Asomvel

 

Yorkshire’s Asomvel are a recent discovery of mine, which is my fault not theirs, seeing as they’ve been doing the rounds for fifteen years. I first encountered them in a small and dirty club, which seems to be something like their natural environment; they were shouting at a sound engineer because he couldn’t make them louder than a jet aircraft takeoff. I liked them. Peddling a grass-roots, authentic style of heavy metal with borrowings from their heroes Motorhead as well as classic rock legends such as Thin Lizzy and AC/DC, they work well on disc but even better on stage, and underneath the foul language and bad behaviour are thoroughly decent blokes with a sharp sense of humour. Our delegation arrived at the bar two miles down the road, which drummer Ian Wright happens to own (who’d have thunk?); we were a bit confused at first, because we couldn’t hear anything, which didn’t seem right, but just as we stood at the door we heard the resounding thunder of a crashing guitar chord; Asomvel were home.

 

Having convinced them to give up their instruments and take up their drinks (not a difficult task) we were treated to a list of all the things they’ve ever been called. “Asomvez. Asomuel. Mudshovel” reflects frontman Jay, “Yeah, Mudshovel was way out there. You turn up at a venue, and there’s a load of posters and you think ‘hmm, there’s another band on tonight with a name a bit like ours, but not, really.” Seeing as it’s quite a simple combination of letters, I wonder if this grates on the notoriously abrasive Jay? “Well, no… although…I nearly had to kill one kid who wouldn’t stop calling us Asomuel”. Guitarist Lenny remembers his favourite misprint, “Afumble!” he exclaims, “Remember you’re Afumble. Seriously, you have to spend the first fifteen minutes of any gig saying ‘Hello, we are…’ just in case”. I can see why this might irritate the band, having put so much time and research into finding the perfect name… “Actually”, says Jay, “I was very, very pissed, and… I just kinda made it up”. It doesn’t mean anything? Lenny looks over at us very seriously. “It means heavy metal now” he says, with a serene calm that should really have given away to us at the start, that although he often plays straight man to Jay’s loveable drunk, of a band of inveterate jokers, he is actually the biggest piss-taker of them all.  

The early days of the band are a topic Jay and Lenny are more than willing to revisit; Asomvel’s first drummer was Mark Wharton, who later played with Cathedral and Acid Reign. Lenny calls this a “squandered opportunity”; they all used to rehearse (I am told to use this word in inverted commas) on a pig farm, which they “bamboozled” Wharton into doing “with four cans of Tetleys”. It’s clear that exalted musical endeavour wasn’t really the aim of the game at this early stage. “We got so pissed” Jay remembers, “that Lenny fell over, down a wall, and snapped the neck clean off his guitar, and he just stuck it back on with glue and stuff, carried on playing with blood running down from his nose and knuckles… I think when you’re that pissed, you don’t realise how ridiculous you’re being. Eventually Wharton got sick of it, which you can’t fault him for”. They’re pleased that he still mentions him on his bio. “His proudest moment, of course” according to Lenny. A number of close calls in vehicles, including a memorable night in a ditch with the police on their tale, did do something to curtail Asomvel’s excesses. Which is when the drummer-search began, with Jay and Lenny realising that “sitting around getting shitfaced, complaining about not having a drummer” wasn’t as conducive to a creative atmosphere as they thought.

I ask Ian if he ever feels slightly precarious, playing drums for a band that is a veritable drummer devourer. “Well… in Spinal Tap” he begins, bringing hilarity from his band-mates, who seem well-used to that comparison, and not at all bothered, “all the drummers explode onstage. I feel like I might spontaneously combust at any time”. Lenny assures him that he’s “good for a while yet”, and they reflect that they’re a good match in age, which helps them get along and means they can talk about the Two Ronnies without confusing anyone, something that Asomvel’s previous drummer, at 16 years of age, could not fathom. The drummer legacy is impressive, though; Jay says that they’ve come “in all shapes and sizes. We’ve had so many drummers I met one at our last gig, who I couldn’t even remember being in the band”. There was also the epileptic drummer who was meant to be navigating the van but instead had a fit. While this seems exactly like the kind of Spinal Tap nonsense their detractors would accuse them of, I get the feeling this is actually true. They’re down-to-earth, honest guys, but a good deal of self-generating madness accompanies Asomvel, and you wouldn’t believe a lot of it if it wasn’t delivered with such earnestness.

