Carl Begai

Kobra And The Lotus are a little band from Calgary, Alberta that I took an immediate dislike to when I first heard them in 2009. The music was fine but I couldn’t stand the vocals, provided by the otherwise lovely Brittany Paige. I have to admit, their debut album Out Of The Pit isn’t the car crash I expected. I recently spoke with Paige about the changes that helped Kobra And The Lotus get out of the career-stifling hole they were in, and was surprised to learn I had a hand in pushing the band’s decision to re-record all the vocals for the debut. Following is an excerpt from the story, with Paige discussing life as a metal band from the Canadian prairies.

According to her Calgary is the city where metal goes to die… (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

I recently caught up with Danko Jones to discuss his new album, Below The Belt, and because he and I both call Toronto home conversation invariably turned to Canadian metal – past and present – and growing up on the local scene back in the day. One topic of discussion was vocalist Sebastian Bach, easily the loudest personality of that era. Baz was also the man that put Skid Row on the map back in 1989 and took the band’s voice, face and fame with him when he got the boot in 1996. Danko, an admitted Bach fan, toured with him on the January 2010 Canadian leg of the current Guns N’ Roses tour, an experience he would be only too happy to repeat. He looks back on sharing the road with his fellow former Willowdale native… ironically, the same part of town where I grew up. It’s a small world.

Danko: “Growing up in Toronto and going to shows, my biggest goal was to play the Concert Hall because that where all the shows I went to were. That level of band to me was ‘You made it!’ If you could get on a tour and be the first of three bands on a night, you were in. I remember seeing Testament, Savatage and Nuclear Assault there; Nuclear Assault were first up and for me it was like ‘Aw man, they made it!’. So sometimes when we get on those tours where we’re first of three I have to remind myself that that’s what I wanted (laughs).”
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By Carl Begai

At the tail end of 2003 I caught up with vocalist / bassist / actor Tony Dolan, best known in metal circles as the man that replaced original Venom vocalist Cronos for the Prime Evil album in 1989 for a total of three records. An unexpected opportunity presented by a mutual friend affectionately known as The Mad Dutchman, based on the fact that Dolan had snagged a part in the Russell Crowe film Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World. The interview was published in January 2004 on the BW&BK website but it didn’t receive the attention it should have (in my always humble opinion ). During a recent hunt through my archives for some information on another band I stumbled across the Dolan story and figured the world could do with a reminder of who the man is and his career. Particularly since he’ll be making a return in 2010. Following is an excerpt from the original story recapping the events leading to Dolan getting the part of Mr. Lamb in Master And Commander and working with Crowe:

Dolan’s move from the metal stage to the silver screen was more or less accidental. Days were spent working in theatre, the nights devoted to Venom until he decided to leave the band, at which point he signed on for a 15 month world tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company for A Comedy Of Errors. That experience led to working on the Queen tribute theatre production We Will Rock You in London, giving Dolan the best of both worlds. Then, an off-the-cuff audition for a “big Hollywood production” led to further auditions, meetings, and a huge first step into a new line of work (discounting a bit part in Judge Dredd that got hacked to pieces).
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When you encounter a band boasting a song entitled ‘Feed A PETA Member To A Starving Child In Africa’ it’s a reasonable assumption they aren’t going to be giving you Mötley Crüe or Slipknot anthems. Los Angeles-based Ana Kefr are the culprits in question, and it’s clear from the word “go” that the very last thing they’re interested in is playing to singalong industry / scene expectation. Described by yours truly in a 2009 review as a demented mating of Dimmu Borgir and Voivod, the band’s independently released debut album Volume 1 is a large-as-life offering of off-the-wall strangeness. Not because it meanders like a Mr. Bungle prog thrash experiment gone mad, but because in spite of the epic scope of the music the songs are rooted firmly at street level. Ana Kefr never get lost in their own brilliance. No surprise, then, that frontman / co-founder Rhiis Lopez is likewise grounded with a very simple and well fed passion for what he does.

