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Didn't you ever think about doing a CD of new songs and one with old and then release it as a D-CD? 
      "The thing was that we wanted to have the album out fairly quickly. The problem, as always, with this business is that you can't do anything quickly. We recorded the The Witching Hour thing over a year ago now, aiming to get the thing released within a few months. That never happened. Also, of course we had the set back with the singers. It would have probably come together quicker if Luther had been on board with us. When that fell through we had to work in a new singer as well. That steadied things down a lot. It became impossible to do a CD quickly of new songs."

On this new album, if I've understood it right there are a couple of songs from each old album. What made you re-record these particular old? 
     "The way that came about was basically that we were going to do some festival dates. It was for large shows really. We put a set together, a large set, of the favourite songs we all enjoyed doing live. The amazing thing was how fresh it all sounded, Harry's voice gave it more depth than it had before, so we thought why not record this and it gave it a wide cross section of our material. That is exactly what our live act comprises of at the moment. The things on "The Witching Hour" is what you can expect to hear from us live. 
      There are three new songs ("The Other Side", "You'll Never See It Coming" and "In Your Dreams") on "The Witching Hour". We tried to get it that there is sort of material from all our previous albums. That is with the exclusion of "Cloak And Dagger" because we did actually re-release that one on CD through our own record company."

What kind of expectations do you have on this album and what do you expect to get out of it? 
     "To get back into people's minds. That is what we really hope to achieve."

How did you get Neat to take an interest in releasing The Witching Hour album and do you feel Neat is the perfect label for Witcfynde? 
     "How did that come about? I honestly don't know how that came about. Jess Cox from Neat Records was pretty much involved with us right from the early days of the reformation, if that's what you'd like to call it, a couple of years ago. Mainly we had interest from people wanting us to appear at festivals and that was amazing. There were festivals in Germany and America. Jess was the person who actually took the acts from the UK over to those festivals so we got involved with Jess on that level. 
     What else happened was that we re-released the Cloak & Dagger LP through our own web site, which Jess got interested in to distribute. When we started to work on new material Jess was interested in being involved with that as well. We just went with it. We thought we could trust Jess quite nicely. To be honest with you we never actually looked
for any other label to put the product out. 
      The Witching Hour is just something new from us on the market. That's all we hoped for and now we want to progress from there."

I know that the Internet has meant a lot to Witchfynde but do you still think had the Internet not been available that you'd still would have been here today? 
     "I'm not sure about that. Internet has played a very big part in bringing the band back alive again for us. It was with all the sort of mentions and references to Witchfynde that brought the resurgence of interest back into the band."

Something that struck me when I first heard Witchfynde back in the early 80s was that
your sound was different from most other NWOBHM bands. What was it that influenced
you when you started Witchfynde? 
     "It was just a combination of the interest in, broadly speaking, the occult. That is such a broad spectrum of interest in the general occult. The music side, it was two sorts of lives that that sort of happened at the same time. The bands I was listening to when I was at school was Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and that was where I learned to play the guitar. We just me up with people at school and we started to play and that did eventually become Witchfynde."

When I listen to "The Witching Hour" I can hear traces of the blues. Where does that
come from? 
     "We have always been very basic. It's a very basic, raw type of sound. We didn't know anything about these NWOBHM acts. We never thought we were part of anything to be honest at that time. We just used to do our own thing. We came from a very remote part of the UK, we never sort of mix with any of those bands. We used to go down to London occasionally for playing gigs and that seemed to be where all NWOBHM were starting from, the Samsons, Angel Witchs and the Iron Maidens. We felt quite far removed from that type of thing. We were just very simple and raw in our approach. I think we've
maintained that and we never pretend to be clever or anything that we aren't. The thing with the bluesy type of influence I think is because of the quality of Harry's voice. I think he seem to have more depth than any singer we've used to be with before. That may be were the bluesy sound comes from."

That was one of my questions, if you felt that you were a part of the NWOBHM when it was at its height. 
     "We didn't. I don't think we ever felt we were a part of it, as strange as it may seem. We've certainly been categorised in that movement now because of the period of time I guess. I think that the whole thing was very much on the back of the punk movement. I'm sure that it influenced us, this sort of raw energy and certainly the thing with getting out your own products. I'm sure that must have come from the punk movement. Before that everybody would try for years to get a big record deal. Instead the punks they put out their own records and tapes and did their own thing. I'm sure that the NWOBHM owed a lot to the punk movement."

