METALLIAN - Dark Heart

Shadows Of The Night - 1984 - Roadrunner
Dark Heart - 2021 - Sleaszy Rider
Out Of The Shadows - 2024 - Battlegod

Members

Vocals

Phil Brown>>Holosade, Armortura - Change Of Heart>>ALLAN CLARK>>Change Of Heart

Guitar

Change Of Heart, Roulette, Longrange>>Alan Clark>>Change Of Heart, Roulette, Longrange - Steve Small - NICK CATTERICK

Bass

Colin Bell>>Holosade, Charger - DANIEL MILLWARD

Drum

Metal Mirror, Battle Axe>>Ian Thompson - GEORDIE CLARK

History & Biography

Tokyo Rose changed monickers after a 1980 EP. The HM album Shadows Of The Night was licensed in the US to Metal Blade and legend has it that the label declared it the worst selling album of its roster. There was report of a planned album called Chase The Dawn, which failed to materialize. Chase The Dawn was a demo track at this time. A record on Roadrunner and live shows lead nowhere and the group disbanded. There was a report that the band had changed its name to Arena, but Alan Clark denied this. Founding member of the band Alan Clark went on to form Change Of Heart moving from guitar to vocals in Dark Heart as well. In the meantime, Alan tried his hand at other bands including Roulette and Longrange.

The band, i.e. Alan Clark, reformed the band in 2017 with a new line-up featuring former Warrior rhythm section of Duncan Emmerson and Elliot Sneddon. The band was booked for Mearfest North 2019. The band was working on a demo called Out Of The Shadows. There was a self-titled album in 2021 before the (same) record called Out Of The Shadows appeared on Battlegod Productions on July 21st 2024! They were mostly the same, but the band was dissatisfied with Sleaszy Rider's efforts and had the record pulled. Producer Pete Newdeck (Midnite City, Vega, etc.) had drummed here, but the band recruited Geordie Clark (drums) from the northeast UK. Geordie and Alan are unrelated. Along with Geordie, the band introduced on bass Daniel Millward, which meant that bassist Josh ‘Tabbie’ Williams (Midnight City and Lawless) was out.