“Dimmu Borgir and Voivod happen to be two great bands, so comparisons like that are a big compliment,” says Lopez. “Ana Kefr’s sound is actually the product of both myself and Kyle (Coughran / rhythm guitars). Kyle and I both come from diverse musical backgrounds, we’ve grown up listening to artists from every genre you can imagine. As far as any ‘off-the-wall strangeness’, there’s not really a point to writing music, being in a band, performing or anything else if you’re just going to rip off someone else. I understand being inspired by other artists, but sounding like another act is kind of like being in a touring karaoke band – it doesn’t feel artistically honest. I’d rather have a flawed original work than a perfected forgery. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

From the moment word got out in 2005 that Manowar bassist / co-founder Joey DeMaio was working with a new female-fronted act called HolyHell it was understood that the band was his new project. Particularly since the band was a power metal outfit signed to DeMaio’s then-new label, Magic Circle Music. The fact that HolyHell toured extensively with Manowar right up to early 2010 only served to add fuel to the fire. Vocalist Maria Breon gives credit where it’s due and freely admits that DeMaio did have a hand in forming the band, but she isn’t shy about letting people know HolyHell wouldn’t exist without her. It also wouldn’t work nearly as well as it does without Joe Stump (guitars / Reign Of Terror), Francisco Palomo (keyboards), Jay Rigney (bass) and Rhino (drums / ex-Manowar) as part of the line-up. So it goes that as much as HolyHell enjoy the attention they’ve gotten, they’re moving forward and and slowly but surely getting out from under Manowar’s shadow.
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Note: This is not a new blog. I wrote it back in 2007 in a fit of inspiration and posted in on MySpace, where I believe it was read by a total of 2.5 people. I’ve chosen to re-publish it more or less as it was because it’s a story that still makes me shake my head in disbelief. As in, this actually happened to me?! I’ve also had some people ask about the oddball Glue In The Eye that appears in my recent blog Your Boyfriend Don’t Dance, You Can’t Rock N’ Roll. Well, this is how and why the moniker came to be. Enjoy!

When I was about 20 or 21 and still living in Toronto I had a girlfriend a year younger than me who worked at a kids’ shoe store. She was rather pretty, her two most endearing qualities were located at chest level, and although she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed there’s no question she had at least inherited all the brain cells alotted to the family gene pool. She also had a problem with her left eye that required her to take special steroid-laced eyedrops whenever it began to hurt. It was a condition that manifested itself about a year into our relationship which, now that I think about it, could well have been an allergic reaction to yours truly.

In any case, we’d been going out for a couple years and our relationship eventually hit the Girls Night Out phase. Translated: she wanted to go out unaccompanied and get plastered with her airhead friends Dipsy, Lala and Po because she was getting rather sick of me and wanted to find someone new before serving my walking papers. And, of course, there’s no better night to get picked up in Toronto if you’re female and stacked than Thursday night, otherwise known as Booty Night by anyone between the ages of 18 and married. Thus she and her gaggle of geese headed out to a well known testosterone / estrogen meat market on Kennedy Rd. in Scarborough on a particularly warm summer night, leaving me to stew in my own juices wondering just how fucked up she was going to be by the end of the night and by whom.
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I fell in love with photography when I was 13 years old. Credit goes to my parents for that, as they decided to send me to summer school that year. Well, it wasn’t exactly summer school. More like educational courses were being offered for the summer and they took place at a local institute of learning, so to my mind it was summer school, which was a fate worse than death for a 13 year old kid. Particularly one such as myself who had all kinds of nothing lined up for the holiday stretch. My parents would have none of it, however, and decided that I’d spend 9:00am – 12:00pm from Monday to Friday for a month taking part in an activity of my choice. Or else.

