Meet Newcastle's loudest export – Idene Roozbayani
Cult metal vocalist x games dev x uncompromising artist x chaos incarnate
This week in IF YOU GO AWAY, meet cult metal vocalist Idene Roozbayani, from my home city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. While I’m querying my latest novel with publishers and waiting to hear back from journals about my most recent short story, ideas are percolating for my next creative project. A lot of the ideas in my head have led back to my misspent formative years at the end of the 1990s, when the north east of England’s alternative music scene included the underground Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle’s legendary rock club, which I think was Europe’s biggest until it closed mid-1999.
Revisiting the people and places that shaped me into the man I am today, I’m discovering that for every tragic tale of peers who didn’t survive the deprivation and high rates of alcoholism and addiction that plagued our city, others have thrived, writing for the BBC and Faber Academy, playing sellout concerts around the world and making the front page of the Guardian.
I’m P M Buchan, a former comic-book writer and lover of horror and dark art. I’ve written monthly columns and comic strips for Starburst and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine. I’ve collaborated with award-winning artists including John Pearson, Martin Simmonds and Ben Templesmith, and have been interviewed by Kerrang! and Rue Morgue. My work has been reviewed by Famous Monsters of Filmland, Fortean Times and Times Literary Supplement. I’ve collaborated with bands including Megadeth and Harley Poe, and written for clients including Lionsgate and Heavy Metal Magazine.
Meet Idene Roozbayani
Born in South Shields and shaped by the raw energy of Newcastle’s late-'90s alt scene, Idene Roozbayani first emerged as frontman for Inbreed, a band forged in back-lane garages and first propelled onto the stage at Newcastle Art Centre. With blistering dual vocals, chaotic live shows, and a fiercely DIY ethos, Inbreed marked the beginning of Idene’s decades-long commitment to noise, narrative and catharsis. He went on to front the uncompromising metal band Blunt Wound Trauma for eight years, recording the cult album Backlash of the Damned and sharing stages with acts like The Exploited, Poison Idea, and Architects, delivering feral, high-stakes performances in venues ranging from Newcastle University to underground punk clubs.
Never content to stay in one lane, Roozbayani pushed sonic boundaries further with Tooms, blending hard dance with hardcore breakdowns and catching the ear of NYC industrial label Industrial Strength Records. More recently, he co-founded the bass-and-drums duo The Vessel with long-time collaborator Dave Barlow, delivering riff-heavy sets described as “big, loud and brash,” and earning support slots for cult acts like A Gazillion Angry Mexicans. Whether in smoky basement venues or festival stages, his projects channel the chaos, invention and emotional intensity of growing up alternative in the North East.
Today, Idene’s creative reach extends beyond music into photography and game design. A self-taught developer, he rose from IT technician to level designer at Sumo Digital and worked with Remedy Entertainment, contributing to games such as FBC: Firebreak, Deathsprint 66, and a prototype horde shooter called Tooncop, under his Geordie Games monicker. Still based in the North East, he balances experimental side projects with personal writing, app development, and screenwriting, proof that the DIY spirit of Shields' backrooms never left him, it just found new formats.
Inbreed and Metalfest: the beginning
We met at Metalfest 1998 at the Black Swan in Newcastle, where your first band, Inbreed, was playing. Tell me about your role in Inbreed and how you got started?
When Inbreed started out, I wasn't in it. They had another singer/guitarist called Neil and then for whatever reason he left the band. Phil Davies, Eddie Liddle, Dave Barlow, Oscar Cassidy, and then I joined.
We used to rehearse in Hoults Yard, in 1997. I don't think we were together very long before we played our first gig. We were only together three or four months before our first gig, with only had five or six songs we could play. Ozzy’s dad used to drive us to the rehearsals.
Then we got invited to play Metalfest at the Black Swan by Pete Ferry. It was a big gig for us, we were part of that early wave of nu-metal. It had a big impact, but I don't think we realised it at the time.
Tell me more about Metalfest?
We got the Metro to go to the gig (short for Tyne & Wear Metro, the region’s light-rail network connecting coastal towns to Newcastle city centre). I'm sure Eddie had his amp and bass with him, carrying them on the Metro. We didn't have cars, we were 18. I can't remember where we were in the lineup, but I do remember there were two rooms of music. The other room was where the bar was when you went downstairs. That was a good gig. We played with Herp Nurp and Downcast, Phil Davies’ band. He was in Inbreed and Downcast, but he sung in Downcast.
