Raging Speedhorn talk about their imminent return

Last night, Hammer Ed-In-Chief Alexander Milas sat down with Gordon Morison – drummer from the newly reformed Raging Speedhorn. Here he talks about how and why the band split, but also what the future holds...

So what happened in 2008 when you guys disappeared into the ether?

“We just decided to call it a day before the band went too far down and we didn’t really think we could do it any more. I don’t know how it reformed. People kept asking me, ‘cause I’m often on tour with other bands, and this year it came together somehow.”

Why do you think you couldn’t continue any more?

“I just think the music scene was changing a lot at that point. Gallows were doing really really well and I just thought that it might have just been our time to go off and do other things.”

Did you feel you were being eclipsed by Gallows?

“I think Gallows are amazing and the new scene was amazing but we were becoming unpopular within the scene. Not in any disrespect to other bands, but we just had to leave it where it was there and then. And it was the best thing we ever did, ‘cause now we can come back and do some shows to people who want to see us.”

The Hate Song

So when did you finally decide that Speedhorn deserved a second go?

“It’s been going backwards and forwards for a while and we were being offered some festival slots that we kept declining. But this year I said we should get back together and member by member we said ‘yeah, let’s do it’. So we had a practice and it was amazing.”

Tell us about the early days of Speedhorn and growin up in Corby.

“There’s nothing there. There’s no train station, no cinema – literally nothing bar this little space where people used to congregate who made music. John, Tony (the other two originals) and I were in a band and Frank and the other guys were in another band, and one day we did a show and decided to get together to try something else. Nowadays Corby is really good but when we were younger it was horrible, you couldn’t get a train anywhere so you were stuck in this really shitty town.”

And yet it’s produced some pretty phenomenal musicians as well, is there a bit of a scene there as a result of being isolated?

“There is now, but when we were younger there weren’t many other bands. There was us and a couple of other bands and that was it.”

So is this a one-off or will there be a new album? What’s next for Speedhorn?

“We don’t really know. There’s always talk after a few beers of doing something else but we’re just going to take it as it comes and see how these shows are. If the shows are amazing we might do something else.”

Listen to the whole interview from TeamRock Radio below.

Alexander Milas

Alexander Milas is an erstwhile archaeologist, broadcaster, music journalist and award-winning decade-long ex-editor-in-chief of Metal Hammer magazine. In 2017 he founded Twin V, a creative solutions and production company.  In 2019 he launched the World Metal Congress, a celebration of heavy metal’s global impact and an exploration of the issues affecting its community. His other projects include Space Rocks, a festival space exploration in partnership with the European Space Agency and the Heavy Metal Truants, a charity cycle ride which has raised over a million pounds for four children's charities which he co-founded with Iron Maiden manager Rod Smallwood. He is Eddietor of the official Iron Maiden Fan Club, head of the Heavy Metal Cycling Club, and works closely with Earth Percent, a climate action group. He has a cat named Angus.