Author: fgt

Emerging at the start of the 80s, a new wave of bands took the sound and fury of the original punk movement and turned it into something filthier, nastier and more extreme. Leading the charge were Stoke-on-Trent’s Discharge, a band who would influence countless metal and hardcore bands that followed. In 2020, we looked back at one of the most influential bands of the 80s.

By 1982, everyone thought punk was dead. After the ’77 boom, the genre had stagnated, and the bands were considered irrelevant laughing stocks. But deep underground, its corpse was twitching, and from the rotten, putrid sludge of punk rose a band that inspired the next generation of both metal and punk rock kids to make a new type of noise. This is how Discharge’s debut album, Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, upped the ante.

Formed in 1977 in Stoke-on-Trent, there was no signal Discharge would make a sizable dent in heavy music. They were, as founding guitarist Tony ‘Bones’ Roberts puts it, “Just listening to The Clash and the Sex Pistols and having a go at doing that.”

After a series of rudimentary EPs and singles, and numerous line-up changes in their early years, they found a home in the anarcho-punk scene of the early 80s – a small but dedicated haven for individuals who refused to give up on punk’s ethics.

“It was a lifestyle that was different, exciting,” says formerdrummer Garry Maloney, who joined the band a year before the release of Hear Nothing… “Likeminded people hanging out and going to gigs. It was brilliant. From my first show, seeing The Damned at Barbarella’s in Birmingham, to a few years later watching Black Flag soundcheck sitting on my flight case, I loved it all.”

Discharge continued to evolve, beefing up their sound while also trimming the fat. When they went into the studio to record their debut full- length, they were armed with a set of songs that would shift the goalposts of extremity. “We really hit on something around that time,” Bones tells us. “We had gone from sounding like a normal punk band into sounding like something else. It was all natural, though. We never tried to sound a certain way; we just started writing sounds about how we felt, and we felt like how that record sounded.”

The sound of how Discharge felt was alarming, even to fans of extreme music. Songs were short, inhumanly loud, full of violent and brutal images of war and human devastation and, crucially, driven by the now infamous ‘D-beat’ drum pattern. “Well, that wasn’t really my thing,” shrugs Garry, crediting original member (and current guitarist) Terence ‘Tezz’ Roberts with initiating the style. “But I did make a point of playing what felt right for me. It was slightly different to the original singles, which was intentional I guess.”

“That drum beat changes the way you play,” Bones adds. “You can’t help but get excited by the sound of it. That’d be the basis of what we’d start with, and it makes everything feel so much more urgent, and I definitely reacted to that.”

Another key component of Hear Nothing… was thematic, with the band’s disgust at Thatcherite Britain, paranoia from the threat of nuclear war and humanity’s self-destructive tendencies all distilled into a series of brutally blunt slogans. The title track repeats the lines: ‘Lied to, threatened, cheated and deceived / Hear nothing see nothing say nothing / Led up garden paths and into blind alleys / Hear nothing see nothing say nothing.’

“I’ve realised how much I’ve been influenced by what I call ‘The Discharge haiku’,” says Neurosis frontman and Discharge super-fan, Steve Von Till. “It’s like a strange style of poetry – these short images of war and political deception. Unlike their earlier records, most songs were four lines, tops, but they say so much. It makes it epic, and you can apply them to your own time.”

As Steve points out, sadly, the album’s themes are as relevant as ever. “It was shit back then and we were all pissed off about it,” growls Bones. “It’s even fucking worse now.”

“The threat of war and government law is still out there,” Garry adds. “They are threats that keep us all in line.”

As the first signings to Clay, the Stoke-On-Trent-based label run out of a local record shop, the band were not afforded much time in the studio, instead “getting it out in one take or so, like we always did,” according to Bones. Regardless, the results were staggering. In around 25 minutes, Discharge had chewed up GBH, Motörhead, Venom and their own unique brand of nihilism and spat it back out into the world’s face. Hear Nothing… would be a watershed moment; at a time when punk and metal were mortal enemies, they blurred the lines completely.

“I was into metal at the time,” Steve Von Till tells us. “This was before I found punk. But when the punks started telling us metal guys that we should listen to this album, we were intrigued.”

The band themselves had no idea what they had achieved. “It wasn’t planned,” says Garry. “I just thought it was super-cool and turned it up full blast and was off in a little world of my own. It just evolved from the music we were listening to and our punk roots.”

