Sabbath (English band)
| Sabbath | |
|---|---|
 Sabbath: Andy Sneap and Simon "Jack Hammer" Jones, London Scala 2008. |
|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Thrash metal |
| founding | 1985, 2006 |
| resolution | 1992, 2014 |
| Website | www.myspace.com/ |
| Founding members | |
| Martin Walkyier (until 1990, 2001, since 2006) | |
| Andy Sneap (until 1992, since 2006) | |
| Fraser Craske (until 1990, 2001, 2006–2007) | |
| Simon Negus (until 1992, since 2006) | |
| Last occupation | |
singing |
Martin Walkyier (until 1990, 2001, since 2006) |
guitar |
Andy Sneap (until 1992, since 2006) |
guitar |
Simon Jones (1989, 2001, since 2006) |
Drums |
Simon Negus (until 1992, since 2006) |
bass |
Gizz Butt (since 2007) |
| former members | |
guitar |
Neil Watson (1989-1992) |
bass |
Wayne Banks (1990-1992) |
singing |
Richie Desmond (1990-1992) |
Guitar (live) |
Richard Scott (1988) |
Sabbat is a thrash metal band from Nottingham , England , which was formed in 1985 by members of two befriended bands.
With the 1988 album History of a Time to Come and the following album Dreamweaver (Reflections of Our Yesterdays) a year later , which is a concept album based on the novel The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates , could Sabbat established themselves as the most important representatives of British Thrash Metal and became an important part, first in the local scene, which found many followers, and finally also globally. Characteristic for the band were the rough vocals and the pagan lyrics by Martin Walkyier, as well as a songwriting for progressive and at the same time powerful songs, which were almost exclusively written by Andy Sneap alone.
In contrast to other big thrash metal bands like Metallica or Slayer , Sabbat were never commercially successful due to the inadequate support of their record company Noise Records at the time and suffered from poor management, which almost brought the band members to a break after recording Dreamweaver.
With the musical development, driven by Andy Sneap, from catchy, fast classics to longer and more melodic songs, there was a break between Martin Walkyier and the remaining members in 1990. While Walkyier then implemented his lyrical ideas in his newly founded band Skyclad (he recorded ten studio albums with them by the year 2000), Sabbat quickly disappeared from the scene. The massive changes in the line-up with Richie Desmond as the new singer and a change of style towards Power Metal with inconsequential songwriting had a very negative effect on the development of the band. The follow-up album Mourning has Broken became a flop, as a result of which many followers completely turned away from the band. The band finally broke up in 1992 after internal differences.
After the Sabbath was dissolved, the other members were active in various projects and bands, but none of them were particularly successful. Andy Sneap became best known outside of Sabbath as a producer for several bands.
After Martin Walkyier's attempt at reunification failed in 2001 and he almost wanted to leave the music business with a demo release in 2006 due to lack of financial success, he decided in December of the same year to revive the band for a few concerts with the original members.
history
The beginnings
The band's origins go back to June 1985 when singer Martin Walkyier and bassist Frazer Craske joined a band called Hydra. Andy Sneap joined Hydra as a second guitarist, but the remaining guitarist left the band two weeks later. The entry of the former striptease and Fallen Angel drummer Simon Negus (to replace Mark Daley, who left the band at the same time as the second guitarist Adam Ferman) coincided with a name change: Hydra changed their name to Sabbath.
"Let me shed a bit of light on things here. Martin and Frazer had this band called Hydra back in 84/85. The most impressive thing about the band was the fact that Frazer had already printed some 2 color t shirts and he had a car! I met Frazer at a local Hell gig in Long Eaton and it turned out they were thinking of getting a second guitarist. I heard a tape (which I still have, it's priceless) of a show they did in a pub in Nottingham and decided to have a jam as I was wanting to get some experience playing, after all I was the ripe old age of 15.
Two weeks after I joined, the original guitarist quit (i think this was on the cards) and the drummer left (thankfully) after we did our first demo a couple of months later, I think due to me having ago about his girlfriend being in the studio (you see, good work ethic back then!). It was Tim Bowler (the drummer from Hell) who introduced us to Simon Negus. The name Sabbat came from a book on witchcraft, but I actually found some old school books of mine with ideas doodled on them so I'm sure I had some doing in suggesting it, but I do remember we liked the way the word looked in the scrawly type of writing so we went with it. Yeah the flexi disc for white dwarf was an odd one, John Blanche, the art editor painted our first cover so it all came about quite easy, it does sound shockingly bad though. "
After rehearsals, which lasted almost a year, Sabbat released the Fragments-of-a-Faith-Forgotten demo, which was very well received. The band received letters from several record companies and a double page in the Kerrang! -Magazine.
