…out the studio world, I hear the samples. I can hear the Andy Sneap snare drum, or the Steven Slate kick drum sample. I can’t listen to this – I prefer when a band works with their original equipment and they have the know how to tweak it to become something good. I bought myself a guitar head called Kemper recently – I was blown away. I had been playing a Peavey 5150 for over ten years – I profiled it with the Kemper and it sounded exactly the sa…
…a few years to pull together their third record Coast of Gold. Featuring drummer Joonas Pykälä-aho and guitarist Emppu of Amberian Dawn amongst the membership, it’s a treasure trove for those who love a dramatic form of power metal that has the right progressive/ symphonic twists while the fantasy stories, speed riffs, and high-octane melodies/harmonies reign supreme. Galloping guitars, alluring keyboards, and 200 BPM + tempos of course make for…
…ue space to occupy. Pooling influences from across the metal and rock spectrum, Vexes debut is ripe with promise. It’s catchy, experimental, expressive, and yet has just enough heaviness to keep the metallic sector satiated. There’s some influences from across several decades, yet done in a way that still moves the band forward. So with our interest piqued, we reached out to drummer Justin Graves, who was happy to discuss the band’s formation and…
…g, ‘hey that’s cool… but don’t do that!’ (laughs). Dead Rhetoric: That is true that many labels want things to be in certain categories for marketing and promotional purposes… Foley: Metal labels seem less afraid of that. Bands are doing more genre-meshing. Labels are less afraid. King: We could also say that genres were created by the labels. Foley: For the right label, yes. Burke: If we could find a label that would respect that we are (the) art…
…e Kempers, we hardly use any effects. We use tube amplifiers, we use real drums. We aren’t into sampling drums. We are a very old school, organic band. We chose Jaime for that reason. He works with very organic bands. He brought a very analog sound to our music. Everyone in the band wanted that organic sound. We wanted people to say, “That’s real.” There’s nothing here that’s fake. There’s actually people performing their instruments. It’s not ove…
…orability to the songs which isn’t easy to achieve when you are going above 200-250 BPM – but “Angel of Fortune” has that endearing quality due to Tony’s rapid fire, forceful delivery against the push and pull of riffing and Kevin Ordway’s shape shifting drum tempo juggling. New England natives should feel fortunate that we have diverse bands that display the many facets of power metal – Armory and Thunderforge two of the most well-known of the ne…
…great friends, and the way we got Gary is Mark Miner has been a guitar instructor for over 20 years. He teaches people how to shred, and Gary was taking instruction from him- and he told us he had this guy he wanted to bring him in. They get along a little too well. On the next album everyone can expect way more dual harmonies, a lot of lead stuff because most of the songs were already written when Gary came in, and we had one or two that had not…
…eneration of Annihilator followers? Waters: Annihilator, we had our little run in North America so to speak from 1989-1991. A two or three- year run, and this music went right out, this traditional 80’s and thrash metal, was cleared out of North America in 99% of clubs and labels. We were lucky we had Europe and Japan- and later South America. For some reason we just didn’t get kicked out of there like a lot of other bands did, and we rose up with…
…P. It should be noted that I record all of the guitars for the albums since 2006, but we always recruit an experienced session guitarist for live shows, to fire out tracks in the hordes with the uttermost brutality. Dead Rhetoric: As for Totenritual, it’s another classic blast of extreme metal from you guys. To these ears, the album incorporates all eras of the band successfully. What was the approach going into songwriting? Helmuth: Totenritual i…
…started off with completed versions of all the songs- playing all the instruments, a drum machine with the drum parts being pretty bad, generic bass parts, record them and deliver them to the band. Harry would get involved then, he threw a lot of ideas into the music, arrangements and changing parts. That meant Harry and I came up with our own set of demos, and these were much better than the first set. Then Joey, John, and Rikard started getting…
…c power metal album that features an added emphasis on proper hooks and chorus elements, beyond the normal speed and syncopation shred interplay instrumentally. Can you give us some insight into the songwriting and recording process for the record, what surprises or challenges (if any) that came up and some of the highlights in your eyes? Lång: A pretty tough question. Jarmo (Myllyvirta) the keyboard player, he has his own visions for every record…
…c: You have a headlining tour set up for mainland Europe in the fall, plus Russia and the Far East on the docket during 2017. How do you see the early part of 2018 shaping up for Serious Black – could there be the possibility of a longer North American run if the opportunity presents itself? Lochert: That’s what we’ve discussed before. We are going to be doing a second headliner tour in Europe, then we go straight away to Nipon in Japan. Then we w…
…with some of the turnouts in Germany. We sometimes played in front of 50 to 200 people, and two or three shows from the European tour were cancelled because of bad ticket sales. That’s the level… so people complaining about this album, which is from my feelings and for my ego to say I want my babies back from the Helloween days- there’s nothing else. I’m not making big cash. Many musicians end up seeing this as a hobby- they don’t know what else t…
…art recording “Under Siege”, we were using MIDI backing tracks for Matt’s drums. We realized we didn’t even really know what we were trying to play at that point- we spent an entire session re-writing the drum parts to what we were actually playing. That was an interesting experience. Goyer: If you guys remember, the difficult labor that was “Shadows”. It wasn’t a difficult song to write, we just seemed a little uncertain about it. We weren’t sure…
…rists (one announced as a fill-in), and a keyboardist along with bass and drums, plus vocals akin to Jukka Pelkonen of Omnium Gatherum, the group’s dark, drowning melodies were a great way to get things started. Both songs played were new songs, but I was sure to pick the band’s 4-song EP, “The Dim Light of Introversion,” as theirs was one of my favorite sets of the fest. Following Vacant Eyes was stoner doom trio, Peasants, from Brattleboro, Vt….