Initially, the record was met with confusion and some hostility. That all changed when the band were adopted by the UK’s ultimate taste-maker. “I’m not sure everyone got it at first, because they didn’t know if we were punk or metal,” Bones sniffs. “I’ve never cared about any of that stuff personally. But then John Peel played us on Radio 1 and, I mean, wow! That was a real honour. Things changed from then; I would go down the pub and people would be telling me they heard us on the radio. We got a real boost from that.”

The record’s reputation started to build, with both punk rockers and metal fans becoming intrigued by this infamous new band. “I saw the cover and it looked so weird that I thought, ‘I gotta try that’,” says Steve. “I got it home and, the second the needle dropped, I felt like it was the sound I’d been searching for my whole life. It blew my mind wide open and changed my life. It had the guitars I wanted and that bass was so crushing.”

The influence on thrash and cross- over was meteoric, and within a few years D-beat even became known as its own subgenre, as hundreds of bands from all over the world tried (and mostly failed) to recreate the iconic sound. Many even adopted the ‘Dis’-prefix in their name; plagiarism had never been so shameless. “Good luck to them,” shrugs Garry.

“I can’t tell you anything about any of those bands,” snorts Bones. “I don’t listen to music… never have. If you do, you get influenced by it. I want to sound like myself and what’s going on in my head. But it’s nice that people have been influenced by us. A few years ago we played The Underworld in London, and Metallica came down to see us before they played the O2. That was alright.”

The best bands were those who took Discharge’s ethos and pushed it further. “What’s more interesting to me is when people try to find their own original voice of intensity,” says Steve. “I can tell you for a fact that there’d be no Neurosis without Discharge. The way they influenced us was that they sounded like screams of anguish, screams of war, screams of where humanity is headed – they were perfect for that. So, if we want to contemplate the existential nature of humanity to find its struggle amongst nature, how can we sound like that? How can we embody those themes? That’s how I hope they would influence people, rather than copying a style.”

Songs from Hear Nothing… have been covered by everyone from Metallica to Sepultura to Machine Head to Anthrax, and there’s no doubt its legacy is set in stone. “I still smile when I see the artwork,” says Garry. “It was an ‘all the planets in alignment’ moment. Every track a killer.”

“There are some of our records that I can’t listen to,” Bones tells us. “Not this one. It’s just got something about it, hasn’t it? A magic that you can’t explain… it’s timeless.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 332, February 2020

Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.

Anyone still holding out hope for a Faith No More reunion should look away. Four years after the alt-metal icons cancelled their comeback tour due to singer Mike Patton’s struggles with agoraphobia and alcohol, FNM drummer Mike Bordin claims his estranged bandmate has “gone from being unable to do the shows to clearly being unwilling to do shows with us.”

Speaking on the Let There Be Talk podcast, Bordin revealed his frustration that Patton apparently seemed happy to tour with his other band, Mr Bungle, though not Faith No More.

Speaking about the cancellation of FNM’s scheduled dates in 2021 and 2022, themselves rescheduled from the previous year due to the covid pandemic, Bordin said the band were supportive of Patton after the tour was pulled on the eve of the first date.

“It was very clear that he was unable at that point to physically do it,” said the drummer. “We made the decision that, ‘Look, we’ve gotta support our guy.’ It’s gonna be a shit storm cancelling fucking 75 shows, but none of us wants to be the guy that breaks his back and forces him to do something that he’s not in the position to be able to do. It wasn’t even an argument. The only argument was, How the fuck did we logistically do this? Because we have to.’

“I mean, we did support him in our way, and whether that’s perceived or not is beyond me – I can’t control it,” continued the drummer. “So we pull these shows and just wait to see. Hopefully things are better, and try to find out what we can around the edges.”

The Faith No More shows ultimately weren’t rescheduled, although Patton’s other band, Mr Bungle, announced a series of South American dates in 2022. The latter outfit subsequently toured in 2023 and 2024.

“So it’s my take, my position, my statement on it is that he’s gone from being unable to do the shows to clearly being unwilling to do shows with us,” Bordin said. “And that’s heavy. That’s a big difference… And we haven’t really had much dialogue on it.”

Bordin isn’t the first member to address the uncertainty around Faith No More’s current status. Speaking to The Guardian in 2022, Patton said his reasons for pulling out of the tour were a result of the pandemic and issues with agoraphobia and alcohol: “Because I was isolated so much, going outside was a hard thing to do, and that’s a horrible thing. And the idea of doing more Faith No More shows – it was stressful. It affected me mentally.”