Upstairs in the other room, Flaming 8s, they played. They were like a hard rockabilly style sort of thing. All dice and cards. I'm sure there was a ska band as well. It's all fuzzy when I think back – we drank a lot.
Was it normal for everyone to drink back then?
Yeah, everybody was on the cheap cider (7.5% cider sold in 2 litre bottles was the norm in England back than sold dirt cheap to teens and alcoholics ali, pretty much unanimously. On the way to the gig we drank a bottle on the Metro. Drinking on the Metro to Newcastle from South Shields, was just a normal Saturday night on the way to the Mayfair.
I think I used to go to the Mayfair more on Friday nights than Saturdays, but those were good times as well.All the bands at the Metalfest led you to the Mayfair and eventually to clubs like Bulletproof.
Victors, Mayfair and the club years
I definitely made an idiot of myself at the Black Swan more than once and paid the consequences. You must have done the same?
Yeah, that's the time you learn your hard lessons. Don't drink six litres of cider. Don't even drink three. The thing is, we were skint.That extra litre of cider was a cheaper way to get on your merry way than buying pints.
I used to get a lot of grief for my long hair back then, do you remember being singled out for looking different?
I remember being in school in South Shields and the alternative kids got a lot of grief. But funnily enough, in Newcastle, nobody really gave a shit, which surprised me. I know it was tougher in other places. It's like, some dude's got long hair, so what? Some kids did get picked on, but it wasn’t as bad in the city centre elsewhere.
During that time period in general, everyone started wearing strange clothes. You were a weirdo. People would go, “What the fuck are you? Goth?” Whether you were an actual goth or just somebody in black clothes with a band logo on, you were a goth.
Tell me about how you got started playing in bands, what you were doing before 1998 when I met you.
I was in Shields. I had an old guitar and started learning Sepultura because it was the easiest thing I could find. From there I just kind of kept playing and then I met Eddie and then he introduced us to Dave. Dave had a garage rehearsal space, that was more like an outhouse, really. But perfect for three knackers from Shields. From there on we just started jamming and then they had already started whatever incarnation of Inbreed. So that was already going ahead.
And then from there, how did we meet? We met Ozzy through a friend, Gail. He was already a phenomenal drummer, even back then, 20 years ago, just absolute god-tier. Doing stuff that nobody else could fathom.
Metalfest was my first proper gig. We played a couple more after that and then it just all fell apart somehow. Like most things, people lose interest and veer off into different directions. It’s hard to rehearse when everyone’s from different towns and relying on public transport.
Blunt Wound Trauma and beyond
Was this the period when you moved on to your next band, Blunt Wound Truama?
Yeah, after that I was in college for a bit and then ended up joining Blunt Wound Trauma. But that was around 1999, 2000ish. They were already looking for singers, with a full set of songs ready to go. It was started by Steve Wingrove, Lee Pearce and John Boundy, at a studio in Stanhope Road Community Centre. I don't know if it's still there or not, but it was like this music studio that was just on the roof of this building. It was pretty good. In hindsight, it was a great studio. I hope it's still there.
We went there and had to do an audition. They made us do a recording straight away and we were like, "Eee, fuck," because I remembered my first time recording. There is an Inbreed demo out there somewhere in the world. The first time you ever record vocals, it's not what you expect it to be. It's really difficult, being thrown into the deep end.
Me and Eddie joined at the same time. Because we used to have two singers in Inbreed. With two singers you can change the texture of the music more. You can change, you can add and subtract and make things sound heavier and more chaotic or bring it all back down. Having two singers gives you a lot more versatility and range as well. Dave Barlow was the other singer in Inbreed
How long did Blunt Wound Trauma last?
Eight years. And we’d done one EP and we’d done another album after that, Backlash of the Damned. And we had a bunch of other songs that we never recorded.
We had some pretty big gigs as Blunt Wound Trauma, supported bands including Architects, Poison Idea, and The Exploited. That was a fun gig. It was at Newcastle University. Honestly, I’ve never seen so many skinheads in one place. And it was really full. The Exploited have songs called Beat the Bastard, do you know what I mean? They're a great band, absolutely cracking. We were playing with them and I was just like, this tiny little Asian guy in amongst all this.
When we went on stage, the bass player’s amp blew up. You could see smoke billowing out of it. We had to play five songs as fast as we possibly could. The drummer just went, "Right, just go, just smash through the set," and so we did, then got off the stage. I think it went down well, but you could tell our music was too metal for the audience.