The air of being genuine and authentic stretches to Asomvel’s attitude to recording as well. I ask them if they feel at home in the studio, and Jay replies that it’s a “fucking alien concept” to them, elaborating that they don’t like the studio because they don’t feel they ever extracted something of worth out of that environment. The band have a sense that it’s too easy to ‘cheat’ in the studio, which is something they won’t do. While I assume we’re talking Pro-tools, Jay enlightens me as to the depth of this conviction; “I feel like I’m cheating even when I’m doing my own backing vocals. I couldn’t exactly do that live, could I? One time, I was so pissed that Lenny had to record the bass parts; can’t see him doing that onstage!”. Lenny looks hurt, and of course has a return quip, “I’d give it a good go”. The band put their best efforts into recording their second EP, “Full Moon Dog”, but faced difficulties when it emerged their drummer at the time couldn’t manage to do a clean take. “We helped out, though” Jay says, with the kind of smile that immediately alerts us to the fact they didn’t at all, “We could see him on the monitor, and shout down to him, so we just shouted ‘get it right then, you twat’”. He beams. I ask him if this was very fair, and he assures me it was. “The rest were all saying I sounded like Fozzy bear, so…”. I do pity the poor engineers and producers who will eventually have to convince Asomvel to bring a more workmanlike effort into the recording arena, but it seems like the band are currently very much motivated enough to go to the next level.  

Rich Walker’s Miskatonic Foundation is about to re-release “Full Moon Dog” on vinyl, which makes sense to Ian who has Europe’s vinyl fans in mind, and sees the need for a really tangible product, but confuses Jay a little; “Why vinyl, you may ask? I haven’t a fucking clue, I may answer”, he tells us, before explaining that really, you can’t ‘shit out’ vinyl from a PC, and therefore the fans are right to see its worth. Lenny advises us that he has a stereogram and would like to return to the technologically non-complicated days, and all three of them regard my digital Dictaphone with great suspicion, so I guess vinyl WILL suit them just fine. Miskatonic have arranged for the two other bands being released in the same series to accompany Asomvel on a tour of Ireland, with one UK date booked so far too. Kay rather bemusingly labels Rich “the Les Dawson of metal”, which is a tagline they all think he will rather like, and is pleased that they will be going abroad “because no one will have us anymore over here”. Ian announces that their next recording will be a live one, which seems like the perfect compromise. Asomvel are one of the few bands for whom this will really work, and it pleases all of them that they’ll be able to do it “once we find a place with the right equipment”.

It seems that the band are gradually coming round to the idea of getting down to the business of promoting themselves, and Ian especially seems keen to give them a kick in the arse and raise activity levels. “Getting us out there is going to be my key role now, I’m going to do a lot more” he nods, enthusiastically, while Jay regards him suspiciously over the top of a pint glass, “I’ve done absolutely fuck-all, ever. Alcohol and apathy are a bad mix” he says of his own involvement, but seems pleased that Ian is targeting festivals such as Download and Bloodstock, and pushing to get Asomvel abroad. They’ve even made a video, which they describe as being primarily “chucking kids about”, although this is later qualified with a reminder that Lenny’s son, who was one of the ‘kids’ in question, is 6’4, and wasn’t such an easy target. “It’s a tool to get signed”, Ian explains, “I don’t think we’ll be on MTV”. The video also features a cameo appearance by ‘Lady Pentagram’ of the doom band Lamp of Thoth, whom the band say will “remain more famous for her drumming, put it that way. She’s good at that”.

