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Built around members of MY DYING BRIDE and PARADISE LOST,
there’s no doubting had OBSCENE EXTREME started in the 1980s, they would have
been right there, rattling coffins with the septicdeath/doom sound on their
demo tapes.
Fast forward to 2010, and VALLENFYRE are taking their place.
With PARADISE LOST’s Greg Mackintosh on vocals and guitar, MY DYING BRIDE’s Hamish
Glencross on guitar, and EXTINCTION OF MANKIND/DOOM’s Scoot on bass, AT THE
GATES/PARADISE LOST’s Adrian Erlandsson on drums, and Mully on guitar, this is
a rare chance to hear death/doom as it should be played, by the men who know it
best.
With the follow-up to 2011’s album, "A Fragile
King", out in time for OBSCENE EXTREME 2014, VALLENFYRE are bringing their
primal dread straight from 1988, like an evil spirit unleashed from an ancient
tomb...
Bio
Words by Gregor Mackintosh (August, 2011):
HISTORY
I was first introduced to more extreme music by my older
brother in 1981. Over the next few years in my early teens I grew to love
various early hardcore punk bands like Discharge, English Dogs, Conflict etc.
Around a similar time I was becoming aware of other more metal music like
Motörhead and Black Sabbath. In '84/85' I got into bands who were fusing these
styles like Hellhammer, Antisect and Amebix. A couple of years later I started
tape trading with people all around the world which enabled me to hear lots of
really cool, interesting, extreme music. Autopsy, Napalm Death, Morbid Angel,
Repulsion, Nihilist are some of the more well known names I started to get into
but there were many many more which never gained the same notoriety. At the
same time I formed Paradise Lost with my friend. Our early stuff was a bit of a
mixture of all this stuff but we also had a lot of doom influence from the
likes of Candlemass, Trouble and St Vitus. In '88 we started gigging and played
mainly with bands from the crust scene and proto death metal/grind scene like
Extreme Noise Terror, Hellbastard, Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower, Christ on
Parade, Carcass, Electro Hippies etc. We got offers to sign a deal with Earache
and Peaceville Records but opted for the latter probably because they were
geographically the nearest and we already knew and respected Hammy who owned
Peaceville and we liked his former band Civilised Society. This was a very fun
time. We were getting to play all over Europe with bands we loved. We even did
a European joint headline tour with Autopsy, who had never been to Europe
before, which was great - but the living conditions were horrendous. There was
us, Autopsy, Hammy, Tez (Instigators) and Baz our ever faithful driver all
crammed into one small transit van with all our gear and a rat infested sofa
from our rehearsal room, but we loved every minute. At that time, these forms
of music were our life. We loved it and lived it, and I'm proud to have been
involved in the evolution of it.
CONCEPTION
The events that led to the conception and formation of VALLENFYRE are not particularly happy or pretty ones. In the late summer of 2009, my father John Mackintosh was diagnosed with prostate cancer. We were not too worried at first as this is a common and quite curable form of cancer. Later in the Autumn as his treatment progressed, Paradise Lost embarked on the their European tour to support the latest album [Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us]. We began in the UK with our good friends Katatonia and Engel. A week into this, I received a call from my mother telling me that the doctors had found cancer in his lungs and it was terminal. He only had weeks to live. I made the decision to leave the tour before it went to mainland Europe leaving my very able guitar tech Milly to take my place. I went and stayed with my parents for the next few weeks. After a very sad and painful time he passed away on the 2nd December early in the morning.
Over the next few weeks I experienced all the famous stages
of grief. It started to become very self destructive so I decided to channel it
into creating something. To pay respects to the man that drove us to our very
first gigs because none of us could drive. The only Dad I knew that listened to
Bolt Thrower’s Peel Sessions on the radio. The guy who gave me my first chord
book. I decided that I was going to go right back to the beginning. To my roots
in Death, Crust and Doom. It all started very Angst ridden. This wasn't
originally meant for anyone else to hear. It was a release. After recording
some material I realized that I was actually enjoying doing this but I wanted
friends involved so it could actually become real fun.
