One of the most eagerly awaited reformations of recent times has been that of Menace, one of the Godfathers of the Oi! movement and creators of the seminal punk classic "G.L.C".
Your HITS scribe met the band in Coventry to discuss the reformation and what's happened to the band since. Lead singer John Lacey thus continues "the reformation happened after we played support to Alternative TV as another band in London, there were loads of punks in the audience and for an encore we did "GLC" and the place went mental. It was at that gig in Hackney, that we realised people still listened to that sort of stuff, cos we had no idea.
Then Darren Russell approached us after hearing about it and asked us if we wanted to reform." Drummer Noel continues, "We did one gig at the Dublin Castle the week before HITS and were stunned by the amount of people that turned up."
Since the reformation the band have toured Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland and the USA but only select dates in the UK. However as Noel states "as the band all work, every tour they have to take time off work, so for gigs in the UK it's just weekend gigs and not tours as such." As for the live shows, its the place where the band are at home, as Noel states; "we enjoy it, we enjoy playing, we like the crowd to feel the energy coming off the stage." He admits; "we're very lucky to be able to do it, we don't want to do too many dates because we don't want to make it feel like work, so every gig we do, we're really looking forward to it." Of the tracks they play live, a quick band consensus listed the following favourites, "I Need Nothing", "Rocks'n'Dust" and "I'm Civilised", so listen out for those in their set.
Turning to their album "Crisis", surprisingly it's their first official album release as they didn't release any long-players last time round. John succinctly sums up that release by confirming; "If we never do anything else in our lives we'll always be proud of that." Indeed the band didn't take the easy way out by re-recording any of their old stuff, as the album was all freshly written and produced in the twenty-first century. The band confirm that the album's shifting units, as Noel says "its gonna be one of those things that's going to be selling well in 10 years time....it is unusual and very difficult for old punk bands to come back and record anything that is relevant or good, but I think we've managed to do it." As guitarist Andrew Tweedie concurs "the good thing about it is that it still sounds fresh and relevant as well, and it's about now." Noel agrees underlining the fact; "we've not got teenage angst we've got middle-aged angst!!!" With regard to new releases the band are currently looking for a deal and are presently working on new material, so get in touch if you can help on that front in any way. The band wouldn't spill the beans as to the new material, but they are all agreed that they wouldn't be following the recent trend of releasing an "unplugged" album, even though there's a "hidden" acoustic version of "C and A" at the end of the "Crisis" album., with Andrew quite rightly stating; "you just don't get the energy...the secret track at the end of the Crisis album, that's our acoustic contribution. "As bassist Charlie Casey jokingly confirmed, he doesn't possess an acoustic bass!!!
With the band now lined-up to play their hat-trick of HITS, the obvious question was why? Noel, ever the conversationalist gave his choice that "meeting people's always good...it's great to see old friends like Charlie Harper, people like that it's great." And their favourite HITS to date? Bit of a split here with John and Noel going for the first HITS they played in 1998 at The Dome in Morecambe, as there was "a real buzz about that one." Andrew however plumped for their performance at The Platform at last year's Morecambe event. Following HITS the band should be embarking to pastures anew with a tour of America's West coast later on in the year, but hope to play some more UK dates prior to then. And the bands closing comments; "Happy HITS, see you there and buy us a drink!!! "Thanks to the band, you can't argue with that sentiment, so get down to the Empress Stage on the Friday to check out one of the finest live English bands that's doing the rounds at the present time.
DERRICK MOORE (EATEN ALIVE) 2002