"Martin and Frazer were really into Venom , I was really into Mercyful Fate and Slayer . I remember the day we recorded 'Fragments ...', Frazer had that Venom, Exodus and Slayer video from New York and we decided that's totally what we wanted to be doing. "
" We recorded" Fragments of a Faith Forgotten "on a little four-track recorder, we got it down in just two afternoons. We didn't think about it much, but then we got a deal with Noise, two sites in Kerrang !, and a Radio One Session. It had an avalanche effect. After the session the label was even more interested in us and after that we got the appearance on the cover of Kerrang! "
After releasing a Warhammer-inspired flexi disc on the front cover of White Dwarf magazine, the band made a deal with the German Noise Records company in mid-1987 (the signing had previously been delayed because Andy Sneap was under 18 and legally not an adult).
The climb
In September 1987 the band traveled to Hanover, Germany to record their debut album History of a Time to Come . This period was followed by a lot of media attention among journalists and fans alike for its unique lyrical approach and how different it was to the image of the "Big 4" at the same time in the 1980s metal scene.
The second album Dreamweaver (Reflections of Our Yesterdays) was a concept album based on the book The Way of Wyrd by Brian Bates. The album demonstrates Walkyier's deeply ingrained beliefs in Wyrdism, Anglo-Saxon spirituality, mysticism and Celtic paganism.
Fraser Craske:
" Well, we made the decision after our European tour [to get a second guitarist in the band]. We had taken Richard Scott on tour with us for the extra sound and it went really well. But Richard said he would Can't support us full time because he wanted to continue with his other band, but we had to get another guitarist to get an improvement in the sound. "
The introduction of new guitarist Simon "Jack Hammer" Jones made a huge leap forward on the guitar faction. Andy Sneap confirmed this in his interview with Renee Ackerman from Rockworldtv in the Backstage Recording Studio in 2007.
Jack, who previously played in Holosade and became a permanent member of the band midway through Dreamweaver's recordings as rhythm and lead guitarist with Sneap's support, was professionally recognized prior to joining Sabbat and is still active in the band.
Crisis and separation
Tensions began to rise within the band, most of them centered around money. The band developed a very good following and sold a ton of fan merchandise, but they were the victims of bad management and the label (Noise) which apparently didn't care what the band wanted.
Martin Walkyier:
" When we got the Noise deal, people were about to tell us, 'don't sign,' but we did. Bands that were good at the time - Celtic Frost, Helloween, Kreator - were all signed to Noise We had complete artistic freedom, but not for the right reasons. It was because they didn't care a tail. "
The band almost broke up in the Dreamweaver sessions, but regrouped to finish the recordings and to overcome and finalize their differences. Andy Sneap, looking back in recent interviews, notes that it's great that he and Martin Walkyier are able to function again within the Sabbath without arguing about things like money, musical direction, and the clash of the personalities they were back then learned.
Martin Walkyier:
" There are stories that I quit on Sabbath because the rest of the band didn't like my pagan lyrics. That's not true. We all have a common interest in paganism. Paganism has never been a problem. No, the truth was that I could see that the music was getting more and more complex. Andy wrote 11 minutes long musical epics and I couldn't even begin to see how to write lyrics for that. I wanted to bring in other styles of music, violins for example. That would never have been with Sabbath worked. "
Martin Walkyier commented in late 2006 that Sabbat were in dire financial straits in 1989 and that he was in need of government support. This was how the financial situation the band was faced with was explained. Walkyier commented that he felt that they were starting to sound more "like Rush" due to the open technical nature and duration of their songs - all in all, those things continued to fuel tension within the band.
Martin Walkyier:
" All of the things that went wrong with Sabbath in the old days really had nothing to do with me and Andy Sneap, even though we had our disagreements in the days when we were young. That had largely with record labels and management and things that what happened around us - the fact that we were selling tons of loads of phonograms and really saw no money at all and instead had to rely on government support. "
Guitarist Simon Jones was the first to jump off the ship during their 1989 UK Dreamweaver Tour with British Thrashers Xentrix as a support band. He left the band moments before the concert at the University of Sheffield Refectory on November 15, 1989, Sabbat ended the gig with only Andy Sneap on guitar. Andy Sneap has stated that alcohol was involved in his exit, and Jones himself said he regretted his departure in a video that appeared on Andy Sneap's MySpace page.
