British thrash metal institution Onslaught is going to celebrate their 40th anniversary with a double CD peppered with many re-recordings from their first three albums and cover songs from punk to classic heavy metal (full review here). Reason enough to send them congratulations and go a little bit more into detail about the reasons for celebrating that very special anniversary that way. For this I had a very nice chat with their only remaining founding member Nige Rockett (git.). Enjoy reading!

Michael

Hi Nige, how are you doing?

I'm okay. I am recovering slowly. It's been a long while but I'm slowly getting all things. Hopefully all is clear now and I'm looking forward to being full-time in the band once more.

Congratulations for the 40th anniversary of Onslaught! Did you ever think you would get this far with the band?

(Laughs) No! When we started in 1982, if you had said to me that you will be doing an interview in 2025, still playing in Onslaught I think I would have laughed.

Were there more ups or down for the band in all that time?

Ups, quite far. There were a few little downs which every band has, I am sure, on their journey over the years. But the ups have been amazing, it was just an incredible journey for us.

With "Origins Of Aggression" you will release re-recorded songs from your first three albums plus some cover songs from punk and metal bands on your new label Reigning Phoenix Music. What was the intention to make this step and not record something new for the anniversary?

Obviously forty years of the debut album release is a big milestone. It's been a very long time and we're still here doing it and that is incredible. So I think we kind of need to celebrate that because it is a huge milestone for the band. We actually discussed re-recording that record as many bands do with their early classic albums but after a few discussions with some important people in the music industry who were massive fans from "Power From Hell" back in the day we kind of fought our ideas. I guess these people were very important and good friends of mine and they didn't kind of like the idea very much. They said that it is a classic album which hold very dear, please don't fuck with it (laughs). Even though it's very raw and back then we were very young and honestly it's not the most technical record but it captured something. I think, looking back I kind of sat down and thought that there were some valid points. Let's look a little bit more outside the box maybe. So this is gonna be something that is super interesting. What we've done with the "Origins" album is try to show the fans where "Power From Hell" came from - every influence that led to making the album what it was and "The Force" more subsequently. I think we've done it. It's come out really well and it gives a very good impression of the journey that we went through to get to that stage.

I personally really like the fury and the powerful sound of the re-recorded songs. They sound much more aggressive and more metal than the original. And the vocals really kick ass. Remembering some other re-recordings like "First Strike Still Deadly" by Testament, "The Final Sign Of Evil" by Sodom or "Let There Be Blood" by Exodus, this project quite often was refused from the fans. Don't you fear that this may happen to your new album also?

I think it could have been if we did the full album. As we covered tracks from '82 – '89, incorporate the first two tracks that we wrote, it does tell that story. We've got a lot younger fans, we've gained them over the years, and I guess it's gonna be nice for them to hear this line-up that we have now re-recording and performing some of the old classics cause we played most of the tracks at any show. We're very well teamed-in the tracks as a band and it was great to be able to re-record them in kind of fresh on the map. We didn't mess around with them too much as we also didn't with the cover versions. We kept them pretty close to the originals, made a few changes with bits that were overly long just to cut it down a little bit. But we stayed pretty true to the original tracks. I think it sounds fresh and we're really excited about the response so far, it has been amazing.

With "In Search Of Sanity" and "Shellshock" you also have two songs from the probably weakest album in your discography. Why didn't you just focus on Power From Hell and The Force?

"In Search Of Sanity" has always been an album that haunted me a little bit for one reason or another (laughs). My feelings on it are that it has some fantastic songs on it but they never sounded like Onslaught at the time because of the situation that arose with the label and everything else that surrounded it. It kind of got diluted like an Onslaught light if you like. It took all the aggression away and it was very polished and more mainstream metal than an aggressive thrash record. It was very important to me to actually re-record those two tracks in particular. I love the songs, they can't be wrong but I just wanna hear them with some anger and aggression in it. I feel that's what we've done, given them at least a whole new life.

I have in mind that when you recorded "The Force" back then there were some spooky things happening? Maybe you can tell a little bit more about that?

