Description
Black vinyl with poster and a 16-page booklet. Limited 350 copies
This is probably the ultimate Apocalypse album – consisting of cleaned up and re-mastered versions of the official Apocalypse and Omega demos plus the legendary Apocalypse 7″ single “Stormchild” from 1982. The centrepiece of the album entitled “Blood Sacrifice” might as well be the band’s re-working of Gershwin’s classcial “Summertime” composition. Guitarist Steve Grainger explains: “Gershwin wrote ‘Summertime’, a masterpiece of its day, from ‘Porgy and Bess’, I believe. Anyway, it has a great and memorable melody. We had the idea of doing a cover of it somehow. I came up with the riff. Nick sung the original melody and lyrics and the band just made it something new. In many ways we could have put different words to it and written out Gershwin altogether but that wasn’t the point. The whole thing came out of the fact that you could take a classic song from an opera and turn it into a great rock track … hopefully that is what we did. It used to go down a storm when we did it live. It was a gift for me as lead guitarist.” Without the shadow of a doubt, London was the cultural and commercial centre of the N.W.O.B.H.M. Samson, Angel Witch, Girlschool, Praying Mantis – that’s the core of bands constituting the first wave of bands circa 1979. There even was some kind of local scene going on in the East End of London, obviously with Iron Maiden leading the pack, but also with Elixir, Pagan Altar and Destroya. From which part of London did Apocalypse come from? Steve: “We came from North London, Dave was from Arnos Grove, Marc and I came from Enfield and Nick from Grange Park. (He was originally from Wales). Basically, Apocalypse/Omega were from around the N21 area of London.” At the time, the band did not really feel part of a movement at all: “You have to remember that the N.W.O.B.H.M. tag was added some time after these bands were formed, so at the time we didn’t think of ourselves as N.W.O.B.H.M. We were just a rock band. New Wave, at the time, was a sort of punk rock. We definitely didn’t want to be part of that, our audience was made up mainly of bikers. Punks were not likely to have been anywhere near our gigs … oh no… there would have been trouble! We knew we were a band like the ones you mention. We often played The Ruskin Arms in East London where Iron Maiden also played until they got too big. We supported Clive Burr’s Escape at their first gig at the Marquee in London. Bruce turned up to that one. He was a good guy, made some positive comments about us. We bumped into Nicky Moore occasionally, he ended up on the Rock Machine label at the same time as ‘The Prophet’ was coming out. It has to be said we aspired to be as good as Maiden, Samson, bands like that. The idea of the N.W.O.B.H.M. tag was attributed to Neil Kay, DJ and promoter who saw the link with British rock music/Heavy Metal with its traditional roots played by bands in a fresh, sometimes unpolished way like punk.”
Track list:
1. Apocalypse -Stormchild
2. Apocalypse -Chosen Few
3. Apocalypse -Night Stalker
4. Apocalypse -The Child
5. Apocalypse -Midnight Train
6. Omega -Summertime
7. Omega -In The Heat Of The Night
8. Omega -Abandon Hope
9. Omega -Blood Sacrifice
10. Omega -The Child