Guitarist Neil Watson was brought in for guitar duties, it only took him two weeks to learn all of the tracks and can be seen on the live video The End of the Beginning . Walkyier left the band in 1990 together with Craske, Walkyier then founded the band Skyclad . Fraser Craske left the music industry completely at this point. Andy Sneap and Simon Negus reunited the band and brought in vocalist Richie Desmond and bassist Wayne Banks. In 1991 they released their third album, Mourning Has Broken - but it didn't hit fans or critics and the band played a final concert in Derby, only to break up soon after.
In Terrorizer Magazine [# 152 - Xmas 2006] Andy Sneap stated:
(Energetically): " I don't listen to this (Mourning Has Broken)! It has a lot of stupid guitar playing, a lot of guitar shreddings there just sound ridiculous. It sounds thrown together, and shouldn't be called the Sabbath. "
Simon Negus continued with the band The Glory Boys. Andy Sneap and Wayne Banks left to start the Godsend group. Andy Sneap is now best known as a successful Grammy Award winning producer who has produced over 100 albums at his backstage recording studios in rural Derbyshire.
Unofficial reunion
Martin Walkyier originally wanted to reform the band as Sabbath in 2001 with Fraser Craske and Simon Jones. However, this was prevented by Andy Sneap at the time.
"The way I originally heard about [the reunion] was from one of the guys at Earache [Records], who called me up to ask me about it. I knew nothing about it so I called Martin to ask him about it. The conversation got a little heated and I explained they couldn't do it under the name SABBAT as both he and [bassist] Frazer quit, leaving me and [drummer] Simon [Negus] with a lot of debts and financial problems to clear up . This was the reason we carried on as SABBAT and did a third album. Obviously we wanted the new line up to work out but it didn't ... simple as that. What it came down to though was Simon Negus and myself, in theory, own the business and name as they left. If you left your employee, you couldn't go and start that business somewhere else under the same name. "
Walkyier, Jones and Craske played under the name Return to the Sabbat from 2001 to 2003, Skyclad drummer Jay Graham was on drums. After Simon Jones left the band (and was replaced by Andy Newby) the band continued their program for a while at the Bloodstock Indoor Festival and a gig in Camden, London. After that Return to the Sabbath broke up.
Official reunion
In 2006 the band reformed again in the Dreamweaver line-up and appeared at four different venues in the opening act for Cradle of Filth on a tour of Great Britain in December 2006.
Ahead of this short tour, the band performed on Saturday December 16, 2006 at The Rig in Nottingham, England. It was the first time since 1989 that the Dreamweaver cast played live together. Sabbat received a lot of press coverage and rave reviews for their support, confirming that their first two albums will be re-released in a remastered format with additional bonus material.
They then played festival appearances at the Keep-It-True Festival in Germany on April 15, 2007 and the Day of Darkness Festival in Co. Laois, Ireland, on July 6th and 7th of the same year took place.
Andy Sneap and Martin Walkyier said in interviews that the reunion was held to "have some fun " and that there is no long-term planning.
On February 27, 2007, History of a Time to Come and Dreamweaver were re-released in new packaging, with live bonus tracks, and remastered. The last Sabbath album, Mourning Has Broken , was not re-released.
Discography
Albums
- 1988: History of a Time to Come ( Noise Records )
- 1989: Dreamweaver (Reflections of Our Yesterdays) (Noise Records)
- 1991: Mourning Has Broken (Noise Records)
Singles
- 1987: Blood for the Blood God ( Flexi-Disc in White Dwarf # 95; Games Workshop )
- 1988: A Cautionary Tale / And the Brave Man Fails (Split Flexi single with Vendetta ; Noise Records in collaboration with Metal Forces and Rock Hard )
- 1989: Wildfire / The Best of Enemies (Wintrup Songs Ltd)
Sampler contributions
- 1990: Hosanna in Excelsis , I for an Eye and For Those Who Died on Doomsday News III - Thrashing East Live (live compilation; Noise Records, SPV GmbH )
Demos
- 1985: Magic in Practice and Theory
- 1987: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten
- 1987: Stranger than Fiction
VHS video
- 1990: The End of the Beginning (Fotodisk Video)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Andy Sneap interview for wickedworldrecords.com ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ Former SABBAT Guitarist Speaks Out On Revamped Group ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
Web links
- Official Myspace page
- English fansite ( Memento from January 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive )