…er], that’s fine as well. Heidi Withington Brink: But mostly we’ve seen eye-to-eye on what to wear. Dead Rhetoric: You had a demo two years ago – how did you get hooked up with Napalm Records after that? Heidi Withington Brink: Last year [2018], in January we played in a festival in Copenhagen called Copenhell Freezes Over, which is the big festival in Denmark. It’s a one-day, networking type of festival where they invite a lot of business people…
…s a job, they don’t have the fan aspect anymore. I really try to keep my 15-year-old alive within. Music is very interesting and exciting for me, and not only in making music but also consuming music. Dead Rhetoric: Do fellow musicians ever seek you out for advice regarding technique or business-related questions – and if so, what sorts of advice or topics do you have them think about? Monsanto: A couple of them – normally younger guys. I’ve produ…
…’ll do what I want to do with the people I want to work with, that are open-minded. The world has become a little bit close-minded. Either you are left or right – but you are both wrong. It’s us the people, and the people in the government, they don’t really care about us. If we understood that we have the power as people, regardless of religion, color, whatever, I think things would change. People are so divided and they’ve designed it like that….
…lved, and I think it’s very important for the bands to get involved with re-issues. We started off with Sin/Pecado, which was a great divider for fans – not everybody loves it. Back then, it seemed like everyone hated it [laughs]. People are very excited about it. But this is not a one-off, we are going to do Sin/Pecado upto The Antidote, so our Century Media years will be available really soon. Dead Rhetoric: What do you remember about the time p…
…ic: Where did you want to come across lyrically on this record? Levén: I re-wrote quite a lot of demo lyrics when I was out with Trans-Siberian Orchestra last year. Because when you are out with TSO you have a lot of time to actually work on something else, during the touring and all the non-days. I got help when I found the artwork I was going to use for the album, we redid the artwork and I came up with the name Skyblood. Suddenly I had a charac…
…their most focused and dynamic record in their discography – blending folk-like / cultural aspects from their native country into their rich vocal harmonies and massively catchy musical hooks at the core of their sound. We reached out to vocalist/guitarist Erik Mårtensson through Skype in the midst of their headlining European tour – and he was happy to bring us up to speed on everything from lineup changes to songwriting, video making to craft b…
…Dead Rhetoric: You signed with Steamhammer/SPV and recorded your debut full-length Vice World – which consists of the four songs on your self-titled independent EP plus several newer songs. How did the songwriting and recording sessions go for this effort – and what do you hope the listeners will take away from the band on this record? Dietrich: In the first part, Ronny Schuster is the main composer of the melodies of the songs – he has a good fee…
…ice regarding vocal technique, things you may use to keep your voice in tip-top shape, or even navigating certain things on the business side. What topics come up the most, and what advice or things to think about do you impart? Alder: Most people say they can’t believe I can still sing as well after smoking for so long. People ask for advice on how I do it, and I tell them, don’t do what I do. Don’t smoke, eat right, take care of your voice. Now…
…possibilities for vocal lines. A song like “Die Just a Little”, it’s a half-ballad with a heavy mid-part and she screams like bloody hell! It’s amazing, and the most hard rock song on the album, but she turned it into a beast in a way. It just gave the whole (album) another dimension. Her growing is hard to say – I think she sings differently on this album. I had a certain demand for a certain voice that we tried out in the beginning. After we fou…
…play with all the time. The one thing that I always love are stories, well-written games with well-written stories. Lately there are a lot of games that are focusing on the story, and that makes me happy. One of the latest games I love lately is Life Is Strange, one of the coolest things I’ve played, seen, or read – it is just like a movie. That was one of the best ones I’ve played in the current years. Dead Rhetoric: What are some of the common…
…that. We have a friend who is a professional photographer, so we had some Skype sessions about what to do with it. We wanted to show a person, for me who is kind of a goddess, who slowly disappears. We were somewhat inspired by the show American Gods. To me, the cover is about a goddess who will be forgotten. With less people worshiping her, she begins to be forgotten and disappears. That’s my take on it – to be forgotten. Dead Rhetoric: What are…
…into the studio right now, I’m still having a little PTSD thinking about it- the self-criticism over and over again. At least the next year and a half we are going to tour like nobody’s business, if we are lucky enough. If someone asks us to go, we are going. Nishad: We aren’t supposed to submit another record until at least 2021, and that will come up very soon. We are a band that takes a long time to write – I may start writing early next year….
…r than life choirs, and ethnic/electronic elements to usher a fresh forward-thinking outcome that is still expansive and far reaching, but could be surprising to followers of these gentlemen from their previous output. We spoke with main composer/guitarist Luca Turilli via Skype, and he was very enthusiastic to let us in to the reunion of Fabio, the thought process behind the album, the crowdfunding success, and a little insight into the relations…
…The Number of the Beast, Brave New World was a great record too. Metallica- Master of Puppets, even Re-Load, I love that album. Mostly the classics – Iced Earth inspired me as well in my early days. Something Wicked This Way Comes. Joe Satriani – Surfing with the Alien. Regarding concert memories, the first Iron Maiden concert I attended was in 1999, October with the first reunion of Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. That was a night to remember….
