Bitches Sin – August 2011
THE RAPTURE APPROACHES: ‘This is not an album, it’s a statement of intent’ – that was my first thought on hearing Bitches Sin’s new offering ‘The Rapture’. From the doom-laden cover (‘an unkindness of ravens gathers… thousands upon thousands heralding The Rapture… the sifting of souls… and The Second Coming… those who believe shall be saved…’) to the intensity and strength of the album’s material – delivered with the honesty and integrity of a band with complete faith and belief in what they do – ‘The Rapture’ sets a new template for metal in the twenty-first century.
Although already well known for their contributions to the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, Bitches Sin now is a very different band to the one that cut ‘Strangers On The Shore’, ‘Ain’t Life A Bitch’ and many other NWOBHM classics back in the 1980s. Since announcing their rebirth in 2004 with the demo-and-BBC-session collection ‘The First Temptation’ founder member and guitarist extraordinaire Ian Toomey has steadily guided Bitches Sin back from the wilderness with a clutch of exciting releases, culminating in ‘The Rapture’.
Strangely, though, the first new material was not actually released under the Bitches Sin name. Unsure of reviving the band without the classic twin guitar approach he had developed with his brother Pete, Ian approached his former Flashpoint colleagues – Flashpoint being his Eighties’ side project – Frank Quegan, Kev Graham and Steve Turton. The resulting self-titled album might not have been Bitches Sin by name but it certainly was by nature. But although he was happy with the songs and the way they’d turned out Ian found the rough mixes of the album far from what he’d had in mind and so made a speculative approach to legendary producer Chris Tsangarides. Not only did this result in a complete and highly satisfactory remix of ‘Flashpoint’ but it also sowed the seeds of an ongoing collaboration between the two Mr Ts.
With Chris convincing him that he needed to be working under the name with which he will always be identified, Ian set to work on a new Bitches Sin EP in April 2007. With powerhouse drummer and acoustic guitar wizard Steve Turton already signed up from Flashpoint, a string of co-incidences re-introduced Ian to former Bitches Sin vocalist Tony Tomkinson. With DBasser on bass and Chris providing the encouragement and technical expertise (as well as signing up to being a fully-fledged member of the band) the sessions stretched through the year as the four songs became ten and the ‘Mr Toomey’ EP morphed into ‘UDUVUDU’, the band’s first full album in 21 years. ‘UDUVUDU’ garnered some great reviews and created a buzz around the band once more.
To maintain the momentum, the band followed ‘UDUVUDU’ with a single, an evocative and ambitious reworking of the Simon and Garfunkel hit ‘The Sound Of Silence’ suggested by Steve and inspired by a music box his wife had given him as a present (which itself makes a guest appearance on the song). By this time Bitches Sin featured Daniel ‘Macca’ McNamee on bass: “I had been playing in a band with some good friends of mine and we supported Bitches Sin at their first reformation gig. Shortly after I bumped into Ian on a train and he told me they were in need of a bass player and asked if I would be interested. I loved the idea and was on board – if you pardon the pun – from the word go. A friend had ‘introduced’ me to the band a while back when we were listening to a lot of Eighties metal; ‘Strangers On The Shore’ was a real favourite of mine – and still is, come to that! It was weird at first though as I didn’t realise just how popular the band was; it was only later when we played at the Heavy Metal Maniacs festival in Holland and went down a storm that this became apparent to me!”
As recording began to take shape for a follow-up album to ‘UDUVUDU’ it was apparent that Tony Tomkinson and the rest of the band had grown miles apart
musically and the singer left. Just when it looked like everything laid down so far would have to be scrapped Ian, Steve and Macca were joined by Dave Mills, a frontman whom Ian affectionately described as “being able to sing like Bon Jovi and play guitar like Gary Moore.” Dave had almost joined in September 2006 but musical commitments had prevented this at the last moment. “I was so busy with my other band that we just couldn’t get it together,” he recalls, “which was a great shame as I would really like to have given it a shot. But this time around all of a sudden I was able to find the time for rehearsals and for writing and everything just clicked.
“It’s so different to anything I’ve done before,” he continues. “Metal’s not my background – I come from the rock side of things – so I did have a few concerns, but I was certainly up for the challenge. They gave me some backing tracks and asked me to write over them, and Ian said ‘feel free to put extra guitars on’ and that’s when I think it all started coming to life. It wasn’t daunting; it was a privilege to be asked, to be honest. And I’m now very proud to call them my friends.”
