NWOBHM favourites Vardis have announced a brand-new archive album, 100 M.P.H. ’79 Revisited, bringing together unreleased late-’70s studio sessions and the band’s earliest self-released recordings all reissued for the first time.
Recorded between 1977 and 1980, the collection captures Vardis at full throttle as they fuse hard boogie and Heavy rock into the beginnings of their New Wave Of British Heavy Metal sound.
100 M.P.H. ’79 Revisited will be released on 24 April 2026 on CD and LP via High Roller Records, plus digital via Hoplite Records. With fully restored audio from the original master tapes, the package contains archival material and new liner notes by bassist Alan Selway.
“This album represents our journey,” Selway says. “From hopefuls to recording artists, plotting a course of licking stamps, building speaker boxes, wielding spanners and screwdrivers in greasy hands and endless late nights in motorway services after triumphant performances in all manner of venues, from grotty pubs with their sticky carpets to tour date rock clubs filled with denim, leather and shaking heads.
“It represents a friendship forged in a common goal: to progress and ultimately succeed. From a boy to a man, I grew up with this band, with these comrades, these songs.”
The CD version of 100 M.P.H. ’79 Revisited contains three exclusive bonus recordings of Blue Rock, Dirty Money and The World’s Insane, recorded at Ohm Studios in July 1978.
“With some inventive overdubbing of acoustic guitar, tambourine and double-tracked vocals plus my harmony vocals on the first recorded version of Blue Rock, we were beginning to explore arrangements and expand the band’s capabilities beyond our usual live loud straight- down-the-line three-piece boogie,” Alan Selway says.
Tracklisting
- 100 M.P.H.
- Blue Rock
- Destiny
- The World’s Insane
- If I Were King
- Out Of The Way
- Dirty Money
- Situation Negative
- Rock ‘n’ Roll Lullaby
CD bonus tracks: Blue Rock / Dirty Money / The World’s Insane (Ohm Studios, July 1978).
Line-up
- Steve Zodiac – guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals
- Alan Selway – bass, piano, backing vocals
- Phil Medley – drums (tracks 1-4)
- Gary Pearson – drums (tracks 5-6)
- Paul Wadkin – drums (tracks 7-12)
Vardis
Vardis’ debut album 100 M.P.H. (recorded live at the Electric Ballroom in London and issued in 1980) is widely regarded as a milestone of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal era. The band’s story stretches back to 1977 in Wakefield, where they first formed as Quo Vadis, cutting early demos and releasing the raw 1979 7″ EP 100 M.P.H., now a prized collector’s item.
““”The 100 Club was the only venue back in the day that we never played in London,” Steve Zodiac told MetalTalk. “I mean, we did every venue in London over that sort of five/six-year period from ’78 to ’86, and that one gig stuck out as the one I’d never done. Yet my heroes from yesteryear have all played it, Chuck Berry or the Stones, all these great blues players. I think in the ’70s, it was seen as a punk/new wave sort of venue.”
100 M.P.H. ’79 Revisited was mastered (with additional audio restoration) by Patrick W. Engel at Temple Of Disharmony in September 2025.
Vardis release 100 M.P.H. ’79 Revisited on 24 April 2026. For more info, visit linktr.ee/vardis.
