Skyclad Martin Walkyier's Viking Funeral t-shirt

With huge thanks and a shout-out to Emilio from Skiltron, I'm very proud to add this rare shirt from Martin Walkyier's Viking Funeral to my collection. It's from the gig performed in Nottingham back in September 2012 where a selection of old Skyclad songs were aired for an enthusiastic crowd (check out Youtube for the odd video).

For those interested in learning more, when Zero Tolerance interview Martin about the gig this is what he had to say:

"Well it was basically a birthday piss up that got very much out of hand. I had two friends coming over from Argentina, from the folk metal band Skiltron, they were coming to visit and it was my birthday on the 20th of September. It started off that we were going to have a little unplugged jam of some Skyclad tracks and get thoroughly wazzled in a pub.

That then turned into suddenly recruiting a band from all over the place to do a set of Skyclad tracks and then before we knew it we had thirteen bands, we had two stages, an unplugged thing downstairs with three people playing and ten bands upstairs. It all mutated a bit and got very out of hand. The Nottingham Irish centre, where the gig was held, is a great venue, but they had no staging there and I’ve got better lights in my kitchen than in the venue!

So, in a panic, I rang my mate up, Richard, who does lights for Lacuna Coil, Cradle and Dimmu Borgir and I said to Richard ‘you can’t help us out with a few lights?’ And he said ‘yeah, I’ll sort you out and get some staging as well’. I thought it would all fit in the back of a Ford Escort van or something…god, we had to load all these stage boards in and this entire lighting rig…you’ve never seen so much kit in your life! Nearest thing I’ve come to doing hard work for years!

We were basically trying to rehearse with a band that had never met before and build a gig around us while we were doing it. So we’d have a run through the songs and then put up a bit of lighting truss… I was collapsing by the end of it! Then when it was over it still took us like three days to dismantle everything out of the venue again. It was a bit of hard work…but everyone loved it I think, apart from me!

We raised about a grand when all was said and done, for Cancer Research UK. It was free to get in and we just did it for a worthy cause…so that’s where that all started.”

Wish I'd been there...