SUNDAY MUSINGS - ACTUAL EAVY METAL
As always, the idea behind a Sunday Musings is that Adam takes a concept and times an hour and a half to write it in. This week, we get HEAVY……
One of the more well-known and still truly fascinating moments in the history of Games Workshop comes from a summer's day in 1990, where a collection on interests and personalities converged into Warhammer Records. What may even in fact be stranger is that this 1990 moment, of which we will get to shortly, is not where the tale begins. John Blanche, being the constant avatar of music that he is, starts the ball rolling in 1987. Blanche contacted local thrash band Sabbat, and remade his Horned Is The Hunter art to become the album art for A History of Time to Come, which led to conversations to create what would become "Blood For The Blood God" as a single flexi-disc that would be given out with White Dwarf Magazine. Games Workshop passed over stacks of publications for the nascent worlds of Warhammer to Martin Walkyier, the bands lead singer, and allowed him to create what he would from the imagery being forged.
Excerpt from White Dwarf 95:
"Be honest, you were wondering what we were doing putting a Flexi Disc into this month's White Dwarf. Is it music to roleplay by? Something for the GM to listen to while the party argues about how many days rations to buy? Or are we previewing the soundtrack to Thrud - the movie? Well… nearly. Avis Blanche sacrifices her eardrums in a gallant attempt to discover The Truth. What's the connection between Sabbat and White Dwarf? Who are they, and how did they manage to talk White Dwarf into carrying a flexi disc of their music? Well, call 'em sharp-eyed but the Games Workshop staff who have been dragging themselves along to Games Day and various Dragonmeets for the last few years finally caught on that there were a lot of gamers turning up wearing the same T-shirts. They found out that Saxon wasn't the name of a roleplay supplement for RuneQuest, and that Def Leppard weren't in the Monster Manual, and they discovered that a lot of roleplayers were into more than one kind of 'Eavy Metal. And that was when Da Boss started kicking around with the idea of giving away a flexi disc with WD. But which band should they choose?
Slightly more famously though, comes Bolt Thrower two years later. The Death Metal band were mostly fans of the ol' Workshop, and reached out to get some official artwork for an album cover. Games Workshop agreed, and the album took on the name Realm Of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness after the recently produced background book. Games Workshop even created a game named "Bolt Thrower or Bust" that was released through SOUNDS magazine (with some glorious Paul Bonner art, and more than a passing resemblance to Talisman. The brand at this point consisted of two mainline IPs in Warhammer Fantasy Battle (and Roleplay) and Warhmmer 40000, a magazine that had ran well over a decade, novels through Boxtree Books and even a handful of comics. Those In Charge smelled cash, and thought there was another route open to continue growing the GW brand into a something much bigger. Andy Jones was the man given the job of operating the newly minted Warhammer Records, taking on the recording and productions costs for each release, using larger, more well known labels to distribute said releases. Jones though was not a music label guy, and left the "day to day" band business, like organising tours, to the bands themselves. Around this time, punk band Batfish (who by all reports were big into tabletop gaming) toured the studio but very little came of that for the next few years as Batfish disbanded soon after, and Simon Denbigh began his next band. It's worth mentioning that Jones and Tony Cottrell of Forgeworld fame were in a Goth band named "Sudanese Witchhunt" at this time. Why they never got a Warhammer Records deal is anyone's guess.
Back to that afternoon in 1990 we circle, and with that comes Queen guitarist Brian May. May's son was a fan of Warhammer, and so both were invited to come look around the design studio and was introduced to Simon Denbigh's new outfit, D-ROK, where May offered to do some guitar work for the band, namely on "Get out of My Way" and "Red Planet Blues".
D-ROK released Oblivion (using the cover from Space Marine that has a passing resemblance to Scarface) through Warhammer Records to some acclaim, but one band does not make a Label, and Jones (and to be fair, the majority of Games Workshop at that time) simply had not other connections to find other bands. Instead, it fell to the local music scene to deliver Wraith, who jumped at the chance to be signed to a Record Label. Crucially though, Warhammer Records was not ran by people who knew how a record label worked, and instead by people who saw a way to get Warhammer into new areas. Stories persist of this time of GW paying out the nose for top-tier rock photographers, adverts in Metal Hammer and KERRANG! and royalties to the bands before the albums had broke even. In fact, Warhammer Records used studios favoured by such bands and Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy to record these albums, which was in no way an inexpensive way to run a label with two bands signed.
In 1992, Warhammer Records managed to gain something of a boon when Saxon, the NWOBHM* legends used a Space Marine art piece on their Forever Free album. Shortly after this though, comes Rich Rags, a punk band with no interest in Warhammer, and who were unaware of the contract stating that had to use Games Workshop art, and who did everything in their power to break the connection to Warhammer with their Psycho Dead Heads From Outer Space release. Rich Rags broke up in 1993 after the album was delayed and a long tour with no album to promote fizzled to a halt. Warhammer Records lost any passion it had quickly as staff moved on, and as Tom Kirby stepped in as CEO, and Games Workshop became a publicly traded corporation, the axe came down fast on Warhammer Records as a colossal waste of money.
Though, having D-ROK in Boltgun is brilliant.
*The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. A movement in the music scene that started in the late 70s into the 80s out of the despondency of life in the UK, often with fantastic, escapist themes to it's music.