Granbretan Invasion!

Graham Oliver and Me playing some Saxon classics

Not long ago, Witch Cross were approached by our Metal buddy Bart Gabriel over at Skol records to see if we’d be interested in contributing a song to a new tribute album to the glories of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Needless to say the answer was a resounding “Hell yeah!”

The choice of song was a no-brainer for us. In our live show, one of our encores is the SAXON classic “Strong Arm of the Law”. Luckily I was over from Spain at the right time and we got the track recorded, but there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to have my long time friend Graham Oliver, Saxon axe-wielder extraordinaire on the track!

I drove up to Graham’s place in Yorkshire while I was in the UK and we headed up to Beat Street Studios in Leeds to record his parts. He’s the genuine article, the real deal, and his playing brought the song alive.

Graham working his Metal Magic

We’re really proud of our contribution to this fantastic project and can’t wait to hear what the other bands have done. Besides Witch Cross featuring Graham Oliver, it contains NWOBHM covers from Cauldron, Crystal Viper, Enforcer, Gatekeeper, Helvetets Port, Hitten, Ironflame, Martyr, Savage Master, Substratum, Twisted Tower and Dire. The album will be out later this year – stay tuned! Big thanks to my mate Jase Brooks at Beat Street for fitting in with our tight recording deadline!

L-R Kev Moore, Graham Oliver, Jase Brooks, Oliver Sekunda

Kev Moore

The Vikings are coming!

Check out the new album teaser trailer for our forthcoming album ‘AXE TO GRIND’.

WITCH CROSS are back !

Kev Moore

www.witchcross.dk

The Writing Process…..working on a follow-up to Witch Cross’ 1984 release ‘Fit for Fight’

..we don’t really write it down like this…I don’t even think Mozart wrote ‘Freewheel Burning’ this way….

People often ask me ‘how do you start to write a song?’ Well, there is no one answer.  I’ve written alone for many years, sometimes starting with merely a title, sometimes a few chords, or a melody, even just a sound can set me off on a path that results in a complete song.

When you start factoring in a writing partner, you are often running a risk.  I’ve written with someone else before – Adrian Foster from Tubeless Hearts – and we had a good working relationship. Now, I’m working with Mike Koch, as we put together a hopefully fitting follow up to Witch Cross‘ cult Metal classic ‘Fit for Fight‘.

What made that release so great in my opinion, was the immediacy, the sheer strength, of the songs. That is what we’re faced with emulating if we can.

With the advent of the internet, ‘remotely writing’ has become much easier, and Mike and I have developed a great ‘ping-pong’ style of writing as we bounce the song back and forth across cyberspace, changing and moulding it along the way, until we arrive at a concise demo that we’re both happy with. It’s a great system, because we’re both very honest with each other, keeping true to the genre and style of the band, and recognizing that whatever we do, it has to be for the good of the song.

The band was initially born of the late 70’s/early 80’s ‘New Wave of Heavy Metal’, and while  we are planning to use all that modern production can offer, we are taking care to make sure it remains faithful to that era.  This involves a discipline, because in effect we’re writing in a different time, and you have to put aside influences that may have crossed your path along the way.  I’m enjoying writing this way, because it is very different to how I’ve written songs before. My songwriting is often eclectic – my last solo album encompassed a huge number of styles across 18 songs, and I’ve also written songs in different styles to complement articles on my radio show, but that is not what is called for here. What we’re doing is tapping into the vibe that existed when bands like Saxon, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden first came onto the scene. With that in mind, it was great when, as we toured with Swiss band Gotthard recently, their guitarist Leo commented that Mike and Paul’s guitars in Witch Cross had that ‘Saxon‘ quality – occupying different places in the sound spectrum, but complementing each other perfectly, just like Graham Oliver’s and Paul Quinn’s did on their classic hits.

I think we’re on the right track!  The most important thing, at least from a songwriter’s perspective, is that we’re not drying up, the ideas are coming thick and fast! So roll on 2013, when we’ll unleash the new Witch Cross album on the world, almost 30 years after its predecessor – it’s been a long time comin’!

Kev Moore

Alone, yet together….Sippin’ Wine

Phil Hendricks

Kev Moore

Throughout my career, I have collaborated on various projects with different artists over the years, and before the internet age, it usually involved me being in the same room with them.  However the session I’m going to highlight today differs from that.  It is a blues duet (for want of a better term) between me and Phil Hendricks,  Singer and guitarist with UK punk band The Stiffs, who my old mate and Gonads cohort Garry Bushell referred to (in his capacity as a Sounds journalist) as: ” pile driving pop-punk of the first order…a band to be reckoned with I’d wager..”

The project that involved us both was “End of an Era” -the solo album from Saxon’s Graham Oliver, his first release following the acrimonious split of the NWOBHM legends into two camps.  The song that we worked on has a fascinating history. When Graham was touring the States with Saxon, he went to Seattle to visit Jimi Hendrix’s grave, and met Jimi’s father. He gave him an old notebook of Jimi’s containing half-scribbled song ideas and lyrics. One of these was “Sippin’ Wine”. A track Graham fashioned in the way he thought Jimi would have finished it, and some extra lyrics from me.

Phil and I had never met, and put our vocal parts down at different times, and were not sure if we’d contributed to the finished product or not, and then, suddenly it was released, and we could both hear the finished version for the first time.

Over the ensuing years, I found the album in record racks in stores the world over, from Boston to Barcelona.  Then I noticed that later pressings of the disc omitted the track. Apparently, people acting for the Hendrix estate (not Jimi’s Dad) had asked for the track to be removed from the original running order.  The result is that the track is now a bona fide rarity, only to be found on a couple of thousand of the original pressings of the disc.

You can listen to it at the bottom of this entry.

Fast-forward to 2009, and a show I did recently in Germany with BC Sweet.  We were performing at a 70’s festival with The Rubettes and Eric Faulkner’s Bay City Rollers. During the soundcheck, the guitarist came up and introduced himself. It was Phil, and the circle, begun eight years previously, was complete.

LISTEN TO SIPPIN’ WINE: