Reign Dance

It was 1992 and I was browsing through records at a Darlington market stall.
The guy who ran it had a number of tatty old cardboard boxes full of used LPs in various states of decay, but he at least had a metal section (or should that be "metal" section? It did contain Celtic Frost's Cold Lake - an absolute car-crash of non-metal - and various other horrendous offerings). This particular Saturday afternoon something pink caught my eye, which nowadays would elicit the response "WTF?" It turned out to be Acid Reign's Obnoxious album and cost £2.50 (that's £150 in today's money). I had never heard anything by Acid Reign before, but I had read a review of a concert of theirs in Kerrang! and that was enough to prompt me to dip my toes in the shallow waters of British Thrash.
I was not disappointed. This thrash metal was easily good enough to go up against its American counterparts. The following weekend, I returned to the market stall and went through every tatty cardboard box there, but he had no other Acid Reign albums. How could he? I needed more! In the mean time, a few of us became regulars in the Old Dun Cow, the closest thing Darlington had to a rock bar in the early 90s. Looking at their jukebox, we found a metal compilation album that contained Acid Reign's Goddess. This song was not on Obnoxious, but as I'd later find out, came from debut EP Moshkinstein. I could barely contain my excitement at hearing this, for me, new song. Again I was amazed by this song and fed pound coin after pound coin into the jukebox to hear it over and over again (I imagine this thoroughly annoyed some people, but I was young and a bit drunk).
A few weeks later on a trip to York, I bought a CD of The Worst Of Acid Reign and then had to endure the agony of looking round shops and eating lunch, when I should have been back home enjoying my new purchase. This was a little different; some songs were way better than others, some were demos, some were recorded live. It hadn't yet sunk in that this was the career retrospective of a band that had split up (the first time I listened to a new album, I never used to look at the lyrics or sleeve notes - just listen to the music), but when it did I was gutted as Acid Reign were now my favourite band of all time (a title which, to be honest, changed hands with alarming frequency in my youth). There were still other albums I didn't own, so there was a kind of silver lining to this devastating situation.
The silver lining became more of a bronze lining when I discovered there was only the aforementioned Moshkinstein EP and long-player The Fear left for me to hear - hardly a wealth of material, but it was better than nothing. A guy at sixth form college who used to like metal (and who I suspected was an aspiring drug addict) showed me a list of albums he was selling to finance some project or purchase (DRUGS!). On that list was The Fear and I happily contributed to his downfall by buying it. This was the best Acid Reign album I had heard yet. All the songs were fast and heavy as thrash metal was meant to be, and some of the riffs were mind-blowingly fantastic (All I See contains my favourite AR riff of all time).
Moshkinstein proved more difficult to get hold of and I eventually found it in a record shop in Bishop Auckland of all places. I had already heard Goddess several thousand times and a version of Motherly Love was on The Worst Of, but the other four tracks were totally new to me. As debuts go, it was alright, but I never warmed to this as much as their other stuff (I still think Goddess is a fantastic song, though).
During my second year at sixth form college, a tape of The Worst Of found its way into the stereo in my friend Karl's rust bucket of a car. Everywhere we went for the next year, we did it whilst listening to Acid Reign and I know some friends got so sick of hearing it, they refused to accept a lift from him anymore.
It's a shame Acid Reign split up, but at least they never sold out and they had fun doing what they did. Literally hundreds of people are still begging them to reform, but we all know that isn't going to happen.