Interview with Sy of Onslaught 2007
By Bradley Smith
You guys are celebrating the release of your new album Killing Peace. Can you
tell me some of the events involved with its creation? How do you feel about it
in comparison to your early catalogue? To me it seems like you guys are a
little more groove oriented today.
Celebrating YES! Oh Yes! We are so happy with this album; it’s the album we should have made after The Force. We started writing during 2005 we purposely took our time with it’s creation as we obviously wanted to came back with a Bang! Our intention was to blend PFH & The Force & include the precision of ISOS, which I think we’ve achieved. GROOVE! A slow 4/4 timing with a Fuck Heavy riff, groove! That’s a new one! Haven’t any Metal bands done it before, Slayer, Metallica lots of bands include this ‘Groove’ intelligent song writing, breaking it down makes it a lot more interesting for the listener, rather than 100Mph for a whole album, No, it’s still THRASH!
You guys are having a release party for Killing Peace. Can you tell me about some of the events planned for that night?
Yeah, we have a local (Bristol) gig booked for 3rd March, we had the choice of playing in London, but to say a big thank you to all our friends & families we decided to keep it local (sold out 3 times over) we have 2 guest bands for the gig, Seragon from Bristol & the UK’s brightest thrash hope (2nd to Onslaught of course) Evile, it is also a charity event & we have a Metal Raffle with some great prizes donated by Candlelight & Roadrunner among many & Ultimately we are playing 1 hour 30 min set including songs from all 4 albums.
There has been a lot of controversy surrounding your major label debut In Search of Sanity. How do you see it today? Would you change anything if you could go back in time?
‘I know’ Fact! We would have chosen a different record label, producer & management, yup with hindsight it would have been a whole lot different, A&M were the other contenders for our signature, & we wish we’d gone to them. Manipulation from a major record company who had invested an awful lot of money was unavoidable, my departure from the band was the start of the rot which saw the band split 1&half years after Sanity’s release, although it remains Onslaught’s best selling album to date.
You guys were one of the founders of the Old British extreme metal scene. Do you ever look back on those days with nostalgia? What were some of your favourite bands among your contemporaries? What do you think of the modern day British scene?
We look back with great affection & great memories, I wouldn’t use the term nostalgia, cause this isn’t a nostalgia trip for us, we’re back in the 21st C with something fresh & alive, we knew many other Brit bands, touring with Motorhead in Europe was a blast, Sex, Drugs & R’N’R = Motorhead, Sabbat were friends (Andy Sneap Approached us as we approached him to produce Killing Peace)
Today the scene is healthy, although not to many Thrash bands, but we’re here to put that right.
I know you guys are gonna be doing some upcoming touring. Who will it be with and where will you guys be going? What can the fans expect from seeing you guys live?
At
this point in time we are putting some dates together across Europe, but as I
type nothing is concrete, we obviously wanna get our asses to the U.S.
& the whole world, but we’re not gonna rush into anything, everything goes
through every member of the band before we agree to anything, we’d obviously
like to get on a Major tour, & we’ve had some good offers, so we’ll have to wait
& see. Live
you can expect a uncompromising brutal performance of the highest order, taking
in songs from all 4 albums.
THRASH!
If you could choose any bands to tour with that are either active or dead, which bands would they be and why?
We’d love to tour with Motorhead again, or any of the big Thrashers, Slayer, Kreator etc. We were offered the Euro tour with Celtic Frost / Kreator but the timing was not right. We will see what reaction we get from the album.
I want to say I remember some pretty extreme bands had done some covers of you guys in the recent past but for some reason I can’t remember who they were (maybe Marduk). Has anyone that you are aware of covered you? IF you could choose a band to cover you who would it be and what song would you choose? What band would you cover and what song?
Not aware of Marduk covering us, I’ll have to check that out, I have covers of… Onslaught (Power from Hell) by ‘Thou Art Lord’ & ‘Toxic Holocaust’ & Death Metal by ‘Ritual Carnage’
An artist To Cover Onslaught would have to be ‘Britney Spears covering Killing Peace’ that would be entertaining & Onslaught have done many covers over the years AC/DC springs to mind! We’ve done Sabbath – Symptom Of The Universe, Priest – Breaking The Law, all done in the spirit of fun, although Let There Be Rock did get stretched a little to long, 2 versions! NO! we have no plans to cover any more songs.
From your early career up until today there has been a relationship between Onslaught and Satanism and antireligious stances. How has your distaste for religion developed over the years and how do you see the current state of religion in the world?
Religion! I don’t think we need to make people aware of the role religion has had on the people (sheep) of this world for hundreds of years let alone the past few years, recent events have fuelled the Onslaught lyrical content, which would be relevant in any generation.
Killing Peace is quite an evocative album title. In your opinion, what is killing peace these days? What can we as humans do to change it?
What is ‘Killing Peace’? The blind religious bigot’s who lead the blind, what can we do? Make sure our spokespersons in our governments make the right decisions for us, unfortunately we will never see a peaceful world & I fear for the future. There is more shit to be dealt.
Since we are on the topic of conflict, how do you feel about British troops in Iraq? Are you glad that they are trying to bring more of them home or do you want to see them level the place?
Bring ‘em all home, Brits, Americans, all of ‘em. Civil war is raging in Iraq & will continue to do so when all the troops have gone home, levelling the country will encourage more hatred of the west, to many innocents have died already, every day our news brings us more civilian deaths, the politicians can’t control it, so who can ?
What else does the future hold for Onslaught? Any additional plans sneaking their way around you’re heads?
The Future; we have already started writing for the next album, which we wanna record in 2008, maybe a re-recording of some Onslaught classics, & plenty of worldwide touring.
Any Final Prayers for the Dead?
We hope you give the album a listen, we hope you enjoy our THRASHTASTIC MASTERPIECE! I think it can appeal to an audience outside of thrash, & we hope to see you on tour for a beer.
THRASH!
Sy Keeler