…que I think. Being our first US tour, I wanted to say that I knew that we had a big following over here but we didn’t realize how big [laughs]. We are pleasantly surprised every single night. Dead Rhetoric: I saw a few days ago there were some pictures of the four of you in someone’s tour bus that were posted. It looks like there is a lot of comradery on this tour. Scissorhands: You have to be extremely professional and work, work, work, although…
…ecorded even. From that, that kicked off our time in the band with him from 2015 to 2017 where we blossomed, I think. On a live perspective we got to go out on tour with D.R.I., that was a big deal for us. We played some significant shows around San Francisco, Oakland, and the Bay Area – we were one of three bands to play with Exodus at their two-night residency at The Chapel in San Francisco. That was a big deal for us – we were asked by Exodus’…
…tell Margaret Atwood [laughs] – where Aunt Lydia is talking about pre-Gilead they had the freedom to do things. What are you willing to give up for safety and security? It’s an interesting question. “We are the blinded led by the blind” is the chorus but there’s just a ton of stuff in that. “A Monument to Compromise” is the very last bit before the outro, which is from a Rick and Morty episode of all things. Again, I’m a lyrical magpie and see so…
…soon as possible, to perform our new album Quadra. We want to be on the road in 2022, and make up for all the stuff that we didn’t do in 2020. See where we are then, take things step by step. Dead Rhetoric: Now that you are in your fifties, what is left personally on your bucket list of goals or experiences you want to achieve that you haven’t been able to at this point – either with Sepultura or in your own personal wishes? Kisser: It’s funny. I…
…oklet of the album as well. And for the album we picked something that he had already painted from his existing work. I asked him if we could use it for the cover, he agreed. It wasn’t something that we commissioned ourselves. Dead Rhetoric: How do all of the special dynamic elements come together in your spectacular live show experiences? Did your fire-breathing action come about being inspired by an act like Kiss from the past, or were there oth…
…of these cool bands that all wear black hoodies and I said that it was already a dead trend. So he suggested visors, and he talked about it for weeks. Then everyone said no, but he had bought the stuff online and we felt that it was a little bit different. There’s no meaning behind it. The original picture we had, during the pandemic, we had sent selfies to an artist and he painted this digital picture, which was cool, but it seemed more like Glor…
…et for a couple of years at this point. When we went in to record them we had already been playing them together for over a year. The parts weren’t hard, the recording atmosphere was very easy. You don’t need to jam your amps up to eleven, now it’s very accommodating. You play your parts, and do the work. Drummer goes in and does his parts. Bass same thing. Vocals are more room for effects, where you want to place things. Shawn made things painles…
…e pandemic happened. I had to switch completely to online lessons. I have had online students for about four years now, simply because of the fact that it’s rare to find a teacher in these harsh/guttural vocal styles. People from all around the world come to me, and usually I round it up with giving one-on-one workshops and also having 15-20 people in one place. But I couldn’t do that, so as the pandemic stuck around, I tried to do that online and…
…works to our benefit rather than to our detriment. Dead Rhetoric: You’ve made steady strides improving your vocal range from release to release – would you say guitar playing comes easier than your vocals, and what changes/improvements have you made as Mark of the Wolf definitely represents your best work to date – especially evident on some of the higher notes/screams throughout the record? Delbridge: First of all, thank you very much Matt, I re…
…really positive. Dead Rhetoric: After the release of the album, what’s ahead for 2021 with any of your bands/projects? Grossmann: I am doing two mixes, one will be the new Eternity’s End, which is power metal by my buddy Christian Muenzner. It’s really good stuff. We are going to mix that and I’m looking forward to it. The songs are really good. We already recorded guitars and they came out great. I’m totally stoked for that. I am doing session d…
…the listener as the electronics swirl around them with opener “Recode,” leading into a big opening by Bell – who sounds more angry and vicious than on many recent releases (like Genexus or The Industrialist). Perhaps it’s the frustration from the then on-going legal issues, but the aggression (hence the title) is at near Mechanize levels when they really go for it. Second single “Fuel Injected Suicide Machine” truly captures this essence, with fu…
…unny that I was born dead, that it was my life started out with me being dead and now I’m like dead inside being gothic. I would make jokes about myself like that. I thought of it as a band name when I was 15 – it was like I’m alive, but I’m dead. I’m a zombie or something. It was actually a personal name. Then people started telling me about the song after I had picked the name and printed merch and stuff. I wasn’t going to change it at that poin…
…eepers to get very upset [laughs] but it’s quite funny and entertaining. Dead Rhetoric: I had a similar conversation with another band recently. As a culture we have reached a point where no one wants to state their opinion because they are too afraid of someone disagreeing with them. I think we have lost that ability to argue and debate things without turning it into a pissing match, so to speak. Targett: I completely agree. I don’t know why it h…
…g as much press as we can and we are going to try to push the release through social media. Also, we have started composing songs for the next album and plan to finish before the end of 2021 and then in 2022 we can enter the studio to record the next album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9HnO1woqk Scar of the Sun on Facebook…
…to decide on what we are going to do? It should be us. Fear is never good advice. We had that in mind, but we are not going to fall on that and just decided to go for it. If you look at Metal Blade’s past, what they have created in which aspects they were the first, it’s such a legendary label. It’s the perfect fit for us in the end. Of course, there are a lot of modern bands on the label, stuff that doesn’t fit our idea of heavy metal. But in th…
