“Amebix had emerged from this gutter punk band that nobody really wanted to listen to back in the day, to having established ourselves as an important musical part of history”
54 TERRORIZER #269 Ahead of TAU CROSS’ appearance at Roadburn, we look back at the making of AMEBIX’s final album, and all the events leading up to what has become one of the greatest comeback records ever. ROB ‘THE BARON’ MILLER told us this most amazing of tales – ladies and gentlemen, ‘Sonic Mass’ as it came to be, in the words of its main protagonist. Words: José Carlos Santos
Amebix re-arises seen them had been in 1981, in Trafalgar Square, “I was here on the Isle of Skye and I was during a CND rally, so really, really early on. They approached by a fella called Roy Wallace, who was had left a huge impression on me back then, and doing a documentary for Ian Glasper’s book, ‘The Day seeing these guys live and hanging out with them The Country Died’. I had already talked to Ian and we afterwards was great. It was a huge inspiration to had agreed I’d have a look through a lot of Amebix feel that power, it’s like the switch turned back on. stuff that I have, lots of unknown material which When we were heading back to England, in the would be good to make public. The band has always van, Roy was writing stuff on his laptop and then been subject of a lot of conjecture and rumours, and he hooked it up to the van speakers to show us a there’s never been much hard factual evidence out drum line he had just written, with a basic guitar there about us. Most people just knew our records, it static line on top, and that turned out to be ‘The was a very obscure and cult band, which is also kind Messenger’. I was carrying around a video camera of cool obviously. At one point Roy and I realised it at the time, so I used it as a microphone! We wrote would be interesting to do a whole programme about that one on the run, and went back to our base Amebix, it was shaping up as a quite interesting of operations in Northern Ireland to record it. So project, and this was the beginning of what would ‘Days’ and ‘The Messenger’ were the first two tracks end up as the ‘Risen’ video documentary. Then Roy to be put down. We kept going away at it, and asked if it would be possible for us to play some we actually recorded a lot of the tracks in a little songs. I told him it wouldn’t be very possible – Stig cottage up in Derbyshire, we had a very positive [Maximus, guitarist] was still kind of in the world he time there.” was living in, Spider [original drummer] had tinnitus so he was unable to play, so I had always written that Ghosts, deaths and general misfortune off as an impossibility. “We started running into misfortunes when, as of UFO activity too. It’s a strange place, I went in “In the meantime had gotten in touch with Roy the album was gradually coming together, we had there a few times, I had a walk on my own during Mayorga, whom I didn’t know previously, through a session in Antrim again. Roy Mayorga had arrived the day once, and… it’s not uncomfortable, but it’s a Alicia Morgan from the band 13. I invited him to but his cymbals didn’t; he was really jetlagged too, place where you feel you’re being watched. There’s a record some old Amebix songs, he was excited to do and nothing was really working. He was in a foul lot of bad energy. I went downstairs in the dark one it and that went great, so I arranged to meet with mood, saying things like ‘fuck this, I wish none of this night and it was one of those things where the hair Stig in Belfast so that we’d play some old songs. We had ever happened,’ stuff like that. I told him to be on the back of your neck goes up, I felt a presence all met up and recorded the tracks for what would careful with that phrase, ‘I wish’. I never use the word above and behind, taller, bigger and very threatening. be the ‘Redux’ EP. Right from the first track we ‘wish’ if I can possibly avoid it, it’s a kind of powerful On the very same night, Stig had a similar experience went into, which was ‘Winter’, I thought that it was thing to use. We all went to sleep that night, and in with sleep paralysis, he felt something on top of his completely perfect. At the end, Roy Mayorga stood the morning when we woke up Roy was completely chest preventing him from breathing. up and told us – this has been really good, but we ashen faced and he told us he had one of these sort “The next day we were putting together the song really need to do more afterwards! Personally I had no of deep dream states, with paralysis. He woke up in ‘Visitation’, and I told Roy it didn’t really sound like intention, the main focus of the whole DVD project the room, bright as day, and he was aware of a figure a song, but asked him if he remembered any of the was really to put the thing to bed, that was Amebix by the door, of a black dog, which walked slowly to dialogue that happened between him and the entity. I and here’s how we would have approached these his bed, when he saw it, it had the face of a man. He had him and Stig run through what they remembered things nowadays, thank you and good night. But Roy was completely freaked out by this, and this creature of the conversations from their experiences, and I put saw it in a ‘where do we go from here?’ light, and started speaking to him, communicating telepathically, those down as the spoken narrative for that track. It that made us think.” and one of the messages was ‘be careful what you turned out as not really a song, but it was important wish for’. ‘Sonic Mass’ takes forM “The place where we were “It wasn’t really until we did Hellfest that we really staying was absolutely haunted went into the idea of writing more music together. to fuck. It’s a really weird place ‘Redux’ was received quite well, but for us it was on the edge of a wood called a case of stretching the muscles, exploring more Breen Wood, it has apparently depth and more atmosphere like we’d envisioned been the inspiration for Bram with albums like ‘Arise!’ and ‘Monolith’. We’ve always Stoker’s original ‘Dracula’ novel, had synthesizer in the background, but we never from a local legend of this guy really knew how to create much of an atmosphere. who was buried face down, in a I have no regrets about that, but with ‘Sonic Mass’ hole. The wood is really ancient, we were in this unique situation of having had 22, it’s the oldest oak wood in Ireland. 23 years outside of playing music and being able to Among other things, there’s been re-approach everything again. reports of strange lights, weird “As we came back from Hellfest, we got the electromagnetic activity, the army opportunity to watch Killing Joke. The last time I had use it and there have been reports
TERRORIZER #269 55 AMEBIX
“The band has always been subject of a lot of conjecture and rumours”
for us to put that down. On one of the last days, to At this time, Fin the art guy was having a major within a year or so, it was quite obvious that the other top all this off, Roy got a phone call, his father had breakdown with his family and he ended up living thing that had been knocked on the head was the just died. with me on Skye for a little while. band. We started to disintegrate. I was aware Amebix “The next day we were supposed to be heading “After we finished the recording process he couldn’t go on anymore, but I couldn’t really carry on out, doing this trek across to Antwerp, and Roy went back to Ireland, and at Christmas time he with another band called Amebix without my brother. insisted on not cancelling it and going ahead with took a massive overdose, left all the windows The bill for this whole thing was, yes, we managed to it. We kind of came undone at the end of that gig, open – it was an awful winter – and planned to do an album at a great cost to many different people, Stig went off with some friends there and we got a just freeze to death. Apparently it was so cold and at the cost of the destruction of the band too. I phone call in the morning saying he wasn’t coming that it kind of preserved him in a sort of stasis spent a year very angry about that, frustrated too at back, he had met some woman and he was getting and he just woke up in the morning feeling really the waste of potential, because we wanted to go out married there. I called him and told him he needed fucking wasted. I was like, ‘what the fuck is going and tour the album. Everyone was behind us, Amebix to make a decision because we were in the middle on?’ Everybody was falling to pieces and I got had emerged from this gutter punk band that nobody of recording an album, either he was in or out, and the impression that in one sense the universe was really wanted to listen to back in the day, to having we had to go to where he was and forcibly drag established ourselves as an important musical part him out of that place. At the same time, Roy and of history, and the next logical step would be to Fin [McAteer, design, art direction, photography] proceed with that. It was a terrible fucking waste. had a big falling out, and a lot of tension I was still writing these songs, and I felt quite started to build between the band and Roy strongly the spirit of Amebix was still there, and Wallace too, he was having a bit of a personal the ideas I had for this band were still translating meltdown. We went back to Derbyshire to work very well into these new songs. If it couldn’t be a bit more, and Roy Wallace was pressuring us Amebix it had to be something else, and that’s to finish the album, so I asked him what did where these days the transition into Tau Cross he propose. We wanted to see something on comes in. It’s me saying, I couldn’t do Amebix but paper from him regarding the entire handling this is the same thing without using that name of promotion and distribution… He couldn’t that has a black fucking curse hanging over it.” answer any of this stuff, so we told him we couldn’t do it like this. Later we found ourselves The future? in a position where the band was cut off, we “Roy and I have talked about playing these had no money from any of the shows we played saying the album was not supposed to happen. songs live. I don’t think anybody gained anything and we had all kinds of legal stuff going down. We If you push enough, it will happen, but there’s a from this. We all lost Amebix together. I’ve had a basically went through four fucking record labels in cost to that. And it went on – Roy had a stroke conversation with Roy, and he’s very keen to do it. As a a year, trying to find someone who could actually playing with Stonesour, and he ended up mixing great performer, he wanted to do that album live. We’ve deal with a new record by Amebix, and give it the the album with no feeling on his left side and his discussed this and it would be great to put a group of attention that we thought it deserved. So we went face a bit flat. It was completely surreal. people together, possibly as a band called Sonic Mass, basically the opposite way, back to the DIY, we went and go out and do the album in its entirety.” to our friend Carlton from the Devon days, who was The end running a small label of his own called Easy Action “Stuff like this just kept piling on, and at the Tau Cross play Roadburn on Saturday, April 16th Records. He was great, so we worked with him. end of the day, sure, the album came out. I guess www.Amebix.net
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