Description
After Dark is no strange name to the NWOBHM aficionados. The band’s debut EP from 1981 “Evil Woman” featured throughout the years in many Heavy Metal/Hard Rock collectors wantlists. The names Mick Hare and Steve Annetts are no strangers too, for those who bought our Heartbreaker & Ironheart releases. Steve Annetts fronted Heartbreaker and Mick Hare was the guitar hero behind Ironheart.
Confused? Before After Dark, they were called Ironheart. Formed in the late 70s by Mick Hare. Mick changed the name to After Dark after the quick dissolution of the band for musical differences with the other band members, invited Steve Annetts to sing (after Heartbreaker had finished) and other members to complete the line-up and after two 7″s and a few demos recorded, After Dark terminates in the mid’80s. At that point in time, Mick reactivates Ironheart with a different line up, releasing a 12″EP in 1988 then disbanding again in the early 90s. For a while, After Dark were active in the mid’90s when the band released the album “Masked by Midnight” (a collection of old songs re-recorded) and Ironheart resurfaced in the early 2000s for a few special gigs and a self-released issue of their complete 1988 recordings on CD.
Now back to After Dark: Fast forward to the 2000’s and after the demos + 7″s collection released with the same name of the 1995 album, its time for a completely unexpected surprise: An excellent quality live recording from 1980 on the famous Reading club Top Rank, where the band performs 7 tracks all never released in the studio except for “Johnny” who featured on their first EP. To add more excitement to this release, we included 4 studio tracks recorded in 2021, where the band pursues a classic Hard Rock style, rooted in the 80s, not interested in compromising, to sound modern. This release was carefully remastered, with a 16-page booklet, full of rare photos, lyrics and band history. Strictly limited to 300 copies! File Under: Hard Rock, Melodic Heavy Metal, NWOBHM. For fans of: Ironheart, Heartbreaker, Ace Lane, Dark Star and Jameson Raid.
TRACKLIST:
1-Blind man on the run
2-Shattered emotions
3-Games
4-Lonely no more
5-The Sweeney (Instrumental)
6-Johnny
7-Heartbreaker (Bonus studio tracks:)
8-Rock Diamonds
9-Take this heart
10-Mean boy
11-Life and death
