Dead Rhetoric: Todd Michael Hall seems to be the perfect vocalist for touching on all eras of the band; where do you see his range and role within the band in comparison to some of your other notable singers through the years?
Flyntz: Well, all the other singers are great. I love every single Riot singer, but none of the other ones have the ability to do what Todd can do. He has his own voice, he has his own character, but yet he can still emulate every other singer. I know the fans were blown away by it when we would do rehearsals; he would do Rhett Forrester songs, he sounds just like him, when he sings Guy Speranza… well, he gets close to Guy, no one sings quite like Guy to me, he does justice to it. He does “Angel Eyes” like Mike DiMeo. It’s just incredible how we have a singer who can do every vocalist great. Riot is known for not getting any breaks, we have the worst black cloud over the band since we’ve started but one of the big breaks we got was Todd Michael Hall; we are very thankful for it, and he’s a super nice guy, we are very good friends with him.
Dead Rhetoric: And was it difficult to choose a replacement for Mark, with Nick coming into the band?
Flyntz: Well, that’s the one thing I said was impossible to replace, we are not going to replace Mark. We got a lot of offers from bands that most metalheads would know, a lot of phone calls from people that would love to play with us and join the band. I was not replacing Mark, and the only way I could go on was by choosing someone that I’ve worked with through the years. I taught Nick to play from the time he was 9 until about 17 years old. And then he started working for me because I own a guitar store and a music school. He had been teaching for 3-4 years, and we have been playing together doing lessons, and I have a relationship with him. Most of it ironically learning a lot of the Riot songs. I am going to take over all of Mark Reale’s parts, and Nick Lee is going to replace me. And that’s how I officially put it out there and that’s how I honestly feel about it.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you adapt to the modern, fast paced, instant communication/social media technology and use it to your benefit for the band – without succumbing to its ‘time sucking vortex’ capacity?
Flyntz: I’m not on top of everything as much as I should be; there are a lot of people out there who are right on top of it. As far as the technology end of it, we were able to record this album in a lot of different states because of Dropbox and file sharing. We could be on the phone, writing songs on the phone, and easily sending our songs back and forth, making suggestions on doing this and not doing that. Donnie, myself, and Todd, we were able to record easier. It’s easy to promote your band today, because of Facebook and other social media, but because of file sharing, it’s making it impossible to make any money. Whatever money we had we spent on the record, a lot of bands are having difficulties because there are no budgets or money to record. You pay for everything yourselves, and that’s what we’ve been doing; we have regular jobs and still work for a living while putting money into this.
Dead Rhetoric: I know you didn’t play on Thundersteel, but I was curious if you know any specifics as to why the record seems to have different production values for certain songs over others?
Flyntz: I know. I joined the band in 1989 for the Japanese tour of the album, I do know the circumstances that they recorded the album. It was recorded in Greene Street studio, (and) started out as a demo. Bobby Jarzombek only played the drums on half the stuff; they had another singer doing material on it before Tony Moore joined the band. It was recorded in a couple of different stages, that’s what you might be hearing. It was all mixed at once though, I know when it comes to the management, the producer, it was all a part of the same team that owned the recording studio. A lot of late nights, 3 day straight runs of mixing, I know it was a crazy scene, I try to not give too many negative details here but it was a crazy bunch. They mixed the record over a couple of weeks in that crazy stretch.
Dead Rhetoric: You had a very killer set at this past May’s Ragnarokkr Festival in Chicago. Are there hopes for more North American festival action – or even a small tour?
Flyntz: Yes, we are planning a tour now, there is nothing solidified, we are listening to a lot of offers. We have offers from Anvil, we have been offered the Accept tour in North America- we did book a couple of shows. Donnie has all the dates. We will be playing upon our return from Japan in a few weeks New York City; we booked a show in Brooklyn in 2015; a festival with The Rods, Exciter, the Defenders of the Old festival. There is so much going on, life is crazy with the dates, the offers, the album is getting a lot of buzz and people seem to like it.
Dead Rhetoric: Will the band be going forward now as Riot V instead of Riot?
Flyntz: It should be a Roman numeral five, the V in there. We are looking at it as Riot V. When Mr. Reale asked me to continue, he thought it would be nice if we could alter the name a little bit. And we came up with a bunch of different names that didn’t work and finally we came up with Riot, chapter five. Referring to Todd being the fifth singer, and there’s been many different lineups but this is the fifth version of Riot based upon the singers. When we did the artwork the five didn’t fit in there, so we just shortened it to Riot V. That’s how we are going to be called from now on. The Japanese label, they said we signed the contract before we decided on a name, so they put it out as Riot. I was upset about that and so was Mr. Reale, but we couldn’t do anything to stop them.