Sounds From The Junkshop #61 - One Minute Silence

 

"Some you win some you lose..." - One Minute Silence - Fish Out Of Water

As you've probably gathered from reading various SFTJ's in recent months, not to mention the Worst Albums Ever list we did on this site the other month, it's safe to say that I was not a big fan of nu-metal. For the most part, I just found it unlikeable in the extreme - as someone who'd always considered themselves a fan of tunefulness in metal having grown up with the likes of the Wildhearts and Terrorvision, having the pages of Kerrang! suddenly invaded by groups of knuckleheaded fratboys dressing like a bunch of toddlers, peddling a mixture of bad rapping and skin-crawlingly insincere "teenage" angst from a bunch of guys who were clearly much nearer to their thirties than their school years with a decided paucity of actual tunes and decent riffs, it's safe to say that I was pretty damn grateful when the Darkness came along to casually nuke the careers of the likes of Limp Bizkit et al around 2003. Good bloody riddance.

There were, however, a couple of exceptions to the rule. The main one was Grand Theft Audio, partly I'll admit because of the Wildhearts/3 Colours Red connection in there but also the fact that they approached the whole thing with a bit more of a sense of fun and showmanship than most of the rest of the genre. The other were fellow Brits One Minute Silence. For some reason, I was always convinced that they were a Bradford band (I'm pretty sure I remember hearing from somewhere that their bassist Glen, despite originally coming from Gibraltar, had some sort of connection to the area) which was enough to pique my interest but when I heard their breakthrough single Fish Out Of Water on a Kerrang! cover CD, it stuck out like a sore thumb among a lot of the also-rans on there. With its sinister intro riff giving way to a full on guitar assault and its panicky tale of existential dread, it quickly became a regular fixture on my show on KUBE in my final year at Keele.

I remember going to see the band (I'm pretty sure it was at Bradford Rio's) shortly after I left Uni in the summer of 2001 and it was a great gig - I still remember the slow building fury of opener Sixteen Stone Pig kicking the set into gear and the place going absolutely nuts (I also seem to remember bassist Glen doing a Danny Wildheart and being still stood at the bar when the band went on stage before realising his mistake and sprinting to the front when he saw the others up there!). Though it seems not everybody shared my enthusiasm for the band - I remember picking up the parent album Buy Now Saved Later from the Harrogate branch of Our Price that summer and there was an American lad with a broad New York accent working behind the counter who got really incensed about my purchase - "Dey a bunch o'phonies man! Dey always talkin' about da Bronx, dey never been to da Bronx!" I quickly picked the album up, made my excuses and left...

Geographical gripes aside, Buy Now Saved Later was a great album and one of my favourites of that era. OMS always seemed to suffer a bit by being compared unfavourably to either System of a Down or Rage Against The Machine which I always thought a bit unfair as songs like 1845, Holy Man and Rise And Shine were good enough to stand up in their own right. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I much prefer One Minute Silence to SOAD who I always found just a bit too contrived and silly for my liking (their recent support of Donald Trump probably didn't do them any favours in my eyes either tbh). As for RATM...yeah, I do see the influence with the short sharp shock Tom Morello style riffs and frontman Yap's similar vocal style to Zack de la Rocha although he's different enough that you could never call him a clone. Whatever - the point is, it was a jolt of much needed political fury among a scene that appeared more concerned with flushing the cistern than smashing the system for the most part. Listening back to it for the first time in way too long as I write this, it definitely brings back a lot of good memories of seeing venue moshpits get well and truly detonated.

Unfortunately despite decent sales and reasonable press, One Minute Silence seemed to be that band who were perennially bubbling under without ever making a full breakthrough although with Fish Out Of Water being a minor hit, they looked like they were on their way. However, it would turn out to be the last single from Buy Now Saved Later with the group taking a brief sojourn before returning with the ferocious One Lie Fits All album in 2003. Again though, despite it being a good effort which showed the band progressing musically with the rapping being toned down a bit in favour of Yap singing on more tunes and the group showing off their musical versatility, it ended up being another slow-burner with the first two singles, the pounding Revolution and the ferocious We Bounce both missing the chart but the third single I Wear My Skin actually giving the group their biggest hit to date, just missing the Top 40.

Unfortunately, it would turn out to be the group's final act as they split in October that year. Apparently there was no animosity, just a feeling that they'd realistically taken things as far as they could. Yap would go on to a spoken word career while I remember seeing an ad on the Leeds Music Scene website (which I was writing for at the time) that Glen was looking to put together a new band in the Yorkshire area. Eddie the drummer would go on to join New Disease who were briefly touted as the next big thing by Kerrang! for about five minutes in the mid-noughties.

One Minute Silence would reform in 2011 and have been plugging away intermittently ever since although apart from a new EP (which I have to hold my hands up and admit not having listened to), I'm not aware of any new material. I'm not sure what the status of the group is at the moment but I'd certainly be happy to go to see them if they tour around here in the future although I'm under no illusion I'd be able to mosh along as enthusiastically as my early twentysomething self did back in the day! Either way though, they deserve a mention in here for being in my opinion, one of the genuinely worthy bands to come out of the otherwise pretty atrocious nu-metal scene, eschewing the whole misogynistic wanton stupidity of that movement for a genuine attempt at rabble-rousing anger against the corruption at the top of our society. Buy Now Saved Later and One Lie Fits All both come under the category of being overlooked gems in my opinion and certainly deserve rediscovering. Certainly I think any Rage Against The Machine fans reading will find a lot to enjoy in them.