XENTRIX WERE BRITAIN'S ANSWER TO METALLICA. THEN IT ALL WENT TO SHIT.
Two decades on from their last album, they explain why it’s time to take back what’s theirs
Thirty years ago,
Xentrix were genuine contenders. Widely hailed as the UK’s most credible answer to Metallica, the young Lancashire quartet led the charge for British thrash. Signed to Roadrunner Records early in 1989, they released their debut album, Shattered Existence, a few months later and swiftly became the hottest name in the scene. Unfortunately, timing is everything. Despite a steadily rising profile and the release of an acclaimed second album, For Whose Advantage?, in 1990, Xentrix were just one of countless thrash casualties in the early 90s, as thrash’s old guard began to wander from the genre’s previously rigid path and grunge loomed on the horizon.
Today, Xentrix guitarist and chief songwriter Kristian ‘Stan’ Havard has no regrets, with the possible exception of his band’s goofy version of Ghostbusters (recorded for Radio 1’s Friday Rock Show and released as a single in 1990), and is in an excellent mood. Now fronted by Jay Walsh, who replaced original frontman Chris Astley in 2017, his band have just released their first album in 23 years, Bury The Pain, and it’s an absolute beast. With a main stage appearance at Bloodstock looming, he admits that there was a time when anything seemed possible.
“Yes, it really did feel like we were heading onwards and upwards in the early days,” he grins. “On the second album in particular, we got to go to Europe and play with Annihilator. We were on a tour bus, so we’d made it! We were set for life and we’d be rich beyond our wildest dreams! Obviously that didn’t really happen, but it was still a great time. It all happened so quickly, and it was strange how quickly it all stopped.”
The law of diminishing returns catches up with most subgenres at one time or another, but thrash metal’s commercial downfall was more brutal than most. The UK scene, which had never exactly been overpopulated with world-class acts, fell apart rapidly, as everyone scrambled to mitigate Metallica’s transformation into all-conquering rock stars and the arrival of grunge. Like many of their peers, Xentrix attempted to reinvent themselves on more melodic and progressive third album Kin in 1992, but it soon became apparent that the game was up, as all the band’s British contemporaries called it a day.
“As soon as the scene started to die, there was nothing left,” Stan shrugs. “Sabbat went, Onslaught went, Acid Reign went… there was nobody left and everyone started to do other things like going funky or whatever. We tried to change as well. We tried to make ourselves more accessible, maybe, and to be
“WE THOUGHT WE’D BE RICH BEYOND OUR WILDEST DREAMS!”
KRISTIAN ‘STAN’ HAVARD
cleverer in our songwriting, but it didn’t really work for us. But it’s easy to look back and say that, isn’t it?”
Eventually splitting in 1997, Xentrix could easily have ended up as a forgotten footnote in British metal history. But after a tentative and short-lived reunion of the original line-up in 2005, Stan, Chris Astley, drummer Dennis Gasser and bassist Paul ‘Macka’ Mackenzie (since replaced by Chris Shires) reconvened for a more serious reformation in 2013. After numerous well-received live shows, including a particularly celebratory appearance at Bloodstock in 2013, it seemed like Xentrix were on course for a second crack at the whip. As Stan explains, Bury The Pain was originally recorded in 2015 and would have been released a long time ago had Chris Astley not suddenly announced that he was quitting the band within days of the album’s completion.
“Andy Sneap had done the mixes for us and we everything lined up, and then Astley dropped this bombshell. But we all know what he’s like. He’s done it before! One day he’ll just go, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’ and he’ll stop! It’s just how he is. He’s a cyborg sent from the future to fuck us up, you know? It’s quite annoying at the time, but it’s not like he’s going to another band. He just puts his guitar in the loft and says, ‘Right, I’m not doing that anymore.’”
