Читать книгу Bullet For My Valentine - Scream Aim Conquer - Ben Welch - Страница 8
ОглавлениеWith Jeff Killed John clearly under the influence of the new breed of American metal acts that had emerged towards the end of the twenty-first century, Bridgend probably felt like it was a very long way from the action indeed. As Matt put it himself, it was just a normal Welsh town where everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. But as the millennium hit, the fact was that, to the rest of the UK and beyond, South Wales was starting to look quite special.
For a long time Welsh pop music was synonymous with one man: the baritone-voiced, carpet-chested lothario of the valleys, Tom Jones. But in the mid to late 1990s Wales had well and truly been put on the alternative-music map by Manic Street Preachers. They were the ultimate pop provocateurs. Their lyrics could be political and confessional, sometimes they dressed in women’s blouses and sometimes in balaclavas, and they pulled influences from many different genres into their restless and infinitely inventive albums. By the time their third album, The Holy Bible, was released, they were regarded by many as one of the most interesting guitar bands in the UK. In short, they were exactly the band that Wales needed. Other acts followed – most notably Stereophonics, Catatonia and Super Furry Animals, the so-called ‘Cool Cymru’ set – but for most of the 1990s the Manics remained the quintessential Welsh guitar band, particularly after the critical and commercial smash of their fourth record, Everything Must Go.
As the new millennium loomed no one was particularly expecting Wales to deliver on the ‘Next Big Thing’ but a young band from Pontypridd nominated themselves for the role anyway. Lostprophets began life as a side project to hardcore band Public Disturbance and went through a period of line-up changes and small-scale tours as they independently released three EPs. They were regulars on the South Wales circuit, which had a number of venues of the right size and with the right attitude to showcase new talent: Clwb Ifor Bach and The Barfly in Cardiff, The Toll House in Bridgend and TJ’s in Newport. The latter, in particular, is an iconic venue with enough lore attached to it to fill a book in its own right and is, supposedly, the venue where Kurt Cobain proposed to Courtney Love after Hole played there in 1991.
Eventually, Lostprophets signed to independent rock label Visible Noise and recorded their debut album, Thefakesoundofprogress, in under two weeks and for a few thousand pounds. It was rough and ready, made up, at least in part, of reworked demos but, with its sly combination of American post-hardcore, nu metal, and pop-culture references, they caught the attention of the public. The success of first single ‘Shinobi vs. Dragon Ninja’ was enough to convince Columbia Records to sign the band, who re-recorded and re-released their debut. Suddenly, the band were blowing up in America as well as the UK and a lot of eyes were on South Wales to see if there was more where that came from.
There were a number of other bands drawing from American post-hardcore influences around South Wales at that time, like Hondo Maclean – a noise-mongering outfit whose style bordered on technical metalcore – The Blackout from Merthyr Tydfil, who wove a pop-punk influence into the sound, and Midasuno, also from Merthyr. Ammanford’s Jarcrew had a more eclectic approach, mixing post-punk and progressive-rock influences together into a kind of jagged, dance-floor-baiting take on Gang of Four, whereas Cardiff’s Mclusky were the veteran bruisers of the scene – a power trio with a keen sense of humour and an ear for a thrillingly dissonant racket. The previous incarnation of The Automatic, who would come to mainstream prominence in 2006, were also on the scene, performing under the name White Rabbit. The bands were not necessarily all associated and the different bands’ sounds were incredibly varied but it was, nonetheless, an incredibly fertile scene with the venues to support it. The existence of Mighty Atom Records in Swansea, which also boasted its own recording facilities, added to the health of the scene.
However, it was Funeral for a Friend who would prove to be next out of the gate and go on to mainstream success. Like Jeff Killed John, they were from Bridgend, with singer Matthew Davies (now Davies-Kreye) having met the rest of the band through working at The Jungle record store in the town and through connections at school and college. Funeral for a Friend began as a metalcore act called January Thirst but the addition of Davies-Kreye added a melodic vocal approach to the brutal guitar work, and the band slowly began to seamlessly blend the brute force of hardcore with the open-hearted pop sensibilities of emo.
They signed to Mighty Atom Records, where they had also been recording, and released their debut EP Between Order and Model in 2002. It was shortly followed by tours with US bands Boysetsfire and The Juliana Theory, who were heading over to the UK for the first time. One of the most interesting things about Funeral for a Friend was that they were taking fundamentally American styles and merging them with a distinctly regional sensibility, as Davies-Kreye told Rock Sound magazine: ‘There were no other bands in the UK doing what we were so we felt as if we were part of an American scene to a degree. We felt more of a kinship to a lot of American bands than we did [to] anything that was going on in the UK at that point.’
After winning a Kerrang! Award for Best British Newcomer in 2003, Funeral for a Friend released their debut album, Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation, in October, through Atlantic Records. It was an immediate hit with the music critics and produced three top-twenty singles in the UK. By 2004 the band were off on tour around the USA with Linkin Park. At the same time, Lostprophets had continued to grow in renown thanks to the release of their second album, Start Something, which had a more tepid critical response than their debut but which was, nonetheless, commercially successful in both the US and the UK. Two bands from two small mining communities in a country of three million, with little to superficially connect them other than a decades-old sporting rivalry, were tearing up the charts across the English-speaking world. There had to be more to it than chance.
It’s not exactly clear who first dubbed South Wales ‘The New Seattle’, after the American city synonymous with the grunge movement in the 1990s, though it was most likely popularised by Spin magazine after they used the phrase to title an article about Newport’s TJ’s. But whatever the cause of the major-label feeding frenzy that descended on South Wales following the success of Lostprophets and Funeral for a Friend, for Matthew Davies-Kreye, the tag was not justified. In an illuminating article for online music mag Noisey.Vice.com called SOUTH WALES WAS THE NEW SEATTLE? TOTAL BOLLOCKS, he writes, ‘They were nothing alike other than the fact that we’re by the coast, it’s depressing, and it rains for 290 of the days of the year.’
However, he does give an incredible account of the South Wales music scene in the early 2000s before it came to the nation’s attention. He states his view that the venues were incredibly important, particularly because they would often host pop-up record stores: ‘Even if I wasn’t too familiar with the band playing,’ he writes, ‘I’d go to shows knowing my friends were going to be there… It was a very honest, pure environment to be in.’ Davies-Kreye also pays tribute to the diversity of the scene, which would often see bands from completely different genres hosted on the same bill, with an atmosphere of mutual support throughout. ‘You’d have hardcore kids, punk kids, nu-metal kids, hip-hop kids; nobody really knew what they were and it didn’t matter,’ he explains in the piece. ‘It was a mash-up of people and influences, which made being a part of it quite beautiful. There were no boundaries, most people were just really passionate about the fact that local bands were writing their own songs that were actually good.’
