Twisted Faith

Rock and Roll has never been about good clean fun- is that the appeal? Even with the moon in June lyrics and the unorthodox hair. Even in the era of flower child innocence and the Osmond brother’s pearly smiles Rock and Roll has always been a sweaty nasty business.

From the very first time the world was introduced to the beauty of rock conservatives have dubbed it the "devils music" and has been the biggest fear of society. But it didn’t stop there!

Bill Hayley’s "Rock Around The Clock" was seen to be the first bona fide rock and roll song (by most accounts). This was the start of the revolution of young talent trying to make it big in the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Throughout the last 50 years rock and roll has been a big part of everyone’s lives. From the three chord fifties into the sixties. When the Beatles came along rock and roll became a vehicle to try to change the world or at least an excuse to use drugs and … um…."Expand ones horizons!"

By the seventies and eighties musicians became adolescent millionaires who fed their fans on fantasies by publicly indulging their hungry ids. As Vince Neal of Motley Crue said about the life of rock and roll " I think if you take sex, drugs and rock and roll, let your imagination run wild, and then multiply it by ten, then you’ll have an idea of what our life has been like.

But the obvious question arises "is the music and the lifestyle inseparable?" Can rock stars satisfy their fans without their mutual love becoming a funeral pyre?

A heavy metal bond between four average guys about to face the big bad secondary school world. We knew nothing of the lives each member lead or even what name to call them by, lost in the sprawl to make friends with the first person you meet believing what your parents always told us from primary one " You meet your real friends in your secondary school." No member decided his friends it just happened. All four of us sat at the same table by the window of Mrs Finlay’s immaculately clean H.E. room. We had no idea what the rest of our lives had in store. Did we really care?

Who would of guessed that out of that average group of teenagers could come a trip with so many twists and turns you get dizzy thinking about it and become what we know today as Twisted Faith.

I am Ande and this is my recollection of how the Faith hAve come to be like we are now. I hope I don’t come across as big headed that’s not my intention but I don’t want to lose the memories I’ve been given. I’ll spare you all the boredom of the first year of school as things only began in second year…

It all started when Waldo suggested starting a band, but none of us ever expected it to go any further than that. Of course we would talk about what we would do in the band, for example dressing me up as a giant spider and setting me alight (very mature). Despite all this there was no urgency to get instruments and start. In fact, it was another two years before that would happen. Waldo was the only one who really understood the line up of a rock band, I had never heard of a bass guitar before it was decided that was my role. That’s as far as things went for the next two years.

It wasn’t until the summer of 1998 that we began to take the idea seriously. Having discovered the joys of rock at the age of fourteen Waldo began playing the guitar and three or four months later Neal got his first guitar as a Christmas present form his parents. I can remember at the end of third year on sports day the four of us going into the changing rooms at Campsie playing fields and listening to some "Scary Stuff" in the form of KoRn – Issues. I don’t know about the rest of them but this was my first introduction to newer forms of rock a welcome change from the increasingly popular but hated Dance music brought to the masses by untalented artists such as DJ Jean and Alice DJ who was bold enough to say "who needs guitars anyway." Well if it hadn’t been for real musicians such as the Beatles or Elvis there would never have been the progression of music into the drivel that disgraces music today. I mean real musicians wrote the songs they destroy with their manufactured bands, Steps in particular who have never even wrote a song of their own and were picked at random, not for any talent they possessed, it’s a disgrace that music has been allowed to get so bad! Art is what the mind can imagine but only the heart can know to be true. In the case of modern pop music the imagination and heart have died and nobody will turn off the damn life support machine, so please someone save the world pull the plug on fake music and conformist ideals.

The first rock album I bought was by Nirvana and the album was called Nevermind. Nirvana would prove to be Twisted Faith’s biggest influence along with bands like Motorhead the most influential band in the history of the world. Through third year the band was put on hold so we could concentrate on key stage three exams. By the start of fourth year we began deciding who should play what. Waldo –Lead Guitar, Lead Vocals, Neal –Rhythm guitar, backing vocals, Bryce –Drums and Ande –Bass guitar and backing vocals. It was around this time that we all started growing our hair.

We experimented with different name up until the time we got our instruments. Some of the names were Arachnobesity, Ch4 and Blunt Pentagon. It wasn’t until around November 2000 that we finally decided the name of our band was going to be "The Inert Elements". Unfortunately at the time when people found out about the band only Neal and Waldo could play any instruments so people didn’t take us seriously.

We managed to persuade our parents to get us the equipment we needed to make "The Inert Elements" work. I got a Westfield "Fender" Precision Bass with a huge Amp which nobody knows the size of, Bryce got his drum kit, Neal a £400 Black Yamaha Electro Acoustic guitar with am 80 watt Marshall Acoustic Amp and Waldo got an Electric Guitar with a 10 watt Kustom practice amp.

