As previously reported, Birmingham-based New Wave Of British Heavy Metal legends Quartz are set to issue—on January 31st through Skol Records—a dramatic cache of top-notch demos under the moniker Too Hot To Handle. Given the gravity of the situation within the history books of the NWOBHM, Bravewords asked founding members Malcolm Cope (drums) and Mick Hopkins (guitars) about the project.

“Well, a lot of people were talking about the old products,” explains Cope, “and the record we did with Heavy Metal Records called Against All Odds (ed. the band’s third and last studio album, before reunion) and they’d ask about whether it was going to come out. We didn’t approach Heavy Metal, but some people on our behalf approached Heavy Metal Records, to see if they had any direct intentions and they didn’t. So somehow we got involved with Bart Gabriel and Skol Records, and so we had a look around and saw all the old demos we’d got stashed away, and lo and behold, there is a load; there was quite a few that we’d forgotten over the years, which were actually experimenting with when we did the Against All Odds album. So we thought, why not see whether that was worth putting out? And Bart was quite enthusiastic so here we are.”

Here we are indeed, with a raft of professionally crafted songs, many that would have made the cut for the band’s third, stirring album. Vocalist on hand is not the singer of the first three albums (two studio plus a live record), but a chap by the name of David Garner, who, almost fantastically, is the band’s singer now in 2015, as Quartz work toward a new record of all-new material.

“Well, unbeknownst to us at the time,” notes Cope,” I think, Mike Taylor—Taff is his nickname—I think he was having a few matrimonial problems and that crept into his attitude toward his involvement in the band. And as it went, after a while, we’d been touring for a long time, and we didn’t seem to be making any headway financially. And so he decided to leave and try his own thing which fell apart quite quickly.”

Enter David Garner... “He was recommended to us from one of the guys that worked in the music store, Reddingtons. And he’d worked with him on and off, and he said what a good singer he was. So we said we’d give him a try, and at that stage, we felt we wanted to try get a bit more softer in the approach, because obviously we were trying the really heavy thing for a long time and it didn’t seem to be making any headway. And we thought, we can get somebody with a little bit more melody and we could probably broaden the market for record sales. And David seemed like the guy who could do that. Unfortunately for David, when we were doing the live gigs, Taff was a remarkable front man. And there was a lot of people chanting, “We want Taff, we want Taff!” etc.. And it wasn’t his ability on stage, because Dave’s a great front man as well, but Taff’s got a real strong rapport with the audience, really, really good. And I don’t think Dave could sort of... I don’t know, he found it difficult to follow in Taff’s shoes from that point of view.”

Which is why the Heavy Metal Records-issued Against All Odds album, fully three years after the classic Stand Up And Fight on MCA, does not include David, but a third vocalist called Geoff Bate. As well, don’t take Malcolm’s comment about “softer” too seriously—Against All Odds turned out to be a pretty dark and heavy set of songs, as do the demos for it, which is what we are now celebrating as Too Hot To Handle, on Skol.

“It’s like having a child,” reflects guitarist Mick Hopkins (also of Gerry Levene & The Avengers fame, who supported The Beatles in 1963—yes, you read that right), on the writing of these songs. “What you’re writing is like having a child, you see. Initially, because of all the different things, what comes out the other end doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the way you wanted it to. You have to strike a happy medium, with three or four other people. I mean, I was quite happy with a lot of the stuff. I’m more happy now, because we got a new album we’re doing. But that will be later on, after this Too Hot To Handle. But yeah, Bart Gabriel is brilliant. He really works hard, and I’m surprised—he showed me the booklet that he’s doing, and the pictures and lyrics are all at a very high standard.”

All told, Mick (who, like I say, played with the Beatles and all through the ‘60s and ‘70s—even with John Bonham pre-Zeppelin—before making the modest splash with Quartz from ’77 to ’83), is pleasantly surprised with the interest in the band at this juncture.

“There was such a gap between Stand Up And Fight and Against All Odds. That was the problem. Because you’ve done that with a major company, MCA, and then you’ve got nothing. You just go around and you’re playing. But eventually, it comes to a point where you think, well, we’ve finally got Against All Odds out. But as I say, there’s such a gap between the two, that people tend to lose track because they don’t know what you’re doing, or whether you are still around. And they’re not seeing any advertisements or anything. And it’s like, now, being such a gap between when the five of us were together before... we recently went over to Germany and Sweden and we were thinking nobody will know us. But they put us like, I think, third on the bill or something like that. And we get to the gig, and the Germans are all yelling “Quats, Quats!” and we didn’t know what they were saying. And this lady who was the promoter said to us, would you do a signing session? And we thought, yeah, thinking it was going to be a few people. And there was a long line of people, a queue of people. And they were all ages. You’ve got the 20-year-olds, younger than 20s, something like that, up until 40-year-olds, and they’re at the signing, we’re having photographs taken with them, and they were all saying, “We thought that we would never see you live.” It was brilliant, you know?”