Christopher Owens  ðŸ”– The enduring fascination with the independent music scene of the 80’s is heartening and frustrating.


Heartening because it was a genuinely exciting and fascinating time for music. Inspired by punk and the DIY attitude, labels popped up across the world that would release records that would never have been allowed past the demo stage at a major label. Factory, Creation, 4AD, Postcard, Rough Trade, Mute, Some Bizarre…these labels are (rightly) revered.

And this is also frustrating because, in (admittedly excellent) books like My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for The Prize and Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records, there is a sense that the aforementioned labels were the only game in town. And that simply isn’t the case: Clay, Riot City, Crass, Bluurg, Good Vibrations, Manic Ears, Children of the Revolution, Industrial…the list goes on.

And one of the most important (and resilient) was Earache.

Make no mistake, there was a period where Earache owned the independent music scene by releasing epoch defining records from Napalm Death, Carcass, Godflesh, Morbid Angel, Sleep, Bolt Thrower, Cathedral and Scorn. All bands who helped define genres like grindcore, death metal, industrial metal, stoner, doom and even dubstep. That’s one hell of a back catalogue.

As a result, there’s no doubt that there is the potential for a genuinely fascinating book that explores a part of the independent music world not often discussed. Unfortunately, this book squanders this potential.

For a start, 90% of the text was published in a (since deleted) post on the Ask Earache blog in 2017. At that time, the title was “Adapt or Die” and earmarked as a sample for a book coming out that year (which it didn’t). Although there have been additions (such as how Covid had an impact), and it’s been padded out with numerous photographs, it’s not enough to justify the price and format (hardback coffee table style).

There’s little to no examination of the state of the underground scene at the time, how Earache shaped that same scene and glosses over the periods in which the struggles to keep up with the curve. Why? Those are often the most fascinating aspects of any bio. So why are they skimmed over?

One example of this is the section delving into the notorious Columbia deal, where the major label snapped up as much of Earache’s roster in the belief that extreme metal could dominate the charts! As ludicrous as that sounds, with Sony buying a chunk of Creation, and London Records taking the Factory bands around the same time (as well as the success of Nirvana, Metallica, and Sonic Youth), it would have been obvious to the majors that there was something brewing in the underground.

However, the book only gives a general idea of how this affected the label. Take this segment for example:

The deal was already unravelling when I started at Earache and I was too inexperienced to understand it at the time…All I remember from that time was total stress and Dig and Al really having a hard time keeping it all together. You had to have a thick skin. You can look back and laugh now because there were some people screaming abuse at you and down the phone for half an hour, but at the time it was pretty demoralising…One instance, I was almost reduced to tears. I got such an earbashing I actually held the phone away from my ear while the manager was screaming. I hung up on him and he phoned back and went even more mental. I couldn’t escape. I had to go to the pub and had the loneliest pint in my life. But everyone was insane; there was a lot of pressure and a lot of money being pumped into those bands. I think Columbia put in a fortune. You only have to look at the videos to see that. I think the accusations at the time that Dig was somehow pocketing the money or that Dig was the only one benefitting from the deal masks the stupidity of some of the people involved…Dig tried to push as many bands as he could through to Columbia…That wasn’t because he wanted to spread his bets, he genuinely thought that all those bands could take off. What happened was the bands that got picked all started fighting with each other, and those left out got the hump and started creating problems.

Doesn’t that segment hint at greater stories? Stories of gargantuan egos, naïve musicians, the battle between the corporate and the indie. Wouldn’t that make an interesting book in itself?

Running at 150 pages, this is an utterly disappointing read. Earache’s history deserves far more respect.

Guy Strachan and Dave Ling, 2022, Earache: 35 Years Of Noise. Yes Earache Ltd, ISBN-13: 978-1399930512

🕮 Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.

Earache 🕮 35 Years of Noise

Christopher Owens  ðŸ”– The enduring fascination with the independent music scene of the 80’s is heartening and frustrating.


Heartening because it was a genuinely exciting and fascinating time for music. Inspired by punk and the DIY attitude, labels popped up across the world that would release records that would never have been allowed past the demo stage at a major label. Factory, Creation, 4AD, Postcard, Rough Trade, Mute, Some Bizarre…these labels are (rightly) revered.

And this is also frustrating because, in (admittedly excellent) books like My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for The Prize and Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records, there is a sense that the aforementioned labels were the only game in town. And that simply isn’t the case: Clay, Riot City, Crass, Bluurg, Good Vibrations, Manic Ears, Children of the Revolution, Industrial…the list goes on.

And one of the most important (and resilient) was Earache.

Make no mistake, there was a period where Earache owned the independent music scene by releasing epoch defining records from Napalm Death, Carcass, Godflesh, Morbid Angel, Sleep, Bolt Thrower, Cathedral and Scorn. All bands who helped define genres like grindcore, death metal, industrial metal, stoner, doom and even dubstep. That’s one hell of a back catalogue.

As a result, there’s no doubt that there is the potential for a genuinely fascinating book that explores a part of the independent music world not often discussed. Unfortunately, this book squanders this potential.

For a start, 90% of the text was published in a (since deleted) post on the Ask Earache blog in 2017. At that time, the title was “Adapt or Die” and earmarked as a sample for a book coming out that year (which it didn’t). Although there have been additions (such as how Covid had an impact), and it’s been padded out with numerous photographs, it’s not enough to justify the price and format (hardback coffee table style).

There’s little to no examination of the state of the underground scene at the time, how Earache shaped that same scene and glosses over the periods in which the struggles to keep up with the curve. Why? Those are often the most fascinating aspects of any bio. So why are they skimmed over?

One example of this is the section delving into the notorious Columbia deal, where the major label snapped up as much of Earache’s roster in the belief that extreme metal could dominate the charts! As ludicrous as that sounds, with Sony buying a chunk of Creation, and London Records taking the Factory bands around the same time (as well as the success of Nirvana, Metallica, and Sonic Youth), it would have been obvious to the majors that there was something brewing in the underground.

However, the book only gives a general idea of how this affected the label. Take this segment for example:

The deal was already unravelling when I started at Earache and I was too inexperienced to understand it at the time…All I remember from that time was total stress and Dig and Al really having a hard time keeping it all together. You had to have a thick skin. You can look back and laugh now because there were some people screaming abuse at you and down the phone for half an hour, but at the time it was pretty demoralising…One instance, I was almost reduced to tears. I got such an earbashing I actually held the phone away from my ear while the manager was screaming. I hung up on him and he phoned back and went even more mental. I couldn’t escape. I had to go to the pub and had the loneliest pint in my life. But everyone was insane; there was a lot of pressure and a lot of money being pumped into those bands. I think Columbia put in a fortune. You only have to look at the videos to see that. I think the accusations at the time that Dig was somehow pocketing the money or that Dig was the only one benefitting from the deal masks the stupidity of some of the people involved…Dig tried to push as many bands as he could through to Columbia…That wasn’t because he wanted to spread his bets, he genuinely thought that all those bands could take off. What happened was the bands that got picked all started fighting with each other, and those left out got the hump and started creating problems.

Doesn’t that segment hint at greater stories? Stories of gargantuan egos, naïve musicians, the battle between the corporate and the indie. Wouldn’t that make an interesting book in itself?

Running at 150 pages, this is an utterly disappointing read. Earache’s history deserves far more respect.

Guy Strachan and Dave Ling, 2022, Earache: 35 Years Of Noise. Yes Earache Ltd, ISBN-13: 978-1399930512

🕮 Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist.

1 comment:

  1. Christopher, you are a superb chronicler of the contemporary music scene.

    ReplyDelete