Reviews

DARK HEART - OUT OF THE SHADOWS - BATTLEGOD
Dark Heart comes with one of the more convoluted biographies out there and one that stretches back to 1982. The band was inactive for thirty odd years in-between, but, and be that as it may, that adds to the complexity.
First things first, this is a rerelease of an album originally entrusted to Sleaszy Rider Records. That makes it really two albums in 40 years, but astounding facts aside, how is the material? Could the band rely on its tenure and show younger bucks how it is done or is the band lazy and dated and should have let things be?
Out Of The Shadows - think about that title for a band founded in the early 1980s - is a good album with some very good material. Fans of hard rock, heavy metal and the glam metal sound of 1980s won’t regret getting hold of this, but on the flip side the album is a rerelease and has one too many slow number for my (metal) tastes. Want more? Let’s examine the artefact more closely then.
Put your best foot forward early singer Alan Clark and crew believe and the record begins with the uptempo Darkest Eyes, which has capable vocals to go with a gritty voice, a rocking and unyielding guitar that bridges the gap between Saxon, Dokken, MSG and UFO, soloing a la vintage George Lynch-meets-Jake E Lee-meets-Michael Schenker (hear it at 4:25 mark) complete with wah wah and, oh, let's not ignore the thundering drums. By now readers know that one of this writer’s pet peeves is the modern drum sound, which often comes across like a twig is tapping against an object. It is utterly repetitive and powerless. The drum sound here, in contrast, is full and serious. A few people by now have noticed the track title relates to the band’s monicker. Darkest Eyes is followed by Cast To Stone, which is a slow and steady track that could be described as Whitesnake-meets-Statetrooper. Unfortunately, the keyboards kick in, but room is left for the bass to shine. It is unusual for a ballad to be a second track, but there’s more to that story. The sound is superior and the vocals bear a touch of Magnum sung with palpable emotion. "Can you feel it?" Edge Of Dreams is a hard rocker that keeps a steady pace. It is a riff-oriented one with a solid rhythm and another top solo. Nick Catterick is neither into noise solos nor those whitewashing three-second chintzy jobs newer bands love. He favours real solos! For a moment Alan really goes for the higher pitches and he should do that more often. Degrees Of Separation is next and is loud and fast, hard and heavy and sounds like Jake E Lee is on guitar transporting us back to the glorious days of 1983. The bassist lays a heavy foundation right next to Jake, er, Nick Catterick. The production does the band a favour again. Alan Clark doesn't have the same tone as Dio, but the phrasing shows an influence and so the song becomes a Dark Heart version of Dio's Caught In The Middle. Imagine that, a track described as a mixture of Ozzy Osbourne (from when he was good) and Dio. In fact, imagine no more. Check the song out inside. Wings Of The Night supports both a big riff and gentleness in one. There is a synthesised sound to start unfortunately. It is a good song, but the band is overdoing the ballads. Has the review mentioned that Dark Heart has an impressive snare sound? The backing vocals add to the body of the song, Alan’s vocals are soaring in the Bon Jovi realm and the wailing guitars are nimble and sublime. House Of Usurer’s heavy riff is something one could imagine hearing on a 1990s’ Black Sabbath album. Break The Chains’ title must be suggestive because my ears pick up Dokken on the track. Seriously. The song will erase the slate of your yearning for that style of hard rock. Time To Fly - a couple of tracks earlier we were treated to Wings Of The Night - is tasteful and melodic, but not a favourite. The backing vocals lean AOR and the track leans that way as well with the soft synthesiser in the background. KOTD allows Alan Clark to stretch his vocals and showcase how he has even more of a range than he lets on. The fluent guitars are something to hear. Night Won’t Let Me Go is a rocker and the record ends with the one that had me the most curious, which is Shadows Of The Night since it is the same title as the 1984 debut. It is a complete track in every way possible. It is nostalgia-inducing. Hear it and you will know.
By the way, looking into it one is reminded that the album’s producer is drummer Pete Newdeck, who has worked with Paul Di'Anno in the past (except who hasn't?). I was probably in business with Di'Anno at some point too if I properly rack my brain, but seriously to be earnest again the sound punches above its weight and makes a good album better. Despite the act’s history being a chronicle unto itself this band and album came at me out of nowhere . - Ali “The Metallian”

Interviews

First there was Tokyo Rose. Then, in the midst of the NWOBHM boom, came Dark Heart in 1983. The band around guitarist-turned-singer Alan Clark has released its album 2.5 only now. Read the conversation between Alan Clark and Ali “The Metallian” to learn more, find out about the band’s history, obtain updates and work out why the latest is somewhere between a second and a third album. - 01.08.2024

METALLIAN: Alan, thank you for your time. I knew of Dark Heart and Metallian obviously has a band entry, but it was my first time actually hearing you probably. The opening track made me want to listen more. It is fascinating in two ways. The music is good and the vocals are soaring. The production is top-notch especially for an independent band. So, it became necessary to speak because you had been a guitarist before switching over to the microphone and then there is the band’s history, which goes back to the heady NWOBHM days.
ALAN: Phew! It's an interesting one. I mean It's something that's been mentioned before with regard to why the band isn't better-known than what it should be. Certainly, the album isn't received or heard as much as it should have been. A lot of that has to do with being in the right place at the right time. I think, very much, if you've got a big label behind you sometimes it's a little bit easier to get in the public eye than it is, as a sort of if you like, at a smaller independent level. We originally way back when in the 1980s signed to Roadrunner Records. They were a pretty big label at the time. We did our first album with them, Shadows Of The Night, but it really didn't get pushed. It really didn't get, I mean, it wasn't to be honest with you, cards on the table, I don't think it actually was a very good album. The tracks were good, but we weren't happy with the production. We did actually try to stop the album being made after the first three days, because the producer we just didn't like working with him, and he didn't understand us at all. Still, for financial, and other reasons, political reasons we had to do the album.
Fast forward to this album, Out Of The Shadows, we have been working on this album. We have been working on it for a few years. We did actually try to release it under another label at the end of… beginning of ‘22, but they did nothing for us, no promotion, so I pulled the record from them. And then we tied up with Battlegod so to cut a long story short, I guess this is really the first opportunity that we've had with a label which pushes us and gets us out there for anybody to actually hear us to a level where we're actually getting noticed. People are actually enjoying the album. So that's kind of half the reason for it. But, like I said, the majority of it's just been being in the right place at the right time over the years. We probably weren't.

