Sexta-feira 11 Set 2009, 11h:20
(Previous NWOBHM Band of the Week)
This week I will be writing about hellanbach, one of the plethora of nwobhm bands to originate in or near Newcastle. Also, one of seemingly very few nwobhm bands who are have at no point continued to be active after the mid 80s, meaning this could be a bit shorter than some previous entries in this series. The low number of youtube links is partly because there aren't many for this band and partly…well you'll see why you don't need them, hopefully.
If you've heard more than one or two songs by Hellanbach, you'll probably have made a comparison to van halen. Once you have, it's hard to ignore the glaring similarities, of which there are lots. In fact, I can save myself a lot of words in this guide by announcing up front that pretty much all the Hellanbach catalogue can be described alternately as highly comparable to one of the following: atomic punk, on fire, ice cream man, light up the sky, hear about it later or panama. all the way (youtube, album version) has chorus lyrics almost identical to the first verse's lyrics in On Fire. In fact, the major differences between Hellanbach and Van Halen are that Hellanbach vocalist Jimmy Brash sings on average about a tone lower than david lee roth and there are no Michael Anthony-esque backing vocals in Hellanbach's songs.
Guitarist Dave Patton's technical ability is very high, and a good match for Eddie Van Halen. He also seems to favour using the middle and high strings in a similar fashion to Eddie and throws in plenty of natural harmonics in what could (and has, repeatedly) also been accused of being deliberate apeing of EVH's style. Meanwhile, singer Brash, though not quite averaging the same pitch or dynamic energy as Roth also seems to imitate every other trademark of Diamond Dave. In fact, the similarities are too numerous to mention other than to claim it's almost everything. I believe most people wouldn't believe it even if they heard it.
Now, onto the career description!
In 1980 Hellanbach self-financed and released their debut EP Out to Get You EP, which, although at times sounds like there are tapes slowing unnaturally (there probably were I guess), gained them a deal with Neat Records.
The band's first full length would not be issued until '83, but Neat had them include a track on two of their compilations "60 minutes +" (All The Way) and "One Take…No Dubs" (All Systems Go (Full Scale Emergency) (youtube)). The latter recorded in September '82.
Now Hear This was released in '83 to a swathe of Van Halen comparisons. While some claimed Hellanbach incentivised Van Halen to perform better, most just criticised Hellanbach as copycats. Some journalists nicknamed the band Halen-bach, while others tipped Patton as a rising guitar hero.
Some journalists relented on the Van Halen comparisons briefly for Hellanbach's Disney cover everybody wants to be a cat which was tagged on the end of Now Hear This. Some just compared it to Ice Cream Man. Unfortunately for Hellanbach's claim to originality, some later David Lee Roth work would further validate this comparison
In the interim before the 1984 follow-up, which would be titled the big h, the band promised journalists the next album would be less of a Van Halen rip-off and show a more individual sound from the band. Neat Records' management then canceled almost all of the scheduled tour dates for the band and brought them in to record earlier than originally planned. The band's only line-up change happened around this point as they brought in a new drummer. The band never liked the Van Halen comparisons constantly thrown at them, but with their second album they still sounded a hell of a lot like Van Halen, without much more to add to that description. Sales of both albums were simply 'respectable' according to reports and the band petered out without ever officially splitting.
There, one of the simplest careers I've covered so far this series.
Final thoughts? I'm sorry for the band who aren't going to like me saying this if they ever read it, but there's no two ways about the fact that Hellanbach were Van Halen-lite, or possibly Van Halen-dark since they tended to focus toward the darker, heavier, faster and more aggressive VH songs' style. There's one song (s.p.g.c.) on the second album where Brash sounds uncannily like Joey Belladonna instead of Roth, the fact that S.P.G.C. stands for "Street Punk Going Crazy" which comes very close to combining the title of a Van Halen song and a DLR solo song, however, doesn't help distance the band from their clear inspiration.
So, overall, Hellanbach were pretty much an uninterrupted Van Halen soundalike band. Now, I love Van Halen, so I can happily listen to plenty of this, and some songs actually best some Van Halen songs in some aspects, so owning the Hellanbach discography is almost like stumbling across two album's-worth of unheard Van Halen demos that didn't quite make the cut for the albums. I suspect most big fans of Roth-era VH would find something to enjoy in Hellanbach. Similarly, people who sort of liked VH but always thought it would be an improvement if the songs were just a shade faster and deeper (tonally speaking) might find Hellanbach to be the band to fill that Van Halen shaped void in their listening. Unfortunately though, it's really difficult to credit the band with any originality at all, so if you're inclined to stick to morale values of only listening to bands that emanate originality throughout their body of work then Hellanbach will not be for you.
One easily adaptable critic-like insult/appraisal I've been tempted to use a lot recently and can't remember where I got the phrase from is, "It's like they are a <insert band name here> tribute act who just happen to play original material," a phrase, I think, which is applicable here.