Hailing from Newcastle Upon Tyne in North East England back in 1974 (yes – 44 YEARS ago!!!) the brothers Gallagher cut their teeth playing the pubs & clubs until solidifying their line up in 1980 with drummer Rob Hunter. The trio went on to release three of the most influential metal albums of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal on the Neat records label which in turn inspired every band of that era and beyond. Basically, without Raven you just might not have had thrash/speed metal…. after all, the band did give Metallica & Anthrax their first tours!
Raven most recently released a live album and introduced newest member Mike Heller of Fear Factory fame on the drums after Joe Hasselvander was forced to take a leave of absence due to issues with his health. Now 4 decades in and the band are set to make their first ever live appearance in Australia alongside Girlschool and Tank. We caught up with John Gallagher to discuss the tour, the band’s history with their tour mates and much more.
[editors note: at the time of this interview, Venom Inc. were scheduled to be part of the tour but have been forced to cancel their appearances due to health reasons. Tank have been announced as their replacement]
Andrew: Thanks for your time today, really appreciated. You won’t remember this but I certainly do, we last spoke about 4 years ago when the Extermination album was about to come out and at the time we actually brought on the idea of you guys coming down to Australia. So fast forward 4 years and here we are, you are finally coming down here!
John: Wonderful isn’t it! Finally to have it happening, yep good stuff!
Andrew: Yeah definitely, so how are you guys feeling about it?
John: We’re pumped, we’re very excited about it. We’ve got an absolutely crazy schedule in June which has us in Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Belgium and then we fly to Australia. So we will be match fit, probably road zonked but match fit and ready to go and as far as I know we’re still getting the occasional show added here and there so it’s great.
Andrew: It’s great and obviously a lot of fans have been waiting for you guys to come down to our end. So because it is your first time in Australia, what can fans expect? Will you be bringing something a little bit different to what you usually do or will it be the same set as what you have been doing for the last few years?
John: Well we always mix it up, it’s never exactly the same set. We have two or three songs we play as an opener and we have a rough idea, not the real end but the so called end and then we just keep going. It’s just a rough idea and we just play around and move songs around, we’re not the kind of band that says, ‘Ok when we’re playing this song we play exactly the same guitar solos, play the exact same drum part’. No we don’t do that, it’s a three piece, there’s improvisation. We expand, especially near the end we’ll just stop and start another song, Keeps us all on our toes, keeps it fun. So we’re probably going to put in one of the new songs, we have a new album in the can which is hopefully coming out near the end of the year or at worst the beginning of next year. So we’ll definitely do a brand new song and give you guys a flavour of what’s coming up. We just put a live album out in January – “Screaming Murder Death From Above: Live In Aalborg”, if you get to check that out that will give you a good idea of what we’re bringing. It’s going to be longer than that, we’ll add in a few extra songs and all that but that’s the plan.
Andrew: I was going to actually ask you about that live album, as you mentioned it came out earlier this year and it really captures you guys quite well. It wasn’t necessarily something you had planned right? It was something that came around by mistake or something?
John: Well it’s…what’s the term – serendipitous I believe, it just came at the right time. We have had some delays with the record and knew at this point it wasn’t going to come out until the end of this year and we knew that back in November of last year and it was like, ‘Oh god how are we going to do this? Well why don’t we put out something in the meantime, do we have any live stuff, maybe even do a live EP or something’. Mike (Heller, drummer) was digging through…he was collecting a whole bunch of live stuff that he was sent and he goes, ‘Oh I’ve got this memory stick the guy gave me when we played with Dirkschneider back in the end of 2017 from Denmark, let me check it out’. Then he called me right back and said, ‘This thing is unbelievable, you gotta hear it’. We said, ‘Really?’ And we heard it and we go, ‘Oh my god. Let’s do a live album, this is it’. There was none of that “red light’s on, gotta play careful, don’t want to make any mistakes”.
I mean in this day and age and for how long we’re playing, you kind of realize that everything you do gets video’d anyway so that kind of feeling is kind of low down. But if you were bringing a truck in to record or whatever, it’s a whole big deal. These days not so much so it captured us the way that we would of wanted it, it’s perfect with that. It’s not perfect but it doesn’t have to be, it’s perfect as far as the energy and the attitude and that’s really what we wanted. And it’s a great transition in that Mike’s in the band, here is what the band sounds like with Mike showcasing his craziness and his insane phenomenal drumming and a great point at how the new studio album is going to sound because it’s going to have that energy. It’s captured in spades so it was the perfect thing to do at the right time.
Andrew: Yeah for sure and let me ask you about Mike Heller as well because I’m a huge Fear Factory fan as well and he’s quite a different drummer for your kind of band. So how did that come about with him joining you guys? I know obviously the tragedy behind Joe (Hasselvander) and how he has had to step outside of the band for a bit but how did you guys hook up with Mike?