Scene tensions and shifting creative outlets
Growing up in Newcastle in the 1980s and 1990s, did you experience much racism?
I never had anybody giving me shit in Newcastle. In Shields back then, when you were alternative, when you looked different or whatever, you were already an instant target. Me and Eddie had been chased plenty of times. We went to a shop once and as we were approaching it, we went past the back lane. We never saw what was in the alley until we went past, but it was just 25 radgies (Newcastle term for “volatile youths”) standing around getting pissed. And they see us two with baggy jeans and hoodies, and imagine that, they went right for us.
In Newcastle, that never happened. In Newcastle, they were more educated charvas (sportswear dickheads who across the UK became known as chavs, though I’m sure we coined the term first in Newcastle), nobody cared who you were or what you were doing. They were just like, “Whatever, you’re wearing baggy jeans, you look like a twat.” That’s it. Fair enough. That’s understandable. While that was weird, I never had any real bother in Newcastle.
Stop me if you can’t remember this, but I have these vague memories of the early days when I first met you, and you told me some crazy story about an incident with a local drug dealer. Do you remember that?
I once went to get a deal and got a knife pulled on me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I knocked on some random guy’s door, basically still a little kid at this point, and said, “Can you get us a deal?” The dealer invited me in. He was way older than me. He asked what I wanted, then he just pulled a knife out. Then I looked in the room and his kid is somebody I went to school with, sitting there on the sofa. He looks over at me and I go, “All right mate,” and that was that. It was terrifying at the time, but once I saw the kid, I wasn’t bothered anymore.
Looking back at the Newcastle music scene at the end of the 1990s, remembering the bands and punters in the Black Swan, a lot of those people went down pretty dark paths, but of the ones who survived, there are a lot working in the creative industries now. You’re best known for your music, but you also do photography and game design. Do you think of yourself as an artist?
Yeah, I would consider myself an artist. The actual term might be multimedia artist or something like that, but I do. I think photography started as an accident though. It was a hobby and then I got good at it. You lose interest sometimes and you want to focus on something else. For a while I was focusing more on music and then the photography and the music got pushed to the side, because I was working, doing game design. So photography was just a hobby that got taken too far.
Although it was fun being a photographer, it was a lot of work. When I think about how easy it is now, well back then it wasn’t as easy to edit photos. There were days when I would spend hours and hours. I’d made promises and I’d taken the photos so I had to make sure they were good. It was a different world. Now it’s much easier.
Game development and growing older
How did you get into game design?
I was working as an IT tech for a game studio and while I was there, I learned how to use Unreal Engine. I love game design. After I’d done some work I showed it to people and got onto the design team. I worked on a game called FBC Firebreak that's out now on console and PC, also a couple of others, Death Sprint 66 and Stampede Royal Racing.
I’ve done a lot of different things, some level design and game design. Basically I taught myself how to be a game designer and then found projects to contribute to, because I was already in the industry. There was also Toon Cop, the game I made myself, a prototype for a horde shooter.
I really enjoyed working in games, but the industry is collapsing. Right now, it's nearly impossible to find the next industry role, so I’ve been working on my own ideas, writing screenplays, building a new app, developing a new game. There are quite a few projects and so I’m developing them to the point where I can pitch them and start applying for funding.
Going back to 1998 when we met at Metalfest, a big part of my life back then became hanging around at the Hippy Green, Old Eldon Square in the centre of Newcastle. Did you ever hang around at the Green?
Not really, because I lived in South Shields and getting there was a bit of a chore. I went to the Green on a Saturday every now and again, with friends from Shields. We’d go to the George and Dragon pub nearby and get a bottle of Brown Ale before going to the Mayfair, but we wouldn’t intentionally hang around the Green all day.
The Mayfair (an underground ballroom that was Europe’s biggest rock club before it closed in the summer of 1999) was a Newcastle institution. How old were you when you started going the Mayfair?
I’ll have been 16 or 17. The Mayfair, to a bunch of late teens, was a mindblowing place. Before going there, going out at night meant going to some shirts and dress shoes place [Newcastle was notorious for enforcing smart shirt and shoes dress codes in their bars and clubs], but once you discovered the Mayfair, that other world quickly vanished. It has such a big impact and I'm sure that everyone that used to go would agree that the Mayfair is massively missed. Three rooms and all the big tracks everyone loved at the time.
