…and see them every time. But then there’s the odd person who gets so starstruck they can hardly stand. That happens to me – I met the Iron Maiden members once or twice, and I tried to talk to them, and I simply couldn’t make a sound. I was so starstruck. Being on the other side of that is really weird. I can’t get my head around it. When we meet people who need help to stand up in my presence, that’s strange and humbling and eye opening. Dead Rhet…
…will be reactivated, we will be playing a festival in August. We had stuff written before we stopped playing a few years ago, we may revisit that and put out a new album. Also, Tom and I have a new project, an instrumental, ambient, laid-back guitar and bass, acoustic stuff. There is a lot going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q964xa-1Mt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUZMyX5suao Grey Skies Fallen on Facebook…
…ess do you try to map out who will handle what parts vocally? Is it a trial-and-error basis, or do you know who will do what part? Ekberg: We never know. When we get to the point where vocals come in, we find that this needs this or that. Clean or growl. Sometimes we feel that maybe I should do this part, and I’ll try it out – it sounds like crap, so Madeliene you do it (laughs). Liljestam: And we’ve had it the other way around. There is like grow…
…on camera – and he would send me a full demo back. He’s great at most instruments, and he’s a drummer first. I love the way he plays. We connected on the black album by Metallica – as they already knew how to play thrash metal, let’s see what they can do with Bob Rock. They did this heavy metal album, with an amazing, huge, arena rock sound. I wanted the riffs, the hook choruses, arrangements. I don’t care about appealing to the deathcore guys wh…
…he’s done thousands of sessions. He is a huge fan of Motown, Stevie Wonder-ish material. He wanted some big choruses, Sly and the Family Stone sounding stuff. I would go in and try shit – then he would want the harmony done up a third. In a way that he gets the best out of you, being so unassuming. He never comes at a place where he berates us. He will tell us it was cool, but he thinks we can get some better (takes). He’ll let us know if it’s th…
…You have no idea how many people remember this tour. It’s more than twenty-five years ago, the tour was great. Music-wise it was the best thing that ever happened, as support for them. It was altogether eight weeks, we played from Finland down to Italy, everywhere. We felt respect from Dream Theater, they were so cool. They were very professional. We had good sound, good stage, cool concerts. We have played festivals, but if you saw the tour it w…
…ivity as they develop an interesting, diverse discography that spans twenty-six years. Be it the long-epic track that is Winter’s Gate from 2016, or the mellow introspective Ardent Moon EP from 2021, listeners have come to expect these musicians unfurl performances and songwriting that pushes boundaries while staying true to a vast influence bank, confident in going where their ideas take them at that moment in time. Such is the case for this late…
…y care, even spending our own money for travel/flights, than spending a two-year salary to play in front of 500 people that are there just waiting for the headliner. Dead Rhetoric: What would you say are three of the most important albums that helped shape or define your viewpoints on heavy metal? And what’s your most treasured concert memory that you attended as a fan in the audience, and what made that show so special to you? Ragnoli: I would pr…
Fervent fanatics of traditional heavy metal love the tried-and-true staples of the 70’s and 80’s – yet we all know for this subgenre to thrive, there needs to be younger blood willing to create material for this current generation to savor. Enter Swedish act Screamer as one of those reliable bands since arriving on the scene in 2009 that deliver hymns of steel, anthems sure to go down a storm across stages small or large. Moving up the ranks to S…
…ome less metal as I play metal so much. I listen to Genesis, Wishbone Ash, Rush. The focus has shifted to rock and some pop. I enjoy the Beach Boys, because vocal-wise they are fantastic. The tastes spread to the outside, but it keeps my musical approach fresh in a way. If you listen to too much metal 24/7, I will not gain anything from it. I like movies, sometimes I like series. Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the horizon for Hammer King or any other mu…
…tus free reign to create what he wanted based on the music or was it a back-and-forth collaboration to get to this final product? Kolesne: We sent him some of the lyrics and some of the songs. The first concept that he ended up sending us back is the cover art for the album. He captured exactly what we were looking for. The concept with the warrior, the battle, the gladiator, has a lot to do with the lyrics and the music. For him, he is such an am…
…ke things easier from your perspective? Camden: I wish more bigger bands struggled more. I truly believe there are a lot of bands that are put together by one person, and then they have the push or name that automatically puts them on a certain level. They can hire a musician, or have a crew, or have management to deal with it. When you find… I always say behind closed doors, that’s not a real band. What I mean by that is, there’s one person in it…
…d you assess the career of Sole Syndicate at this point? What goal(s) short-term or long-term have you set for the group? And is it a challenge to balance the activities of the band with having regular jobs and family lives? Månsson: We are at an important stage of our career. We have recorded the important third album and are super happy with it. When we released Last Days of Eden we were stoked to get on the road and then COVID-19 messed up ever…
…w. I love “The Beatings…”, it’s a short Exodus song with one verse, two choruses and a lead section. It was a good song to put out, it’s brutal, it’s heavy. Definitely exemplifies what Exodus is all about, kick in your face type of riff and murder your wife type of lyrics, it has a good blend of everything we are all about. Dead Rhetoric: Is it hard at this point in your career to push yourselves creatively because all of the work you’ve done at t…
…ld still be here with nothing. The response to it – I was blown away. I had 500 Patreons in the first day, and the thing that struck me most was how grateful people seemed to be able to support artists through COVID. People told me that they had a concert budget that they were not spending, so they were happy to. I was like, “Wow, people have concert budgets! That’s so smart! Why don’t I have a concert budget?” So I am, and I was, very grateful fo…