Of all the courses on offer photography was the only one that held any sort of appeal. It was either that or I could learn how to needlepoint my way to boredom by weaving fake Persian rugs. And so, off I went bitching and complaining that first day of July wondering why life was so goddamn unfair, determined not to enjoy myself. The world would pay for putting me through such misery as having to spend my summer holidays frickin’ learning stuff. My parents would rue the day they sent me away to be lectured by teachers with no real lives to speak of. I would make a mockery of their decision by being the worst student in the history of summer school-ism…
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By Carl Begai

Free music, acquired legally and available to anyone that wants it. A novel idea in this day and age, and one that could result in some well-deserved attention for Kinetic when they finally unleash their next album. The long suffering Greek sextet did the deed in 2008, releasing an EP entitled 6.6.6.6. via their official website as a free digital download for diehard fans and the merely curious, a deal that’s still up and running to this day (see below). As Kinetic enters its eighth year together – a much different animal now compared to their early years – bassist / vocalist Savvas Betinis believes the band is finally on track. In essence, 6.6.6.6. was a new beginning for the progressive death metal outfit and things can only get better as far as he’s concerned.

“Things in Greece are rather good for us,” says Betinis. “Kinetic has been around for over seven years and most of us were members of other historically important Greek metal bands. I was part of Acid Death for 12 years, for example, and we were the first progressive death metal band in Greece in the ‘90s. Kinetic has become fairly well known in Greece so things have been good I’d say, but we’re faced with the question of how to make our importance stronger outside of Greece. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

The last place anyone expected two former members of Megadeth to resurface is with a band hailing from Ashland, Kentucky. Sounds like the set-up for a redneck joke, but in actual fact it’s a very serious buzz now that guitarist Jeff Young – from Megadeth’s 1988 record So Far, So, Good… So What! – and recently departed bassist James Lomenzo have officially joined Hydrogyn. An extensive overview covering the how and why of Young and Lomenzo coming aboard can be found on the BW&BK site here. Below is an inside look at Young’s relationship with guitarist Jeff Westlake and vocalist Julie Westlake, which amounts to a trial-by-fire gone right.

Westlake: “After Deadly Passions we had problems with our label, Demolition, and it left such a bad taste in our mouth that Julie and I were about ready to completely shelve Hydrogyn. We were thinking about doing some solo projects and see where that would take us, but then Jeff entered the picture. I feel like I’ve known the guy my entire life. We get along great. He brought in some songs, I brought in some stuff, we’re teaching each other the parts that we have to learn, we’re writing stuff together, and that’s really brought Hydrogyn back.”

Young, who has more or less steered clear of the metal world since leaving Megadeth in favour of a career working in world music and classical guitar, reveals his return to the realms of distortion was all a matter of finding the right people to work with.
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With all eyes on Canada and our “owning the podium” at the Olympics in direct spite of the fact the homeland suits decided the campaign had FAIL! written all over it, I figured it was a good time to remind people (yet again) of Canuck musical genius, mastery and general ass kickingness. And so, for the faithful that think my head is screwed on at an off-kilter yet strangely attractive angle, a few recommendations to get you through to spring…

Big surprise (not!) that I’d be thrilled to announce that two of the four lovely ladies from the Carl Begai In Hell house band, Scarlet Sins, have returned with a new project called When Forever Dies. Vocalist Sylvya NuVynska and bassist Tanya Nicklaus have been writing and recording demo tracks since Scarlet Sins called it quits in November 2009, and the music I’ve heard thus far is great. Very promising indeed. It’s a no-brainer that Sylvya and Tanya would take care of unfinished business with When Forever Dies, particularly given Syl’s unique vocal style. Scarlet Sins fans won’t be disappointed, One of the tracks I’ve heard, ‘What Have You Become?’, takes the lessons learned from the Sins experience and kicks things up a notch or three with grittier vocals, big harmonies, a guitar solo (!), with a piano (!!) thrown in for good measure. Things have become decidedly more metal since the break-up; so much the better. Add to this the return of Rush producer / engineer Rich Chycki for the debut album and it’s safe to say this is going to end up sounding huge.
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