I try to get them to outline their approach, what particular quality it is that will make them marketable and loved by fans far and wide. “We hark back to the traditional bands”, Lenny explains, “there’s nothing better than those primeval rock riffs”. Jay agrees, “we’ve got the real old-school sound. I love Motorhead, but when I listen to their later albums, there’s too much fucking around with the sound. There not a patch on the first ones. We take things like that into mind”. This fundamental belief in the quality of their material means that Asomvel have recently been revisiting old songs, finding things they like and bringing them up-to-date. There aren’t many bands who can go back to their earliest rehearsals and smile at what they find, so for me, what makes Asomvel special is a combination of this old-school sensibility and a huge amount of conviction. “We do what we do, and the more people who like it, the better. But if they don’t like it, I don’t care. We can’t change. I can’t change” says Jay, with an impassioned seriousness. “We had a drummer once who tried to change us, and I fucking hated it, I was in a band that I hated. So I said those songs have to go, or I’m leaving”. “We kept the songs”, Lenny grins.

They’re not irredeemably stuck in the past, either. “I’m open-minded to modern music” Jay explains, “even if I don’t personally like it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t also judge when a band is shit”. One of the problems they encounter when trying to immerse themselves in today’s scene is that they often get billed “with bands of spotty kids, whose mums and dads drop them off right before the show”. “And pick them up the second we start playing” says Lenny. Emos really confuse Asomvel. When they all simultaneously explain how emos do their hair to me, with gestures and examples, it’s equally hilarious and adorable. But hell, I don’t get them, and I’m only in my 20s. I don’t think it’s a sign that you’re old if you don’t understand emos.  

One phrase related to age that DID crop up at Asomvel’s last gig was “if it’s too loud, you’re too old”, which was delivered with great irony by Jay to an engineer half his age. As it’s clearly an issue for them, how loud exactly do Asomvel have to be? “Really, really loud” says Ian. “Incredibly loud” says Jay, whilst Lenny plumps for “unnecessarily loud”, before explaining that they do actually need to achieve a certain volume so that they can hear what each other are doing. But they want to go further, to the point where the bass knocks the audience off their feet. “A thousand million watts” is the figure Lenny finally produces. They’re certainly firm about the way things should be done, taking the view that “an un-mic’ed drumkit should be seen and not heard”, and who’s to tell them they’re wrong? It’ll certainly make for an explosive live album. I suggest that they could try an acoustic folk festival, which I hoped was a joke, but I get regaled with a story about Davefest, at which bands had to go “up hill and down dale” to reach their camp, then get a tractor to pull them to the stage, which worked until the farmer needed the tractor back, and promptly hi-jacked it. This festival was apparently located “the furthest you could be from civilisation on the British Isles” but they’ll be going back this year. For an acoustic set? “Fuck off”.

Fibbers in York is one of their favourite venues, simply because of the excellent sound, which overcomes the problem of not having confidence in yourself when “all you can hear is the snare drum and a crazy bass”. They had fun in Belgium too, although their driver kept falling asleep at the wheel, and they ended up kipping down in a flea-ridden back room whilst an all-night rave took place in the club. I’m really struck by the image of Asomvel, who couldn’t LOOK more heavy metal if they tried, emerging from their place of no-rest early the next morning, and walking into a crowd of adolescent glow-stick wielders. “If you did it all… sensible and nice…” Jay reflects about touring, “you’d have no interesting stories”. As it happens, Jay finished that night by having the majority of a bottle of whiskey for breakfast, whilst Centurions Ghost, the headliners who’d spent a nice night in a hotel “with shampoo! And preserves!” emerged refreshed and ready to go.

I get the feeling that Asomvel could talk touring for many hours; there are some especially ripe tales about Andy from Lamp of Thoth and his bathroom adventures during their latest jaunt to London, which were fairly disgusting and don’t really deserve to be repeated. But amidst the mayhem I do get the idea that they’re gathering their energies for a full-on assault, and that this will be the year when they consolidate their live reputation into Europe-wide fandom. Jay is very anxious that I don’t leave the venue with that in mind, and tells me his philosophy about being drunk to take the edge off the good impression. “One guy, I can’t remember who, said never go onstage drunk, because you wouldn’t rehearse drunk, so you’re misleading the audience. Well I say, to rehearse sober would be a crime in the first place…” he lets that thought trail off, a real sparkle in his eye, and convinces his bandmates that what we really need to finish up our interview is a rendition of “Full Moon Dog”, at proper, Asomvel volume. We leave with our ears ringing but our hearts lightened; British heavy metal is in good hands.