…t to learn and it’s really hard because a lot of bands just aren’t business-oriented. I try my best to keep us as business-oriented as possible, and when I say that I mean… hey guys when you record an album, rather than do what a lot of bands do and get over exuberant and release a single on the internet a week after the recording’s done because they are so stoked they want it out, we are not doing that. The album is going to have to be mixed and…
…fferent side to your vocals – especially during the verses? Winterwild: Yes- it was kind of hard. Jens came up with the music and the riffs- he had this cool clean guitar part and we really wanted that on the album. I struggled a lot with both the lyrics and the melody of the vocals. I really had a hard time – I tried a lot of different approaches. It was not an easy song to write actually. Dead Rhetoric: Were there any songs that took on a bigger…
…at riff from that song – and then we had some dystopia lyrics on the record- so maybe we need some science-fiction parts on the intro as well. I told Piet and he made this synthesizer intro. I sent him some John Carpenter stuff, as I’m a big fan of his films and the music. He sent it to us, and we use that as the intro for the show and the heavy parts we play for ourselves. Dead Rhetoric: Being an avid metal follower, what are your feelings regard…
…ly on what we’ve done I’d say we started out with a much more obvious, Ozzy-era Black Sabbath influence and then our initial inspirations – bands like Judas Priest, Manowar, and Dio-era Black Sabbath, became much more obvious the third and fourth albums. That’s pretty much for me tells you what’s been going on. And overall you layer in the epic parts of Bathory – the Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods records, that’s always been a huge inspirati…
…t really heavy I think. These two tracks, we are huge fans of the Scorpions- especially the Uli Jon Roth-era. When we looked at their material, that song “He’s A Woman, She’s a Man” was pretty fast – we could do this and make it thrashy. The Entombed song “Supposed to Rot”, we just love the first two Entombed albums. This is clearly out of genre – we wanted to have some interesting songs as covers. Dead Rhetoric: What are your thoughts on today’s…
…oduction, obviously you guys are doing a lot of the recording separately in-home studios- and came together with Piet from Iron Savior to mix and master. Discuss the challenges of pulling this together to make it sound so complete and cohesive? Münzner: I recorded all the rhythm guitars at my place, Phil recorded all his leads at his place, Hannes recorded his drums at his studio- so there were so many things going on. The challenge, with all the…
…ts own? van Giersbergen: What I love is that we are doing this process part-by-part. For every chapter, we are writing, rehearsing, pre-production, and then recording. Then we do all the promotion. It means that I haven’t read a single thing about the character for the next chapter. It’s kind of scary because it has to be finished in like 6 months. But on the other hand, it does make sure that I keep my focus. My focus is solely with the one chara…
…iques of your playing and not just the fast parts. For me what makes a well-rounded player is someone who possesses all those things- is a great rhythm player, really good choice of notes and solos and is able to adapt to a situation where he is playing for the song in the solo section. All of those elements form a really good player- and it inspires me to consistently work on all those areas. Dead Rhetoric: Through the years you’ve probably been…
…had some day jobs to help support my livelihood. Then I came across Patreon- I started doing some YouTube stuff but you have to get a ridiculous amount of views on YouTube to make any income from it. Then there’s Patreon- you post your videos and the people pledge their direct support in a selected amount of dollars per video. It started to be quite a decent income on the side. Videos are about guitar playing, songwriting, vocals, even whaling whe…
…known. We will play a small tour with Crystal Viper through Eastern Europe in the spring of 2019. We want to make a crusade. I’ve got ten more songs ready, we will work on pre-production down the line. We want to promote this record. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G1X_g5CE4I Torian official website…
…a Rosellini’s potent vocals. We were able to grab Rosellini for a round of Skype one morning just after the album had been released. We collected her thoughts on the new album, the band’s evolution, her other projects, and her recent degree in veterinary medicine. Dead Rhetoric: How has the response been to The Frozen Throne so far, as it just recently was released? Nicoletta Rosellini: It has been a great response. We got a lot of nice comments o…
…old days, we listened to bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep- things like that. Most of the new bands are listening to bands like Metallica, Slayer, Kreator, Destruction, and so on. That’s the main difference- the older bands had a bit more melody in there, and I think the newer bands are thinking more about aggression and tempo. Dead Rhetoric: When you look at the career of Artillery, are there any specific mistakes or decisions th…
…knock personally it affected me. I’m still working through some of the non-visible and non-audible damage that that causes, which is damage to your confidence. I feel like I’ve only really finished working on getting my confidence back this year, even though my range came back a year and a half to two years ago. If my headspace was like it is now, I’d have been able to sing that way on Untouchable Glory if I really had to. I was afraid of it. I t…
…ds them with the core of the band itself. In short, something just as genre-defying and masterfully written as anything else they’ve accomplished. Sitting down for a Skype chat with vocalist Elize Ryd, whom this scribe has had the honor and pleasure of chatting with on multiple occasions, the opportunity arose to go a bit deeper than the norm. Some talk of Helix ensues, but there’s also some honest talk about the stresses of finding a new vocalist…
…nce again for many territories? Dirkschneider: Yeah, this is always trouble- which songs you take off for the bonus tracks, which song that you take off for Japan. I have to be honest- I hate to do this for the Japanese edition, because in a way the song always ends up sort of lost, you know (laughs). They want to always have something extra. I know that only a limited amount of people can buy the limited edition, but I think for that version it m…
…well so we can concentrate on the music a little bit more. There’s no five-year-old boy calling us in the middle of the night saying ‘daddy- I miss you’ when you are in Russia. It’s just the wife calling you, ‘hey where is the money- I must buy some new shoes’ or my son saying ‘dad- buy me some cigars or vodka’. That’s the deal these days. Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the agenda for Brainstorm as far as touring and promotion over the next twelve mont…
