Quartz (band)

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Quartz
General information
origin Birmingham , England
Genre (s) New Wave of British Heavy Metal , Hard Rock
founding 1974 as Bandylegs, 2011
resolution 1983
Current occupation
Derek Arnold
Malcolm Cope
Mick Hopkins
David Garner
former members
Electric guitar, keyboard
Geoff Nicholls († 2017)
singing
 Mick "Taffy" Taylor († 2016)
Electric bass
 Steve McLoughlin
singing
 Geoff Bate
Keyboard (studio)
 Alan Long

Quartz is an English New Wave of British Heavy Metal and Hard Rock band from Birmingham , which was founded in 1974 under the name Bandylegs , split up in 1983 and has been active again since 2011.

history

The band was founded in 1974 under the name Bandylegs and consisted of bassist Derek Arnold, drummer Malcolm Cope and guitarist Mick Hopkins, who had previously been active in the band Copperfield, and singer Mick "Taffy" Taylor. This was followed by the release of several singles on various labels, including the single Bet You Can't Dance in 1976 on Jet Records . The label made it possible for the band to tour with Widowmaker , who was also under contract with Jet Records, before appearing with AC / DC in Europe . In 1976 the band was seen at the Reading Festival . In early 1977 concerts with Black Sabbath in Great Britain followed . Here the group saw that Black Sabbath could get more attention through their more aggressive image, whereby they also tried to change their image. In addition, the guitarist and keyboardist Geoff Nicholls was added to the cast. The group also wrote a different style of new material while renaming itself Quartz. Through the tour with Black Sabbath, the band was able to win Albert Chapman as a tour manager and Tony Iommi as a fan.

Then the self-titled debut album was recorded under the direction of Iommi, which was released in 1977 on Jet Records. At the same time, the release of an EP called Sugar Rain , which contains the title song, the two songs Hustler and Little Old Lady , was planned. However, the publication was canceled, which is why only demo copies of it are in circulation. Instead, the single Street Fighting Lady appeared with the song Mainline Riders as the B-side . The sales figures of the single did not satisfy Jet Records, however, and a renewed appearance at the 1977 Reading Festival as a replacement for Widowmaker could hardly increase the popularity. Many smaller appearances followed, as well as a few appearances on TV in 1978. At this time Quartz and Jet Records separated from each other, and the band found it harder to perform. In the second half of 1979 the band became more active again with the advent of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, with Geoff Nicholls having left the line-up to musically support Black Sabbath. Now back as a quartet, the band signed a record deal with Reddingtons Rare Records , which released the single Nantucket Sleighride (1980) with Wildfire as the B-side and the 1980s live album Live Quartz . The latter was recorded in a local club. The A side of the single is a cover version of the Mountain song. On the single, Alan Long helped out as a keyboardist. The live album was re -released in the same year through Logo Records , which gave it better distribution. The same label also released the EP Satan's Serenade in 1980 , which, in addition to the title track, contains the songs Bloody Fool and a remixed version of Roll Over Beethoven from their live album. At the time of release, the band was on a tour with Rush , and the band was able to achieve solid sales for the first time with this EP. In 1980 the band took part in the EMI sampler Muthas Pride with their song Back in the Band , before the group signed a record deal with MCA . During this time, Jet Records re-released the originally self-titled debut album under the title Deleted and the single Street Fighting Lady was re-released. The label also used the three songs Street Fighting Lady , Devils Brew and Mainline Riders for the sampler Metallergy .

The first activity for MCA was the contribution Can't Say No to You to the sampler Brute Force , before the album Stand Up and Fight , produced by Derek Lawrence , followed a few months later, also in 1980 . The album includes new versions of the songs Can't Say No to You and Wildfire . Stand Up and Fight and Stoking Up the Fires of Hell were released as singles in the same year . The latter contains the song Circles as the B-side, in which Brian May can be heard as guest guitarist and backing vocals by Ozzy Osbourne . To promote the album, Gillan went on a national tour in the fall of that year. In 1980 the band was represented for the third time at the Reading Festival. Sales of the album slowly began to pick up before appearances with Saga followed in early 1981 . In the following period, MCA decided to part with the bands Fist , White Spirit and Quartz in order to concentrate more on the NWoBHM bands Diamond Head and Tygers of Pan Tang . The group was looking for a new label until 1982, when founding members Derek Arnold (bass) and Mick "Taffy" Taylor (vocals) left the line-up. The bassist Steve McLoughlin and the singer Geoff Bate joined the group towards the end of the year as replacements. After the group signed a record deal with Heavy Metal Records , work on the next album began in early 1983. For this, Geoff Nicholls came back briefly to the band, but left them again after the recordings to continue to devote himself to Black Sabbath. The album produced by Robin George was released in the same year under the name Against All Odds . It was partly written with singer David Garner, but the vocals are from Geoff Bates. However, the sales figures remained disappointing. In the same year, the single Tell Me Why was released with the song Street Walker as the B-side. In the same year the band broke up. Also in 1983, Malcolm Cope helped out in preproduction for the Black Sabbath album Born Again . Geoff Nicholls contributed two of his compositions, Facing Hell and Black Illusion , to the Ozzy Osbourne album Down to Earth in 2001 .