We had our first practice on the 28^th of December 2000. The first practice was a shambles. The layout of the amps was way out and we had no idea of how to make everything sound right. It took us three weeks to learn our very first song, Methadone Monday written by Waldo. It was about a family who’s new-born baby had to take methadone because the parents were heroin addicts.

We all wrote songs although Waldo and me wrote most. We had been writing songs since the beginning of fourth by Christmas we had our first three albums written and titled. Waldo had the biggest input in the first three but I have written the fourth although the rest of the band has only seen three or four songs of it.

We got our first gig on the 1^st of March 2001. We were the support band for Inertia; it was also to their first gig. We played two songs, "Ayem Spechall" written by Neal and "Smells like teen spirit" by Nirvana. We only knew three songs by that time but still got an encore to go up and play "Smells like teen spirit" again. Although Inertia came up and took away the drums and turned off our amps, the night was still good although not as big a success as we would have hoped. Some people began mock us because they either didn’t like the music we played or more likely the way we played it. Most of the ridicule however was about the length of our hair. Of course, what a freakish thing to do, ey? Who on earth would want to be different break away from the "traditional" number one at the sides two on top please. We were called everything from "the astropuffs" to "the muff gang." We let most of it pass without concern but it got boring and annoying after a while so we gave out a few beatings.

The next few months were pretty quiet until March when we began recording a few songs for a charity CD in school. Mr Blacoe and Mr Montgomery were organising it and asked us if we wanted to have a go so we agreed and that was it. We began recording about a week later, we played Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana and Methadone Monday. We were still really inexperienced so the recording was pretty poor but it was a step into the mechanics of recording. The CD was never actually made because Mr Blacoe ended up resigning two months later and was never to be seen again ( it wasn’t our fault!! ).

By May our repertoire of songs had increased rapidly with us learning a song every practice. We enter into the inter-schools talent show at the end of May and won the Academy heat with a cover of Warning by Greenday. We went up to collect our prizes (Easter Eggs, hell yes!!) in front of an unappreciative shroud of steeks and Pac Men but it was still good to win.

June came along with the best night of my life so far. The band went up to the Ulster Hall to see Motorhead play. It was amazing, extremely amazing the atmosphere was excellent and there’s definitely something special about watching your lead guitarist puking in a dirty bog after eating a undercooked burger (or rat burger as we better know it) with and old man with a long white beard mumbling "It’s the wrong way to go lads." We all travelled home with Waldo’s dad that night with me apparently stoned (but I wasn’t… seriously I wasn’t).

We entered into the end of school talent show at the end of June with Mr Bingam (the man) and Dr. Rees (the man) as the two judges. It was here that we announced are name change from "The Inert Elements" to "TWISTED FAITH." Everybody seemed to prefer the name change and so it proved to be a good decision. We played Sonne by Ramstein and won. We got ten pounds at the end of year prize giving in school.

We didn’t get much practising done overt the summer but we did manage to get a singer. She is called Ann Louise and heard about us through my sister. She came out for an audition and from then on she was Mrs. Faith. It took a while for her to get used to the way we did things but everything was going well and the performance at the end of school talent show had gained us a lot of respect from people in our school.

Nothing memorable really happened that is worth putting in here until the twenty fifth of October when we were offered a gig in the rugby club where we were to be the headlining band. We accepted of course and the date was set for the ninth of November. We would have to fill two and a half hours and we only knew enough songs to play for a hour so we called in the help of wanna be punks Xli and our closest rivals Krass. The two support bands were to play half an hour each and we would play an hour. We got Enda (Jesus the drum teacher) to come and help us out with the sound and we began advertising around Omagh. So everything was set for the big night...

The nine came and at five o’clock we headed down to the rugby club to begin setting up. Things were planned to kick off at half eight but we ended up being ready early so Krass went on at about twenty past and played their set to an excellent crowd. The atmosphere was brilliant by the time Krass were coming off. Xli came on to the stage and played their Blink 182 style pop punk for forty minutes. The time came for Twisted Faith to come on. The nerves were overcome with the anticipation to get up and play the music. We opened with Otherside by The red-hot chilli peppers then played one of our own songs. This gig was the first chance we got to pay all of our own songs and the crowd seemed to like them. It was a brilliant feeling watching all those people moshing to our music. Everyone seemed to like our performance so the band was on a real high. The night was a complete success we even got an encore and played Zombie by the Cranberries by far our best song.

Our next gig was arranged for the fourteenth of December at St Columbus church Hall and was organised by Alasdair Patton (Bubba) it was well advertised but not many people showed up so the night was a big let down and was probably our worst performance since the Methodist gig.

The last event we did in 2001 was the Christmas break talent show organised by the sixth years at Omagh Academy. Nobody said anything insulting about how we played so it must’ve been OK.

That wraps up the first year of Twisted Faith. The Friday nights staying up all night, burning packets of crisps, swigging beer in fields full of slurry and making the most minging food at two or three in the morning will go on and Twisted Faith will continue playing music until death engulfs the world. Are you ready for Judgement ?!?