With Dave in the band ‘The Rapture’ was soon back on track, delivering ten new Bitches Sin songs and a re-recording of ‘The Sound Of Silence’ to feature the new singer, whom Ian is quick to credit. “It’s fair to say that I did not actually set out to achieve anything with this album because I’d resigned myself to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen, and in some respects I think we’d already pretty much called it a day. Once we got fully engaged after recording the backing tracks with Chris Tsangarides in January 2010, it was a case of ‘well, we’ve come this far, we might as well keep going’ but to be honest we had no real plan. And then, enter Dave Mills. Just as we were thinking about giving up on what we’d done Dave came up with lyrics and a sensational vocal treatment for the songs and the result is an album I’m completely floored by. Chris Tsangarides at his genius best, the band at full throttle, songs the like of which I have never heard or written in a lifetime in music…
“Dave is not a ‘traditional’ heavy metal singer although listening to his voice you would never know that, and he puts many of the genre to shame,” continues Ian. “The big bonus for Bitches Sin is that, because Dave’s not traditionally metal through-and-through, his approach to songwriting and in particular his take on the riffs and music we write brings a completely different slant to the music. Macca, on the other hand, was weaned on Metallica and Slayer and the like and his playing reflects that. He plays with aggression and attitude, exactly what our music is about, be it the older songs or ‘UDUVUDU’ and ‘The Rapture’ material.”
“I think with ‘The Rapture’ we’ve progressed quite a lot from its predecessor,” adds Steve. “I was over the moon with ‘UDUVUDU’, and it’s fair to say it broke our hearts that it didn’t do as well as we thought it might; but as the great Mr. Tsangarides told me, ‘there's no guarantees in rock ‘n’ roll, Stevie boy’. I kind of lost my faith a little after that but Ian’s persistence persuaded me to keep going; he’d kept saying during the ‘UDUVUDU’ sessions ‘there's another album in us yet, Steve.’ I couldn’t see it at the time but I’m so glad we persisted. I think this album has got stronger songs. We’d got all the backing tracks down in just five days and then Mr. Mills arrived and gave us a totally different angle and made us listen to the tracks in a different way too. As such we’ve come up with our most diverse album yet, although it’s obviously still very much a ’Sin album. I think Dave’s vocal delivery has given us a more commercial appeal on a lot of the tracks as well, yet he can scream like a banshee when it’s needed!”
“From my point of view it was a very exciting time, coming together, writing songs and just seeing where that led,” recalls Macca. “At the time we didn’t even know if it would definitely go all the way to the recording stage, so the fact we were able to take it that far was a great achievement in itself. The fact that another Bitches Sin album has been added to the catalogue pushes that even further and is something for us all to be proud of. It’s a very diverse album, as Steve said, with hooks, heaviness and heart while at the same time it has ‘hit-you-straight-in-the-face metal qualities. It’s very direct in that sense but embraces every facet of the band, and, as this is the first CD of this line-up, that means a lot to us all. It’s been a long process, a long journey, but as a result the album is just how we all want it to be. To my mind, ‘The Rapture’ is a tribute to everyone’s hard work and perseverance.”
The album’s artwork is striking, and was inspired originally by seeing the sound mirrors close to Chris Tsangarides’ studios. “To me,” says Ian, “the artwork is a message on a number of levels. Firstly the sound mirrors are receiving the message from the ether of the coming of The Rapture – the great sorting of souls before the arrival of Armageddon. For those chosen all is calm... The ravens immediately swarm for the rich pickings awaiting them as people flee the coming end. The true collective noun for ravens is ‘an unkindness’, by the way, and so the birds also spread the word by their very presence as the flock, the unkindness, spreads – faster, thicker, darker... The colours on the sleeve are not of nature: they are toxic, otherworldly, as the chosen spirits ascend. Some may even attribute it to the band, having been in a forced Purgatory, now being released to claim their salvation and their redemption. In fact, to my mind, if there is an underlying theme to the album it would be redemption. UDUVUDU let everyone know we were back: ‘The Rapture’ is that claim on our legendary status that finally informs the world of our prowess.”