In late 2024, FNM keyboard player Roddy Bottum said that the band were “on a semi-permanent hiatus”, while bassist Billy Gould addressed the situation in January 2025. “I honestly don’t know… Right now we’re in a really weird spot, a really strange spot, and I can’t really tell you what’s going on. I don’t know myself. I get different information from people, and I’m in the band.”

Faith No More’s most recent album, Sol Invictus, was released in May 2015. They last played together in August 2016 in Los Angeles.

Founded in 1983, Metal Hammer is the global home of all things heavy. We have breaking news, exclusive interviews with the biggest bands and names in metal, rock, hardcore, grunge and beyond, expert reviews of the lastest releases and unrivalled insider access to metal’s most exciting new scenes and movements. No matter what you’re into – be it heavy metal, punk, hardcore, grunge, alternative, goth, industrial, djent or the stuff so bizarre it defies classification – you’ll find it all here, backed by the best writers in our game.

Dickey Betts, a co-founder of the Allman Brothers Band and one of the most influential and colourful figures in the realm of music known loosely as southern rock, died on April 18, 2024, following a period of declining health. His passing at 80 years old left just co-drummer Jai Johanny Johanson, aka Jaimo, as the last surviving member of the original line-up of the group.

A statement on behalf of the band recalled how Betts’s “extraordinary” guitar playing, alongside that of Duane Allman, “created a unique dual-guitar sound that became the signature sound”. Until that point it had been traditional for two-guitar bands to have defined roles for soloists and rhythm players.

The statement remembered Betts as being “passionate in life, be it music, songwriting, fishing, hunting, boating, golf, karate or boxing”, adding: “Dickey was all-in on and excelled at anything that caught his attention.”

It concluded: “Betts joins his brothers, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks and Gregg Allman, as well as ABB crew members Twiggs Lyndon, Joe Dan Petty, Red Dog, Kim Payne and Mike Callahan in that old Winnebago in the sky touring the world, taking their music to all who will listen.”

The Allman Brothers Band formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969, their freeform style fusing together elements of country, rock, blues and jazz. While brothers Duane (guitar) and Gregg Allman (keyboards, vocals) were the band’s leaders, Betts was a significant member, writing many of the band’s quintessential songs including Blue Sky and Ramblin’ Man, and also the instrumentals In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed and Jessica, the latter of which became the theme tune to the British TV show Top Gear.

On stage and in the studio, the band became known for their improvisational skills. Their tune Mountain Jam (based on the 1967 Donovan song There Is a Mountain), which appeared on 1972’s part-live double album Eat A Peach, would serve as an extended instrumental jamming vehicle for the Allman Brothers Band throughout their long and distinguished history.

Also recognised for his unpredictable, hellraising rock-star behaviour, Betts was the inspiration for the character played by Billy Crudup in the 2000 film Almost Famous. During Betts’s youth, trashed hotel rooms, arrests and fights with band members and authority figures were just a little too commonplace.

Forrest Richard Betts was born in West Palm Beach, Florida. At five years old he played the ukulele, and progressed to performing in several local bands before meeting future ABB member bassist Berry Oakley III and forming the group Second Coming. After the pair jammed with Duane Allman, Duane invited them to team up together.

With his connection to Eric Clapton, Duane brought pedigree to the Allman Brothers Band, although the ex-session star admitted: “I’m the famous guitar player, but Dickey is the good one.”

When Duane died in a motorcycle crash in October 1971, with the group poised for a commercial breakthrough via their double live set At Fillmore East, Betts stepped up to take a bigger role. When just a year later Berry Oakley died in remarkably similar circumstances, crashing his motorbike into a bus just three blocks from where Duane had been killed, a lesser band would have combusted. But somehow the Allmans continued to reinvent themselves, with Betts acting as unofficial leader for their fourth album, 1973’s Brothers And Sisters.

Although the ABB became superstars, drug usage began to spiral, and the band members grew apart. When Gregg Allman reluctantly testified against his personal road manager John ‘Scooter’ Herring in a 1976 federal drugs case, the Brothers were torn asunder. After a split in 1976, Betts released a solo album, Highway Call, before forming Dickey Betts & Great Southern.

A reunion ensued for the Allmans’ 1979 album Enlightened Rogues, but despite selling half a million copies the spark was missing, and three years later, having misfired with Reach For The Sky and Brothers Of The Road, the band broke up again.

