In a new interview with The Tampa Morgue, ONSLAUGHT founding member and guitarist Nige Rockett discussed his recovery after a three-year absence from the road following a long battle with illness. His first appearance back was on the 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise in January as ONSLAUGHT kicked off a year of 40th-anniversary shows celebrating the release of the veteran British thrash metal group’s debut album, “Power From Hell”. Rockett endured a number of cancer removal operations, chemotherapy as well as two spinal operations — upper and lower spine — during his forced hiatus, with both conditions now thankfully in full remission/recovery and continuing to heal.

Rockett said: “Yeah, it was tough. It’s been a tough three years. I’m still not back 100%. I’m still working on things. My playing’s still not where it should be. I reckon I’m running at about 70%, because I completely lost the use of my arms three years ago. I had a compressed nerve in my spine, the nerve that controls both your arms. It got completely crushed, basically, and wouldn’t function. So I eventually got surgery after a year on that. They basically cut my throat open, went in, took out one of your bones in your spine — I think it was L5 or L6, the one that touches the nerves — and put a metal cage into my spine, basically, to stop anything pressing down on that nerve. And they said, ‘Well, you may get 5%, you may get 30% back use of your arms.’ So far I reckon I’m at about 70%, which is amazing. Those guys did an absolutely fantastic job. I was recovering from that when I got the same problem at the bottom of my spine. So it was kind of affecting my leg then, which was an absolute nightmare because it was so painful. The first one wasn’t painful. It was debilitating. The second one was absolutely horrendous pain. Luckily, they sorted that as well, so it’s just recovering from both, which is tough.”

Addressing his cancer battle, Rockett said: “I got cancer in the most bizarre place you could ever imagine to get cancer — on my eye, my eyeball, which I never knew you could even get that. I mean, I’ve been to the doctors three or four years before, because there was something weird on my eye and it didn’t look good. They basically told me it was nothing to worry about, and that was it. So I was going for a general optician appointment one day. I was gonna get new glasses. And the guy looked at my eye and he said, ‘That doesn’t look good. You need to get this checked out.’ So he made an appointment for me at the eye hospital in Bristol, and they looked at it and they said, ‘You’ve got cancer in your eye,’ which was, like, unbelievable. So, they were amazing. They were really quick. They were on it straight away. I think within probably a month, two months at the most, they’d done an operation and removed it and put me on some chemotherapy. I’d been back for, I think, four follow-up appointments, and so far, so good. It seems all clear. So hopefully that’s where we’re at. I’ve had two other operations of cancer removal — on my face and on my leg. Again, so far, so good and all is clear. But it’s been a hellish three years.”

This past May, Nige was asked by George Dionne of KNAC.COM if his neck injury was due to all the years of banging his head on stage. Rockett responded: “Yeah. That’s what the surgeon said was probably the most likely cause. I don’t really do anything else that could kind of wear your neck that much. So I guess it’s kind of similar to what Tom Araya (SLAYER) had. But the problem is I’m on stage and my head wants to bang. (Laughs) You’ve gotta hold it back. It’s, like, ‘No.’ It doesn’t feel right not doing it. It’s still pretty stiff, my neck, but the pain’s gone away now, and I’m not getting the loss of use of my arm. So it is all good in that respect.”