Vio-Lence: Thrash Metal Forever
We’ve spent two years crying out for concerts to come back. We’ve kicked and screamed for festivals to flock to. And we’ve lost sleep wondering if we’ll ever see our favourite bands again. Now that the cogs of the live music machine are beginning to turn once more, we’re chomping at the bit to catch those we’ve missed. Two years has been tough to wait for our favourite bands, but forget a pandemic, what about waiting 37 years to see yours? In a set first announced three years ago in 2019, this year’s Bloodstock Festival meant fans of thrash metal legends VIO-LENCE finally got to see the band dish out their bay area bangers. But it wasn’t just fun for the band, how did it feel for the reunited thrashers?
“For me, it was awesome!” Beams vocalist Sean Killian, just hours after hopping off stage at Bloodstock. “Any time you play somewhere you’ve never played before and you have support like we did today here in the UK, it feels really good – it gives us strength.”
Having played a major part in shaping the second wave of thrash metal along with the likes of DEATH ANGEL, SEPULTURA, and SACRED REICH, VIO-LENCE’s long awaited arrival on our shores took even longer to come thanks to COVID-19 cancelling festivals more than once. Following the band’s – completed by guitarists Phil Demmel and Bobby Gustafson, drummer PerryStrickland, and bassist Christian Olde Wolbers – decision to reunite in 2019, they chose Bloodstock as just one of a handful of festivals to stage their comeback at.
“We’ve had these three festivals shows at Brutal Assault, Alacatraz, and Bloodstock scheduled for the last three years, and they kept getting screwed up,” explains Sean, however he’s clearly a glass half-full thinker. “It’s great to get here finally, fill these commitments, and play in front of people that are into our band and people who’ve never seen us before.”
Whilst there’s plenty of VIO-LENCE fans from way back when in the crowd, clutching their copies of 1988’s Eternal Nightmare to their chests, there’s a whole bunch of kids showing up who weren’t even born when they first got back together in 2001 – and they absolutely love it. “When we first started doing our reunion shows, there’s kids who are 15 or 16 and they weren’t there because their parents are fans of VIO-LENCE, they were there because they found VIO-LENCE. They were searching for something else, and the algorithm threw VIO-LENCE out there and they’re all like ‘I never thought I’d see you guys ever play’ so to come back together to see that mix of generations coming and responding is a great feeling.”
Whilst their set at Bloodstock cherry-picks the best bits of Eternal Nightmare and Oppressing The Masses, Upon Their Cross from this year’s Let The World Burn EP holds its own. Coming back with a banger meant bringing a sledgehammer to their past – that’s why we got new music in the first place.
“We did Nothing To Gain under a lot of pressure from the label, and grunge was coming in, and we weren’t the only ones in our genre of music that were feeling that, and this time we got back together and just said ‘okay, cool’ because none of our records are on the same label, so this meant we could do something that changes everything, we wanted to come at this hard cause there’s a lot of expectation.”
For lesser bands, that expectation would rest on their shoulders like it’s the weight of the world. For VIO-LENCE, it’s just another weight on the rack to squat with. Considering Bloodstock was their first show in the UK ever, they had no qualms about chucking in the new stuff. “When you come to a festival, there’s people that’ve never heard you and Upon Their Cross is a large audience tune – Phil and I thought we needed a big song for the big stage and Upon Their Cross was that song today.”
When you’re getting the band back together and you’re finally playing shows somewhere you’ve never done before, there’s got to be a better option than a festival right? Turns out VIO-LENCE like challenges. “They’re good opportunities for us, because if people have a preconceived notion of VIO-LENCE because they listen to the record, but they’ve never seen us. And I’ve always said, you know, if you’re going to listen to us, you’ve got to hear the lyrics and you’ve got see us live so when we play in places like this, we hope to spread that, it’s an important part of who we are.”
But surely main stage festival appearances are high-pressure affairs for a band who’ve never played the UK before? Wouldn’t it be better to trial it out at club shows? Apparently not. But there was some pressure piling up over the past three years. “It was just the expectation, because we knew that we’d be highly anticipated, and we didn’t want to let our true fans down who’ve been with us for so long. We wanted to show people that are younger that may listen to EXODUS and this and that, that we’ve never wavered from playing thrash, and we’ve always wanted to be the heaviest band in the Bay Area and there’s some big competition – we’re straightforward hardcore thrash which separates us from the Bay Area bands.”
With Bloodstock under their belts and hopes to sail back to our shores sometime next year, they’ve now got their sights on celebrating Eternal Nightmare’s 35th anniversary next year and spreading their music to the masses, because it’s been kept under lock and key for far too long. “We plan to keep putting stuff out but the one we really need to get is Oppressing The Masses. Atlantic won’t release it to us, we sold the publishing rights to them but we’re going to talk to some folks to try to help us get that back. It’s important to us because they don’t put it out, and people want it, but that’s why we’re with Metal Blade now, they’re behind us, they support what we do and our old music, and they’ve been around since the start of thrash metal.”
Let The World Burn is out now via Metal Blade Records.
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