We also used to go to Victors in South Shields, a little Sunday night rock club that finished at half ten. It was the perfect night, if you think back to it. Started at half seven, you’d get in there, get drunk early. You had a great time, danced to all your favourite tracks, then you left and you went home at a reasonable time. Victors had a small community of Shields metallers and we’d often go back to an after-party or there’d just be chaos in the street… Good times!
After the Mayfair closed in 1999, where did you go next? There was a period where we were all scrabbling for the next thing.
I went to Bulletproof a lot and then Cuba Cuba opened up and we’d go there as well. Bulletproof was Friday night at a club called Rockshots 2. It was a right bomb, but there were places to dance and there was a back room of hip-hop on a Friday night.
I don’t remember ever going to Bulletproof. I went to Snakebite & Black in Rockshots 2 a few times, the goth night, but I’d always wear the wrong thing and show up in sunny yellow clothes looking like an idiot. Wherever I went, I always wore the wrong thing. I’d be in PVC trousers and nail varnish at the ska night or else everyone would be in black and I’d be wearing tartan bondage pants…
I remember your tartan bondage pants! Good times. It was a wonderfully free time. You could do whatever you wanted. There were no phones, no cameras, nobody filming. You were just sitting there, staring out into the world, drinking your cider on a bench. Magical times. Kids today will never experience that and it’s tragic.
If you’re in your teens or your twenties now, you see videos of people getting humiliated for being too drunk and think, “No, that’s not going to be me.” I worked with loads of young’uns that wouldn’t drink. They’re still fun, but they’re more about their entertainment.
Partying, perspective, and staying afloat
That hits close to home for me, because growing up in Newcastle got me into some bad habits early in life. Looking back on those days, how do you feel about all the partying we used to do?
I went down loads of different paths, but you’ve just got to accept that what you’re doing has consequences – sometimes you’re going to have the best time of your life and other times you have the worst. That’s part of the whole appeal, getting drunk and going down the party route, it gives your life a narrative.
Back then, it was definitely more exciting. Now I’m in my forties, the thought of it doesn’t appeal as much. I like to go out and party every once in a while, but not like the days when you always drank a bottle of cider on the Metro.
It was what it was. You’d get mortal because you were poor and couldn’t afford to do anything else. You’d drink a bottle of cider on the way to the gig so that by the time you arrive, you’re already steaming. Then you start drinking the strongest drink you can get for your money. I’d buy a bottle of wine because it was cheaper than two pints, and it got you leathered. A whole bottle of white wine, after that you were gone. I’d wake up in some strange places…
One time I woke up outside of Planet Earth. Do you remember that place? I don’t know why we were there. I think it was a drum and bass night or something, a one-off thing, and I must have just fallen asleep. The bouncers chucked us outside. I woke up and there was just… nothing. Silence. No one anywhere.
When I first moved out of home with my best friend Dave, you were wild and chaotic even by our standards. Seeing you on a night out, you were like a Viking marauder!
It was a fun, chaotic time.You were wrapped up in the moment and all this new stuff was coming into your life and you were opening new doors every night, going to new places, meeting new people. Taking it too far all the time, but I still held down a job and that.
I worked so hard Monday to Friday, then when the weekend came, that was my time, I was going to get leathered and go on a magical mystery adventure and see what happened. And then you find others like you and things spiral and get worse and worse. But I don’t think anything really bad happened.
I was slaving away or doing whatever job I was doing, but the weekends washed all of that grimness away. Often I’d feel the effects of the weekend right the way up to Friday, then I would be like, “I feel good now. Right, let’s go.”
They were good times. I wouldn’t change any of it.
I feel like I’ve struggled with the aftereffects of those early years my whole life. What was your secret to getting out of that life intact?
I never really drank in the house. I was a binge drinker. Just a straight-up binge drinker. To this day I never really drink. It’s just not my thing. I go out and get drunk, but I won’t sit in the house and do four cans on a Thursday night like a lot of people do.
I don’t mind a craft ale or whatever when I’m out, but I don’t drink cider on the Metro anymore and I don’t binge.
That’ll be how you’ve stayed skinny!
That’s it for IF YOU GO AWAY this week. Were you shaped by time spent in an equally chaotic underground scene? If so, dig up some old photos to post on Instagram and tag me in the comments so that I can read about your misadventures.
– P M Buchan
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