Recorded against a backdrop of tragedy and disharmony, Bigelf's fourth album Into The Maelstrom was aided by a revamped line-up and help from old pal Mike Portnoy. In 2014 band leader Damon Fox told Prog he was, at last, cautiously optimistic about the band’s future. But Into The Maelstrom remains the last we’ve heard from them.
Damon Fox has always worn his influences on his velvet-jacketed sleeves. But Bigelf’s fourth album, Into The Maelstrom, is more than just the band’s usual mélange of pomp-prog and psychedelic power pop. Right from the opening track, The Incredible Time Machine, it’s apparent that the new trio line-up – plus guest drummer Mike Portnoy – have created a forward-looking record.
“We were listening to a lot of Rage Against The Machine, System Of A Down and more aggressive, non-retro rock music,” Fox says. “I wasn’t listening to stoner music. I wasn’t listening to Sabbath stuff. I wasn’t inhabiting the space of The Sword or Tame Impala. I’m trying to figure out a way for Bigelf to be the Radiohead of metal.”
Into The Maelstrom arrives at a time when psychedelic sounds are back in vogue; but Bigelf will have to work hard to re-establish themselves. It’s been almost six years since their last album, Cheat The Gallows. Its melodic singles, Superstar and Money, It’s Pure Evil, constituted a breakthrough, and Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree came calling with tour support slots. Festivals crowds were captivated by Fox at the helm of the stage, flanked by vintage Hammond organs and wearing his signature top hat.
But they failed to capitalise on the moment. Instead, internal conflict threatened to dissolve a band whose entire career has been characterised by setbacks. “We had a tragedy during our roller-coaster ride,” Fox says. “Our Behind The Music documentary would be pretty devastating.”
If Fox had a time machine he’d return to the summer of 2001, when the band were playing Sweden’s Hultsfred Festival while touring their debut album Money Machine. They’d just settled into their third line-up with bassist Duffy Snowhill and drummer Steve ‘Froth’ Frothingham. It felt like a triumphant moment, until guitarist Andrew Butler-Jones, who had diabetes, fell ill backstage.
“We both had 103º fevers,” Fox recalls. “Getting antibiotics in Europe wasn’t easy; I waited three hours. He said: ‘Fuck that – I’m just going to have some whisky. I’ll be fine.’ He didn’t know he had pneumonia.” Butler-Jones suffered an attack that left him in a coma. “I would have never left Andy’s side at the festival, but we didn’t recognise exactly how ill he was. If I could go back, I’d get him the antibiotics he needed. He wouldn’t take them back then.”
The musician was airlifted back to the United States and remained in a coma for eight years before he died. “It changed the course of the band and everything about us,” Fox says. “I had to call his wife.”
By way of therapy, he wrote three songs about Butler-Jones for Into the Maelstrom –The Professor And The Madman, High and Mr Harry McQuhae (the latter title is a reference to the guitarist’s middle names). “I’m still dealing with post-traumatic stress about this,” he says.
Still, in the years after the tragedy, things started to look up. Finnish guitarist Ace Mark joined for second album Hex. Then a chance meeting with Linda Perry, singer of 4 Non Blondes and songwriter/producer for Pink and Christina Aguilera, resulted in a big break. She released Cheat The Gallows on her label, Custard Records. Mainstream success beckoned. In a surreal moment, pop star Alicia Keys gave Bigelf a shout-out during an interview in Oprah Winfrey’s magazine.
But things went wrong again after the album tour. “We got dropped from Custard,” says Fox. “We’re incredibly grateful for what Linda did for us, but she had to stop a wound from bleeding. It wasn’t turning into anything big.”
After the many years of toil, fame and fortune still eluded the band; and as a result, long-simmering frustrations – ranging from salary disputes to disagreements over the album’s sound – came to a boil. Worse, the timing coincided with challenges in the band members’ personal lives, including “a really dark time” for Fox.
He recalls: “What was about to happen was another Captain Fox pep talk. ‘We’re going to go get ’em! We’ve got our armies and no one can take us!’ But it wasn’t going to work for Ace. He quit. He had a baby and his father had passed away; that changes your perspective on life.” Fox mimics the moment of an egg cracking to describe what happened next: the band were no more.
“I was always sure Bigelf was going to come back,” says Snowhill. “All my friends said, ‘You’re still waiting? Are you stupid?’”
Fox: “He used to send me emails at 2am, saying: ‘What the fuck is this bullshit? Is it ever going to happen?’”
Snowhill: “I’d be sitting there with my whisky bottle, thinking, ‘What am I doing?’”
They eventually gathered to jam in the studio, with the stipulation that Bigelf were in the past. Fox had begun writing songs that captured the reckless feel of the band’s early work. When it came to tracking the drums, they recruited old friend Mike Portnoy, who encouraged Fox to reactivate the old band name.
“I really wanted Mike to do his thing, versus copying our thing,” Fox says. “He was worried it wouldn’t sound like Bigelf. I said: ‘Don’t worry. The Bigelf DNA is stronger than you think.’”
I thought: ‘I just made a four-minute pop song and gave Mike a 30-second drum solo!’
Damon Fox
Portnoy’s performance on Into The Maelstrom emphasises the groove side of his drumming over his busy fills. “When I played it to my friends, they said: ‘Who’s this guy – where’s Portnoy?’” laughs Snowhill.
There are times when the drummer’s pyrotechniques come to the fore, such as on the eight-minute title track. When they recorded Alien Frequency – a song that sounds like The Mars Volta gone pop – Fox told Portnoy to “go fucking apeshit.” He responded by laying down a blitzkrieg that could drown out the guns of Navarone. “I thought: ‘Wow, I just made a four-minute pop song and gave him a 30-second drum solo!” Fox marvels.
He also wrote a song for Portnoy called Theater Of Dreams, a response to the vicious criticism received following his departure from Dream Theater. “It was a friend-to-friend thing,” says Fox. “But I think my own feelings about my own band were fuelled in it as well.”
They still needed a lead guitarist, and it had to be someone who understood the band implicitly. Enter longtime friend Luis Maldonado, a session player for Glenn Hughes, James LaBrie and UFO. He credits his background in Flamenco guitar for his fifth-gear speed during the solo for Into The Maelstrom.
“I almost forgot that I did that the other day when I sat down to learn it again,” he says. “I was like: ‘This is a good solo!’ I did a handful of solos – but I was really there more as a creative friend and moral support.”
The three-piece line-up are clearly enormously proud of their work, and they’re pretty eager to tour the album. This time, however, they’re tempering their expectations for the future. “The only thing Duffy and I ever wanted for Bigelf was just to sustain it,” Fox says. “If it goes beyond that, we’re thrilled. Let’s just see what happens.”
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