didn’t suit the big stage. It was
never intended to do so. Yes, Slayer and Metallica were still shifting enough units to makes it viable, but compared with the extravagant stage shows of the likes of Guns’n’ Roses and Motley Crue - thrash music lost its identity on the larger stage, with shows often consisting of nothing more than a group of headbangers rooted to the spot headbanging in unison. With the leaders of the genre, Metallica, adopting a more mainstream approach in the Nineties, and the emergence of Grunge music, the glory days were over, never to return. However, all is not doom and gloom. Even with the passing of Jeff, we are assured that Slayer will continue to churn out the kind of music that Thrash fans demand, and the current scene is littered with a new generation of talented bands doing the rounds and delivering the goods. Thrash ain’t dead, let’s just hope that it has learned from its mistakes. By John Morgan - Photo Cristina Massei