Given that the movement was called NWOBHM, what was the first wave of British heavy metal? Deep Purple and Black Sabbath were hardly called heavy metal when they first started. 
     "I guess that was called heavy rock or just rock. But they were certainly the first wave. The big bands like Purple and Sabbath or Uriah Heep. That's what I mean. They got the big record labels. The new thing to come up had to be the new wave because you got the same sort of type of bands bringing out their own things without any big labels backing them."

Given how the Rondolet label managed to pretty much fuck everything up I couldn't help wondering how did you end up on Rondolet to begin with? 
     "I guess it was ourselves being quite naive and desperate at that time. We had been playing for years without any record label or interest. Certainly we had sent of tapes to EMI and Virgin without any interest at all. So what we decided to do was to play everywhere constantly, which we did. We ended up with an incredibly fanatical and loyal following. When we came and played back round were we came from this fellow went completely berserk and at the same time we decided to record the Give 'Em Hell single and just put it ourselves. All the sessions had been done and we were all set to have the vinyl pressed and everything. We did this gig in Mansford and these two chaps who ran a record shop in Mansford came to the gig and could not believe it so they decided to form Rondolet Records. Basically to get our Give 'Em Hell single out. We just signed to them and they put it out. To start with it was quite all right. They put us on Def Leppard tour and certainly it was the biggest success we had and definitely still is. But then they got greedy and we had offers from different labels, EMI being one, to buy us over but they said no. They wanted to keep all the money for themselves. So we got totally ripped off. They didn't have the money to keep pushing them towards what the band needed so it gone to a halt."

If I remember it correctly you also released the second album Stagefright on the Rondolet label.
     "They picked up their option. Things were going all right with the Stagefright album. That was right after the Def Leppard tour. With the Stagefright album we started to play headlining shows by ourselves to promote the Stagefright album. It was after that it all fell through and it came to pieces with Rondolet."

So you moved labels for the Cloak & Dagger album and ended up on an equally bad label. 
     "The thing that happened then was that Rondolet still got us under contract but they said that they didn't have the money for us to do another album. They wouldn't let us go and record for another label so we were really stuck. We wrote the Cloak & Dagger album and got a producer in with us to try and help us out and what happened then was that the Expulsion label was actually somebody Rondolet owed a lot of many to. A deal was done that we could get away from Rondolet buy recording for the Expulsion Company. So it got rid of Rondolet from our necks and it got rid of some of the debts Rondolet owed this company. That is why we moved to them. What happened then was that the Expulsion Company decided to go bankrupt not to having to pay us for the album so we got stitched up again." 

Your luck didn't turn when you signed with Mausoleum, did it? 
     "No it didn't. We thought it had. On paper it seemed an extremely good label and a very good move. We spent a year in the studio recording the Lords Of Sin album with a producer who actually owned the studio. It was the first time we were able to take that time and get a sort of more quality type of sound. But then as soon as we were finished recording the album and gave it to Mausoleum they also went bankrupt. We're still not sure what happened to that. We are sure that some of the albums did actually sell and they still keep releasing bits'n'pieces of Lords Of Sin from time to time and we yet we never see any of the royalties. Again it was another unfortunate deal."

Now that your back with a new album do you think we'll see the Give 'Em Hell and Stagefright albums being re-released by the ones owing the rights to them? 
     "We would like to get to re-release them by ourselves. There are contractual difficulties with that at the moment. We don't see that they would be re-released by the Rondolet people because we got legal people looking into that. The chaps who ran the Rondolet has done a runner anyway."

With all this bad luck with the labels did you ever feel that he band was cursed? 
     "No I didn't. I don't think that comes into it. We know a lot of people in the music business and it's nothing new for that sort of thing to happen. We didn't think it was anything like that going on. There are other things that did happen. Those who that to us, they don't come out of it very well so it works that way."

When you recorded Give ‘Em Hell album what were your expectations, what did you hope to get out of it and did you feel you got it? 
     "Yes, I think we did at the time. It was just what we'd been wanting. It would have been alot more gratifying if we had been with a bigger record company or we could have had more promotion but it did what we intended for it to do. It got the band across to an awful lot more people and they put it on to the record player, which again was incredible exposure for us at the time. We spent six or seven years going round playing venues, smaller venues and straight away we where in the big concert situation were you get the interest of so many people. I think it did quite good for us."

