How often do you think of where the music you listen to came from? How did it progress over time? Heavy metal as we know it today wasn’t always so heavy, and Diamond Head has been around to see a lot of the progression. Now, the legendary band, who cut their teeth in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement, are coming to town; guitarist Brian Tatler says he’s looking forward to coming to some smaller towns in Canada on this North American tour.
“We’ve done Toronto and Vancouver. This time we’re doing some places I can barely pronounce,” he says with a laugh, “and I’m thinking, ‘Where’s that?”’
Tatler says the 10-year hiatus the band took between 1983’s Canterbury and 1993’s Death and Progress allowed him to focus on other musical endeavours, but he never gave up on the band. Today, he is the only original member.
“I worked in a studio and I formed another band,” he says. “I became a kind of studio engineer. Diamond Head just stopped in 1985, and then it reformed in 1990; we probably needed a break from each other, you know? That’s the way it happened. Once you get dropped by a record label it’s hard to come back from that.”
The reasons behind the band getting dropped, says Tatler, come down to business decisions and a lack of resources.
“We didn’t have the management or the sales base, really, to keep us going. Everything just dried up. We were dropped by the label, and nobody else would sign the band.”
Tatler took his passion, and his career, into his own hands after that by simply keeping on.
“I tried to keep going in my way and keep writing songs and things,” he says.
Despite administrative struggles over the years, some Diamond Head songs have still managed to reach millions of people, thanks to one of the biggest bands in the world. Metallica are champions of the band, having covered Diamond Head classics “Am I Evil?”, “The Prince,” and “Helpless,” among others.
“It’s been fantastic to watch and to be part of,” says Tatler about Metallica’s support of the band, adding that he always gets VIP invites to Metallica’s UK shows.
Tatler says Diamond Head’s sound comes from listening to ’70s rock like Rush, Deep Purple, and AC/DC. It goes back to the aforementioned New Wave of British Heavy metal movement, which started in the late ’70s and gave rise to bands such as Iron Maiden and Def Leppard.
“It’s titled the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, just to give it a focus really, I presume, but we were all just doing our things, our respective talents,” says Tatler. “You pull your style, you’ve got all your favourite bands; you try and write songs. It just comes from there, and if you’ve got some talent and tenacity you can hopefully pull it together.”
Diamond Head
Saturday, August 26
$25, V-lounge
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