00:00Atomcraft and Slayer, the Marquee Club, London, 1985.
00:04My first gig, 24th of June, 1985.
00:08I was just 16 years old and I was about to play my first ever gig with Atomcraft.
00:14It was also the first time all three of us in Atomcraft had played together in front of an audience.
00:20We had formed only a few months earlier and had just spent around two weeks at Neat Records
00:26recording our debut album, Future Warriors.
00:30We were young, we were excited and we were about to step onto the stage
00:35of one of the most famous rock venues in the country.
00:38But there was another reason this night would become so memorable.
00:42The band headlining the show were an American group called Slayer
00:46and this was their first ever appearance and performance in the United Kingdom.
00:53The date was the 24th of June, 1985.
00:56In 2005, Slayer were in Europe promoting their album Hell Awaits and their tour
01:02had already taken them through Germany and Holland.
01:05London was their first British appearance and anticipation was building.
01:12The marquee was packed, around 500 people had crammed into the venue
01:17and the crowd outside had become so restless that, according to Slayer's own account of the evening,
01:23the club staff briefly chained the door shut.
01:27This wasn't just another gig.
01:29People had come specifically to see this new American band.
01:32For us, Atomcraft, we were the support act.
01:36Most of the audience had no idea who we were.
01:39I remember looking out at that crowd and realising that we were playing in front of people who were waiting
01:45for Slayer.
01:46But we were there to do a job and we went out and gave it everything we had.
01:50We put in a brave performance and I think we went down reasonably well.
01:54But there were shouts coming from the audience, faster, faster.
01:59At that time, we didn't fully appreciate what was happening.
02:03But looking back, those shouts were telling us something.
02:08Something new was arriving.
02:10The new wave of British heavy metal had made its mark and traditional heavy metal had its place.
02:16But a different sound was coming out of America.
02:18It was faster, more aggressive, more intense.
02:22Sia, Metallica, Exodus, Anthrax and the bands around them were pushing metal in a new direction.
02:30And that night, I was about to see just how powerful that change could be.
02:35Our set didn't go down entirely to plan.
02:38About 20 minutes into the performance, my amplifier went off.
02:42We had also planned a bit of a stage destruction for the end of the set.
02:46With things going wrong, that part of the show happened earlier than it intended.
02:52Tony Dolan smashed up his bass guitar on stage, in the great tradition of Pete Townsend.
02:58And our drummer took an axe to the drum kit.
03:01The bass drum ended up being thrown into the audience.
03:04And this is one of the images from that night that has stayed with me all these years.
03:09There was this absolutely crazy Sia crowd and the bass drum was being bounced around above their heads.
03:16A sort of crowd surfing bass drum.
03:19Sia's official website has since published a collection of photographs and memories from the evening.
03:25One of the eyewitness accounts confirms the technical problems during our set
03:29and the bass drum going out into the audience.
03:31It's quite something to see that little piece of Attencraft's history recorded in Sia's own archive.
03:39And then it was time for Sia and this night really made an impression on me.
03:44I had never heard Sia before and seeing them live was something else.
03:49The sound was incredible, fast, heavy, aggressive and completely different from anything I had experienced up close before.
03:57But what really blew me away wasn't just the band, it was the crowd.
04:02I had never seen anything like it.
04:05The audience went absolutely crazy.
04:07They knew the songs, they were singing and shouting along,
04:11and the whole place seemed to erupt as soon as Sia started playing.
04:15The energy was unbelievable.
04:17I remember standing there thinking, what on earth is going on here?
04:22This was something new.
04:23This was a different kind of metal audience reacting to a different kind of metal band.
04:29I was 16 years old and I was watching a band from America create a reaction that I had never
04:34witnessed before.
04:36Journalist Phil Alexander later wrote a first-hand account of the show for Korang magazine.
04:42He described the marquee as completely sold out with a crowd of more than 500 people
04:48and recorded a 14-song performance followed by an encore of chemical warfare.
04:53His account captures just how intense that night had become.
04:58Sia's own website has also collected memories from people who were there.
05:02One eyewitness described the crowd as crazy
05:04and another remembered the condensation running down the windows
05:08because the venue had become so hot and sweaty.
05:11That sounds about right to me.
05:13After the show ended, backstage with Sia, we were drinking beer and celebrating in that famous
05:20scruffy little marquee club dressing room.
05:22It was a great atmosphere.
05:24There was Sia, there was Atomcraft and Venom's Abaddon was there too.
05:29In fact, Abaddon introduced us to Sia.
05:32I remember speaking to Sia's guitarist and drummer and telling them how incredible the crowd had been.
05:38I said something along the lines of,
05:41Wow, that crowd was crazy.
05:43They were going absolutely nuts for you.
05:46They both just laughed and replied,
05:49Yes, they're always like that.
05:50I suppose for them it was normal.
05:53For me, it was something I had never experienced before.
05:56I think that as a new band, we had expected to progress through the months and years,
06:01gradually finding our feet and building our reputation.
06:05But this very first gig made us realise that we had stepped into another world almost immediately.
06:11We had barely started and already we were seeing a new movement take shape right in front of us.
06:18If Atomcraft were going to survive and compete in this changing metal scene,
06:22perhaps we were going to have to speed ourselves up because this wasn't something that was coming.
06:29It was already here and it wasn't going away.
06:33The following months would take both bands in different directions.
06:37Sia continued their rise, becoming one of the most influential bands in thrash metal.
06:43Atomcraft had our own future to look forward to.
06:46Future Warriors was released later in 1985
06:49and we were preparing for our European dates with Exodus and Venom later that year.
06:57For a young band from the North East of England, that was an exciting prospect.
07:01But when I look back at the Marquee Club,
07:03it is the atmosphere of that night that stands out most clearly for me.
07:08It was my first gig with Atomcraft, I was 16 years old,
07:12we had just recorded our first album and we were sharing a bill with a band that was about to
07:17become
07:17one of the most important names in thrash metal.
07:21We didn't know it at the time, but we were witnessing a changing of the guard in heavy music.
07:26I had gone to London as a young guitarist, excited about playing my first gig.
07:30I came away having witnessed something that would still with me for the rest of my life.
07:34And the biggest lesson of that night? Some names, it's not just the band you remember, it's the crowd.
07:41It's not just the band.
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