EXECUTION
Deciding which friends to get involved in this was not that
difficult. Adrian is already the drummer in Paradise Lost, and not only is he a
great drummer and a good friend, he also has a great pedigree and taste in
music. He grew up in similar musical circumstances to me in Gothenburg, Sweden.
He started at a young age in At The Gates and he was also in Skitsystem (who I
think are a fantastic band). The Gothenburg scene was a thriving scene for
extreme music. I wrote to lots of people from Gothenburg in the tape trading
days (including Fredrik Wallenberg who went on to start Skitsystem with
Adrian). It was a small world indeed. Adrian thought it sounded like a lot of
fun and agreed. Hamish is a friend of many years. An all round lovely chap who
grew up in my home town of Halifax. Every time I go back to my home town I give
Hamish a call to see if he wants some ales in The Sportsman (one of the first
pubs I ever went in and still the same good old rock establishment today as it
was then), to which he always says yes. Again he has a good pedigree being the
guitarist in My Dying Bride and a very good knowledge of quality doom metal. I
approached the subject of him playing with me on this project during one of our
hardcore drinking sessions in The Sportsman and in his usual enthusiastic manner,
he said he thought it was a bloody good idea. Scoot is the person I've known
the longest I think. Probably about 20 years ago I needed someone to rent a
room in my house and I was already an acquaintance of Scoot’s as we were both
previously part of the Halifax punks, so I asked if he wanted to move in, which
he did. He was playing in the band Doom (which he still does as well as a few
others...Extinction of Mankind, Alehammer) and was, and still is fanatical
about underground crust, punk, metal etc. I remember whilst living together I
had to go and do a 7 week tour supporting Sepultura in Europe [1993]. During
that tour Max Cavalera never spoke one word to me. Upon my return home I
received a phone call and amazingly it was Max, but he didn't want me. He wanted
to talk to Scoot because he wanted him to play in his new band Nailbomb.
Typical. Scoot was interested in doing this VALLENFYRE project with me but
wanted to hear it so I had to knock together some demos. He is very specific in
what he does and doesn’t like so I was pleased when he said he loved the stuff.
I was originally going to be purely a guitarist for this project but because I
didn't have any friends whose vocals I thought fit the stuff, and because the
lyrics were so personal I decided to handle them myself and get another
guitarist, so finally I asked Mully who is my friend from where I live now.
Every Thursday I go to his house and we have a few beers and listen to lots of
old school stuff as well as checking out newer underground stuff we've heard
about. Having only played in local bands previously, I assured him he would be
among friends playing the kind of music they love. He agreed.
CONCLUSION
The enthusiasm for the music from rest of the guys in the band convinced me to send a demo to another friend called Jens Prueter who is head of A&R at Century Media Europe. I didn't hear anything for a couple of weeks and then I got an email from Jens apologizing for the late reply as he was on holiday, and that he was blown away by the demo and would love to do something with it. This resulted in us recording a limited edition 7" [on Imperium Productions] and an album between December 2010 and April 2011. Because we knew exactly how we wanted it to sound, we just needed someone we trusted to record it and mix it. I asked another friend (and live sound engineer for Paradise Lost) James Dunkley to record it for me and then it was mixed by Russ Russell at Parlour Studios [Napalm Death, The Exploited, Dimmu Borgir, etc]. We are all really pleased with the result and look forward to its release.
Oh and the name Vallenfyre came to me whilst reading a book
on the old English language. Vallen means "strong" and fyre means …
“fire”. I just liked the sound of them together. The album is called "A
Fragile King" which is a reference to my fathers' battle with cancer. The
lyrics are predominantly about the same thing but also include gripes with
society, religion, politics and relationships as well. It's all pretty grim.
Discography
Release date | Release name | Media |
---|---|---|
2011 | A Fragile King | |
2011 | Desecration | EP |