Steve Bardsley
Black Rose
Hi, and thank you for inviting me to do an interview with your magazine. I am very well thanks as are all the guys in the band, we are going through the heat wave that is affecting all of Europe at the moment so very hot, but as UK weather is notorious for being cold and miserable I'm not complaining lol.
Well we didn't really stop as such, we were still doing gigs up until 2016, but then we stopped gigging and decided to concentrate on recording the new album. The last gig we did was the Xmas rocker HRH festival in Sheffield with bands like Girlschool, Blitzkrieg, Fist, Tygers of Pang Tang and loads of others. We also had a change in personnel as our drummer Chris Bennett left and we recruited our former drummer from the late 1980's Paul Fowler.
Of course the pandemic was something that we'd never experienced before and it has been a strange time for sure. In the UK lockdown caused a lot of problems especially for musicians as no gigs were allowed so most of the time was spent sat at home, apart from going out a couple of times a day to walk the dog haha. But obviously due to the internet we could all keep in touch and we used this time to send mixes of songs to each other and finalize the sound we were after.
Personally, I wasn't affected by it too much, there were the obvious worries about money and the lack of income but luckily my family and me managed quite well compared to some people.
Hahaha well originally the idea of the title came about after we played at Hammerfest in the UK and a review that came out afterwards of the gig. A journalist made a joke about us being old and wheeled on stage in our zimmer frames which I thought was unnecessary and unfair, especially when you consider that the headline act was Anthrax who are of a similar age to us. So my thinking was ' what the fuck ' has our age got to do with anything. A lot of bands our age are still going strong – Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Metallica and many more, they're still making fantastic music and entertaining people so their age is irrelevant... this is why the album's title originated.
It was probably a mix of different things that affected my writing, the pandemic, the state of the world especially climate change, and maybe it was an age thing as well, wanting to prove that us old farts can still rock! Lol.
I think we're all affected by the world around us and we are mostly powerless to do anything about it, we have to rely on the powers that be – the governments of our planet to do the right thing.... which sadly they don't always do.
Writing lyrics and songs is all we can do and it's our way of shouting out about the way we feel and if people listen and more importantly take notice then that's great and we can take some satisfaction from that.
I would love to think so.... but probably not if I'm being honest. Maybe if we sell as many albums as the likes of Iron Maiden.... then it might lol.
Even though we were around during the 1980s NWOBHM era and got associated with that movement, we were not your typical NWOBHM band. A lot of people back then called us more' Glam rock ' or ' Party Rock ' and listening back to the music we did that's probably a fair comment.
Although I always liked the heavier stuff when I was younger, I also liked catchy sing-a-long type songs, so that obviously influenced my writing back then. The last album 'cure for your disease' was a definite throwback to the 1980s and had quite a bluesy rock feel to it, so this time we wanted to go all out, heads down, fists in the air, heavy metal rocking....and so far everyone seems to think we've achieved that.
Yes, without doubt it is, I've already wrote a lot of new material/ demo songs and it's definitely in the same direction as this album...possibly even a bit heavier. The positive reviews we've had so far reflect that other people enjoy our change of direction too, so why spoil it.
I like to think I'm open minded when it comes to music and I'll listen to a lot of stuff. Some of the new modern bands are amazing both musically and technically, although I may not be directly influenced by them I definitely take notice of what they're doing. Of course trends have changed even in the heavy metal genre but I hope we have achieved a blend of the old school rock heart with a modern metal twist.
As I am the main songwriter so that does make things easier as I write most of the riffs and melodies, record them and then let the guys listen and they will give their input. A couple of the songs on the album Kiko and me co-wrote and that's great when that happens.
No all this material was written within the last few years and it has taken a little while to get them to this final stage, with changes and various remixes but it's all new stuff. In fact we originally mastered and mixed the album ourselves but to be honest we're not engineers and so on the advice of Pure Steel Records we had it remixed by Robert Romanga at Audio Stahl and he did an amazing job.
Luckily the majority of the album was already recorded before the pandemic hit so it was just a case of final touches and mixes which we managed to do over the internet. This album wasn't recorded in the traditional way of us all going to a studio, we recorded most of the drums and vocals at Kiko's home studio and the rest was recorded at our own home studios, so we were working from home... sort of.
Well we can honestly say we are very happy with the sound of the album, we wanted a heavy, clear and dynamic sounding mix, which together with Rob we worked to achieve. Hopefully this is the sound we will continue to have for as long as we're still around.
Detonator is a fast and heavy song about the possibility of how things might turn out if we don't get our shit together as a planet regarding climate change. We are seeing how much hotter the summers are getting and it's obviously not just a coincidence, but the powers of world government don't seem to be willing to do much about it, until we become a great big ball of fire... then maybe they will. It is one of my favourite songs on the album and apart from the underlying message.... it just fucking rocks lol.
It's funny you're not the first one to mention the Skid Row connection, but the strange thing is I've personally not listened to them much over the years. I know their big hit songs of course like 18 and life and Youth gone wild, but Kiko our bass player is more of a fan than me and Ash our new singer is also.
But there is obviously a similar sound to them on this track as others have mentioned it, which we'll take as a compliment I guess. I think personally that each track has its own merits on the album, which is why it hopefully makes for a variable listen and glues it all together.
We have our first gig since 2016 coming up in September with our new vocalist Ash Robertson at Trillians Rock bar in Newcastle,UK as I'm now concentrating on guitar and backing vocals. We hope that we can do some festivals and play gigs to promote the album we are certainly ready to rock again without doubt.
Cheers Lior, Take care buddy.
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