In 1996, Neat Metal Records released the compilation Resurrection , which consists of the live album Live Quartz , recordings from a performance at the Hammersmith Odeon and other, sometimes quite rare, recordings. In 2004 another compilation was published with Satan's Serenade - The Quartz Anthology , which contains some previously unreleased demo recordings as well as live recordings. In the same year Majestic Rock Records re-released the album Stand Up and Fight with Circles as a bonus song.

In 1994 Sabbat covered Satan's Serenade for the compilation Black up Your Soul… and in 2011 Roxxcalibur added her version of the song to her album Lords of NWOBHM . Orodruin also recorded a cover of Stand Up and Fight for their 2004 compilation Claw Tower… and Other Tales of Terror .

In 2011 the band got back together and played their first gig on December 16 of that year at The Asylum at a cancer aid concert in Birmingham. The cast consisted of Nicholls, Hopkins, Arnold, Cope and Garner. Since the concert was quite successful, they began to write new material and gave other concerts in Germany and Sweden, among others . In 2013 the band was featured on Keep It True . In the same year, the live album Back in the Band - Live and Revisited was released , which was followed by the 2016 studio album Fear No Evil on High Roller Records after the compilation Too Hot to Handle via Skol Records . Former singer Mike Taylor passed away on September 27, 2016. On January 28 of the following year, former guitarist and keyboardist Geoff Nicholls died of lung cancer at the age of 68 . In their career the band also played with Iron Maiden , Saxon and UFO , among others .

style

Malc Macmillan wrote in The NWOBHM Encyclopedia that the band played uninspired hard rock under the name Bandyleg. The debut album only contains occasional heavy metal moments in the form of Black Sabbath riffs ; otherwise the material is very similar to that of Bandylegs. Overall, there is Proto-NWoBHM in the style of Ethel the Frog , Nightwing and Rage . With Satan's Serenade , the band got closer to the more typical music of the NWoBHM, since the songs are now heavier upbeat pieces. Stand Up and Fight offer slippery, medium-paced, NWoBHM-typical music in the style of More or Fist, so that the band has largely moved away from its traditional roots. You do without rambling guitar passages and instead focus more on catchiness. Against All Odds is an attempt to break into more commercial areas. The album is very different from its predecessor, with many songs sounding almost like unused material from the group Grand Prix .

According to The International Encyclopedia of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal , the band plays simple hard rock, where you can hear Black Sabbath influences. However, Quartz has a less threatening voice and one concentrates more on the melodies of the songs. Manfred Kerschke wrote in NWoBHM New Wave of British Heavy Metal The glory Days that the self-titled debut album includes Hard Rock, which is "[s] slow, sometimes a little more violent but never leaves the mid-tempo range". Against All Odds offers a "combination of old style and keyboard-heavy commercial rock". Allmusic's Bradley Torreano noted that the band's debut album was important to the emerging NWoBHM scene. In addition to Diamond Head and Def Leppard , Quartz was one of the first groups to accelerate heavy metal.

