Latest news with #thrashmetal
BBC News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Thrash metal band from Norwich selected to perform at festival
The vocalist of a thrash metal band said he felt "lucky" that the group has been selected to perform at a festival he first attended more than 15 years ago. Lee Margaillan, from Collapse The Sky, a band from Norwich, said the group entered a competition to play at Download Festival as part of its community takeover stage. The festival will take place at Donington Park, Leicestershire, between 13-15 June with headliners Green Day, Sleep Token, Korn and McFly amongst the line-up. He said: "It's something that we've entered in the past but this year we are lucky enough to be selected and to be performing at one of the most major rock and metal festivals in the country and probably the world." The band made up of Mr Margaillan, Flynn Green on the guitar, Karl Morse on the bass and Luke Fowler on the drums, will play the Doghouse Stage on Wednesday, 11 June in the community takeover slot. The takeover slot gives up-and-coming unsigned bands and artists an opportunity to play on stage in the lead up to the festival. Mr Margaillan said: "You can never guarantee what type of opportunities or where these things will take you but one thing's for sure, we are going to grab it by the scruff of the neck and we're going to make the most of it." Mr Margaillan currently juggles music with work, but he said his dream was to be able to pursue music full-time. He said: "Musicians and aspiring musicians would love to call it their full-time job and I know many many people in our local scene share the same desire and dream."As long as we keep our heads down, keep working hard and putting on great shows then these types of opportunities are going to come our way eventually." While this is the band's first year performing at the festival, Mr Margaillan said the group were familiar with the event and have been festival-goers for years. "It was 2010 when I first started going to Download Festival... I thought I would love to be on that stage one day - here we are," he said. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Former Megadeth guitarist says Dave Mustaine damaged his career by calling him a 'liar'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Ex-Megadeth guitarist Chris Poland says that bandleader Dave Mustaine calling him a 'liar' negatively affected his career. Poland joined the thrash metal icons in 1984 and played on their first two albums, 1985's Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good! and 1986's Peace Sells… But Who's Buying?, before being fired for disruptive behaviour stemming from heroin abuse. Talking to fellow former Megadeth member David Ellefson on Ellefson's podcast, Poland claims that Mustaine branded him a 'liar' onstage for 'years' after his firing. 'I have no regrets about everything that's happened – except one,' Poland says (via Blabbermouth). 'I regret that Mustaine for years would go onstage and call me a liar. I never really thought much about it, but then I did the math and I realised that's why things were so hard for me to try and get deals.' As evidence, he points to an interaction he had with guitar manufacturer Carvin. 'I walked into Carvin one day and I thought, 'You know what? These guitars aren't bad. I wanna talk to their A&R guy.' So I spoke to the guy and he goes, 'Dude, we don't use people like you on our roster.'' Poland continues: 'I have a feeling that Dave's anger with me about what it was really was like dragging around a fucking 50-pound ball all the time – back then.' Ellefson, who was fired from Megadeth in 2021, then backs Poland up, pointing to the experiences of former guitarist Jeff Young. Young played on the thrashers' third album So Far, So Good… So What! (1988) and was fired due to Mustaine believing that Young had flirted with his then-girlfriend. 'There was some derogatory comment [Mustaine made] that kept [Young] from getting work for a long time,' Ellefson explains. 'I could say the same was attempted at me. Fortunately, I just kept moving. I just kept going and was like, 'Alright, I'm just gonna ignore that comment and keep moving.'' In a 2022 interview with Sofa King Cool, Poland stated that he was the subject of the song Liar from the So Far… album. 'Obviously, Dave was very upset with me when I left the band – when he fired me, basically,' the guitarist explained. When asked if the lyrical scathing made him angry, he said no and pointed towards Mustaine's own heavy drug use at the time: 'It's like the pot calling the kettle black, man. When you point your finger, man, there's three pointing back at you. I just rolled my eyes and was like, 'Really?'' That same year, Poland claimed that he took a job in a diner after his Megadeth exit. 'I would be bussing tables on a weekend, and some guy would go, 'Dude, you're Chris Poland!' And I'd have to go, 'Yeah, I am!',' he told The Metal Voice. 'And it was so weird, because he just looked at me like, 'Dude, what the fuck are you doing here?' And I would just say, 'Hey man, I've gotta eat. I've gotta pay the rent.'' Poland briefly reunited with Megadeth in 2004, playing guitar on their album The System Has Failed. However, things soon soured again, with Poland suing Mustaine over the inclusion of three demos on a 2004 re-release of 1990 album Rust In Peace. Poland said in 2022 that the pair haven't spoken since. Megadeth – now composed of Mustaine (vocals/guitars), Teemu Mäntysaari (guitars), Dirk Verbeuren (drums) and James LoMenzo (bass) – released their latest album The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! in 2022 and are currently in the studio working on its follow-up.