…s like D.A.M., Onslaught, Xentrix, etc.? Drake: Yes. When I was a kid, my dad had a job working for a guy who part of his job was getting stock of CD’s that were being returned or scrapped. He had this huge warehouse of these CD’s, albums that he would let me go in there and have a look through them. In Search of Sanity by Onslaught was in there. I’d never heard of them, I took it home, put it on. Obviously it sounded like Metallica, I was very in…
…f socks. That’s all for the hopeful payoff that we are going to play some badass shows. Dead Rhetoric: Coming in with such a unique sound, you have been on a slew of different touring options. It almost seems like something you have to strive for, especially coming in cold and not sure of what any reaction is going to be. Sweetnam: I think so. We get a pretty cool response when we play live. A lot of people are caught off guard a little bit. When…
…orites by Tears for Fears, In Flames, and David Bowie, Stranger Vision already prove to be an all-encompassing metal act willing to take risks. Forming in the spring of 2019, they spent the better part of a year writing this material – choosing to team up with Domination Studios and the skills of Simone Bertozzi (Ancient Bards) and Simone Mularoni (DGM) for engineering, mixing, and mastering expertise. Accessing a foundation of power metal with sy…
…recording the drums for this album. We wanted to stick to the schedule we had. If we had lost our studio slot – we were the first 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 cont…
…ext album, just from being stuck and not being able to do anything else. Dead Rhetoric: So do you have any plans for 2021 outside of the album release? Harper: We are looking to tour, possibly in the fall. Our booking agent is starting to say that it’s more and more likely that with the vaccines rolling out, that the fall could be a touring opportunity. Other than that, we are going to stay focused on writing the next album. We might even drop an…
…Rhetoric: What do you enjoy most about the power trio lineup? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages from your viewpoint… Prij: I think there are only advantages. It’s great to be in a band with just three people. If you have a band with four or five people, you always have four or five opinions, and you have to fight about what’s going to happen. We take a rule – if two are pro and one is con to doing something, it will happen. It’s an easy th…
…, but its cool to know that I can do some new stuff. Dead Rhetoric: Back in 2018 you had to deal with a very stressful situation concerning your clothing business Thunderball clothing, Arch Enemy, and a photograph that caused a copyright controversy – to the point that you shut down the company. How has your health – and mental health – been in those years since, and what do you think you learned most from this situation? Gabriel: My mental health…
…lot heavier – it doesn’t stray too far from our sound that we originally had. But instead of just making 1-2 minute songs, we wanted to make what we call ‘cornerstore bangers’ – something you could play on the way to the cornerstore and get a six pack or something. We wanted to write songs that were longer and more chaotic. Something that blends together really well. Dead Rhetoric: In some ways, I don’t want to use the word ‘mature,’ but along th…
…ith some incredible people and there’s a lot of great moments that I have had. Dead Rhetoric: You’ve mentioned your children a few times. Does being a parent impact the way you think about music – either from a writing or career perspective? Issa: It does. Things change, I guess. You want to make them proud now. That’s a totally different thing. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about you because you are the world to them. That’s what mean…
…lowed to. In the meantime, I’m singing and practicing my guitar. I’ll be ready when we are allowed to go out again. Dead Rhetoric: Did COVID-19 give you some time to slow down on some things? Has it made you look at some things that you do differently? van Giersbergen: It did. I hear this from a lot of people, but for me too – the pandemic forced me to be in one place. To be quiet, and to think things over. What we talked about, with me doing vari…
…ces of support make a big difference in the end. Dead Rhetoric: Epica has made a lot of headway in the US with the past few albums. Are you concerned that this COVID-related touring downtime is going to have a negative affect when you can finally get back on the road again? Many European bands view the US in that you have to get over here regularly in order to start generating a fanbase. Jansen: There’s some truth to that, but I think that once yo…
…completely different. The world was in another situation. What happened in 2000 through 2010, tons of new thrash bands were coming up, but a lot of these bands were trying to copy the 1980’s. I’m really happy that as you said bands like Warbringer, Suicidal Angels, and Havok are still here and are the new wave of thrash metal. I could include Angelus Apatrida in there, and I am friends with the guys in Crisix. The big four and the European big on…
…t of a plot, it had this overarching period going on. Over 120 shots. The lads had a laugh, and I took the ball and run away with these things. I learned a lot about making a video from the last video we did “ Bring Out the Monster”. There’s a lot of work behind the scenes – you have to have a shot list, you have to scout locations, we were working with Ireland’s lighthouse authority to get access to a lighthouse. We have the monster, people makin…
…studio album. Where do you see the major differences between your debut Shadow of the Sword from 2017 to this effort? How did the recording and songwriting sessions go for this material? Chris Calavrias: That’s a good question. I’m struggling to think of a difference between the two albums. The songwriting process was the same. Myself and Dave live a couple of streets apart from each other and we are quite close. We are always in contact. In term…
…So Andrew did the majority of it. I didn’t really get involved until they had already begun recording the album. It was only when I realized that the clock was ticking, that I was going to have to say, “Yes I’ll do it” or “No, you are going to have to find someone else for this album” that I came in. I took me a year to do the vocals, because it just wasn’t coming. I thought I was ready to go back, but I just wasn’t. Nothing was falling together r…