Having experienced more than a few peaks and troughs over the years, Stan and his remaining bandmates figured that they might as well make the most of the new material they’d spent so long writing and recording. Agreeing to give Xentrix one final try, they set about auditioning new frontmen, in the hope of finding someone that could credibly replicate Chris Astley’s vocals and guitar parts. As this proved to be a struggle, Stan decided to look for a new vocalist and a new guitarist. For the latter role, he swiftly tapped up Jay Walsh, guitarist with Bull-Riff Stampede, offering him the role backstage at Bloodstock while both men were working as stage crew. A huge Xentrix fan, Jay was very much into the idea. Meanwhile, auditions for a singer continued…
“We spent two years looking. It was only after we’d auditioned all these people that I finally just said to Jay, ‘You can’t fucking sing, can you?’ He said, ‘Well, I used to! I’ll give it a go, yeah!’ He asked me to give him a month to go and learn a bunch of old Xentrix stuff and I said, ‘Don’t bother learning the guitar parts…’ but he wanted to do both. He said, ‘I want to do it properly!’ and that was that. He came back, we tried some old stuff and it was like, ‘Ah right, so he was here all along!’”
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the new Xentrix album is how it sounds exactly as diehard fans will have hoped. Jay Walsh has stamped his own identity onto the frontman’s role in no uncertain times, but it’s impossible to deny that part of his success is due to an uncanny similarity between his voice and Chris Astley’s. As a result, Bury The Pain represents an impressively seamless transition.
“It is by design,” Stan points out. “Jay is a self-confessed fan; he was into Xentrix when he was starting out. When he joined he said, ‘I know what Xentrix should sound like and that’s what I’m aiming for. I can do a bit of a Chris Astley, so that’s what I’ll do, but I’ll put my own twist on it when I need to…’ He’s done it and it’s great. When we play in Europe, and we’ve done a few gigs already with Jay, I honestly don’t think people know [that it’s not Chris]! They’re just happy there’s someone there. I guess they’re thinking, ‘Oh, Chris Astley’s grown his hair!’ Ha ha!”
Already making plans for a follow-up to Bury The Pain, Stan notes that it’s a strange but satisfying feeling to be releasing a new Xentrix album 30 years after the first one. Older, wiser and with no one depending solely on the band for their income, they are able to focus on enjoying the whole experience and not fretting about being the next big thing. Stan also notes that one great advantage to making a comeback in 2019 is how much more welcoming and open-minded the metal world seems to be, particularly in comparison to those tricky days of the early 90s.
“It was a really strange time back then,” he states. “Unfortunately, I think if we’d have made an album that was more like Bury The Pain then, it would have still received a bad response. Things seem a bit different now. Maybe it’s the streaming thing, making things more accessible and people can like more flavours of metal at once. Obviously you get your diehard death metal fans who won’t listen to anything else and that’s fine, but people are into a broader spectrum of things now I think. You can say, ‘I like Carcass and I like AOR,’ and feel comfortable with it, I think. Hopefully we fit in there somewhere, too.”
The march of progress may have stopped Xentrix in their tracks the first time around, but it’s hard to imagine that Bury The Pain won’t go a considerable way towards putting this band back at the forefront of the UK scene at the very least. There is something timeless and
undeniable about Xentrix’s sound: even now, you can hear why so many people touted them as the British Metallica back in the day and why the lyrics to the first song they ever wrote, perennial show-closer No Compromise, still ring true for Stan and a generation of British thrashers: ‘Don’t think what your parents might say / If it’s too noisy, fast and loud / Just fuck ’em all and do it anyway / Stand up and be proud!’
“I remember we wrote that at rehearsal; it was the first song Chris Astley and I ever wrote together,” Stan recalls. “I remember writing the lyrics. When we were kids, really early on, there was a guy who played drums for us. He said, ‘I’m going to leave the band, I’m gonna join this cabaret band because they’re getting regular gigs…’ That was the spark. He just wanted to make money from playing and I thought, ‘If you want to do this, just fucking do it!’ I was only 16 when I wrote it and they’re pretty naïve lyrics, really, but that’s how we felt. And it still rings true, doesn’t it?”
BURY THE PAIN IS OUT NOW VIA LISTENABLE. XENTRIX PLAY BLOODSTOCK FESTIVAL ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 9. SEE P.107 FOR DETAILS