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Metallica concert rocks so hard that the legendary metal band triggers an EARTHQUAKE
Their lightning-quick riffs helped helped lay the foundation for thrash metal and made them one of the most successful bands of all time. And now the members of Metallica can boast that those riffs also helped trigger shaking similar to an earthquake. The band — which had a pivotal role on the latest season of Stranger Things — managed to shake the Earth's foundation thanks to the jumping of fans in the audience at its concert at Virginia Tech on Wednesday, May 7, according to ABC 13 News. The show, which was held at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia, as part of Metallica's M72 World Tour, reportedly created enough shaking from the jazzed-up fans that it registered on a seismograph a mile away at the Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory. According to Virginia Tech Geophysics professor Dr. Martin Chapman, the band managed to trigger vibrations similar to a minor earthquake after it played the introduction to its 1991 single Enter Sandman. He said the seismograph readings were detailed enough to allow the scientist to pinpoint two different times when the crowd appeared to trigger an earthquake, with the first being early in the concert, around when the crossover hit was teased. But the group forced fans to wait until the encore to finally hear the lead Black Album cut, and the second burst of vibrations appeared to line up with that moment at the end of the concert. The Metallica fans must have been doing plenty of jumping and stomping and dancing, as Chapman said the readings for the concert were 'probably four to five times bigger than what we see typically for a football game.' According to Chapman, the strength of the vibrations is dependent on how many people are in the stadium for any particular event, and Wednesday's show appears to have the necessary attendance to create a minor earthquake with more than 65,000 fans turning out to see Metallica shred. 'What we recorded last night is a lot bigger than what we see at a football game, so Metallica really got the crowd rocking there,' Chapman told the station. Although the shaking observed by the lab had similarities with a naturally occurring earthquake, Chapman clarified that it was technically distinct. He said an earthquake has similar 'amplitude as the crowd noise from Enter Sandman, but it's brief. It's concentrated.' 'The energy that goes into the ground for the crowd noise is spread out in time, so if you add all that up, if you integrated it over time, you would come out with a signal coming from Lane Stadium that would be approximately a magnitude one or two earthquake, but they're very different kinds of signals,' he explained. Virginia Tech went on to share video of Metallica's triumphant encore performance of Enter Sandman to its news site, which showed deflated fans letting out disappointed sighs when the band first left the stage, only to rock out as soon as the group returned to sign off with its most popular song. The song isn't just a popular hit for students in the audience, as Virgina Tech's football team has used Enter Sandman as its walk-on music for more over two decades. Metallica — which formed in 1981 — is currently comprised of James Hetfiled on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Kirk Hammett on lead guitar and backing vocals, Robert Trujillo on bass and backing vocals and Lars Ulrich on drums. The group is currently touring in support of its 2023 album 72 Seasons, which was praised by critics as a return to the more complicated thrash-metal songs that Metallica played in the 1980s, before diversifying its sound in the '90s to mixed reviews. Following its ground-shaking Virginia Tech show, Metallica will be taking a break before returning to the road with two shows in Philadelphia on May 23 and 25, followed by touring throughout the US that will conclude with two shows in Denver, Colorado, on June 27 and 29. Then the group will head abroad with a show in Birmingham, England, on July 5, followed by November and December dates in Australia, New Zealand, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Irish Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
‘Sometimes the reality is more Spinal Tap than Spinal Tap': Philly Byrne of Gama Bomb on Irish thrash metal and the band's new film
When Philly Byrne, lead singer of Gama Bomb, began discussions about a documentary on his durable thrash-metal band, thoughts of a much-loved pastiche from the mid-1980s were unavoidable. 'Well, sometimes the reality is more Spinal Tap than Spinal Tap,' the Newry man says. 'Obviously, we're all huge fans of the film. Just last week we were on tour and we drove past Stonehenge.' Ah, yes. As replicated in accidental miniature for one of the Tap's most hilarious mishaps. 'The comparisons were inescapable!' READ MORE There seems to be one oblique reference to This Is Spinal Tap in Kiran Acharya's rambunctious Gama Bomb: Survival of the Fastest. We hear of Domo Dixon, the band's lead guitarist, being laid low with a mysterious 'trouser accident'. Come on, now. This is surely a nod to the fatal 'bizarre gardening accident' that did for a Tap drummer. 'Correct reference!' Byrne says with a bellow. 'He put his hand in to push his boxers down and something snapped. It's called 'baseball finger'.' The conversation is a bit unfair to Gama Bomb and to Acharya's low-budget flick. This Is Spinal Tap, like so many genuine rock documentaries, is a study of terminal dysfunction. It is about relationships warping and cracking under the glare of publicity. The wonder of Gama Bomb's story is that they survived for more than 20 years without (if the film is to believed) any major fallings-out. Purveyors of warp-speed comic bangers, the band have never been enormous, but they have sustained enough of a following to keep them trundling on while members worked jobs, raised children and otherwise pursued 'real lives'. It is, to use a sentimental cliche, an inspirational tale. 'We are mates, which I think the film does a really good job of showing,' Byrne says. 