Ant and Gaylene Ward both joined iconic Auckland metal act Just One Fix in 2004, as each knew guitarist Sharne Scarborough who was looking for a rhythm section. Prior to that they had only briefly met a few times, so it was by being in the band that they got to know each other. Fairly early in their tenure G told Sharne she was not sure if she could stay due to Ant’s constant barrage of innuendos which she found quite overwhelming! But she is no quitter and stuck it out, and then at a Halloween gig in 2005 for Ant’s other band, Ward 10, he proposed to her, thinking that it would be pretty difficult for her to say no in front of 500 punters! Not only was he right, but he also had the foresight to get a close friend to keep videoing at the end of the set so that proposal is now on YouTube! They married in 2006, where at the wedding reception they got up and played a Just One Fix song - the guy from the band they hired commented that in all his years in the biz he’d never seen someone play drums in their wedding dress! When G became pregnant with their first child in 2007, she stepped down from Just One Fix halfway through their “World Tour of the North Island”, supporting the first album Price of $ellvation. Her last gig with Just One Fix being the support slot for Hellyeah the first time they played New Zealand. Vinnie Paul being one of her all-time favourite drummers and influences making that a personal highlight! After two more children, Ant also had to pull out of Just One Fix, re-joining years later, but Bleeding Afterglow is the first band for G since having children. Ant and G first started writing these songs back in 2014, but initially had no intention of making a record. They had finally found some free time to jam and realised that neither knew a song start to finish, but with free time being in short supply, rather than learn some songs for next time, they just started jamming and made what became their first song - Red Raw. Then every time they jammed, they ended up writing a new song and at some point, thought it’d be cool to record them. Over the next several years they (very) slowly got the drum tracks sorted out, then the pandemic hit and while this was an awful period in history, it did give them the time to get the guitars recorded. Then over the next year Ant recorded and re-recorded and re-re-recorded the vocal tracks, continually striving for better takes (but mostly trying to get his voice back in shape). During this time, they also started doing lots of mixing, the snare in particular proving a very painstaking thing to get right. Ant - “How does mix 329 of the snare sound darling?” G – “That sounds yuck!” Then just after they’d FINALLY nailed the snare mix, here in good old New Zealand we had our second major nationwide lockdown. Again, this was a terrible time, but also again, meant they had time to finish the “final” mixes, re-re-re-record a few small vocal things and do the album booklet. As Ant says, “And so here we are, our first record is finally done and dusted! Phew! Hopefully the next one won’t take as long, and we definitely hope that it won’t take any more pandemic lockdowns in order to do it! Anyway, massive thanks to you, the reader, for carrying the “physical product” flag. This record took an incredible amount of blood, sweat, tears and other bodily fluids to make and it sure was one hell of a fun ride! Except mixing the snare, that part just plain sucked, hard!” Over the years they have collectively opened for Sepultura, Hellyeah, Black Label Society, Corrosion of Conformity, Death Angel and Push Push, and now they are here pushing their own style of rough and raw metal with a distinct sound. No bass!!
