Time To Rock 2023: Diamond Head flies the NWOBHM flag at Knislinge

It is always a real pleasure to enjoy NWOBHM live, even more so if who we are talking about is none other than Diamond Head. You could say that Metallica has built its career on what the British quintet defined during the early 1980s, but that’s something we’ll talk about another time.

The Stourbridge machine, with Brian Tatler as the only original member since its formation in 1976, has continued in the gap, releasing new material on a regular basis despite its comings and goings between 1985 and the new millennium, releasing works as solid as the eponymous Diamond Head from 2016 or its immediate successor The Coffin Train from 2019.

Around 8:30 p.m. in the afternoon the quintet led by Brian Tatler came to the fore, accompanied by guitarist Andy Abberley, vocalist Rasmus Bom Andersen, drummer Karl Wilcox and the most recent of their additions, bassist Paul Gaskin.

With his particular charisma, Tatler did nothing but smile at all times, showing how proud he felt to be there with all of us at that very moment. Furthermore, fate wanted the British guitarist to stay for the entire festival since he would be closing Time To Rock a couple of nights later with his compatriots Saxon.

The fact is that Diamond Head is a safe bet, it is synonymous with quality and spirit, dedication and motivation, and that is something that its members carry within them. The band has a lot of material to go over live, but what their fans want to hear is, without a doubt, the songs from their seminal debut Lightning To The Nations (1980), an NWOBHM epic that never lacks cuts like Helpless, It’s Electric or The Prince, curiously all of them covered by the San Francisco quartet in the middle of that decade, and the one that can never be missing from any of their concerts: Am I Evil?.

There is always room for the odd song from their most recent works such as The Messenger or In The Heat Of The Night, especially Belly Of The Beast, although what the audience really enjoys live, and this is something that was demonstrated on the afternoon of Saturday, July 9 at Knislinge, is that the anthems of several generations like Lightning To The Nations will always have a privileged place in the hearts of all Diamond Head fans.

As for the live band, there is little more to add that has not been said at this point. Vocalist Rasmus Bom Andersen is a true killing machine on the microphone, the best replacement they could have found for the legendary Sean Harris, an energetic and outspoken frontman who knows how to dazzle the audience while being able to nail each and every one of the notes he sings.

Obviously I can’t stop talking about Tatler‘s work on the six strings, but his partner Andy Abberley doesn’t fall short either. The same goes for Paul Gaskin on bass and Karl Wilcox on turntables, the rhythm section sounds as powerful as it is forceful, a musical earthquake that continues to demonstrate that the spirit of the NWOBHM is still more present than ever.