BRISBANE THRASHED - Issue No. 1

This blog is called The Sound Cellar for a reason. It's a repository for musical goodies (and not so goodies), where they can be brought out and gazed upon in years to come to rekindle some fond memory or other of something. Every now and then, I come upon a true gem, something that really is a rare jewel one doesn't find too often. This is one of those finds.


A little while ago, I was interviewed in The Fallout Magazine and happened to mention that one of my goals is to have a complete archive of Australian metal stuff that I can one day pass on to a museum or something. Shortly after this story appeared, a dude contacted me offering to send me a copy of a video zine he worked on back in the 90s. The early 90s. So of course I told him I wasn't interested, thanks.


Like fuck.


I don't know how many issues of this were made, or how many copies of this issue there were/are, but if I'm ever in the same pub as Walshy I owe him about 100 beers for this. The video may be grainy (this is on VHS) and some of the interview questions a bit cheesy ("When did you form your band, and why?"), but this is pure gold. Brisbane Thrashed is a video zine from 1991 featuring "some of the best underground thrash bands" of the time, including Armoured Angel, Alchemist, Dearly Beheaded and Iron Lightning, as well as some of the more obscure ones like Abhorrent, A.I.M. and the awesomely-named Ewok Zombies From Hell. The interviews are intercut with raw live footage of the various bands playing around Brisbane (or in Abhorent's case, in what looks like someone's front room) and the zine opens with an awesome clip of Armoured Angel playing to a pumped crowd with guys stage-diving everywhere and just going nuts. The interview is a little hard to hear because it seems to have been taped at the venue before they went on so there's a lot of noise around, but at one point Lucy is asked about the future of metal and says something like "It will only get more extreme" which is pretty prophetic considering he's talking in 1991. There are other moments of prescience on display too: the bare-footed and shorts-wearing Alchemist lads are asked if they think they'll still be playing metal at 40... and they are!

Not everything is brilliant though. Hardcore lads A.I.M. seem oblivious to the fact that they are on a video zine for metalheads, making a couple of remarks that all but decry metal in general, including a suggestion that metal bands aren't "political" enough (even though a few minutes earlier, Armoured Angel had basically said that religion is stupid, which is one of the most political comments one can make) while ripping off D.R.I.'s fashion and Minor Threat's music. There's no interview with the Dearly Beheaded lads either, but their musical contribution is a ripper. Apart from occasional lapses in the sound quality though, there isn't a lot to complain about. Brisbane Thrashed was a fun nostalgia trip. Thanks for passing it on, Welshy!