Diamond Head : Fforde Green Hotel, Leeds, 13/01/1980

What's going on here then? Go to the local expecting to see Quartz and they don't show up. Now they'll try to feed us some high-school drop outs with one guitar and a stolen amp between them.
Here we go...
Must admit they look okay though; permed hair, typical red and black leather strides, promising opener too. I'll give it 10 minutes.
'Trick or Treat' is the first number on my notebook, along with 'Play It Loud' and 'Streets Of Gold', then there's their first single 'Shoot Out The Lights' and 'Helpless', just to prove that not all titles have three words. Kindly note that this is no ordinary single, its a double. A modest eh? A clever ploy really as I wouldn't like to choose between them.
Watching vocalist Sean Harris is quite amusing - until I realise what I thought was funny is actually charisma, kids style. In other words, if this was a concert, not a pub, any 14 year old would stare wide-eyed; then practice in front of a mirror. Drummer Duncan Scott even appeared to play beats designed especially for Harris to waggle his Rod Stewart-clone posterior to with maximum ease.
All I want to say about lead guitarist Brian Tatler is that he was good. Not because 'good' is less offensive than 'fair', but because the hunt for superlatives to describe someone who fingers his fretboard at twice the speed of light gets so boring after a while. Same goes for bassist Colin Kimberley.
With this group, no matter how a song begins it invariably winds up loud and heavy. That's the good thing about diamond: It's solid rock.

Lesley Stones

Record Mirror, 2nd February, 1980.