METALLIAN: Unfortunately, that story makes sense, and I think I understand it. Let me go back to a couple of things you said. You had an album in 1984, which you're right, was probably on the biggest independent label in the ‘80s and ‘90s. You were in the studio and you wanted to stop the process and go record elsewhere with someone else.
ALAN: Yes, right.

METALLIAN: The other thing was that you were originally a guitarist and not a singer and yet the vocals are impressive.
ALAN: Thank you.

METALLIAN: There was this label, Sleaszy Rider, that released the music in 2022. The current release has a cover that is slightly different and the track listing has been modified.
ALAN: Yeah, that's correct. I mean, originally the artwork belonged to us. I paid for the artwork to be done. We paid for the recording. So none of it belonged to Sleazy Rider. As far as I am aware, they printed next to no copies of it. Unless he's telling me something different.

METALLIAN: So, the question I'm getting at is, could you elaborate a little on what happened? Because the current release seems to be a re-release with differences and yet your bio from the publicist makes no mention of it.
ALAN: Well, the main difference is that we've added an extra song. We put an extra song on it since the last release. The first release had 11 tracks on, or ten tracks I believe, and this one has 11. So we've added a different track to the album and just slightly messed around with some of the graphics and stuff. I mean with the first release, the reason we pulled it was for the reason that we're probably having this discussion now… that nobody heard it.
I don’t want to go down the line of insulting the company, or to badmouth them, because at the end of the day, they're trying to do their bit. But we didn't feel that they were potentially capable of handling what we wanted them to do. So any reviews we got, any sort of interviews that we got, I generated those myself. Expecting some support, It didn't happen. So after we realised that, you know, we, myself and Nick, had put a lot of work into this. We wrote it and recorded all of it. And then Pete Newdeck and Josh Williams came along, and Pete did a fantastic job on the production and the mix, a phenomenal job, well, we felt that the album just wasn't getting the justice it deserved, because I felt the songs were really strong. We felt it really was as good as anything that was kicking around at the time. So, the decision was made. I got in touch with Sleaszy Rider and said, ‘sorry, guys, but it didn't happen. And I need to move it to somewhere where it's going to work.’ So, we took some time out to look for who was going to be at the right level for us. We were put in touch with Battlegod and everybody rated him. I know he was doing work with Tony Martin and stuff at the time and we approached him. He loved what we did and said, ‘okay, guys, let's re-release the album. Let's put it out again to an audience where actually, somebody's actually going to be able to hear it and actually be able to buy it.’ Those were some of the issues. It wasn't available in the shops. Nobody could buy it. Nobody could buy it online. It was just ridiculous. It was a situation I wasn't prepared to put up with because ultimately getting the music out there was what it was all about. So that's why we did what we did.

METALLIAN: What was Sleaszy Rider’s reaction?
ALAN: It was reluctant, but he was okay about it. I am still in contact with him. I still get on with him fine. I think he understood. I think he knows. I think he realised and maybe some bands are quite happy with having 500 copies of an album done and that's it. I was because I felt it was better than that and deserves better than that so we wanted to take it somewhere where it gets proper distribution.

METALLIAN: In my opinion, most labels have become a bad joke. They do nothing and have made themselves obsolete. Okay, coming back to the new release, which track has been added to this version?
ALAN: Shadows Of The Night. It is a reworking of the title track from the original 1984 album. So we redid it and thought ‘we'll do that and stick it on the album.’

