Getting a member of One Minute Silence to sit still long enough to answer a load of questions was never going to be an easy task, what with them being the most energetic band in the entire world. Late one night in June 1999, I followed the band and, while no one was looking, kidnapped drummer Eddie Stratton, nailed him to a chair and refused to let him go until he talked. Here are the results.

In the last 2 or 3 months OMS have gone through more guitarists than most bands do in their entire lifetime. What’s going on?

We don’t really know! Answers on a postcard please! Well, Kee had some personal stuff to deal with, Chris just wanted to produce. That’s the long and the short of it. Massy is the new guy, and he rocks like you wouldn’t believe. He is 100%, dedicated, eager, in his favourite band, and ready to destroy everything! So no more surprises except for the new album, which will KILL ALL LIVING THINGS!

What effect will these line-up changes have on the sound of the new album?

There is a much more intelligent sound to it - a real progression from the debut. Massy understands sounds as well as riffs, and so there will be a lot to listen to! We can promise the power, the intensity, and also the inventiveness of a guy who is really thinking with the music.

How long before we get to hear that album?

We shall finish it around the end of October, then, the release date is up to the record company. It won’t be before the end of this year though - the novelty songs and general shit released for the bullshit millennium will bury anything serious which gets released, so we will put it out in the new year.

As a band how do you approach your music and songwriting?

With a very long pole. Raw, unfinished OMS music is dangerously unstable and radioactive, so we have to wear Chemical & Biological Warfare suits to approach it, until we can defuse it, and make it safe to work with. Then we take out all the radiation, and harness its power, before recording it, and putting it onto a CD. All of this happens in a hermetically sealed chamber, so nobody gets injured, and we have to wear titanium ear plugs to shield our brains. The finished product is lethal to the uninitiated listener, so you have to be ready for it. Still, what we release has only a tenth of the power it has when we write it, because mankind will never be able withstand the full effect of One Minute Silence.

The way it goes, is we all sit in the rehearsal room, and bring riffs, song ideas, melodies, whatever, and then put different ideas together. You have to force ideas through, because everyone talks at once! Then we gradually beat things into shape, and if we don’t jump around and go fucking MENTAL, we jettison it. It has to be AWESOME for us to keep it!

OMS have always been quite politically outspoken, particularly in areas such as racism and, on the last tour, the Millennium Dome. Does this show up more or less in your new songs?

Of course. We couldn’t write stuff about love, motorbikes, women, etc. That’s cliche mongering, and it’s nothing more than words to fit to the music. How banal. How could we get passionate singing ‘Oooh, baby, don’t leave me’, that’s just a peg to fit a vocal line to, and anyone who sings that cliched shit with ‘passion’ is a fucking LIAR! Celine Dion can fuck off and die with her ‘passion’ and ’sincerity’! WHAT the FUCK does ‘my heart will go on’ mean anyway? My heart will go on what? Fire? Let’s fucking hope so!

“Celine Dion’s chest spontaneously exploded today at the Albert Hall” - that’s a concert I’m going to!

Carrying on along the same lines: Jimmy Dennis. Discuss.

Jimmy is a mate of mine. He’s a musician, who was framed for the murder of a young girl back in 1991, and now waits on Death Row to be murdered by the State of Pennsylvania.

He couldn’t have done it, but the State of Pennsylvania are trying to kill him, to offer voters a head on a spike, in order to secure political advantage. That’s how the Death Penalty is administered in the USA. And this is in the face of international law, and all conventions of Human Rights. The USA breaks the law routinely with regard to executions and torture, but we only hear about how Clinton ‘upholds and guarantees Human Rights’. This is just a transparent LIE. The US Government has a disgraceful record in Human Rights, as evidenced by Amnesty International’s continual condemnation of its practices, and continual requests from the UN for the US State to observe the law, which the US State just ignores - who is going to argue with Numero Uno?

Anyway, Jimmy needs our help. He is five foot four, and the killer was six foot tall! Jimmy was convicted by the accusation of a guy who was handcuffed to a chair for five hours, and interrogated and threatened by five cops until he cracked, gave in, and fingered Jimmy just to get out of there. He since retracted his accusation.

Jimmy needs your support, and your encouragement. Here’s an address you can write to - be polite because invective will absolutely NOT help Jimmy Dennis, and request that this case be re-tried, so the truth can come out:

Governor Tom Ridge
225 Main Capitol
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
17120 USA

Here’s Jimmy’s email:

jimmydennis@mailcity.com

He would appreciate your letters!

Also, if you want to donate towards his legal fund (they don’t tend to get legal aid on Death Row!), he needs $600 a month, you can. You can offer donations via email to Jimmy’s campaign headquarters, and Tracy or Dave there will tell you what to do!:

ccadp@home.com

Do you feel that the British music scene is rising up out of the underground at the moment and do you think it will ever be able to compete with all those “hip” American bands?

Well, it happens where it happens! Since there are five times as many bands in the US, there’s a five times greater probability that bands will be awesome! So it just happens where it happens! The important thing is not to copy or derive from a particular band, but to do the stuff you really love. Then it will sound awesome! I really don’t believe in ’scenes’, each band is its own entity!

What bands should people be looking out for?

Er, there’s a question! Liberty 37 are doing some good music, Breed 77 are about to explode! Lockdown, Junior Loaded, Freebase, they are all ones to watch. And you HAVE to check out Stampin’ Ground - they kicked my bollocks off during the last OMS tour!

From the US, there are some friends of ours worth checking out - Shovelbarn are making some fantastic noises, and Chakra are definitely worth a punt. They are on the net, so search away!

OMS are known for having insane crowds at live shows and, having experienced it, I can vouch for that. Why do people react so differently at your shows than at other gigs?

We unquestionably LOVE what we do, we are in our favourite band. This is infectious. There’s real passion going on here, and we utterly ADORE our audience, so they feel good about us, and there’s no ego crisis, and no ‘them and us’ separation between the band and the audience! It’s YOUR stage, so we encourage people to come and sing with us, shit, if you know the drum parts, you can do the fucking song - it gives me a chance to get in the pit where I can crack some heads! It’s a real synergy!

How does Glen do that jumping thing? It has now been scientifically proven to be impossible!

He eats beans and locusts. I actually don’t know! I used to play bass, and I thought I was active, but he has unlimited reserves of energy! When he was a child, he used to have to run around the block five times before he could bring his energy level down enough to play with the other kids!

I am now going to give you 5 (vaguely) random words. Please write whatever comes into your head when you read them:

- Future

STADIUMS. Mosh pit across the entire pitch at Wembley. Like fucking BRAVEHEART.

- Live

As opposed to die, the most important thing there is to do! Live! Life above everything. Then there’s the other definition, as in playing live! We need to do this constantly, because live shows are the stuff of LIFE for OMS!

- Music

NOISE! Life!

- Stupid

Politicians. Priests. Soldiers. Cops. Anyone who follows orders. The entire education system. Spice Girls. Boyzone.

- Solo

MASTURBATION!!!!!

And finally, where will you be for the new year?

We actually want to be playing a gig at the stroke of midnight - start the next millennium the way we mean to finish it, because in the next century they will finally discover the secret of everlasting life, and we can all just mosh and laugh for the rest of time!!!!