In Search of Sanity
September 1988 is etched in my memory as a bad month: the A-level results had been released, and I was all set to leave for University, except that I had got really bad grades and wasn’t elligible for any of the institutions I’d applied for. Faced with a choice between redoing the whole year to take the exams again, or finishing my education in favour of a regular job I decided to take the do-over option, even though nearly all my friends would be scattered across the country embarking on their bachelor’s degrees in less than a month. I’d already left home, and needed to stick with my hotel bar job to avoid moving back in with my parents, but I was getting on famously with one of the young chefs who was a fellow metalhead. After a few months of getting drunk at Torbay’s rock clubs, and getting to know some of the bands on the local circuit, we plotted a trip to Reading to see one of my favourite bands of the time: Annihilator, who had not long released their amazing debut, Alice in Hell.
Neither of us could drive, but a short train ride to Bristol, and then a bus into Reading followed by a taxi to the Leisure Centre got us to the gig plenty early, and gave us the afternoon to sink a few beers at the adjoining sports bar before we needed to join the ticket queue. And we could even hear Annihilator’s sound check across the hall while we waited. We had never heard guitars so loud, and were grinning inanely in anticipation over our beers when Jeff Water’s (Annihilator main man) walked in for a couple of beers, and said “Hi” to us while he waited for the bartender. Completely star-struck, I managed a nervous hello, told him I loved the album and that the sound check sounded amazing.
Anyway, I digress… a few hours later we’d made our way into the hall, and the first band, Horse (London), had finished their set, shortly followed by another band I hadn’t heard of, fellow Brits Onslaught – almost an hour of crunching guitar riffage punctuated by the soaring vocals of Steve Grimmet. I was blown away by their sound, and the intimacy of the set, with band members actually coming out among the small audience of a couple of hundred kids. Annihilator were great too, but Onslaught really made that gig for me, and I bought a T-Shirt and a tape of their just released album, In Search of Sanity. I played it so often that my cassette deck eventually chewed it up. So I rebought it on CD, I think it was the second CD I ever bought after Metallica’s Am I Evil maxi-disc.
At the end of that year, I got much better grades in my exams, and qualified for the University of Warwick, where In Search of Sanity continued to be a favourite over the years ahead. Although I much prefer playing guitar, I played drums in Hemlock for a month or two on the strength of their cover of Onslaught’s Welcome to Dying, but luckily for them they found a real drummer before I got a gig, and I went on to form Alien Fuck Beast later that year. After University, I found a job in Worcester where my first house was robbed while I was out at work in 1995 and, among a few other insignificant things, my entire CD collection was stolen — including my beloved Onslaught disc. In the years since then I’ve pieced back together most of the discs I lost by scouring garage sales, and second hand record shops, but I never seemed to be able to lay my hands on a copy of that particular album, which had long since been deleted.
Fast forward to 2002. I was lodging in the spare room of a long time University buddy, and Alien Fuck Beast drummer, where the nearest pub doubled as the clubhouse for Past It’s MCC. After some months of drinking with the bikers, and going to their rallies and parties I would occasionally talk music with a couple who played in a cover band at the pub regularly. Late after a gig one night, following many beers I recounted this story to the band’s guitarist and vocalist, Tony, who told me that Steve Grimmet had left Onslaught after that album, and Tony himself had recorded demos for much of what would have been Onslaught’s fourth studio album, until the label pulled out on their deal and the band had split. Tony had then fronted Praying Mantis among others, and was currently working on a solo project. He gave me his number and said I’d be welcome to a copy of the Onslaught demos he’d worked on. The next day, hangover very much intact, I thought that the conversation had mostly been the beer talking, and the world couldn’t possibly be that small. Shortly afterwards I moved to Stourport-on-Severn, and more or less lost touch with Past It’s MCC.
This morning, while pruning my junk email, I found an alert from the iTunes Store for a 2007 release by “Reformed UK Thrashers, Onslaught”. Mildly stunned, I bought Killing Peace and listened to it a couple of times. It’s an excellent album in fact, raw and brutal, with chugging riffs that make you want to grow horns and play air guitar. Intrigued, I thought I’d research a little to find that Onslaught had indeed reformed last year, and have been touring Europe since the album was released. They have a myspace page and a new website, including a page about Tony O’Hora who fronted them between Steve Grimmett quitting, and the record deal falling through, no less! Armed with a full name, a quick search of iTunes turned up a new album Escape into the Sun, perhaps the solo album he had been working on when the beer was talking? Not at all Thrash Metal, but a brilliant and extremely accomplished album none-the-less. Damn me if the world isn’t a really really small place after all!
And to cap off this rather wonderful day, In Search of Sanity has been rereleased. 