METALLIAN: Alright. A couple of biographical questions for you, Alan, when was the band exactly established as opposed to early 1980s?
ALAN: Originally we were called, when we first started, Tokyo Rose and that was in 1982. We did our first demo in November of that year. With a completely different line-up - we had a different bass player, drummer and singer. Then we changed line-ups to and in ‘84 became Dark Heart. So the lineup from ‘83 is the same line-up as Dark Heart in ‘84. We changed our name. We changed our name purely on the basis that there was another band calling themselves, Tokyo Rose. We didn't think Tokyo Rose really reflected what we were doing as a band sound-wise (anyway). It sounded a little bit… We wanted something a little bit stronger. So we adopted the name Dark Heart, which I actually pinched off Fred Purser of Tygers Of Pan Tang because we were sitting in a bar and we sat in the pool one night, and we're looking for another name, and Fred had left the band Penetration was sort of joining the Tygers and said he had this name for a band, and if we wanted to use it, so we did! So, that's how Dark Heart came about. So it was ‘82 when we kicked off.

METALLIAN: Did the demo have a title?
ALAN: No, it was just a 3-track demo. It was done at the same studio where we recorded the album, but it didn't have a title. It was just a demo, we were just literally, three guys from school, a drummer and a singer writing a few songs and going into the studio seeing what they sounded like okay.

METALLIAN: Was it five of you and three were school-mates?
ALAN: Yep.

METALLIAN: What is a ‘Tokyo Rose?’
ALAN: It goes back to, I think, the Second World War and it was something to do with America and Japan. And I think it was some kind of a provocateur who sent messages and stuff like that.

METALLIAN: You have an album, it doesn't do well, you weren't even happy with it. I had heard that you became Arena at one point. Is that correct?
ALAN: No, no.

METALLIAN: So you were never called Arena?
ALAN: Nope.

METALLIAN: The band ceases functioning or disbands in 1985.
ALAN: We went through a couple of line-up changes again because there were many issues. If anybody who reads this is in a band, he'll understand that when you get the wind knocked out of you It's very difficult to continue going. People become disillusioned; people move on. Phil the singer left the band. Colin, the bass player Ian, the drummer, and Steve the guitarist got another singer in. We did a couple of more demos. We were actually, oh, probably more than three-quarters way through having written a new album and then Ian the drummer left. He became disillusioned because he just thought it wasn't happening fast enough.It was 1985 and we just saw that, ‘no, this isn't working. Things have moved on. People have moved on,’ and it was time to sort of really say goodbye. So that's what we did.

METALLIAN: Then there is the band Change Of Heart, but were there any other bands, even before Tokyo Rose in your history?
ALAN: Yeah, we had a couple. There was. We did a couple of demos. We did a demo with… what was his name… we got an American singer called Karl Berzinck, probably originally was ‘Carl’ with a C I think, from New York who was a nice guy and you won't have heard of. He sounded like David Lee Roth. I don't think he’s done anything since, but we did a band called Roulette. We did like a 3-track demo. Separately, I think we did a demo under the name Longrange, some strange, bizarre type of a band. I think we had the name as one word, which made it look even more bizarre.

METALLIAN: When were these bands, Roulette and Longrange?
ALAN: They were kind of between ‘85 and probably ‘87, I guess. So, a long time ago, but yeah that’s it.

METALLIAN: Who is “we?”
ALAN: Yeah. Well, Colin Bell was involved in a little bit of it. Mitch the singer that we got once Philip left, he was involved in a couple of bits of it but it mainly was just myself after that. I kind of like got used to often doing all the donkey work myself. It's just what happens. You drift off. The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal thing kind of flipped and faded anyway, by probably ‘84, ‘83, to be honest, and we probably came into it very late. Then the hair metal’s coming in with bands like Dokken and Ratt and stuff like that. I was kind of heading off a little bit that way, and some of the band were heading off a little bit the other way. Phil had gone into proper thrash. So we all kind of drifted in different musical directions. So that's probably why we ended up the way we did.