In 1989 a new line-up celebrated ABB’s twentieth anniversary, with guitarist Warren Haynes, previously of Dickey Betts’s solo group, helping them to rediscover their form with the back-tobasics, Tom Dowd-produced 1990 album Seven Turns.

“I wound up spending twenty-five years of my life as a member of my favourite band,” Haynes stated, as the terrible news of Betts’s death broke. “It did not take long to realise, standing next to Dickie with that beautiful tone, that I had a lot to work to do on both with my tone and with my style. He threw me in the lake and I had to learn to swim. I’m forever grateful for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

With Gregg Allman and Betts at loggerheads, for what was described as “personal reasons” – the band had insisted that Dickey go into rehab – he was suspended prior to a tour in 1990. The move was meant to be temporary. “Ain’t no way we can fire Dickey,” founding member Butch Trucks said at the time. However, the first of several police reports for claims by his long-suffering wife Donna of domestic assault muddied the waters. Betts insists he was sacked for demanding an audit of the band’s money from the band’s management.

“[Dickey] was just crazy as a bat, y’know,” Gregg Allman explained at the time. “But the main thing is that it wasn’t working musically any more.”

After Betts filed a lawsuit, there was little realistic chance of him making a return to the Allman Brothers, so he resumed a solo career. In later years his son Duane (named after Duane Allman) joined him on lead guitar in Dickey Betts & Great Southern.

Betts and Gregg Allman reconciled before the latter’s death in 2017. Betts’s daughter Christie is married to Tesla guitarist Frank Hannon. A road dog to the end, Betts remained on the road even after brain surgery as a result of a fall at his Florida home in what was described as a “freak accident”. He also suffered a minor stroke.

Betts was inducted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with the rest of the Allman Brothers Band in 1995. Still without him, the group wrapped their career in October 2014 upon completion of what had become an annual run of shows at New York’s Beacon Theatre. They continue to be hailed as an influence by Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, The Black Crowes and Kid Rock, among others

Despite having become poster boys for the genre, Betts “hated” the label ‘southern rock’, commenting: “I think it’s limiting. I’d rather just be known as a progressive rock band from the South. Calling us that pigeonholed us, forcing people to expect certain types of music from us that I don’t think are fair.”

In 2020, Betts was name-checked in Bob Dylan’s song Murder Most Foul, which included the line: ‘Play Oscar Peterson, play Stan Getz, play Blue Sky, play Dickey Betts’. While Betts was thrilled by that, he was modest enough to say: “Well, he [Dylan] just used me because [my name] rhymes with Getz.’”

Dave Ling was a co-founder of Classic Rock magazine. His words have appeared in a variety of music publications, including RAW, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, Prog, Rock Candy, Fireworks and Sounds. Dave’s life was shaped in 1974 through the purchase of a copy of Sweet’s album ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’, along with early gig experiences from Status Quo, Rush, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Yes and Queen. As a lifelong season ticket holder of Crystal Palace FC, he is completely incapable of uttering the word ‘Br***ton’.

In a lofty position in the Yorkshire Dales lies Britain’s highest pub, Tan Hill Inn, which sits 1,752 feet above sea level. The nearest town, Richmond, is a drive away, and today, in the depths of winter, locals and tourists are happily snowed in, making new friends, sampling the establishment’s beers, and whiling the hours away with card games and conversations.

It’s remote, sure, but go even further, deeper along farmers’ tracks into the countryside and you’ll find a large, pretty, truly isolated country cottage, miles from anywhere. And this is where, via Zoom, we meet Ginger Wildheart. It was supposed to be an in-person chat but he, too, is snowed in, with only his beloved border collie Maggie – his “soul mate”– for company. “It’s the sort of place where you go missing and no one finds you for years,” he says.

He’s been living there for a year and a half, having moved away from the relative bustle of York. Instinct says that this might not be the best environment for someone who has publicly battled severe mental health issues – something he has been commendably open about. In 2023 he was sectioned and placed on suicide watch, so concern over the isolated nature of his new home and lifestyle is natural. But it seems to be working for him, a brave and risky move he says he had to make.

