An Encounter with Onslaught

It all started with a simple walk around downtown Pensacola. The evening humidity, foreshadowing the Florida summer right around the corner, clung to my skin and inflated my hair into a nest of frizzy curls despite my best effort to tame it with numerous products. Although the atmosphere was far from ideal, I wouldn’t have rather been anywhere else. After all, I wasn’t wandering the streets by myself; I braved the muggy air with my friend, Natalie, whose presence took away any sort of discomfort the cruel humidity might have otherwise ignited. 

As we roamed away from the bustling downtown center, the chatter of bars was slowly replaced with the muffled echo of booming drums and electric guitars as we neared The Handlebar. Lines of cars filled the typically sparsely-occupied parking spots that lined East Wright Street. It was obvious: whoever was playing that night must have been pretty notable. Naturally, upon coming to this conclusion, Natalie and I knew we needed to check out the scene ourselves. 

Since we didn’t know who was playing, and we didn’t feel like dropping thirty dollars each for a show we didn’t know anything about, we traveled to the side of the venue to listen for a second from the outside. Natalie, being much more gutsy than me, attempted to get a peek into one of the windows as I stood back to act as security on the occasion we got caught or called out. The only bystander was a blonde man, all-black-clad, sitting on the backdoor steps seemingly getting some air from The Handlebar’s stuffy, crowded interior. He glanced at Natalie, then at me, and said something I couldn’t hear. Natalie immediately dropped from her tippy-toes to look at me.

“He asked if we want to go backstage!” Natalie grinned. Confused, I didn’t say anything at first. Every bad outcome played out in my mind, the first scenario being getting banned from the Handlebar for being somewhere we weren't supposed to be. But something in Natalie’s excited gaze erased every inhibition I had; so, mirroring her smile, I looked back at the man and nodded. 

Although Natalie and I only hung out backstage for a handful of an opener’s songs, the listening experience itself was far from unforgettable. The opener, a seemingly local instrumental heavy metal group, immediately captivated me with their intricate percussion patterns and impossible guitar solos. Throughout our time in the compact storage space between the stage and venue exterior, I would look back at Natalie with eyes wide and mouth agape as we took in the music from our own private lookout. 

Before I knew it, the evening turned into night, and the opener began their final song. Not wanting to overstay our welcome, Natalie and I thanked the unknown benefactor for our brief stay backstage as we departed the room. At the last second, I realized I didn’t even know who this guy was, so as I shook his hand, I asked the stranger what his name was and if he was part of one of the bands, to which he disclosed that he was the drummer for the headlining band, Onslaught. 

No, for sure. Just casually running into Onslaught’s drummer on a walk. Why not. 

I had heard a select few songs by Onslaught, primarily from curated thrash metal playlists I’d play while working out, so encountering the band’s drummer (who, it turns out, was a more recent addition to the group, having now played with the band for around a decade) was unexpected since the band itself has been around since the eighties and the drummer clearly was not old enough to have been a founding member. Shocked, and admittedly a little starstruck, I awkwardly raved about the band for a second before finally parting ways. As Natalie and I gushed about the sporadic event and how nice the drummer was to not only chat with us, but let us listen to the concert for a second, I stopped in my tracks. I knew I couldn’t go home that night without having at least tried to talk to this new connection about the band and their music. Before I knew it, Natalie, the drummer, and I were sitting on one of the picnic tables between The Handlebar and a local food truck with iPhone’s Voice Memo capturing the serendipitous interview. 

The drummer, James Perry, detailed various aspects of both the band and the tour that led them to The Handlebar. Onslaught, according to Perry, was the “UK’s version of the American thrash scene,” being the equivalent of bands like Metallica and Anthrax during the inception of thrash metal. As Perry discussed the band’s beginnings, the conversation turned towards the respective metal scenes in the US and the UK; as someone who only recently began to truly listen to the genre, I wanted to learn about how American metal was influenced by the UK’s bands since Birmingham is often credited as metal’s birthplace. 

“There are so many similarities,” Perry noted, “but I want to say it’s a bit more organic. A lot of the stuff produced in America was more produced, polished, whereas the early UK metal bands were more raw and aggressive.” 

From what I listened to of Onslaught, this sentiment held true. Whether it was through the band’s skull-adorned album covers or vocalist Sy Keeler’s vehemently guttural lyrics and vocal performances, aggression and violent energy remained at the forefront of Onslaught’s overall impression. After hearing Perry’s thoughts on the more experimental UK metal sound, it was hard not to hear their music as a more raw version of Metallica. With that being said, though, Onslaught by no means sounds like a copy; if anything, listening especially to guitarist Nige Rockett’s elaborate guitar melodies and the accompanying driving bass provided by Jeff Williams, I can hear how bands like Onslaught influenced the present metal sound in terms of instrumental norms and overall intense sound. 

As we discussed the band’s American tour and the 40th anniversary of their second album, The Force, a recent project of theirs piqued my interest. To commemorate The Force’s anniversary, Onslaught released Origins of Aggression, a twenty-two-track double album. While the first section of Origins features re-recorded takes on the band’s most iconic songs like “Let There Be Death” and “In Search of Sanity”, the second section of the album sports covers of a plethora of bands and songs that influenced Onslaught’s sound. 

“It’s mostly punk,” Perry states when describing the second section of Origins. “Onslaught is heavily influenced by the punk scene; that’s where the raw aggressiveness comes from.” Onslaught covers songs by Discharge, Sex Pistols, and Killing Joke throughout Origins, but Perry noted that his standout (and my personal favorite) song off the tracklist is “Holiday in Cambodia” by The Dead Kennedys. As soon as Perry mentioned The Dead Kennedys, I was fully sold on the album.

Not wanting to keep Perry from preparing for Onslaught’s upcoming performance, I concluded the conversation there, making sure to thank Perry again for taking the time to talk about the band and their experiences. I couldn’t catch Onslaught’s performance, which after talking to Perry only made missing the concert harder, but getting to listen through Origins on my drive home with newfound perspectives on the collection somewhat made up for my disappointment in having to go to bed early. I am just thankful that that random walk with a friend led to such a great conversation with a talented part of an equally-talented, influential band.

What you can expect from Origins is stronger, clearer instrumentation and mixing on the songs that put Onslaught on the map, as well as hardcore takes on classic punk songs from the seventies and eighties; whether you’re a full-on metalhead or dabble in different genres like me, Origins is more than worth the listen. Be sure to follow the band on social media, and stream their music wherever you choose to listen.