Brian Tatler has confirmed what Diamond Head followers have suspected for a while: the band he started half a century ago is parked for the time being, and it is Saxon taking up his calendar.
The guitarist spoke to Eamon O’Neill of Eonmusic at last weekend’s Maid Of Stone festival at Mote Park in Maidstone, Kent, where he addressed both his workload and the state of the band he founded in 1976.
Tatler stepped into Saxon in 2023 after Paul Quinn pulled back from touring, and he went in believing he could keep both operations running. That assumption did not survive contact with Saxon‘s schedule.
“When I first joined Saxon in 2023, I thought, ‘It’s okay, I can do both,’” he explained. “I said to the guys that I still wanted to do Diamond Head. It’s been my life since 1976. I didn’t want to just call it a day, but I think because Saxon‘s very busy, it took me a little bit of time to realize, ‘Hmm, it’s going to be hard to do both.’”
He was clear that this is not an ending. Diamond Head are shelved rather than finished, waiting on a window that works for everyone involved:
“I think Diamond Head will have to go on a bit of a hiatus until there’s either a suitable break or there’s an opportunity that we all want to do and we all can do, and then we would do something. But in the meantime, I’m busy with Saxon and I’m really enjoying it.”
Saxon‘s 25th studio album has since been confirmed as Gods Of Thunder, arriving January 22, 2027 through Silver Lining Music, with Andy Sneap handling the mix. Tatler revealed the title at Maid Of Stone before the formal announcement.
He has contributed material to it, as he did on 2024’s Hell, Fire And Damnation — the record that marked his songwriting debut with the band.
Fans will not have to wait until 2027 for a taste. The first single and video are due in September, with pre-orders opening around the same point. A world tour under the Gods Of Thunder banner is already mapped out, opening across the UK and Ireland, and the band are bringing back the 30-foot mechanised Eagle they first flew on the Denim And Leather tour in the early ’80s. It will appear at every UK and Ireland date except Cardiff, where the venue cannot house it. Frontman Biff Byford said they wanted to fly “our beloved Saxon Eagle” again to make the run something special.
Tatler also addressed the man whose touring role he inherited. Quinn, who co-founded Saxon and remains an original member alongside Byford, stepped away from the road in early 2023 but has not been cut loose creatively.
“Biff said they’re still friends with Paul,” Brian said. “Paul‘s great, and [Biff] said you never know, he might write ‘Smoke On The Water’ tomorrow. So I think, yeah, if Paul said, ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Biff, of course, would jump all over it. So if the door’s open there, you just have to wait for the material to come in. That’s what we do — we feed Biff with ideas, and then he sifts through and says, ‘I like this, I like that. Not so much that one.’”
Diamond Head formed in Stourbridge, West Midlands in 1976 and became one of the most quietly consequential acts of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal — a band whose commercial returns never came close to matching their influence.
That influence runs largely through Metallica, who have recorded four Diamond Head songs across their career. “Am I Evil?” surfaced as a B-side to 1984’s “Creeping Death” and again on 1998’s Garage Inc.; “Helpless” landed on 1987’s The $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited; “The Prince” backed the “One” single in 1989; and “It’s Electric” appeared on Garage Inc.
The current lineup pairs Tatler with Danish vocalist Rasmus Bom Andersen, who joined in 2014, alongside drummer Karl Wilcox and guitarist Andy “Abbz” Abberley. Their last studio album was 2019’s The Coffin Train, followed by the live release Live And Electric in July 2025.