“I needed to learn how to live with mental health and how to live with depression,” he explains. “I’d been chewed up, spat out, chucked around the system for years. Medication is not going to fix anything. I need to go away and figure out what depression is, trying to understand it, instead of just coping and living with it. Because the system offers you drugs that numb you and gives the impression that life’s got better, but it hasn’t. So I came in here with lots of boxes, and I had to just open them one by one. I looked in the mirror, I made an inventory of all the things that I hated about my life and then started fixing them.”

The first of those boxes was an intense fear of being alone, being away from everything and everyone he knew. Having reached a point where, he says, he was likely to end up in jail or six feet under, rather than avoiding that fear he faced it full-on.

“I wondered what you would do if you were left with only you and your head,” he says. “And the option is you would learn to live in your head. For years I’ve been masking it with alcohol and drugs. How do I exist by myself? I thought, well, there’s only one way of finding out, and that’s to chuck yourself feet-first into the abyss and build your wings on the way down. I’d gone as mad as I want to go, and I was getting into a lot of trouble. I had huge suicidal ideation. It got so far down it looked like up to me.”

So, country living it was. Out in the wilds, Ginger has spent his time studying Buddhism – something he’s long held an interest in, but which fell by the wayside when the booze was on the table – and stoicism, getting healthy and sober, walking for miles with the dog, getting fit, working out his own thoughts, his own deep-held anger issues. Getting his lungs full of fresh air and taking time to watch the wildlife. Writing a journal has helped, too. Taking a year “to be a ghost” seems to have hit just the reset button he needed.

“There was this one time I was in the studio, making the last album,” he remembers, “and I ran out of medication, and it was like being a smackhead again. I couldn’t work without the medication. At that point I’m like, this has got to change. So I spent a year coming off medication, which I had been a slave to for a long time, and just, you know, small steps, but in the right direction.”

The last album he refers to was 2021’s excellent but fraught 21st Century Love Songs, which saw the classic Wildhearts line-up of Ginger and CJ on guitar, Danny McCormack on bass and Andrew ‘Stidi’ Stidolph on drums. The re-formation was a cause for celebration among devotees, but, without going into too many details, Ginger makes it clear that this combination won’t be back together any time soon; too much murky water under the bridge, too many resentments and clashes. Some people just aren’t meant to be together, whatever the artistic outcome.

The great news is that he’s back with a new iteration of The Wildhearts, and the searingly honest but irrepressibly joyous The Satanic Rites Of The Wildhearts. A blaze of songs that takes in a million directions at once, with The Wildhearts’ instantly recognisable blend of crazed pop and fiery rock, it deals with all the issues the frontman has laid bare today and before, but with a sense of hope and positivity at its core.

“I used to think that I wasn’t allowed to do The Wildhearts without the rest of the [original] guys in the band,” he says. “I had to maintain some kind of allegiance. It’s a long story, but it ended up so bad – it was a terrible end to the band, it got so ugly – and I wanted nothing to do with it. In fact I left, and I was being paid as a session player to sing my songs. I gave all the control back to the band, still hoping that it would work this time. You know, that grim sense of hope that just… be better. And it wasn’t. It felt like an abusive relationship for everybody, and I think everyone would agree that they’re much happier now.”

Ginger beams when the subject of the new lineup is raised. There’s bassist Jon Poole, a familiar face to Wildhearts fans (“He’s just a magical entity, the funniest man I know”), guitarist Ben Marsden (“An absolute Duracell battery of a person”), and a new drummer named, singularly, Charles (taking over from Gong’s Cheb Nettles, who played on the album). It is, he says, the first time he’s experienced real camaraderie in the studio with The Wildheats, particularly on swearily hilarious collaborative rant Kunce.

“I don’t think people realise how much I did and how little the rest of the band did, as far as the creative side goes,” he explains. “I’m used to working alone. I’m used to being responsible for everything, and it not being a very fun experience. And this was a fucking brilliant experience. It’s odd to be doing this for a living and laughing all the time. That it’s okay to enjoy it this much.

“We also had [prog hero and Gong alumni] Kavus Torabi as a guest on the album. Him and Jon were just like putting two foul-mouthed Furbies together. It was great, there was a lot of musical collaboration, which is what I really want. I wanted people to bring things to the table. This is something that I’m not used to with The Wildhearts.”

At the other end of the scale there’s Fire In The Cheap Seats, a portrait of a turbulent mind that serves as a reminder of how pioneering The Wildhearts, and Ginger in particular, have been over the years in opening up the discussion on mental health, particularly among men. It’s thankfully more common now, but back in the 90s it was groundbreaking.

