DIAMOND HEAD - Left For Megadead!
by Martin Popoff

Brian Tatler and a new lineup of his legendary NWOBHM band Diamond Head are set to gallivant around Europe with Megadeth, Dave and the band having a bit of history together. "Diamond Head are supporting Megadeth right across Europe in February," says Tatler. "I saw Megadeth a few times and have talked to Dave Mustaine about doing something together for ages. In 2000 I started writing for an album we were planning, but due to Dave's arm injury it never happened."

Look for some new material soon as well. "Great, heavy, rocking, fast, powerful riffs and vocals - we are really pleased with the results," qualifies Brian, who adds, on the subject of original vocalist Sean Harris not being part of the fold, "It's like the straw that broke the camels back - Sean's refusal to play Wacken in 2003 pissed everyone off, but there are lots of reasons. Sean is probably writing more songs, Duncan and Colin work for a living. As for what I've been doing, I worked as a studio engineer/producer for five years and joined Quill for four years, a band that regularly play around 200 gigs a year and I did a couple of years in a Thin Lizzy tribute band among other things."

But now back in the saddle and ready to relive the legacy, Tatler muses on how it all went wrong - after all, Diamond Head were hyped in the early '80s as the next coming of Led Zeppelin. "I sometimes put it down to lack of success," says Brian, when asked why the three original Diamond Head albums were so radically different from each other. "If the first album had done well, we may have ploughed a similar furrow. No record company would take it and we kept trying to write something that would be successful - not realizing it wasn't the songs but the management."

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