Originating from Birmingham, England, QUARTZ date back to 1974, and were considered to be at the forefront of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. On January 31, 2015, Skol Records released “Too Hot To Handle” CD, which can be considered as a complete unreleased album from back in the day, as it’s a collection of 16 previously unreleased songs recorded between 1981 and 1982. Some of those tracks were re-recorded in different versions for the “Against All Odd’s” album (1983), and some of them see the light of the day for the first time ever.
Official promo clip “Tell Me Why” can be streamed here:
QUARTZ released their first same titled album, which was produced by Tony Iommi of BLACK SABBATH, on Jet Records in 1977. The band toured heavily during this time, playing the Reading Festival three times (1976, 1977 and 1980) and touring with of some of the larger Heavy Metal bands of the time, incl. IRON MAIDEN, SAXON, UFO and RUSH. Late 1979 saw Geoff Nicholls leave the band to join the legendary BLACK SABBATH, providing keyboards and songwriting for them for the next 24 years. Incidently in 1980 Malcolm Cope was approached by OZZY OSBOURNE to join his solo band, but declined stating QUARTZ was his band, and they had just signed a deal with MCA to record “Stand Up And Fight”. 1983 brought the release of “Against All Odd’s” which had been partly written with vocalist David Garner, and the departing Derek Arnold had been replaced by Steven McLoughlin. Prior to the final recording of the opus, David Garner was replaced by Geoff Bate, whose vocals appear on the album. During this period Malcolm Cope also joined the roll call of QUARTZ members being called up to BLACK SABBATH, working on pre-production demos for the “Born Again” album.
QUARTZ reformed in 2011, and the current line up consist of: Geoff Nicholls on guitars and keyboards, Mick Hopkins on guitars, Derek Arnold on bass, Malcolm Cope on drums, and vocalist David Garner.
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