 band
members . . .Barry – vocals Chris Ignatiou – guitar Glen Diani – bass Eddie Stratton – drums
discography . . . about the band... Fast
forward a couple of years when, after a somewhat revolving door attitude
to bandmates had proved unsatisfactory, destiny's balls finally clicked
into place and lead vocalist Barry and guitarist Chris were contacted by
a young Gibraltan named Glen Diani who had chanced across a flyer in a
London music shop mere days after arriving in the country. With the
eventual recruitment of drummer Eddie Stratton via small ads in the
music press, all the components had been locked into place, it was show
and prove time. The then-named Near Death Experience
began their conquest of both the London club circuit and the fickle UK
press. The final component clicked into place when, on the verge of
signing their deal with Big Cat, the band underwent a long-anticipated
name change to avoid confusion with two other Near Death Experiences,
one American and one French. "When somebody dies, a politician or
celebrity or whatever, there's always a 'one minute silence' in England
and Ireland," says Barry. "Basically, the entire nation shuts
up for one minute. We kind of twisted it around to mean that with us,
you basically get one minute of silence, and then the rest is full-on
noise."
Available
in All Colours, the
debut album by One Minute Silence, takes its cue from the blistering,
macho rap-metal sound of groups like Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the
Machine, and to a certain extent Korn. Their hard-nosed social
commentary is also reminiscent of Biohazard, an important formative
influence on the genre, but One Minute Silence is not without a sense of
humor either, albeit one that's often fairly dark. Although there are a
few slow moments, overall the album serves as proof that it is possible
for a British alt-metal band to grasp the essence of the sound and pull
it off well. "I think we have our own identity,
but since we are in a particular genre, people are gonna say we sound
like this and sound like that," concludes Ireland's newest-and
hardest-export. "That's fine by me. I wouldn't have started a
hardcore rap/metal band if I was listening to blues all the time. This
is music I love."
"I write a lot about racism-from
both sides," says Barry. "I was born in Ireland and grew up in
England, so I know a lot about prejudice. I'm extremely anti-racist-but
I'm also not afraid to write about something like black racism against
whites, either. Racism has nothing to do with color, but everything to
do with attitude." The always sensitive Irish-English
relationship was perhaps the one cloud over Barry's admittedly
"great" childhood, as he grew up in a family of traditional
Irish musicians in the small southern county of Tipperary. He moved to
England eleven years ago with a band-as the drummer. "I love the
drums, but I always wanted to be out front, shouting my head off,"
he admits. In
the great last chance lottery that is the music business most bands
spend an aeon or two waiting for their numbers to come up. Then again,
occasionally one group will emerge from the quagmire with a winning
ticket between their teeth and the world at their feet, a suitcase full
of songs and a huge great tick in the box marked 'full publicity'. When
that band occupies the more extreme end of the musical spectrum you know
that they must be something very special indeed. One Minute Silence are
just such an outfit and they're about to lay claim to their jackpot. |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The
artists formerly known as Near Death Experience's meteoric rise through
the strata of hopefuls, wannabes and never-will-bes has come about with
the sort of irresistible inevitability that is normally associated with
continental drift. Their origins may be traced back to a fateful meeting
some six years ago between a burly, loquacious Irishman with a talent
for firing off raps as smooth yet potent as a vat of Guinness and a
towering yet unassuming German Greek guitarist.
That
noise was captured on tape over the course of four weeks in Liverpool
and four weeks in New Jersey, as Available In All Colours took
shape with American hip-hop and dance producer Machine. "A lot of
American bands were working with British producers, so we decided to go
the opposite way," chuckles Barry. "Machine has primarily
worked with hip-hop bands, which was great because we didn't want to
sound like every other metal band out there. We said, 'let's just go for
somebody who's new and fresh.' But there's no way we can get our live
energy onto an album. It's a brilliant album and there's thirteen
blinding songs on it, but I don't think God himself could come down and
capture our live show."
Barry
makes no bones about being proud of his band, and justifiably so. Available
In All Colours is a relentlessly heavy-and aggressively
tuneful-onslaught of gargantuan metalloid riffs and hypnotic hip-hop
rhythms, with Barry's declaratory vocals darting through the wall of
sound like a young Muhammed Ali dancing around the ring. The approach is
fresh, filtered through the vision of four young men from the UK giving
their take on society's ills through provocative titles like "Pig
Until Proven Cop" and "Stuck Between A Rock And A White
Face." 