In his review of the debut album, Martin Popoff noted in The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 1: The Seventies that the band played with the best metal of the NWoBHM. The group offers a special mix of British rock style and ranges from Black Sabbath to The Sweet , Supertramp , Uriah Heep and Nightwing. The song Mainline Riders lets influences from Doom Metal , especially from Iommi's production, shine through and can be classified between Black Sabbath and Angel Witch. Many songs are acoustic pieces that have been enriched by many vocal and guitar harmonies . In the second volume of his book series, Popoff stated that Live Quartz and the first three studio albums are all completely different from each other. On the live album, the group occasionally sounds like a mix of Black Sabbath and The Sweet, which is mainly due to Taylor's expressive vocals. Satan's Serenade contains groove- heavy metal, which sounds like a mixture of Black Sabbath and Stand Up and Fight . The latter album was the best of the NWoBHM and could compete with the releases of Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Tygers of Pan Tang. The songs would contain drum-based grooves, intelligent riffs, good bass playing and “daring” vocals. He was also reminded of Mercyful Fate and Black Sabbath. Most likely, the album is comparable to Blood & Thunder by More or the self-titled album by Angel Witch. Against All Odds has a more toxic sound and a worse production. It is comparable to albums by Oz , Witchfynde and Witchfinder General , whereby one does not concentrate so much on Black Metal , but rather on a depressing sound. Black Sabbath influences can also be heard again. Occasionally, melodic Gothic passages are used.

Matthias Mader outlined in Iron Pages the style of the Deleted re-release of the debut album with the formulation that it was “ boogie-heavy pre-NWOBHM hard rock”. In Rock Hard he wrote in his review for Fear No Evil , that the album far too trendy guessed Against All Odds wiedergutmache. Rather, one follows on from the early works without sounding old-fashioned or anachronistic . The sound carrier is therefore "the best example of the timelessness of good NWOBHM songwriting".

Discography

as bandylegs
than quartz
  • 1977: Quartz (album, Jet Records)
  • 1977: Sugar Rain (EP, Jet Records)
  • 1977: Street Fighting Lady (Single, Jet Records)
  • 1980: Deleted (re-release of the album Quartz , Jet Records)
  • 1980: Live Quartz (album, Reddingtons Rare Records )
  • 1980: Nantucket Sleighride (single, Reddingtons Rare Records)
  • 1980: Live (Single, Logo Records)
  • 1980: Satan's Serenade (EP, Logo Records)
  • 1980: Stand Up and Fight (Album, MCA )
  • 1980: Stand Up and Fight (Single, MCA)
  • 1980: Stoking Up the Fires of Hell (Single, MCA)
  • 1983: Against All Odds (Album, Heavy Metal Records )
  • 1983: Tell Me Why (Single, Heavy Metal Records)
  • 1996: Resurrection (compilation, Neat Metal Records )
  • 2004: Satan's Serenade - The Quartz Anthology (compilation, Castle Communications Records )
  • 2013: Live and Revisited (live album, self-published)
  • 2015: Too Hot to Handle (compilation, Skol Records )
  • 2016: Fear No Evil (Album, High Roller Records )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Info. Facebook , accessed September 21, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Malc Macmillan: The NWOBHM Encyclopedia . IP Verlag Jeske / Mader GbR, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-931624-16-3 , p. 458 ff .
  3. ↑ a b c Bradley Torreano: Quartz. Allmusic , accessed September 23, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Biography. rockdetector.com, archived from the original on September 15, 2016 ; accessed on September 23, 2017 .
  5. ^ A b Matthias Mader, Otger Jeske, Manfred Kerschke: NWoBHM New Wave of British Heavy Metal The glory Days . Iron Pages, Berlin 1995, p. 129 f .
  6. ↑ a b c d Matthias Mader: Quartz . Fear No Evil. In: Rock Hard . No. 354 , November 2016, p. 110 .
  7. ↑ Toine van Poorten: KEEP IT TRUE XVI - 2013. * April 19-20, 2013 *. truemetalfan.org, accessed on September 23, 2017 .
  8. ^ Quartz (10). Discogs , accessed September 23, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Original QUARTZ Singer MIKE 'TAFFY' TAYLOR Dies. Blabbermouth.net , accessed September 23, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Joe DiVita: Former Black Sabbath Keyboardist Geoff Nicholls Dead at 68. Loudwire , accessed September 23, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Tony Jasper, Derek Oliver: The International Encyclopedia of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal . Facts on File Inc., New York 1983, ISBN 0-8160-1100-1 , pp. 263 .
  12. ^ Martin Popoff : The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 1: The Seventies . Collectors Guide Ltd, Burlington, Ontario, Canada 2003, ISBN 978-1-894959-02-5 , pp. 221 .
  13. ↑ Martin Popoff: The Collector's Guide of Heavy Metal Volume 2: The Eighties . Collectors Guide Ltd, Burlington, Ontario, Canada 2005, ISBN 978-1-894959-31-5 , pp. 271 f .
  14. ↑ M [atthias] M [vein]: Quartz "Deleted" (LP) . In: Iron Pages . No. February 18 , 1992, Collectas Corner, p. 13 .