METALLIAN: Final question along these lines, the album was licensed to Metal Blade, which Roadrunner used to do back then and legend has it, and this is really funny actually if it's true, that this was Metal Blade’s worst selling record ever.
ALAN: It's probably true. Yeah, I mean to be honest with you to this day I have absolutely no idea how many albums were made, or how many albums were sold, and, to be honest, after we recorded the album, we couldn't give a flying fuck anyway to be fair.

METALLIAN: That's funny, you know? If someone told me if I want to be the third worst or fourth or fifth selling, then I'd take the worst. At least I am the record holder.
ALAN: For something…

METALLIAN: It must be really good if people don’t like it. Let's come back to the current album, Out Of The Shadows. We know it was ready for release in 2021. It is re-released now. How old are these songs and when did you record them?
ALAN: Oh, they vary. We were approached, or I was approached, and asked if I fancy recording a new Dark Heart album. So I thought, ‘okay.’ We had old songs, I thought, and that's what they were kind of aiming at and so I approached a few of the older members, but a few of them weren't even playing anymore or were in different bands. That was a nonstarter, but I have been working with Nick on some different stuff, different tracks here and there and we decided to write from scratch. So we probably started in 2018 roughly. It might seem a long time, but a lot of the songs were written and then we decided we want to improve the quality of the songs. Then we had COVID that stopped us dead in our tracks as well.
We came out on the other side and by 2021 and we sped it up quite a bit. The majority of the songs were probably written in 2021.

METALLIAN: Is the lead track Darkest Eyes, which caught me by surprise, an older one or one of the newer?
ALAN: It's a slightly older one, I think. That was probably around ‘18 or ‘19 when that was written, but what we did was we just re-recorded the songs all again. So it's kind of pretty fresh. So I kind of redid some vocals on some of the tracks, and changed the way some of them are. They are updated a little bit as we moved into ‘20 and into ‘21 but it's probably one of the older ones. Nick came over with the riff for it.

METALLIAN: Speaking of Nick on guitar, surprisingly, you used to be a guitarist. You became a singer, which was obviously beneficial, but aside from that the album benefits from the sound being good.
ALAN: Yeah, obviously the majority of the thanks have to go to Pete for his production and his drum work on the album. He's so good at what he does. From the first conversation that we had with him he understood what we wanted. We were after a big sound, you know? Nick's got a fantastic guitar tone, there's absolutely no question about that and what we wanted was like our influences. Going into it we thought about Sabbath. Nick's very similar, but also he has a strong Dokken influence. So we were kind of looking for that. We wanted a classic full-on crash-bang wallop for lack of a better word. So it was imperative just to get that sound. The early demos that we had between myself and Nick sound pretty good before they go to Pete. Pete produces them absolutely fantastically. You know, you hear plenty of stuff where people literally have processed the living daylights out of the sound, but this is exactly what we were looking for. We did go backwards and forwards a little bit. This is what we want to hear. Pete got us from day one. We brought Josh in on bass. It just fit perfectly. It was almost like it was meant to be. From that perspective everything just fit and it just sounded great. We moved on and it was superb.
The Darkest Eyes sets up a tone for us. It was one of the first songs, if not the first song that set the tone. We wanted to have a punch. We wanted to have something lively, aggressive, but also melodic as well. We want to keep it like the music we like. The melodic tone is my sort of background, as well, with Changing Heart. So it's a nice opportunity for us just to let fly just a little bit on some songs. We're not shy using keyboards when we need them. I'm not ashamed of that because I think anybody who thinks a metal band should just be guitars is talking shit because it should be what makes the song sound good. It should be what makes the song work. We just have to make sure that everything else that we do from this day on is as good… if not better. I think in some cases I've got some songs on there that I like better, but it's a great track and it was a great opener for us.

METALLIAN: Pete also contributed the drums.
ALAN: He did.

