Andrew O’ Neill has added a four new dates around the UK for his show History Of Heavy Metal. The occult comedian will be playing in Manchester on 1 May, London on 2 May, Cardiff 19 June and Bristol on 21 June.
In this new show O’ Neill brings with him a full band, Reprisal, who provide the soundtrack to the amazing story of heavy metal as it is brilliantly narrated by the metalhead comedian. ZT caught up with the stand-up hero for a few words. “It’s probably the most straightforward show I have ever done,” O’Neill begins. “I just basically go through, fairly chronologically, the story of heavy metal and play some riffs and songs”.
With all the surge in historiography, print and video, metal has seen in the last decade, ZT could not help but wonder if the new show is his contribution to this endeavour… “All these documentaries you have about heavy metal… all the interesting twists and turns that happened in the ’80s are overlooked!” O’Neill replies. He is much more open to the print versions of history however and, when asked which works he enjoyed recently he offers: “Dayal Patterson’s book on black metal was amazing – it’s really good for moving the focus from Norway 1992 and giving a far broader picture. Choosing Death was good… And the Judas Priest biography!”.
So the comedian and heavy metal fanatic actually went to lengths to produce something that does justice to the genre he loves: “Generally, it was checking up on the knowledge that I have acquired from reading magazines and chatting to people… I guess the issue with metal is that it’s oral history more than anything else – it’s how many stories you hear repeated again and again. And I think that this period, 70s and 80s is quite ripe for some re-thinking”.
Read the full interview with Andrew O’Neill in the upcoming issue of Zero Tolerance, out 24 April 2015. You can get tickets for History Of Heavy Metal right here!
