Interview

Elixir Guitarist Discusses Latest Album And NWOBHM

The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal might not be so new anymore, but for those who love classic metal, especially younger listeners, there'll always be new discoveries when digging deep into the movement. While the likes of Iron Maiden and Saxon will always grab the headlines, bands like Raven, Praying Mantis and Witchfinder General will always be regarded as excellent bands that deserve more recognition. Another band which falls into this category would be Elixir, from the English capital city, London.

After releasing a truly stellar debut, "The Son Of Odin" in 1986, it would be another four years until their sophomore "Lethal Potion" would hit the shelves. While the band hasn't always been as active as some of their contemporaries, Elixir has always done their best to give fans slice after slice of high quality heavy metal. In March of this year, the group released, "Voyage Of The Eagle," their seventh full length album and undoubtedly one of the best in their long, storied career.

To find out more about the album, as well as the side project Midnight Messiah, sharing their singer with Desolation Angels, thoughts on the New Wave Of British Metal and much more, I spoke with guitarist and co-founder Phil Denton.

Diamond Oz: Congratulations on the release of your latest album, "Voyage Of The Eagle." Could you tell us what the meaning of the title is?

Phil Denton: Thank you! The title refers to the name of the ship in our adventure, ‘The Eagle’. The album tells the story of how some sea-fairing folk overheard a tale of a dead man’s buried treasure from some drunken seamen in a tavern. From there, they press gang a crew, set sail, try to avoid the temptations of The Siren, survive storms, mutiny, and blood-thirsty crew-mates, to get to the treasure. I won’t tell you how the story ends, but the album documents the adventure, hence the title.

Oz: This is your first album for ten years. Obviously in that time you've changed some band members, but what would you say sets it apart from the previous album, "All Hallows Eve"?

Phil: We have changed one band member. Original bass player and co-founder, Kevin Dobbs, decided that he didn’t want to continue with Elixir in 2012. As we are a tight-knit group who had been together since 1984, we didn’t even contemplate replacing him with someone else, we just thought that it was the end of Elixir. Paul and I formed a spin-off band, Midnight Messiah, to carry on Elixir’s legacy.

When I started recording ideas for a new album, I felt that, as the lyrical ideas were based on a track called ‘Dead Man’s Gold’ from Elixir’s debut album, ‘The Son Of Odin’, that the new material should be recorded by Elixir. I contacted the guys and asked whether they would be interested in making a new album. They were all keen to do it, except for Kev, who still didn’t want to continue. He felt that we had ended on a great album, ‘All Hallows Eve’, and wanted to leave things there. However, he could see that we were all keen to do it, and so he gave us his blessing to get another bass player to continue. That was important to us, because, as I mentioned, we grew up together and are like brothers, so we didn’t want to replace Kev if there was any chance that he may want to continue.

We found a young and talented bass player called Luke Fabian to record the album. He did a great job on the recording, but when rehearsing for live shows it became apparent that Luke wasn’t quite right for us as a permanent replacement for Kev. He is quite younger than us and from a different musical background.

Just before the pandemic and lockdown happened, we had a great rehearsal session with another bass player, who I don’t want to name yet. We are intending to get a band line-up photo done and then announce him in September. We like him a lot, not just for his playing, but as a person we could relate to both musically and personally. When you spend hours together travelling in a van or stuck at an airport, you need to get on well with your band mates. He has been learning the live set and material from the new album, and after the rehearsal studios re-opened following lockdown, we have had a few more rehearsals with him. He is coming along a lot better than I had dared to hope, and is a pleasure to play with. We are sounding like a tight band again. He has stayed respectful to Kev’s legacy, maintaining Kev’s sound and replicating Kev’s bass runs where required, but also has been adding his own touches too. I feel that we have found the perfect replacement for Kev, and cannot wait to get out and start playing live shows again.

Musically, I don’t think there is a lot of difference between ‘All Hallows Eve’ and ‘Voyage Of The
Eagle’, they are both traditional classic heavy rock albums in our usual style. Four out of five band
members are the same, and our fans are telling us that the new album is what they had hoped for and expected from Elixir in 2020.

The main difference musically is whilst ‘All Hallows Eve’ is themed around the old Pagan and Celtic ritual of Samhain carried out traditionally on 31 st October, and has the 14 minute ‘epic’ song ‘Samhain’, the new album actually tells a continuous story, like a concept album, and doesn’t have any songs of such length.

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