METALLIAN: … which are great, and the sound is even better. But who is in the band now?
ALAN: One reason we did the line-up is because they are local to us. The drummer is somebody who I know well, a guy called Geordie Clark. He's no relation although he's got the same name, and then we added Daniel Millward on bass. Since then we've drafted a keyboard player called John Sykes. No relation to the namesake.

METALLIAN: Okay. Now you used a couple of words I'll pick up on, Alan. You used the word ‘tone’ and this is not just the new album, but from your inception and the band’s name. Words used by you include ‘tone,’ ‘light,’ ‘dark, ‘shadow’ and there are other attributions in your song titles, band name and album titles. Is this conscious?
ALAN: Yeah, it's kind of… maybe doing it more subconsciously than deliberately. It allows me to do two things with how I write, certainly with the lyrics. It's like the alter ego of the dark horse, the alter ego of the band Change Of Heart, if you like, for lack of a better word so it gives me that opportunity just to be a little bit more potentially hidden, slightly more hidden with meanings and can be slightly political as well. It allows me to be a little more free. Well, free is probably the wrong word, but it does allow me a little bit more scope to be inventive. Let's put it that way.

METALLIAN: When using the word ‘political,’ are you referring to spectrums, right-wing, left-wing or what is the slant?
ALAN: Well, it's kind of an observation of aspects of life that goes on that I'm kind of not massively interested in. Things that happen that I don't like. Certain things are happening. I don't like the development of. I, personally, don't like the development of AI. All I see is people walk around with their phones. Nobody looks where they're going. Nobody communicates. Kids don't. Kids don't seem to have communication. Countries that shouldn't be involved in other people's countries and people paying far too much attention to what everybody else is doing rather than sorting their own stuff out on their doorsteps. So it's like a little bit of stuff like that. I am not a political person, but I do have my views and sometimes they sort of manifest themselves a little bit.
Social media and phones have become just one more step to isolation.

METALLIAN: Social media is asocial media. It makes you less social. Let's talk about a couple of tracks. Aside from Darkest Eyes that caught my attention, I want to get this one out of the way. I don't have a lyric sheet. What is K.O.T.D.?
ALAN: Oh, that's King Of The Dead. I was looking for something… it's kind of like a backward reference to people's involvement in social media, and how they don't pay attention anymore. And everybody just walks around like a zombie. Everybody's looking for something, whether it's on TikTok or or whatever the stupid, bloody things that kids use these days is. They believe everything they see. The concept behind it is a person rising, just taking control and just leading everybody because they really didn't believe everything they saw. They believed everything they heard. Just a bit of an observation. I just thought that people wandering around with their phones are like zombies. That's really what they are, you know? Somebody rising up with some sort of a sinister power not because he just controls everybody, but because he's got power over the phones.

METALLIAN: The third track is called Edge Of Dreams. It has big hard rock riffs.
ALAN: Yes. I'm quite a spiritual person to a degree. Whilst other people might not necessarily believe in the afterlife, or the existence of spirits and stuff like that, that's for them, which is fine. I've absolutely no problem with that. So this was kind of like a nod to how people can interpret a dream, but also without realising it's actually more real than what they actually think it is. So did I see, or didn't I see it?
The step, almost like a step between what is reality and what is fantasy, is a very fine line. That is what Edge Of Dreams was based around. That's kind of the point I was trying to get across with that. Maybe it's what I should do when I release albums. I should have the lyrics, then a little explanation of what the hell I was actually thinking when I wrote it and then that way it might help me as well! It was a spiritual type of thing.

METALLIAN: What about Night Won't Let Me Go?
ALAN: To be honest with you, that has more to do with people who have an addiction of some kind. I guess that's kind where they get pulled down into the night, if you like. The night represents the addiction and so they are trapped in that sort of world. They have a normal life, but they're in this one also, this addictive side of whatever the personality. It's just a person who's just trapped within this world. They're trying to sort of live a daily life, but on such a night, they're getting pulled and pulled and pulled, and they can't get out of it. And it just spirals, you know, spirals down.

