And now here’s a bit of a potted history of Gaskin. Yet another NWOBHM pioneer act who promised much for a relatively short time without getting the breaks. Taking their name from their very talented lead guitarist – Paul Gaskin – they formed in 1980 when the New Wave of British heavy Metal was arguably at its peak.
Along with leader Paul, the other members way back then were Stef Prokopczuk and Dave Norman. They cut a demo in 1980 which was engineered by Ron Neave who had a connected with another NWOBHM band named Witchfyde (a personal favourite of mine – check out the article about them on this blog). Through the Neave connection Gaskin talked with Rondolet records (Witchfynde’s label) though nought was to come of that as I recall.
Gaskin was somewhat championed to an extent by the legendary Neal Kaye who is said to have advised them to get themselves a frontman on the vocals to free up Paul Gaskin for guitar duties only. Steve Mills would eventually become that frontman. Touring with classic rock band Wishbone Ash and fellow NWOBHM’ers Girlschool didn’t do them any harm.
In 1981 a single was released which was followed by their debut album entitled End of the World. And that’s about the time it all started to go wrong. Various line-up changes ensued over the usual stuff like musical differences and direction. A new line up recorded their follow-up to End of the World which came out in 1982 and entitled No Way Out. Despite being good stuff – a sort of Judas Priest (ish) style though with a sound of its own – both Gaskin albums didn’t see too much commercial success.
After No Way Out the Gaskin did struggle on with more revolving door style comings and goings on the personnel front though enough became enough with a farewell gig in Scunthorpe.
It proved not to be quite farewell as almost two decades later with NWOBHM enjoying a bit of a renaissance some Gaskin stuff found its way on to compilations and the like and Gaskin was resurrected and even played at the Wacken festival at one point. Sporadic activity followed with various rumblings about new recordings though nothing has seen the light of day other than the issue of Stand or Fall which is a sort of “comeback” album from 2000. Quite an oddity these days and good luck if you can find a copy.
Despite Paul Gaskin’s abilities as a guitarist, that alone wasn’t enough to see the band through to success in the NWOBHM hotbed of the time and they became somewhat lost in the chatter. A shame as their two albums stand up with anything else with the debut – End of the World – (for me) the best of the two with some great guitar work.
>> MORE ABOUT GASKIN’S END OF THE WORLD ON AMAZON <<
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