aaamusic | On 03, Oct 2013

AAAmusic: Who are you and where are you from?

My name is Nige Rockett from UK Thrash Metal band Onslaught. I was born in Bristol and currently live in a beautiful city named Bath in South West England.

I formed Onslaught in 1983 with two school friends Paul Hill and Jase Pope. Even though we couldn’t  play our instruments at the time, we had tons of enthusiasm and wouldn’t let a small thing like the lack of talent put us off forming a band haha!

AAAmusic: What inspired you to get into music?

Myself and Paul Hill used to follow our favourite bands all over the country when we were kids, we loved the buzz of the travel and the madness of the live gig, so one day we thought why don’t we do this for ourselves? Which is exactly what we did!

Our main influences when we started as a band were Discharge and Motorhead and that still pretty much stands today; that’s why we play Thrash Metal. For me, it’s the purest, most honest style of metal there is – it has all the true aggression of hardcore Punk music but with so much more added energy from the high tempos and heavy rhythms.

AAAmusic: What have you done?

I’m very proud of pretty much everything we have done in our career,  especially the last 3 albums: Killing Peace, Sounds of Violence and VI. I would like to think we have made some serious contributions to the Metal scene in general and hopefully influenced a lot of other bands along the way. We have recorded six studio albums and one live album and I honestly believe the best of Onslaught is yet to come!

AAAmusic: What are you like live?

We kick ass of course  haha! That’s what being in Onslaught is all about – live performance is everything to us and we have worked really hard at building up a good reputation as a live act. We learnt everything about touring from the masters themselves: Motorhead. We toured with them in ’87 on the Orgasmatron tour across Europe…To this day it’s still the best tour we have ever done!

Other bands we have shared the stage with over the years:  Judas Priest, Saxon, Anthrax,Venom, Whitesnake, Testament, Exodus, Sodom, Discharge, Overkill and many more.

AAAmusic: What makes you different?  

We don’t have any image as such, we’re a Thrash band! Just five normal guys who don’t look any different to our fans and that’s how we like it…Our fans know exactly what to expect from Onslaught – no bullshit, full-on aggressive music that comes from the heart and a totally uncompromising live show.

We will always make a big effort to go out and meet the fans before and after shows, whenever possible, and try to give them something back; it’s the least we can do for these wonderful people!

AAAmusic: Physical vs Downloading vs Streaming…How do you listen to music?

Illegal downloading obviously sucks for every band out there and believe me it will eventually kill music as we know it today!

Quick example: where is the next AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest coming from!? There will never ever be bands like these in the future and when these huge bands finally call it a day that will signal the slow death of metal music. Labels do not have the incomes any longer to sign and nurture bands over 10 years like they did in the past; magazines will only give features to bands whose label spends £1000s in advertising with them and many of the great record stores have long gone, so unfortunately its only a matter of time, unless attitudes change dramatically.

But also, I do think labels are partly to blame for the current situation as they didn’t react fast enough to the move in technology and they also charge over inflated prices for recorded music in a misguided attempt to stay in profit. I believe they really need to act soon on this to try and turn things around as much as possible.

I think Spotify and iTunes are fine, it gives the listener an opportunity to listen to an album pre-purchase without actually downloading illegally. If they like the album and then go out and buy it legitimately then its gotta be a good thing. Personally, I hate MP3; the sound quality is poor and you really have nothing to show for your money. I’m still a huge fan of physical product with great artwork, lyric sheets and pictures…you cant beat it!

AAAmusic: What have you been listening to?  

To be perfectly honest, there’s not a great deal of new music that excites me right now. I’m sticking to the old school for all my music at the moment, whether it be metal, punk or funk music. There’s not much originality around these days, which in fairness is to be expected. Give me the Pistols or Sabbath any day of the week!

AAAmusic: What are your aspirations for the future? 

Well, we have to see what the VI album is gonna do for Onslaught. It’s only out this week (Sept 20th) so there’s a very long road of touring and promotion ahead us, which is gonna be fun.

I’ve already started making plans for the follow up album to VI in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the game. It’s a funny business and you never know what’s around the next corner, so we are trying to be prepared as much as possible.

Questions answered by: Nige Rockett (Guitar) of Onslaught…