“At a time like now where people are being convinced by people like Russell Brand and Andrew Tate, it’s just telling a man: ‘It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to suffer. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to feel like you failed, like you’re on the bottom of your world,’ and ‘You can build yourself back up.’ That’s a more important message than: ‘Hate women because you’re stronger physically.’ We are trying to lead by example. It’s a story of someone getting through life by whatever means necessary, and I think it’s a sentiment that’s shared by a lot of Wildhearts fans. We don’t have misogynist, homophobic racists in our community.”

The Wildhearts’ fans, perhaps uniquely, are as crucial an element to The Wildhearts story as any band member. It’s a collective, a support network, organically and unpretentiously populated by people who genuinely care for one another, and it’s a beautiful thing to witness. Live shows represent a community coming back together to reconnect – less a fan base, more a found family created by the man at the heart of it all. It’s a light surrounding the frontman when things seem their darkest.

“Music has always been my best friend, my therapist, my confidante and my means of communication, my connection with people,” Ginger says. “I’ve never made a secret about The Wildhearts being all about the community. We started with a handful of people, making sure everyone’s mental health was alright, everyone’s feeling strong, everyone feeling supported, and it’s got bigger and bigger. The whole thing not only gives people a bit of hope, it gives me hope.

“There’s times when I’ve needed the community, and therapists haven’t done it, psychiatrists haven’t done it, medication hasn’t done it. And Wildhearts fans have come to my aid. I hear from a lot of people that the music’s helped them. And it’s a two-way street. They absolutely help me. Music is the connection, and it’s magical and it’s real.”

The public-access nature of the band extends to the music itself. Ginger says he never sits down to write, never picks up the guitar at home, never goes back and listens to the songs once they’re recorded. (“Once it’s done, it’s for other people, it’s not for me then.”) The songs just arrive fully formed in his head, these days usually when he’s out walking in the fields. Maybe that’s why they’re so catchy, they’re built already embedded in the brain. He’s already got 12 ready to go for the next Wildhearts album, way ahead of the current one being released. “Once they started coming, they started coming. And who am I to argue with that?”

It sounds like taking himself off to be the wild man of the Yorkshire Dales has paid off in spades. With Maggie a constant and faithful source of comfort and love by his side – on the tour bus, in the studio, at acoustic shows – his search for peace seems to be heading in the right direction, at least. The countryside, with the scent of the earth and the sound of the birds, the clean, life-giving air and nature’s cool indifference to human struggles and endeavours, has become a muse, not just for the music but also for life.

“Working on yourself, demanding that things be better, I’ve lost quite a few friends because of that, and that’s been food for thought,” says Ginger. “But you learn a lot being surrounded by trees, to the point where I feel more like a tree than a human. Just being surrounded by no bullshit, no lies, no ego. There’s just honesty. Nature’s got it right, it’s not a terrible world. We’re a blight on the bloody planet, but nature’s got it all right.

“When you get a level of communication with a wild animal where they don’t fear you, you’ve got something really special going on that you don’t get in society. When you raise your energy to match nature, you find that you’re in a good place where you’ve got a good overview of things. The only hope is that you can just go back out into the illusion of society and try and put it into practice.”

Outside the cottage, things are silent, the snow banked up, indifferent to anyone who may have things to do, places to go, people to see. It’s a good place to take stock, and from here, at the start of the year, Ginger declared on Instagram his one plan for 2025: to “aim for brilliance”.

“Why would you want anything else?” he asks. “Aim for happiness. You can change your life completely. I’ve manifested this to the point where it’s too late to get off the fucking train. Now it’s all starting to happen. And it’s fascinating. But life isn’t an illusion, and the universe wants you to be happy, and when you take those two things into consideration, you can ask and demand anything from life. If you just appreciate every little step, it’s just a step in the right direction, and you’re manifesting happiness before you know it. You look around and go: ‘Fucking hell, this is all I wanted ten years ago.’”

Satanic Rites Of The Wildhearts is out now via Snakefarm.

Emma has been writing about music for 25 years, and is a regular contributor to Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Prog and Louder. During that time her words have also appeared in publications including Kerrang!, Melody Maker, Select, The Blues Magazine and many more. She is also a professional pedant and grammar nerd and has worked as a copy editor on everything from film titles through to high-end property magazines. In her spare time, when not at gigs, you’ll find her at her local stables hanging out with a bunch of extremely characterful horses.