When you toured with Def Leppard after the release of Give 'em Hell I understand that you had a pretty elaborate stage show? 
     "At the time we did the tour with Def Leppard we didn't have much of a stage show because it was just a support slot were we just had to go on and entertain. When we did our own shows after the Leppard tour we had quite a good stage show at the time. All the usual things that you nowadays expect. We also had different characters on stage and different bits'n'pieces, dancers and that sort of things. At that time it was quite different. There was nobody else around doing it in the UK."

Back when you released albums, did you tour much in support of the records? 
    "We did for the first two, Give 'em Hell and Stagefright. We were out all the time touring for them. For the Cloak & Dagger the shows were a little bit less. Again we had no record company backing for us to be doing the live shows. For the Lords Of Sin album we only did one show straight after its releases in London. There was not much touring towards the end. 
      We did some shows in Europe between the Stagefright and Lords Of Sin. We did some brief shows in Germany and France and also we did a few in the UK for those."

Did you feel that the interest was different in mainland Europe than in the UK? 
      "At that time no. It seemed pretty much the same. What I think has happened after that period in the early 80s, is I think it all changed in the UK. The UK has become totally diverged really of the venues and the level of interest in heavy metal. It carried on a lot better in Europe than it did in the UK. It survived much better in Europe than it did here."

If you look at the mainland European scene and compare it to the UK it seems that the UK scene hasn't progressed the same way as the European. 
     "I agree. That is the other way of looking at it. There wasn't really anybody out there doing anything to get the people interested. I agree on that. I've been looking into it myself because we've been asked what the actual scene in the UK is and there isn't one actually. It's very sparse. Unless you're the big names and they still attract incredible audiences because they offer something and yet there's nothing really coming up to get the people interested."

When you released your albums alongside new ones by Saxon, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest etc. did you ever feel overlooked and forgotten about? 
    "I guess so. Again that was the thing with the record label. We played with Maiden right from the early days when they had Di'Anno, before they were signed. We played with Saxon before they got a proper deal and they got big deals and we didn't. They were both great bands but we didn't really keep in touch with Maiden because they were based in London and we were up here. But with Saxon we kept in touch with quite well. We played with Saxon up to sort of the Wheels Of Steel time. They got a very good business deal behind them, which obviously helped."

When I read old stuff in the press about Witchfynde it sometime seems that the press looked at you as more of a joke than a serious band. Is this something that you too noticed back then? 
     "I guess it gave them something to pick a fight with. We had the imagery and things that was something for them to write about. There were bands I guess that there was not much for them to pick on. The press didn't really like us, which is another thing that has totally amazed me when we've done this reform thing. I now speak to people in the press, people like Malcolm Dome who was quite a good friend and was good to us at the time, and everybody are now kind and very complimentary to us and I find that very odd. 

Looking back on the eighties, is there something you wish you’d done differently? 
     "Not really. I know it's all hindsight to say we shouldn't have signed that first deal, we should have stuck it out and got a better deal. But now I think it's the way things went and it has kept that sort of the mystery side of the band because we didn't get the over-exposure that other bands got so we tend to like to not giving everything away. I'm sure that's the appeal now. People didn't really see us much in those days. They heard about us and I think that has probably worked a little bit to our benefit."

There's always been a cloud of mystery surrounding Witchfynde. How serious did you take the whole occult/magic thing? 
     "We did take it fairly seriously. Different members of the band are involved in different projects to varying degrees. I myself am very much committed to what I'm involved with. We don't do it just for a gimmick or for a joke. We are pretty serious about it. 
      Since we sort of went away in the early 80s things have come on with the black metal/occult metal genre. A lot of it nowadays is all sorts of gore and things. We were never into that side of things. I don't think we would ever try and compete with that sort of thing. We are much more subtle in our aims and projects than that type of thing. The imagery is a large part of the band but we leave the blood and gore to other people."

When the media trashed you in the 80s much had to do with the fact that you had this mysteriously surrounding. 
     "That was something they could write about. It was something different, something they could latch on to. We had a lot of people, record people and business people who said that we should think about not using it. We do actually write fairly decent songs as a band without that sort of trappings in the imagery which a lot of the business people thought was holding us back in a way."

