Why Scotland's 'great lost rock star' is busier than ever

The Herald Scotland

20-07-2025

August, as it turns out, will be a busy month for the man of whom it was once said, by the Herald, that he 'may be Scotland's great lost rock star'.
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, fresh from a sweltering gig at Oran Mor nine days ago, are at the Doune festival on August 2. The Filthy Tongues, the darkly compelling band formed by the core musicians of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, are playing the Famous Spiegeltent during the Edinburgh Fringe on August 13, and will also guest at A Night for Soapy, a fundraising event at Glasgow's Barrowland on August 31. Beyond that, there are dates at Irvine's Harbour Arts Centre on October 24 and Dunfermline's PJ Molloys the following night.
Were all that not enough, Martin is producing the forthcoming albums by the Rezillos and The Countess of Fife. He is also, into the bargain, a talented painter.
He first made his name as singer and songwriter with Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, a popular Bathgate group whose distinctive sound emerged from the post-punk scene.
In 1989 their well-received debut album, Good Deeds and Dirty Rags was a Top 30 hit in the UK charts and led to eventful tours of Britain and Europe.
Sadly, as was the fate of many other promising groups, they would go on to be plagued by record company indecision and internal politics. Though there were three further, very fine, albums – Hammer and Tongs (1991), Five (1994; it charted in the UK for the first time upon its reissue in 2024), and The Glory Hole (1996) – the band came to an end, with a final gig at Glasgow's The Garage in late 1995, after Shirley Manson and guitarist 'Big John' Duncan had departed. Along the way, band members had created a side-project, Angelfish, whose 1994 album was produced by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads.
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The Filthy Tongues, which Martin formed alongside former GMM bandmates Fin Wilson and Derek Kelly, were initially known as Isa and the Filthy Tongues, with Stacey Chavis as lead singer, and released two albums, Addiction, a potent blend of punk, surf and blues, and Dark Passenger.
They also contributed songs, including the title track, to New Town Killers, an Edinburgh-set thriller directed by the former Skids frontman, Richard Jobson.
When Chavis left, the band continued as the Filthy Tongues, whose music would explore the dark underbelly of Edinburgh.
Their excellent 2016 debut, Jacob's Ladder, enticed The Scotsman's reviewer to describe them as now a 'strictly testosterone-charged mean gothic blues machine. There is more than a dash of the Nick Cave in the biblical imagery of the title track and much of the album lurks misanthropically in the shadows, but the classy, drawling Holy Brothers references their own musical past with a certain urban romance'.
Jacob's Ladder (2016), Back to Hell (2018) and 2023's densely claustrophobic In These Dark Places all followed. Of Back to Hell, the rock-to-punk-rock music website Louder than War observed: 'This menacingly glorious follow-up to Jacob's Ladder is packed full of richly textured musicianship sound-tracking passionate tales of desolation and pain but with a glimmer of hope to come'.
Also in 2023, the Filthy Tongues featured in Revelations of Rab McVie, an acclaimed collaboration at the Traverse Theatre with artist Maria Rud and actor Tam Dean Burn. As The Herald's theatre critic, Neil Cooper, noted: 'Martin Metcalfe fronts the five-piece Filthy Tongues like some arcane preacher hurling out gothic litanies over a swamptrash voodoo backing'. A live album is currently in the pipeline.
The Rezillos' and Fay Fife's new albums are being co-produced by Martin Metcalfe Martin was flattered to be approached to work on the new albums by the Rezillos, The Armoury Show and The Countess of Fife.
'It was the Countess herself who asked me to co-produce her album', he says. 'That came as a total shock and surprise.
'First she had asked me to co-produce the new Rezillos album, which completely blew me away. The Rezillos were after all the first band I ever saw properly, at the Glasgow Apollo, when I was 15.
'So I find it quite astonishing that I was asked to work on their album, because I never put myself out there as a producer. In fact, it's Derek Kelly who takes most of the producer's role in the Filthy Tongues.
'I've spent a lot of time in control rooms, with the likes of Reinhold Mack, who produced Queen and also recorded the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.
'So, over the years, you do get to a place where you know what you're doing. I've never imagined a career as a producer but one thing has led to another, but it's been a great experience to work with the Rezillos, the Countess and The Armoury Show'. It was a 'huge compliment' to have been asked to produce the latter band's Dead Souls, which charted at number six in the Scottish charts.
It's worth mentioning that Martin and Fin also spent a year touring with the Skids in 2023-24, playing between 30 and 50 gigs and visiting such far-flung places as Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.
'To do that was really bucket-stuff list that I didn't have on a bucket-list', he acknowledges. 'In my head, or my heart, I'd love to play with Iggy Pop, I'd love to play with the Sex Pistols, I'd love to play with the Skids. It's not like a bucket-list thing you think is achievable, like climbing the Eiffel Tower or visiting the Pyramids or sailing down the Amazon. I never thought I'd visit Australia, or New Zealand – a lovely place - or Hong Kong. These were fantastic places. In Hong Kong, I thought, how the hell did I end up here? I really didn't know what it was going to be like'.
Martin and his bands – Goodbye Mr Mackenzie and the Filthy Tongues – are gearing up for a busy August and beyond. He is no doubt hoping that at none of the forthcoming gigs does the temperature match that at GMM's gig at Glasgow's Oran Mor a week ago last Friday.
'It's probably the hottest gig we've ever played', he says. 'Twenty-seven degrees in the soundcheck and possibly 30 degrees during the performance. In the end it was one of the very best gigs, and great because it was shared by us and the audience.
'People will ask in years to come, 'Remember that insanely hot gig in Oran Mor?' and I will. It was a night to remember for many reasons'.
* The Filthy Tongues play The Famous Spiegeltent Presents: Sounds of Scotland, in the St Andrew Square Gardens hub, Edinburgh, on August 13, 9.30pm. www.thefamousspiegeltent.com; www.filthytongues.com. www.backdounetherabbithole.co.uk – August 1,2 and 3, Cardross Estate, Cardross, Port of Menteith.
RUSSELL LEADBETTER