METALLIAN: It occurs to me that the title is another tone-related title, namely that the night is dark.
ALAN: Yeah, maybe I should get out in the sunshine a bit more. It's just how they come out, you know, it's just like sometimes when you have a riff, or you've got a tune, and you hear it, you automatically start to hear melodies and I start to hear words. I start there. It’s yin and yang.

METALLIAN: Speaking of which, were you once upon a time, sticking with the tonality motif, going to record an album called Chase The Dawn?
ALAN: No. There is only a song called Chase The Dawn. We recorded at the end of ‘84 and ‘85. We recorded a 3-track demo and a 4 track demo and on the 4-track demo was Chase The Dawn. That would have been a good title for an album actually! We never got that far however.

METALLIAN: Another song is Break The Chains. I want to bring this one up because the song is a repeat play. There is also the obvious influence of Jake E. Lee riffing from when Ozzy was good and Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath. There is also a little Ratt in there. Finally, there is the sound of George Lynch and Dokken and, of course, Dokken had the ‘Breaking The Chains’ title. Is the song and the title something you adopted or just coincidence?
ALAN: A little bit of both. I mean, Nick, as I mentioned earlier, is a big fan of George Lynch and he does like his Dokken-y riffs to be fair. That song was actually his concept. Some of the lyrics were his concept as well and I just added bits in and did the melodies. So, I don't think he'd be upset (by the comparison). Yeah, I don't think he'd be upset or even perturbed by somebody saying, ‘There’s a bit of Dokken in there.’

METALLIAN: Speaking of which, If I listen to Dokken today, my opinion is, the band must retire. Dokken, in the 1980s is one thing, but if you listen to Don Dokken today they are killing their own legacy. I don't know why, for money, I guess. I guess he has a mortgage, but, and fair enough, I don't have to listen to it. The point I'm trying to make here is about your voice. You've been around as long as Don Dokken and you are singing like some others cannot. What is the difference? Did you exercise? Did you drink milk from the Himalayas every morning?
ALAN: I don't. I think Don probably smoked. That's something I've never done. I just honestly haven't. I mean, I can't remember the name of the guy but the singer in Jefferson Airplane singing in his 70s and sounding every bit as good as he ever did. I don't know whether it’s genetics or not. I don't know whether it's just pure, bloody luck. But yeah, I do try and look after myself. I certainly look after my voice and certainly do breathing exercises. Outside of that, I have no idea. I just think lifestyle has something to do with it, I guess. So smoking and not drinking too much are all factors.
I think people should understand that when the end comes you've got to be graceful enough to say, ‘I can't do it, so I'm not doing it.’ I certainly wouldn't be in that position because I would be mortified to hit the stage, if I couldn't hit the note, I really would be.

METALLIAN: I don't know of anybody who retires gracefully. Whether it's Don Dokken or Ozzy Osbourne or Slayer’s Tom Araya - listen to the last four Slayer albums - they all continue on. Nobody retires gracefully. Look at Aerosmith, Why is that?
ALAN: Oh, my honest opinion is I think maybe they find it really difficult to let go because they've been doing it for so long. What the hell else are they going to do? I also think if you've got somebody blowing smoke up the arse they think they are better than what they really are, because no, it's kind of like it's like that story of the emperor with no clothes that nobody would dare telling him he didn't have any clothes on, and I think that's kind of… who's gonna be the one who does tell this famous singer that you can't sing anymore? Who's gonna be the first one to sort of broach the subject and nobody does. This is the issue, as well, I think. There are a lot of people still making money off these people and don't want that gravy train to end either. I'll probably get myself shot here, but I think it's a fact. I think this is like that you've got to have a level of ego whether it's positive or negative; you got to have some personal pride. It's just people telling them they can do something they can't.

METALLIAN: Interesting, and they're not self conscious or self awareness is not a factor either, I guess. As I am listening to you I thought of one person who listened or was told, or was self-aware, and that's Joe Biden.
ALAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, at least, he listened to his advisors and realised that.. looked in the mirror and thought, ‘yeah, you're actually right. It's time to move on.’ You know, maybe he could release a book and a few singers could read it.

