Diamond Head are thought by most people as one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time. Never achieving the heights that some of the lesser acts did – they are still one of the most important bands of the last 40 years and have influenced the likes of Metallica, Megadeth and Thin Lizzy to name a few.

Hailing from 1976 Stourbridge, England – the band formed in 1976. The band’s first album ‘Lightning to the Nations’ was released in 1980 and brought the band to the attention of MCA records. After signing a deal the band went onto record ‘Borrowed Time’ and then came the experimental ‘Canterbury’ in 1983 which caused alot of friction with fans and critics.

After many trials and tribulations, the bands called it quits in 1985. However Metallica’s increasing status and their often mentioned influence of Diamond Head to their sound kept the band’s name relatively prominent and helped back-catalogue sales and the band reformed in 1991.

This re-issue of ‘Lightning to the Nations’ was overseen by guitarist Brian Tatler and Universal music’s Steve Hammond and it has been lovingly remastered from the original tapes and contains not only the original album but a bonus disc of singles from the era.

I recently got the chance to speak to Brian about the re-issue, his thoughts on today’s music industry and his feelings about opening for the Big 4 at Sonisphere.

First off Brian I just want to say congratulations on the Sonisphere opening slots.

Thank you very much, it was brilliant. It’s such a great festival and we had such a fantastic time. It’s one of the biggest things that we have ever done and it was such an honour to be asked to open for the big 4 and on the main stage! My day was really busy so I didn’t get a chance to see too much of the rest of the festival as we were due in France for the Saturday but it was such a fantastic experience.

Did you always want to be a musician or was that something that evolved over time?

My older brother was in a band when I was 10 so I used to watch his band a lot and then he took me to see a lot of bands live also. He took me to see Black Sabbath when I was 14 and that had an effect on me. It seemed like because he had formed a group that it just seemed obvious for me to go and form my own band. I was still at school when I started the band. Before we were a band, we were all friends so I think that really helped us survive the trials and tribulations that we went through.

Was there a good scene around your area for influence when you were starting out?

There wasn’t an awful lot of bands around at all. Stourbridge isn’t that big and there was no rehearsal room or no venue apart from Stourbridge town hall which is quite big and would hold about 500 people. Occasionally bands would come through town like Dr Feelgood and Stray. The venue that I always wanted to play was Dudley. Loads of great bands played there and it was about getting to that level and then hopefully you would move onto the Odeon’s. We would go and see bands at the Birmingham Odeon like Black Sabbath, Rush, AC/DC and Judas Priest. We would go to Birmingham to see these bands but would never dare to dream that we would play there ourselves.

With the issues that you had to deal with in your career – what bands do you think younger musicians should be looking to as a good example of how to do things?

I think that it really helps if you have a member in the band that is really good at the business side of things. If you look at Lars from Metallica, he is just so good at it and even when they hit a stumbling block, they find a way around it and they find a way to survive it. If you take us for example, we hit stumbling blocks but we dissolved when the going got tough. We had members leave and we got dropped by the record label and there was no money and this that and the other – the band imploded really and split up. Where’s if you look at Metallica, they have had some terrible problems throughout their career and instead of splitting them up – it just made them stronger and it has probably brought them together more than they know. They love that fact that they can find solutions to these issues and everybody loves a survivor.

Do you think there is room for bands to be progressive in today’s industry?

With Canterbury, the critics and the fans didn’t like the album and they thought that the album was over reached and that we were trying too hard and couldn’t understand why we had tried to introduce piano. When we did that album we were taking a leaf out of the book of bands like Queen and The Beatles who could just experiment to their hearts content and change styles and do anything they felt like. They already had the fan base so it was a lot easier to accomplish this and they would either lose a few fans but make a lot more but with Diamond Head, it was like we almost changed direction completely and it was a bit too much for most of our fans to stomach. Metal has become so compartmentalised and it is a shame really as there used to be more freedom to try things and people would give you a chance.

When you went into the studio to record ‘Lightning to the Nations’ did you have a clear idea of what you were looking to achieve or did you just go in to see what would happen?

We understood that some records sounded better than others, so we had an idea about production but we didn’t really know what it was. What I most remember is the 7 songs that we chose were all the best songs that we had played live at the time. We had played them for at least a few months to a year and had tested them with our fans at about 50 gigs. We had written about 100 songs by the time that album came out. Songs we had written during this time like ‘Dead Reckoning’ were used on later releases once we signed with MCA.

The 7 songs we chose for ‘Lightning’ was the best album we could make at that time. It was our second time in a 24 track studio and the entire record took 7 days to record and mix. It was very quick and a lot of it was done in one take.

Did this re-issue project take a long time to put together?

It has taken a long time to put together actually. Steve Hammond from Universal has been wanting to do this for a long time. He was involved in the 2001 release on Sanctuary. It is a passion of his to get classic albums out and available to the public and he and I had been talking about doing this since about 2008. We wanted to get it right and get the right moment to do it and I am really happy with how it turned out.

With the rumors flying about Black Sabbath reforming – do you think there would be a chance of you guys touring together again?

I had not even thought of that (laughs). It would be very nice and I would love that but I would imagine that they would have a young band supporting them such as Mastadon or Lamb of God. I would really jump at the chance if it came our way though. They are such an incredible band.

DIAMOND HEAD DELUXE RE-ISSUE OF “LIGHTNING TO THE NATIONS” is OUT NOVEMBER 14TH.