'There is love there. So there's that. None of us are hired guns, and that's really important. The other thing is we had realistic expectations. Coming from the type of families we come from, we didn't walk into this naively. Whenever we got signed, back in the noughties, we didn't put a down payment on a guitar-shaped swimming pool. We kept our real lives going.' In the film, Byrne, a fiercely smart fellow with a very south Down line in self-deprecation, points out that bands often conceal the fact that they maintain 'day jobs'. Gama Bomb have no such inhibitions about acknowledging their parallel straight lives. Why should they? 'You have to reach compromises,' he says. 'You end up with a job where your boss doesn't really mind that you use all your holidays to be in a band. You end up married to someone who isn't insulted by the fact that you dress up like an idiot for a gig.' Byrne was a journalist for a while, but 'the arse fell out of that when the crash happened'. He still does a bit of that, but most of his work is now in marketing. 'In the band we've got a man who runs supercomputers for cancer research,' he says. 'We've got a guy who is one of the directors of a theatre. We've got a guy who owns a hotel.' The film is a laugh. But it is also a touching study of middle-aged men managing complex lives. Acharya, an experienced multidisciplinary film-maker from Northern Ireland , had known and worked with the band before, but he was still taking on a notable responsibility here. 'It was a strange experience that revealed new dimensions for both the subjects – that is to say Philly and the boys in Gamma Bomb – and the film-maker,' Acharya says. 'Our friendship and our working relationship precedes the making of the documentary. I made several Gama Bomb videos in a variety of incredible locations: Malin Head, out by the lighthouse; that time Philly called me up and commanded me to make my way to a sex dungeon in Edinburgh.'The film also features a touching thumbnail sketch of Newry. Byrne clearly has great affection for the city, but that affection is tempered with an awareness of political tensions that haven't quite gone away. We get a brief visit to an Orange Hall. A band member talks about IRA attacks before the ceasefire. 'It's hard to explain,' Byrne says, minding his words. 'It's kind of a one-sided love. Newry is a hard place to love. But, in retrospect, even with everything that was happening at the time, it was an amazing place to grow up in. Even during the Troubles it was fairly safe. I was never in any real trouble growing up there. Never in any real bother.' In Survival of the Fastest we get the sense he feels the old place has got slightly left behind. His dad lives in nearby Warren Point, which has 'really nice vegan restaurants'. Joe McGuigan, the band's bass player, lives just across the Border in tourist-friendly Omeath. 'Newry at the moment is just like another Wakefield,' he says, referring to the city in Yorkshire. 'It's got the air of a depressed UK town. And I think it deserves more. And, as I say in the film, the slang and the attitude in Newry is amazing. The people quality is excellent. I just think the town itself needs a bit of a shot in the arm.' The band members are a little too old to qualify as ceasefire babies. They have clear memories of the violence. They've seen how the jurisdiction has changed. Before Kneecap were even a twinkle, popular music – first punk, then rave – played a part in moving young people away from sectarianism. 'Music of all kinds was the common currency that you bonded with,' Acharya says. 'Happy hard-core, Scooter, rave or whatever it might be. It was, and it still is, something to be passionate about. Music fans are my people, so to speak. Live music, punk, metal: everything like that is second nature to me.' The genre the once-young band settled on was thrash. The theology of metal has become ever more complex as decades intruded between relatively uncomplicated roots in Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. You have your death metal, your folk metal, your glam metal, your neoclassical metal and so on to apocalyptic eternity. Thrash has its origins in the speedy sounds of early Metallica , Slayer and Megadeath, but, whereas those bands favour a death's-head glumness – 'None more black,' as Tap's Nigel Tufnel would have it – Gama Bomb and their ilk lean towards a comic-book school of macabre humour: titles such as Beverly Hills Robocop, Smoke the Blow with Willem Dafoe and – one of their most popular numbers – Miami Supercops. The riffs are tight. The lyrics are a hoot. In a fairer world they'd be as big as BTS. [ Anthrax's Charlie Benante: 'I was always a big U2 fan. They just got better and better' Opens in new window ] 'I love thrash metal because of when it came into my life,' Byrne says. 'Everyone in the family loved music at a time where there was lots of guitar music. Then thrash metal showed up. And me and my best friend Joe got into it when we were teenagers. We already liked heavy metal – bits and bobs of it, like Ugly Kid Joe and all that kind of thing. We discovered this and it appealed to us. We found it hilariously funny.' Byrne argues that the genre imploded after 'Metallica changed their style in order to become more successful'. He seems relaxed about it all. 'They became a heavy-metal band. And then everyone swam after them, trying to do the same thing,' he says. 'And the genre collapsed. It's got all its own weird signifiers. It has codes and shoes that are appropriate, but I feel like it's a type of music that gives people an excuse to behave like kids – which I think is a brilliant, healthy thing.' It would be insane to ask if he felt Gama Bomb will continue. The lesson of the film is that, for those who properly commit, there is no reason to quit the church of rock'n'roll. Real life can accommodate the music and the music can accommodate real life. It's a thumping yarn. 'You should be proud of things you've done,' Byrne says. 'And, with the band, apart from the music, the one thing I'm proud of is that we can say we're all friends. Even the people who aren't in the band any more are still mates with us.' [ Metallica, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and more: 20 of the best hard rock albums of all time Opens in new window ] Gama Bomb: Survival of the Fastest is on limited release from Sunday, May 18th