Yeah, there were very strange things that occurred in the studio. It was very spooky. We had a burglary at the studio and lots of our equipment got stolen on the first days which wasn't a great start. We set the delays from zero to five milliseconds and whatever the engineer would set it to, 2.15 ms or whatever, it would always reverb to 666. Every single time he did it. We thought it was a bit weird. It really started to freak him out because it was happening every day and it wouldn't change. One of the weirdest things we had was that they had a big speaker in the control room. It was pulsing, the cone on the speaker was pulsing. So we unplugged the speaker and the speaker just carried on and that spooked him so much. He was a young guy as well and had not done any music like this that was so dark. He was really freaked out. We were all kind of freaked (laughs). It was a strange number.

You covered much more punk songs than metal (7:3 or 8:2, depending on considering Motörhead as metal or punk). Is this some kind of statement where you originally come from?

Yeah, we're trying to tell a story of where we came from - from the early days up to the release from "Power From Hell". All these tracks play a very important role in that, personally as well as for the band to get us to that point. I think without these tracks we've covered, Onslaught would have never been the band that they were, maybe not ever formed even. For example "Holidays In The Sun" by the Sex Pistols I remember buying that album. I think I was twelve or thirteen when the album came out and I remember buying it on the first day. I didn't know what to expect really, ran home because I was so eager to listen to it and put it on and "Holidays In The Sun" was the first track and it just blew me away. It changed my whole attitude. Maybe my parents didn't like it too much (laughs) but it changed everything in my life. My outlook to life, how I became and I listened to a totally different style of music from there on. And without that album Onslaught definitely wouldn't had been formed because I would have had no inspiration and would still be listening to David Bowie, T. Rex or The Sweet.

Cool that you mentioned that song especially. I like the lyrics very much and lately I read a book about the crimes that were committed under the banner of Communism and Cambodia is a country where so many people died under the regime of the Red Khmer and Pol Pot. But I guess if you ask around, only 10% of the people might be able to tell you about what happened in the 70s and early 80s there.

Yes, absolutely.

I remember when Slayer released "Undisputed Attitude" in 1996, it was quite irritating, a metal band only covering punk songs. Nowadays it seems quite normal that metal bands are covering punk – is the metal scene keeping the punk scene alive?

I think we've always been very fortunate as a band. We crossed over to many genres like thrash metal, punk, death and black metal. We've been able to cross over to these genres and play festivals. But what you find now I think is you're seeing a lot of mainstream festivals now incorporating punk bands into their line-ups which I think is good. It works for me and gives you a nicer variation at festivals as well.

You are going to promote the album soon; do you expect any problems travelling around? I am planning to go to England in a month with 50 pupils and I am haunted by terrible nightmares because of the ETA, travelling passports and visa shit thanks to the damn Brexit.

Yeah, I hate it. The worst thing we ever did was leaving the European Union. Especially as a musician and somebody who likes to travel a lot. So yeah, it's not cool and I don't know if it will ever get reset like it was before. I guess we have to live with it but it's too much red tape when we tour but we get over it and things will carry on. That's all we can do, try to make the best out of the band's situation.

Do we have to bow down even deeper to all the clowns that we have to owe the current situation? It even seems that the clowns are becoming more and more…..

That was aimed at our wonderful government when we released that and it's getting far worse: I really don't know what's going on, I don't know their intentions and don't know what their end game is but it's just insane. Especially in the UK; prices – we have the most expensive energy in the world now. If the way the government is treating older and disabled people is shocking, unbelievable.

Yeah, but when I watch the news you cannot just see it in the UK but also especially in the USA these days.

Yeah, and hopefully it will all go away soon!

What can we expect from Onslaught next time? A regular new album maybe?

We'll be releasing one more video when the album comes out and there are some more things in the pipeline for the rest of the year. And then we concentrate on the next studio album, I guess.

Sounds good. Have you already written some songs?

Actually not really complete. Lots of bits and pieces, older song titles, much more of "Bow Down To The Clowns" and other kinds of things (laughs), I'm gonna be protesting a lot on this record.

The final words belong to you!

Please check the new album out, I think you'll find it very interesting and very fun. It's a great record and it covers everything in our early years right up to 1989. It was enjoyable for us so I hope it is enjoyable for the fans, too.