…sweat while they are recording [laughs]. Then we had the orchestra in Belarus, we had the harp recordings in Switzerland, native instrument recordings in the Netherlands, as well as recordings in our own studio. It’s always very complex, and of course, we want to top King of Kings production-wise, so we need a lot of time for that. Dead Rhetoric: Can you say anything about the direction you are leaning in? Bauer: I think what will stay the same i…
…gh that this follow up Darkness Remains will establish the trio as solid, trustworthy heirs to the throne. Seamlessly adding guitarist Armand John Anthony for Brent Woodward, the Night Demon train keeps rolling along, benefiting from a vibrant production standpoint to properly replicate the powerhouse live energy delivered on these ten songs. Subscribing to an all killer, no filler philosophy, the intro to opener “Welcome to the Night” features cl…
…Espinosa: I was born in a town in Southern Spain, Albacete, which has about 200,000 people in it. They have about three times the amount of people in that city than Andorra has in total. We know that we live in a country that people probably can’t point at on the map. In a way, it’s normal that people don’t know where Andorra is. For us, it’s funny because we have been putting the country on the map for all those people, which is great. Actually t…
…V: Empires Collapse, as only vocalist John Kevill remained standing until drummer Carlos Cruz came back to the fold in 2015 – and as you’ll discover through this interview with John, he went through many trials, tribulations, and personal struggles to get the current members in place. Woe to the Vanquished as Warbringer’s fifth album is a re-birth of sorts – establishing a lot of the early qualities from the first two albums that catapulted them t…
Choosing to leave Sabaton as their grueling 200 date plus a year road schedule and success ramps up may seem insane, yet personal priorities change as guitarist Thobbe Englund wastes no time writing and recording this solo album Sold My Soul. Delving into his influence bag of tricks, it’s nice to explore the roots of one’s musical and playing philosophy – making these 12 tracks a journey through the 70’s and 80’s hard rock and metal terrain that…
…eve things are much more organized for touring in Europe than in America? Cruz: A lot of people, and this is one thing that kind of frustrates me a little bit, think before you go to Europe- the crowds are going to be so much better, everything’s better in Europe. To a degree, it is, but it’s just like the United States- there are certain markets where nobody hits. You can’t be a rock star in every single city, and it’s the same thing in Europe. Y…
…album out in May – we are working on the recording side. This morning the drummer began to record his drum parts – I think we will work for all of December on this. We are going to Japan to play three shows, but I think in this month we will finish the album and the plan is to have it out in May of 2017. I’m so happy about it- but before this album we will go on tour in March across Europe with Trick or Treat and DGM. Light & Shade, Adrienne and I…
…imes being in Accept during the 1980’s and when the band was resurrected in 2009-2014? It just seemed very strange that you and drummer Stefan were let go for scheduling and other conflicts beyond their control, as you always made yourselves available for all recording and touring obligations… Frank: The answer to these questions… ah, like Ozzy Osbourne used to say, I can’t remember these things anymore. I spoke enough about these things, it’s his…
…ong,” and it seemed to have the same story vibe to it that the video for “True” had [on Massive Addictive] and was wondering if there was more to it. Ryd: Yeah! We grew up in the ghetto, kind-of. Pop and hip hop even, is from there – to make the song more true, that’s what we wanted to do. The response is that we are selling out, and that’s exactly not what we were doing. We were just talking from a teenager’s perspective. Dead Rhetoric: Well, it…
…world. We are starting off in late October in Europe, we are doing a cool run with Amon Amarth right on top of the release of our record. That will bring us into December which we’ll probably have off. I know in February we are playing 70,000 Tons of Metal. In between all of that stuff we are trying to get to Asia and Australia tentatively right now. In the springtime we are going to be doing a North American tour, we haven’t done a tour there fo…
…and singing? John: We did that for like two gigs…we started out with one drummer, he flaked out. We found our second drummer and did our first two or three gigs with him. We had a disagreement which led to him leaving right before a few gigs. We had to cancel one but we had a couple of more gigs the following weekend. Adam: That weekend we had two shows in a row and we had to drop off one of them. That whole week I just decided that I would drum…
…ure. That, to me, is the next evolution of the band. I programmed all the drums this time, and having a real drummer would bring the next album to life. Let them experiment with writing some of their own parts – just bring that aspect of it more to life. The next album will be darker and more cinematic. It will be more of a horror movie-type. It will be going in different directions. I have all these ideas floating in my head, so when I start work…
…g to the premastered Restoration tracks told us to contact his friends who run Apathia because he thought that both parties would mesh well together. Funny enough, Apathia took a listen to Restoration and passed on us back then! However, we kept in touch for the last 3 years, and after we released Ascension (on our own), we started talking more about releasing something. Eventually, things got serious, and as you know, we signed on for our next al…
…and. When I joined, it clicked instantly. We needed a bass player, so I recruited George Ford who I played with in the bands Axe Ripper and Crumble. Dead Rhetoric: Operation: Genesis is the band’s debut full-length. How did the songwriting and recording sessions go, were there any strange or stressful situations you had to work through and how do you feel about the overall final product at this point? Badalament: Justin and Bubba had all of the mu…
…n name off a package, but the bands I would love to tour with would be Destruction, Kreator, Slayer would be a dream come true. And… who else. Maybe like, if Emperor ever got back together I would love to do a tour with them. Dead Rhetoric: Where do you stand on technique versus feel when it comes to the band? Is there ever a point where you could go too far left-field, or too technical in a particular song or part? DiSanto: Yeah, I try to be awar…