METALLIAN: What's next for the band? Here's an album that's been reworked and re-released and it is good. The band should have become big, but you won't.
ALAN: We know.

METALLIAN: What is the plan now?
ALAN: I am finishing off writing the next album. It should be released in February of 2025. So it's not that far away. We're a long way down the line of just about finishing that. So we've got that to look forward to. The whole piece and in June ‘25 we start playing live shows. We actually are playing on the 23rd of November this year. We're supporting Demon in Stork. That should be a good night. We'll try and get a little warm-up local gig to get ourselves into fitness. Then hopefully festivals next year. Battlegod is looking at potentially some dates involving Tony Martin and maybe another band. That's in discussions.
Yeah, we're happy. I'm happy, really happy with Battlegod. They’ve done a fantastic job. He's a great guy. He's a musician himself, but also he's so passionate and I think that really comes across. I mean, he phones me quite often, even though he's in Australia, some bizarre phone calls at bizarre times. He's really nice. I get on with him really. Well, so there's absolutely no reason for us to not want to do another album about a girl.

METALLIAN: Any details about the album?
ALAN: We hope that it's another level. We've got good songs. There's a song called End Of Tomorrow which could end up being the title track for the album. There's a couple of slightly more commercial songs coming along. Still great, so powerful. But it's just a little bit slightly, not to the slightly more commercial side. But there's some really good stuff in there, some quite sort of melodic heavy. We actually, we think the best songs, and all majority of them are better songs than on this album, but if it didn't say that'd be no point doing it. So, I suppose, hearing is believing. There should be roughly eleven songs, give or take, for the album. We've doing a couple of new songs at the minute.
We are our own worst critics when it comes to writing. We have looked at a couple of the songs and said let’s strengthen it. It should be coming out in February. There's going to be a video and everything. So we're going to go the whole 9 yards for the next album.

METALLIAN: When will you record it?
ALAN: It's being recorded now. How we record is I've got my own home set-up here. I'll do all the vocals here. Nick's got his set-up. So he puts the guitars down before the baton is passed and then we send that to the drummer who puts the tracks down that goes to bass. Then it all comes back in again, we pull together and then we send it to Pete who is producing the next album as well. Mixing, engineering and producing the next album. He does his magic on it. We have four or five songs, I think, so far. I just did some vocals for a track yesterday.
That's the one good thing about technology that we didn't have back in the day when you had a 2-inch tape and, if you had made a mistake, you had to do it all again. There's no cut and paste, and no sort of like, you know, technology where you could send files. We transfer, or wherever we just want to send huge files, and they can just download the files and stick them into their software and the tracks there. So that's the one thing about technology that I do like these days.

METALLIAN: On my part, listening to the current album, we need more solos like on this album because they're lengthy. They're not 3-second snippets like with modern bands. Hopefully, the oomph in the drums will continue.
ALAN: Well, All of those things are coming. There's no problem with that. Nick likes nothing better than nice, long guitars. To be honest with you, I like it as well, so we always write like that.

METALLIAN: Alan, enjoyed the conversation and the information. Metallian is the best website for hard rock and heavy metal music in the world. Why do you agree?
ALAN: You do well, to be honest. If the quality of this interview is how you conduct yourself with people and how you understand music and how you appreciate what people do then it's good. Then I can understand why! Because at least you're putting good stuff out there instead of crap. But you know I've really enjoyed it. It's been excellent and has different sorts of questions as well, which is really good. But you know, to have websites like yourself, supporting bands and and helping bands, pushing it out there I can't thank you enough because it doesn't happen enough. To have people who are passionate about what they listen to and what they believe in and then take it to the next level like yourself...

We end the interview on that note. Singer Alan Clark, guitarist Nick Catterick, newer bassist Daniel Millward and drummer Geordie Clark, alongside recording bassist Josh Williams and drummer/producer Pete Newdeck, can also be found at https://www.facebook.com/darkheart.rock

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Dark Heart