Frank Assert

Fastest drummer in t' west. I am the drummer for UK hardcore's most uncompromising band ASSERT. At the first gig I went to, when I was 13, to see a local punk band Riot squad, the drummer leapt up off his kit halfway through their set and attacked me - he thought I was his friend! (We both had yellow spiked hair & I was big for my age) Anyway, as compensation he gave me his sticks after the gig, I became their roadie at fourteen and used those sticks to play along to my GBH, Discharge, Cr@ss, Exploited, etc records on a cushion, till I was seventeen then I played on a drum kit for the first time ever in front of about 300 hardcore punks at a Crucifix / Antisect gig in Nottingham. The band I played for was the Scum Dribbluurrzz.........you had to be there..................In 1984 I helped form Intense Degree and we had a great time playing at top speed with bands like Heresy, Napalm Death, Ripchord, Unseen Terror etc. We were part of the new generation of "blur-speed" hardcore bands influenced by DRI, Siege,Deep Wound, and the rest of the early h/c thrashers as well as early Slayer. In 1994 I joined a band from Telford who became Assert. I left them to raise a family before they had even played live. When I saw them again in 2001 I was stunned by how fast and brilliant they were. Now, I am back with them, it is strange to be their new drummer none of their followers know and being the original drummer at the same time. I jam 'floyd (Echoes period) with some local dudes and have aspirations to play all kinds of hardcore.Intense Degree re-formed in 1997, I loved the stuff we created in that period but it did not work out...... I had a period in the '90's when I played percussion and sang for a latin band, Los summat or other, I was into tripping on acid and mushrooms at the time, playing Samba's, rhumba's etc certainly widenend my percussive repportoire though..........I love being back in a Hardcore band as this is the music that I was into when it was new and evolving, when I was a kid, no other music has the same effect on me and playing for Assert who play as fast as possible is a challenge and an honour. Oh, for any drummers reading, I am an old school punk Thrasher, I play a single bass-drum pedal, I tried a double pedal the other year for the first time in over twenty years of playing, I liked playing the D-beat at very high speed with it, like DRI and Slayer do, but at heart I love the skill of the single pedal style.This year, 2008, I have taken on the double-bass-drum challenge. I prefer twin bass drums to a double pedal because it is by far superior, for feel and the sound is intense!! I am converted! Still play single pedal with Assert though this twin bass drum bug is really biting me!