Sy Keeler – Onslaught – Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Jim Rowland
Saturday, 02 November 2013 03:40
Kings of British thrash Onslaught have just released a barnstorming new album in the shape of ‘VI’ – an album that has got fans and critics hailing it as a modern thrash masterpiece – just check out what Uber Rock’s own Matt Phelps said about it. When the band hit London recently as part of their UK tour, I sat down with Onslaught vocalist Sy Keeler to talk about the album, new drummer Mike Hourihan, the downside of touring Russia, the band’s early days, and those grumpy old British thrash fans of the ‘80s… Read on Uber thrashers!
The new album ‘VI’ has had a pretty amazing reaction so far, I’d imagine you’re rather pleased!
Yeah of course we’re pleased. All the reviews are saying “best thrash album of the year”, well I bloody well hope so! We’ve had comments like listening to ‘VI’ was like hearing ‘Master Of Puppets’ for the first time, or the best thrash album since ‘Reign In Blood’ was another one. That’s a compliment, so you never get tired of hearing compliments like that! They’ve all been pretty amazing.
It’s a really powerful album – the production is superb. Tell us about who produced it.
Thomas ‘Plec’ Johansson is the man behind the production. He wasn’t first choice, we were gonna go with Jacob Hansen again who did ‘Sounds Of Violence’, but he wasn’t available. He basically blew us out because he was offered a bigger band, I don’t even think it was a metal band actually. He was going to make more money out of it, so he said “sorry I can’t fit you in”. So we were disappointed about that, but our record company came up with Thomas Johansson. We listened to some of his work and it was like, “yes, this guy is very, very good”. So we just took the plunge and went for it, and we have a fantastic production on the album – it’s huge! The space he has managed to create and everything is crystal clear. It’s a brutal mix yet there’s so much space.
So it might have been a blessing in disguise not getting Jacob Hansen
Yes, I think so.
Talking about how good the album’s sound is, the drums sound awesome on it. You have a new drummer for this album, tell us about him.
Oh yes! Well Steve Grice left on the eve of a European tour on the back of ‘Sounds Of Violence’ so he left around March of 2011. Jeff our bass player said ‘I know a drummer who would probably do it’ – Mic Hourihan from the death metal band Desecration. So he asked Mic if he could help us out on the European tour. So he said “yes”, and ultimately he had eight days to learn an hour and fifteen minute set, and not necessarily straightforward songs either. So he worked, and worked, and worked, and on the first show it was like “wow, this guy’s got something special here – we’ve got a great guy on board here”. Every night, as he got to know the songs he was just expanding on what he was doing, and I would turn round to him with a big beaming smile on my face – “awesome!” After four shows, we were sat in a café, and I’d already had a chat to Nige about it, saying we should offer this guy something, see if he would be interested in joining us. So we were sat in a café in Sweden after a show and I said “Mic, would you be up for joining the band full time, we’re really impressed with what you’ve done”. He had a big lump in his throat, and we thought he was going to cry, or say no! He was blown away, so Mic joined on that European tour, and we haven’t looked back. He’s such an explosive drummer, it’s amazing. When I heard the finished product of the new album it was ‘OH MY GOD!’ I was gobsmacked, so we have an awesome drummer on board I’m please to say. He’s reliable, consistent, his timekeeping is second to none and every night I still find myself turning round and smiling at him because he’s done something else!
You’ve just toured Russia
Oh God!
You haven’t just popped over to Moscow for one show, you did a whole tour. How was that?
We did seven shows in seven days. Russia is such a huge place, I’m not sure what the mileage was – we spent quite a long time on trains. Yeah, Russian trains! The carriages sleep seventy or eighty people, they’re like cattle trucks, people just crammed in, and everyone’s got a bunk. We would play a show, if we were lucky we would get a shower, not all the venues had showers, and we’d get on a train for a ten/sixteen hour journey at one in the morning and you’ve got to negotiate a very narrow aisle up to your bunk. There’s feet hanging out the end of the bunks, there’s horrible smells in there with all these people everywhere. We’d often get split up – you get a bunk number – so more often than not I’d be adjacent to or above a complete stranger, some Russian woman. I’m not one for sleeping fully clothed, so I’m down to the underpants and you’re trying to be discreet and get to my bed by climbing off of her bed! The bunks are just wide enough to lie in. It wasn’t comfortable, the toilet facilities were horrible. We weren’t allowed to drink our own beer on there, you had to get their expensive ones…so it was an experience but not one that I would undertake again!
But the gigs were good?
Oh yeah, they were great. But we saw some sights, we started in Moscow and went east towards the Kazakhstan border. A lot of the towns and cities have not changed since they were under Communist rule. The housing complexes are just falling down with people still living in them. Some of the towns are falling down and you still see statues of Lenin.
I want to go back to the early days if I may, I know you joined from the second album. Initially the band was more influenced by the second wave of British punk, bands like Discharge and GBH.
Yes. Basically Onslaught started with Steve and Nige and neither of them could play. It was learn as you go, I don’t think Nige could even tune a guitar when he started. The first time I saw Nige before I joined Onslaught he had pink spikey hair about six feet tall! I saw them in Bristol at the Granary in November ’85. I thought “these guys are quite good”, the whole punk/thrash crossover even then, and a month later I was told they were looking for a singer and would I be up for an audition?. I’d heard some of the songs in the set that would appear on ‘The Force’. I auditioned with ‘Metal Forces’, they’d completed the writing for ‘The Force’ and were looking for a new vocalist, because Mo wasn’t doing justice to the new songs with the direction they were taking – the thrash thing with more dynamics. I sang a verse and chorus of ‘Metal Forces’ and they stopped. I thought, oh fuck it didn’t work, but Nige said “do you want to join?” Onslaught moved into the metal realm at that point. Nige was into Motorhead, Steve liked Iron Maiden, so there was a pot of Motorhead, Iron Maiden and the second wave of punk with the Discharges and The Exploiteds. You put that into a pot and you got ‘Power From Hell’.
You may not agree with this, but what I remember from being in the audiences for thrash gigs in the ‘80s was that audiences in the UK wanted American bands then and the British bands were getting a pretty hard time.
Oh yes, I think even today it’s still the same. Metallica seem to be getting bigger and bigger, and the big four – who made them the big four? I’m not saying that Onslaught should be in the big four, but…music is music and people should give everything a chance. People diss Onslaught because we’re British. I’ve had comments on Facebook saying “oh I don’t listen to that because it’s British”. There was a video posted for ‘Chaos Is King’ and there were some really unpleasant comments on there. You know, “they’re not American or they’re not German”. But it did annoy me back in the ‘80s, I was fucking annoyed. Even now it’s a battle. People say thrash – Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeth. You could probably say only Slayer were remotely thrash these days, the rest of them aren’t thrash at all these days, their history was thrash. It’s a constant battle against the American thrash invasion. The sixties and seventies was the British invasion – Beatles, Zeppelin, Floyd etc, but the eighties and nineties was the American invasion – Metallica, Poison, Van Halen etc.
Perhaps there’ll be a change on the back of this new album then.
I hope so – we deserve it!
Many thanks go to Sy for taking the time to speak to me for Uber Rock and to Mike Exley at MEPR for arranging it.
https://www.facebook.com/onslaughtuk