John: Well I mean we had dates set up and it’s really worked out for all of us. Because Joe really didn’t want to be out on the road anymore, he’s basically done and he was complaining, ‘Why you booking these dates, you’re going to kill me’. Because basically we had these 4 dates in the States, a few days off, a short European tour and then an American tour and then festivals. So we had quite a workload coming up and he has the heart attack where we go, ‘Oh god’. Two days we get a guy in because we booked a rehearsal, we hadn’t played in 6 months, we booked a rehearsal in Chicago, guy comes in, does a great job and then the next 3 dates a friend of ours says, ‘I’ve got this guy Mike Heller, he’ll fill in’. OK! Mike turns up, he charted everything, we talked for half an hour and walked out and played a perfect show. It’s like, ‘What? How?’
And we did 2 more shows with him and each show got better and better when we told him to loosen it up and he loved that idea because of course playing with Fear Factory it’s very regimented, very machine like, no improvisation, no nothing. Then this is like letting the animal out of the cage, he’s got that freedom. Playing in a three piece in a band like us is an absolute total different animal but he’s a younger guy, he’s got different influences. So he can take the crazy stuff from death metal and black metal and what have you and put that in a totally harmonically different environment where there is songs as opposed to just noise [laughs], you come up with something totally different which is fun. So there’s a couple of items on the brand new album where there’s blast beats out of nowhere and you’ve got that against a really melodic part. Who’s done that? Noone’s done that so it fits, it’s exciting and he’s totally into it and we’re totally into it and it definitely gave us a kick up the arse and it’s just been so much fun, it really has. We’ve done 200 hundred shows at this point, still haven’t rehearsed [laughs].
Andrew: [laughs] Probably don’t need to now I would think!
John: Well it’s always been, I’ll learn this and we’ll go over this in sound check, ‘Ok let’s go’.
Andrew: Awesome great to see and we are looking forward to seeing Mike with you guys as well. This tour itself is great because you have two great bands with Girlschool and Venom Inc [editors note, Venom Inc. replaced by Tank since this interview] as well, what’s your history with those two bands? You must have done a lot of shows together in the past.
John: Oh yeah! We never played with Venom or Venom Inc. but I’ve known Tony Dolan since 1982 and Jeff (Dunn) was always the quiet one so the first time I really met Jeff and talked to him for a long time was about 7 or 8 years ago when they were doing Mpire Of Evil before that, he’s from our hometown so we had all that linked there. Girlschool we opened up for in 1982, played a whole UK tour with 27 dates with them and they are just so much fun. They are crazy, especially back then they would drink anybody under the table. And then they opened up for us on a European tour back in 2013 and we all travelled together and just a hell of a lot of fun definitely. So looking forward to having our mini British invasion, it’s going to be great!
Andrew: Yeah it’s going to be a reunion of sorts I guess! All three bands were very influential on so many bands that went on to big successes including bands like Metallica and such. So there’s so much influence and pioneering going on with those three bands, it must be a great feeling to know you have had such an impact on the music scene like that.
John: Yeah it’s a thing that it would never be expressed to us for many, many years and now finally over the last 5 or 6 years, we’ll play festivals and bands we’ve never heard of will come up and say, ‘If it wasn’t for you guys….’ and then bands we did know but didn’t know personally would come and say the same thing. Guys like Tom Warrior Celtic Frost, [we] were just knocked out that we were one of his biggest influences so it’s like, ‘Really?’ He’s such a nice guy and then of course famously back in ’83 we did a show in Germany and I went out in the parking lot with my bass and sat down and talked to all the kids and all these kids formed bands like Kreator, Coroner, Sodom, Rage, Doro Pesch. Half of Germany came to that one show, it’s like ridiculous [laughs].
Andrew: Fantastic stuff! It’s great to see you coming to Australia for the first time, finally we get to see you guys and as I said before, three great bands all together. So do you have any messages for the Aussie fans before you do come down here?
John: Absolutely! We would like to thank you so much for the support over the years, we do run into the occasional Aussie that comes out to festivals and stuff out this way and I just know from everything I have heard and seen, Australians are our kind of people. What you see is what you get, straight up in your face and want to have a good time. We’re going to bring you that good time, we’re going to come down there and kick your arses big time. It’s going to be great!
AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
EXTRA SHOWS & SIDESHOWS ADDED – SYDNEY, CANBERRA & ADELAIDE – TICKETS ON SALE NOW!!!
Girlschool / Raven / Tank:
WED 26 JUNE – THE BASEMENT – CANBERRA
THUR 27 JUNE – THE ZOO – BRISBANE
FRI 28 JUNE – THE MANNING – SYDNEY
SAT 29 JUNE – CROXTON BANDROOM – MELBOURNE
LIMITED VIP MEET AND GREETS AVAILABLE (Meet all 3 bands)
Girlschool (Sideshow):
SUN 30 JUNE – ENIGMA BAR – ADELAIDE
LIMITED VIP MEET AND GREETS AVAILABLE (Meet Girlschool)
Raven (Sideshows):
SUN 30 JUNE – FRANKIE’S – SYDNEY
MON 1 JULY – ENIGMA BAR – ADELAIDE
LIMITED VIP MEET AND GREETS AVAILABLE (Meet Raven)
TICKETS FROM: WWW.HARDLINEMEDIA.NET
