Hails James, welcome to Arsenal Del Metalero again, is great back to interview you after practically 2 years, well before to start this interview let me say: congratulations for the release of your first album with Vader, how was work with the guys in studio? And how did you feel composing the drums in the studio?
Hey dude! It’s cool to be speaking to you again and thank you very much for the kind words about the new album! It was hard work recording the album but it was a real labour of love. We had a tour in the US right before entering the studio so we didn’t have very much time to put the album together. I met with Pete a few days before going into the studio and we put the song structures together with a rough idea of the riffs so I knew the main skeleton of the music but I still had a lot of room for improvisation- which I think is something that really stands out about this album. In the studio it was pretty relaxed and easy. We had 2 days to tune the drums, set the microphones and find the correct sound and then we just worked all day everyday until the drums were finished. Nice and simple!
The title literally translates into ‘For You and Fire’. I believe this was a code used by spies and just means ‘burn after reading’. Fire has been a big part of Vader’s lyrical themes for a long time. It can signify a lot of different things; Hell, creation, destruction, passion, war, change or even purification or baptism and so you could say that the title is a reference to any or all of these things. As for why the title is in Latin, it is (or at least was) a pretty common expression in it’s day and it is a nice phrase. It also makes us sound more intelligent than we are!
Joe did a fantastic job putting it all together! I don’t know much about the process for the artwork; that was conducted between Pete and Joe so I can't tell you anything about how everything came together. I can say that the front cover really captures the essence of the music. All the themes I mentioned earlier about fire can be found in the artwork if you look for them. More than that, there are so many references to previous Vader album covers. The main example would be the eye that also appears on so many Vader albums but there are more if you can find them. I think it’s my favourite Vader album cover but, I guess I’m pretty biased.
Thank you! I was using my Tama Starclassic Performer B/B drum set with 2x 22” bass drums, 10” and 12” rack toms and 14” and 16” floor toms. I also use Meinl cymbals exclusively, for this album mainly the Mb20 range, which are very heavy and extremely loud and aggressive! I always use brass snare drums if I have the option. It has a lot of low end so even if you have the drum tuned quite high you still get some real weight to the blastbeats and it really came through in the recording. The main part of the sound was the room. They have a great recording space at the Hertz studio and we used a lot of room mics to capture the resonance of the drums which made it sound heavy but still natural.
The technology of drum programming is not inherently bad. Drum programming software has it’s place; I’m working on a few other projects at the moment so I use that software to compose guide drum tracks while I’m travelling. It also means that musicians I work with can send me any rough ideas they have for the drums, which can sometimes give me some really interesting ideas. The down side is that people have a tendancy to rely on it too much. A lot of drummers use triggers to compensate for flaws in their playing like maybe the blasts don’t have enough power or the double bass is not very accurate. Triggers and drum software are good tools but a lot of drummers and producers make the mistake of over-using them. The result is that the whole recording sounds fake and that can really devalue the music- better to have a more raw sounding recording but a real performance with energy and passion. But that’s just my opinion.
I was actually really sick during my first time in South America and I was still not 100% while we were in Peru so sadly I didn’t see much more than the hotel and the venue. I really enjoyed the architecture but I only saw something from the bus window, a real shame for me. Even though I was sick, all the shows in Colombia (Headlining one of the stages at Rock al Parque), Venezuela, Peru and Argentina were amazing! All the crowds, big or small were fucking crazy! People really care about extreme metal in this part of the world and it is great to feel so appreciated there! Really, thank you to everyone that came out to see us on that tour!
Vader have done Japan many times before- this was my second time. Playing in Japan is not like anywhere else, the venue staff are always so professional and efficient and they really take everything seriously and every band is treated with the same respect, whether it’s some small show in a bar somewhere or a stadium show. We also played for the first time in Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand. The experience was something similar to South America. The metal scene is still underground in these places but the people that do come really do love metal and it’s very rewarding to be able to share that with them!
I tried to put my personality into every song on the album but I guess that my favourites on the album would be ‘Eye of the Abyss’, ‘Light Reaper’ and ‘Hexenkessel’. In Eye of the Abyss is something more like my project, Divine Chaos with a lot of double kick work and interesting rhythmical patterns. It also has some nice groovier sections that really set it apart from the other songs on the album. Hexenkessel is a real blaster! Spider and I also wrote one of the main sections together while jamming in free time during the US tour. I think it’s a really varied and interesting song and it’s one I’m looking forward to playing live! Light Reaper is also something different from the previous two, some very old school death metal with a lot of thrash influences too. I think that the middle of the song, the slow part with the fast double kick, is probably my favourite part in the whole album. I can’t wait to bust that out live but I’m going to have to practice like a motherfucker first!
To the Arsenal del Metalero readers: Horns up! Keep supporting the real metal underground and don’t rely on your drum programming software to record your music!!!!! To our South American fans: We’ll be setting all of South America ablaze with Tibi Et Igni very soon!!! Be ready!!!
To know more about Vader:
https://www.facebook.com/vader
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