Description

Black vinyl with 8 page booklet and vinyl single in picture sleeve. Limited 200 copies

There was no great exodus in the glory days of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal of Bristol-based bands to London, which is a great shame as like, say Jaguar and Shiva, Stormtrooper would almost certainly have had a better shot at beating the odds had they upped sticks and moved to the Capital. The mentioned act Stormtrooper formed back in 1976 and released their one and only single, Pride Before The Fall, in 1980. The single shows a band that mixes a lot of the notions of 70’s blues rock with the dark and heavy NWOBHM sound, a single that captures the time perfectly. With only one single released there were of course several songs that didn’t make it to the studio sessions for one reason or another. Founder member Colin ‘Boggy’ Bond recalls: Crescent Studios in Bath was a place we knew nothing of until recommended to us by Simon Edwards of Heartbeat Records. They were used to dealing with bands such as XTC and musicians like Peter Gabriel and heavy rock was a medium they’d never worked with before, but we were impressed with the care and attention to detail they lavished upon us in the short time we were there. Because of their leaning toward pop rather than rock, the ambience, dynamics and overall production at Crescent left us with a final product that sounded (in a positive way) different to other NWOBHM fare at the time. All of the songs were recorded live, the vast majority being first takes; we didn’t have the luxury of prolonged hours spent multi-tracking and ‘tidying’ and as a result there is a refreshing rawness and spontaneity in these recordings, a feeling of being ‘in the moment’ reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s first album. It was a live performance in a controlled environment; there are flaws, but these do not make the end result any less impressive. Our songs, like the band, were evolving constantly from blues to twelve bar, from progressive rock to rock standards (well, almost!) but everything we did was fused with an aggression born out of our self-confidence as individual musicians and arrogance as a band. With ‘Bounty Hunter’, the earliest song in this collection, the balance seems to err on the side of aggression with the most basic of riffs and a lyric devoid of fantasy and fairy tale. ‘Pride Before A Fall’, ‘Drunken Women’ and ‘Battle Of The Eve’ followed with the Moog Taurus foot synthesiser featuring heavily. Although the songs were composed before the expensive Moog was attainable, they were always written with it in mind. ‘Pride Before A Fall’ was an obvious single whereas the other two were ‘assembled’ lengthy pieces of music incorporating different time signatures and syncopated rhythms which always impressed the musos but sometimes left the average punter a bit confused at gigs! The songs began to lean heavily toward the rhythm section taking centre stage, the guitar being used to embellish, which was not a conscious decision but as it happened at that point in our development turned out to be a refreshingly different by-product that enabled us to explore other paths we might never have gone down. This approach formed the basis of the songs that followed, ‘Still Comin’ Home’, ‘After Battle’ and ‘Confusion’, with the addition in the latter two of the Moog Prodigy keyboard. The right length, a nice hook and a blisteringly good riff, ‘Still Comin’ Home’, as with ‘Pride Before A Fall’, had ‘single’ written all over it. ‘After Battle’ was the second part of the ‘Battle Of The Eve’ opus, following a similar path to its predecessor but overall was a little more polished. ‘Confusion’ was just that! An all-out attack on ‘the norm’, every sequence throughout is subtlety different to the last. And with no chorus and no guitar solo for a hard rock band this was unthinkable, but we were pushing boundaries and ultimately it’s up to the listener to gauge whether we got it right or not. From the sublime to the ridiculous, originally used as an instrumental framework to facilitate Nick’s drum solo ‘Hancox Half Hour’ ‘If It Takes A Man A Week To Walk A Fortnight Then How Long Is A Piece Of String’ was, at just 2.44 long a conscious step in a different direction – short songs with long names. The title had no bearing on Paul’s lyric, which was a ditty about us as a band, where we were and where we thought we deserved to be. It was crammed with clever little passages, manic riffs and hooks. The song was recorded both at Crescent and then again at S.A.M. mainly because we felt we didn’t do it justice at Crescent the first time around. Listening retrospectively I’m not sure now which version I prefer, although unfortunately only the S.A.M. version of this track is represented on this album as the Crescent recording couldn’t be restored to an acceptable standard. ‘In The State In The City’ was also recorded at S.A.M. Studios in Bristol; it was the band’s final offering, a song of commercial length which in arrangement almost followed a standard format. Personally I preferred the cleaner crisper sound that Crescent provided, but S.A.M. certainly left us with something to be proud of. Listening to the songs now, there maybe a couple of things I would edit, but then again… As Bob said to me recently, ‘they are what they are’, and he’s right. They are a product of their time, and who am I to inflict a mature head and today’s trends on recordings made thirty-six years ago by a bunch of young dedicated musicians. And come to think of it I would probably ruin them if I did. They are perfect as they are. This is a record of Stormtrooper spending two very productive Saturday mornings in Bath and one Sunday afternoon in Bristol, and I for one applaud its spirit, enthusiasm and not least its brilliance –if I do say so myself! – Colin ‘Boggy’ Bond, March 2016

Track list:
1. In the State of the City
2. Battle of the Eve
3. If It Takes A Man
4. Bounty Hunter
5. Drunken Woman
6. Confusion
7. After Battle

Vinyl single:
1. Pride Before a Fall
2. Still Comin Home