To some Witchfynde is one of the three original black metal bands along with Venom and Mercyful Fate. Was this something you felt you were a part of, that this tag was a description that suited you? 
     "That's very complimentary. There was Black Widow in the very early days, which I guess was an influence for us, at least in the combination of the music and the stage show. Black Sabbath obviously took it more to the music side than the stage show side. At that time, the 70s, we were probably the only band to combine the two. I think Mercyful Fate came a little bit later than us. Venom, yes certainly. That is an incredible thing to have come up with the term black metal. We never paid much attention to Venom at the time. Just the fact of inventing the sort of a whole name for a genre of music is quite an achievement, which I compliment them on."

The last I heard of Witchfynde was when you released the Lords Of Sin album. What happened to Witchfynde after that? 
     "After that Mausoleum went bankrupt. The producer and manager of ours who owned the studio were we where recorded the album also went bankrupt because Mausoleum couldn't pay the bill. We took up the studio for a year so the studio bill was quite immense. So were in a situation with absolutely nothing to gain. There were two things we could do. We could go for getting another deal. For getting another deal we had to write a whole new album of material. We had drained ourselves working on that album for a whole year so the idea of coming up with another album worth of songs was just too much for us. We did come back home and started working on it but we were too drained at that time. The thing of getting a new deal when the Lords Of Sin album had been totally slated in the press we thought another label would be hesitant taking us on straight away. We didn't split up or anything. We just never spoke to each other for a while, 18 years I think. There was no bad feeling really, we didn't fall out or anything but we were just so fed up with it all. I know 18 years is long time to have had a rest but we got involved with other projects and other commitments. I've tried to get the Lords Of Sin album re-released every other year but I've come up to a brick wall all the time. 

The "Lords Of Sin" album came with a 12" live EP. How's idea was it to stick it on the album? 
     "That was done through Mausoleum. They had tapes around so they said they'd do it as a limited edition." (The first 10,000 copies.-ED)

You said that you recorded the Lords Of Sin album over a whole year. How do you go about doing that? It seems like an awful lot of time for just one record? 
     "It's a lot of time. I don't know why we did it, why it took so long. We actually moved into the studio. The first weeks we built the beds and then we put the kitchen together. We didn't really think it was costing us anything so we just kept there. It just got ridiculous. We were in London for a year."

If you look back on the old albums (Give ‘Em Hell, Stagefright, Cloak & Dagger and Lords Of Sin) how do you write today? 
     "It's pretty much the same except for that Harry (vocals) is quite good on the lyric side and the melody side so he's putting a lot more into it than the other singers have. The main writing team is Gra (drums, leaving bass player Pete Surgey unmentioned) and myself. Gra comes up with a lot of titles and lyrics. He always has, the very bare bones of
riffs and chords. He doesn't play a proper guitar, he plays an acoustic, jangly thing but he brings them to me and I transform them to the Witchfynde sound and we work on it. We work with full band, just jam around and put it together from the ideas Gra and I had. It's pretty much the same."

What do you think about the old albums today? Do you feel that they still hold up? 
      "I think some of the songs hold up. I'm quite surprised. The Give 'em Hell sound, when you listen back to it we want to go back to it. It's quite sparse but big as well, big in reverb. We're still quite proud of certain songs. The production went out of the window on the Cloak & Dagger album. That just sounds awful. We don't know why it sounds awful. It sounded OK when we left the studio and then it came out sounding awful."

What do you feel about Luther Beltz going under the name of Wytchfynde? 
     "I think it's ridiculous. It's just ludicrous. There is nothing else you can say about it. He's only doing it so he can get interest in what he's doing. We get so many people e-mailing us totally confused and they're angry and upset having gone to a gig expecting to see us and then it's him. It's just a ridiculous situation. We just had an e-mail from the guy doing his artwork thinking he's doing it for us. It's bizarre."

What’s his motive for doing it? 
     "His motives are to deceive people."

Is there so much money to be made from the name Witchfynde? 
      "We never made any and we've been at it for ages. I think he's struggling to get any interest from promoters and labels without using the name Witchfynde. It's a great shame. If he had done it properly and legally we'd have supported him. We had no problems with Luther at all. We even offered him an opportunity to stay a part of Witchfynde. It is a great shame and it's a stupid thing he's done. We still don't know what's happening half the time."

Let's talk about something more positive. Can we expect a full album of new songs not in the too distant future? 
      "Definitely. Within the next year there will be an album of new songs. There will be a few covers on there too. We are working on one or two very strange covers."