“I also love the contrast between truth and fiction,” Steve chips in. “The sound mirrors were something Ian and myself were very keen on portraying as they tie things down not just as an audio entity but are very close to the area where we laid down the tracks with Chris Tsangarides. So they portray this little corner of England that is special to us, while at the same time there’s also this eeriness and mystery, this element of darkness which in a way can also allude to the band’s history.”
As for the songs themselves, “I didn’t personally set out with any theme in mind for the album lyrics,” recalls Dave. “I only wanted to write what the music was making me feel at the time of listening to the backing tracks. You know, initially, I simply set out to help the band – who’d been left in a shit situation – complete their album. But once I started writing I became very emotionally involved with each track until I was totally submerged in ‘Bitches Sin world’ and just knew I had to give it everything I could. As the writing progressed and each song took on a life and joy of its own I did start to feel pressure from myself to make each track as close to a ‘classic’ as I could. And, personally, I think we pulled it off! But in terms of the lyrics, on reflection I think a theme did develop in the form of honesty and truth – about love and life and where humanity is right now… About spiritual and personal awakenings and how we need now more than ever to be questioning everything we’ve been ‘told’ is true by our teachers and so-called leaders. That said, it is not a political theme at all, just a platform to express some deeply held beliefs in a poetic and artistic manner. So all-in-all this has been a very emotionally charged and personal journey for me from the early stages and one I am deeply proud to have been a part of. And I got to record an album with Bitches Sin and Chris Tsangarides. That’s pretty damn cool in my book!” he concludes, with obvious pride.
“As a musician you’re always searching for that perfect song or riff and if truth be told it just doesn’t exist!” laughs Steve. “But that said, I think this is as close to touching it as we could get and we’re extremely proud of that fact; getting Lil’ Dave on board was a masterstroke and he’s more than helped us put us in a place that we’ve being reaching for for some time. Personally, I’m so happy with ‘The Rapture’ that if this was going to be the last thing we were ever going to record then I could lay down my sticks – what’s left of them! – a very proud man; so I consider myself extremely lucky and honoured to be in such a position, and if this sells five or five million copies I simply don’t care because we know we’ve been the best we possibly could be.”
There was still one more hurdle to clear. “So after the journey of a lifetime or even a ‘lifetime’s journey’, given the way ‘The Rapture’ had grown in importance to us all, I found myself with this new album that should never have existed,” laughs Ian. “But there was still the mastering to be done. All four of us had listened intently and endlessly to the audio copies Chris Tsangarides had supplied us with. Could it be any better? Remember, all this work had been done as a band, independently, with no big record company behind us, no manager, no support; only our own self-belief and on a number of occasions ‘grim determination’ to succeed, plus the support of a handful of individuals, pulled us through. Well, we were about to find out.
“Chris had recommended London’s Metropolis Studios for the mastering and so, and not without a little trepidation, the studio was booked for 13th June 2011. Within a few moments the veil was lifted and the crystal clarity of all we had worked so hard to achieve was born. It was an otherworldly experience, one I never expected in a studio. But with each track a feeling of love, fulfilment, redemption and finally pride swept over me like waves. I realised it’s called 'mastering' for a reason: for me, it means finally mastering all that you have strived for in your musical career, all embodied in one album that is testimony to the dream of what Bitches Sin is, and what we stand for as a band.”
“I’ve been back with Ian for a long time now,” says Steve. “Being in Bitches Sin is a lot different to any other band I’ve been in – far more engaging, far more challenging, far more productive. It’s always been about loyalty and the music. Ian runs a tight ship but he never pushes anyone as hard as himself: he works very hard keeping the band in the right circles as well as keeping his eye on the high standard of musicianship that the name requires. It’s quite simple: without Ian, there would never be a Bitches Sin.”
“The band is, and will always be, my Holy Grail,” is how Ian describes it. “Even after all these years whether it’s a rehearsal or one of our rare live appearances we still play with the same attitude and excitement as we’ve always done. This transmits to the fans and we always get great responses live like at last year’s Heavy Metal Maniacs festival at Hoorn, Holland, or the British Steel festival. I guess that even after all this time we are still like your next door neighbours, the ordinary guys who used to sit in their bedroom listening to albums thinking ‘we could do that’ and then went and did it. So on reflection maybe it’s the fans who are Bitches Sin and all we do is supply them with original kick-ass music for them to enjoy. And as long as they’re there for us, we’ll be there for them.”
Live photos by Rita van Poorten
© John Tucker August 2011