…practice to keep yourself sharp and sane as a musician for your total well-being? Tolkki: I think because they diagnosed me as bi-polar in 2004 and I have been going to therapy for seven years. I have read a lot of books, meditating, keeping myself fit. I don’t drink too much. The rock and roll life is bi-polar anyways. You play to these 7,000 people with a two-hour concert, this energy you really feel it, a physical thing. And then you go to a h…
…racks, it kind of has that Mechanized vibe. There’s a beautiful melodic chorus, and I bust out with the 8-string on that song. It goes along with the storyline of what we have been talking about for years. The opening line, “Imagine your life, taken from you” that’s the first vocal line you hear from Burt. That’s kind of setting the concept of the whole record. From the beginning of the record, you can hear the struggle. You can hear what it took,…
…once in the creation phase due to the coronavirus? Do you believe the long-running history playing together now for almost twenty years helped you shape and mold this material in a unique way that may have come out differently if you were together in those initial phases? Spaarmann: What has been different, definitely. We had more time, Volker especially, to think about the details. When you are working together in the rehearsal room on new mater…
…ones into Parlour Studios as he went through a major refit in the summer. Russ Russell, he is incredibly popular and potentially booked for eighteen months in advance. It would have meant we would have to have gone to a different studio – and we didn’t want to do that, we were very happy with working with Russ. His contribution to what we do is quite understated really, we wanted to maintain that. There’s no timetable for how long it would take A…
…with re-releasing cassette tapes. Believe it or not, they’ve decided to re-release a limited edition, 500 each, of our last five albums on tapes. I would have never thought I would see that again. Collectors really enjoy these different formats, I think it’s great. Dead Rhetoric: Heavy metal as a genre is now 50 years young as I’d like to say. Does it ever surprise you the enduring quality the genre has, with the musicians as well as with the fan…
…to get thirty days off from work as a police officer in Canada. To rent a U-Haul, run around in Canada and play to clubs of 50 people. I’ve seen some amazing bands tour Canada and only draw 100 people in 400-500 capacity venues. What do you do? There’s no metal scene here per se. One-off shows, festival shows, a European run – it could be achievable. A lot of these bigger bands, they expect a buy on. That’s asinine to me. You are going to ask a ba…
…itional for black metal, but I was trying to do things that had a verse/chorus type structure. That was different. We hadn’t been trying to do that since Restoration. At the same time, we were still trying to write things that we deemed sounded like Amiensus. That’s a very broad stroke. We’ll listen to something and think that it sounds like something we can do, but then 5 minutes later we’ll hear something in a completely opposite direction and t…
…d, where do we even start? If we go back I remember going into record the drums, in Jay Maas’ studio – get the drums done, spend a month at home, and track guitars, bass, and vocals, and a month later the record was going to be done. And then years went by. Nick: It was crazy. We spent time writing a lot of the stuff and putting a lot of it together. Structurally we put a lot of it together before we put a lot of the specific parts of the music to…
…ge, Herman Frank, and Silent Force among others? Parkes: André is a great drummer, I really like him as a person and a drummer. He’s very professional in what he is doing, he doesn’t make mistakes. He brings a lot to the table. He has a certain style with his fills and different things that he does. He is awesome. Dead Rhetoric: How long does the process take from the initial songwriting development to the studio work and reaching the final produc…
…wo we are going to be using for a different release. One of the songs is “Brutish Manchild”, and that is on the Decibel magazine flexi-vinyl track. It will end up being on something else and available on something else at some point. Everything you are hearing on Forever Black (are) brand new compositions. Dead Rhetoric: How do you think the recording process went – especially considering they hadn’t been used to the studio process for decades? Le…
…very successful. It doesn’t really matter if we have 300-400 people, we had 500-600 on some of those dates- but that was still a big success. I didn’t really predict that – let’s try to break even and it turned out to be a very good tour. The next logical step would be to try and support as a special guest with a bigger band – and that is what will be happening now with Sabaton. There are some shows already sold out, so I think this is going to be…
…album to be recorded within a year or two. We want to do a few five to ten-day mini-tours. We all have jobs, we all live in California and it’s ridiculously expensive. We have to make smart business decisions with touring so that it will keep the band strong. I pay $1600 a month to live in a 550 foot square house in California, I don’t know if that is relatable or not- but when they tell you you can go on tour and make $500 for the week, I could…
…normal. For this next release there is one song I started with programmed drums- everything else is from both of us or all of us jamming the riffs, having fun and grinding out some music. Dead Rhetoric: When did the idea come about to develop paint jobs on pedal units for music equipment? Valentin: That is something that I’ve been doing for a long time. I started building pedals back in middle school. I did it for a science project- I was in Pegas…
…rock or progressive rock, no one had even termed it heavy metal in the mid-70’s. Worldwide festivals, the magazines, the websites- it’s a huge industry, it’s a lifestyle. It’s one of the biggest selling music genres on the planet. I always felt that this was a bit more out of fashion, underground – there have always been huge mainstream bands like The Eagles, Queen, and then heavy metal seemed a little bit more on the edges. Thanks to bands like…
…That’s how that came to be. But the concept behind it, the visual is a non-cliche’ version of a post-apocalyptic world, where everybody is gone, man is gone – an eradication. The bird was a symbol, a lone survivor sort of thing. Dead Rhetoric: What did you want to get across lyrically on this record? Roth: A lot of shit. Lyrically we touched on everything from PTSD, the war in Iraq, the opioid epidemic. We really hit on a lot of different stuff,…
