Carl Begai

By Carl Begai

If a band’s success can be measured by the number of paying customers coming through the club door on any given night, Toronto rockers Danko Jones have hit something that looks a lot like the big time in Europe. Their five week tour for new album Below The Belt boasted high attendance and six sold out shows, including the remarkable feat of packing a club in Nuremberg, Germany to the rafters (800+) after playing to 1,200 people in neighbouring Munich – less than two hours away – the previous night. Europe has been a solid market for the band for almost a decade, but frontman and namesake Danko Jones admits even he is a little surprised by how well they’re being received on their current run. He chalks the buzz up to a variety of factors, not the least of which is having an album heralded by many as the strongest of the band’s career.

“We’ve had sold out shows in the past, but we haven’t done a club tour for an official full release in two years. We did a tour a year-and-a-half ago, but that was for the B-Sides album. This has been good, though. Getting the cover of Visions Magazine helped, the video and airplay have helped, and we did a lot of festivals in the summer so I think the combination of all that helps put people in the clubs. And no one’s overbooking us, as in we’re not being booked into 2,000 seaters. It’s about 1,000 capacity a night, give or take.”

Below The Belt has yielded two singles – ‘Full Of Regret’ and ‘Had Enough’ – with a video for a third reportedly in the works to feed a growing fanbase.

“The reaction has been better than any album we’ve put out,” Danko says. “I think that’s a culmination of years of touring and word getting around, and we’ve done these high profile tours with Motörhead and Guns N’ Roses. We did the Motörhead tour at the tail end of the album cycle for Never Too Loud, the videos we’ve done with the movie stars in them, and the radio play we’re getting in America, Canada and Europe now really pushed it. There’s a commercial element to our band that lends itself well to attracting that group of people that listen to the radio.” (continue reading…)

Every so often I retrace my steps and review my own writing from years gone by, patting myself on the back here and there for a clever turn of phrase, or giving myself a kick in the ass for being painfully lame and cliché. I recently stumbled across a “gem” from November 2006 – published on MySpace and read by nobody – featuring a rant against bullshit “talent” shows on television. It seems I was set off by some idiotic programming by a German network and decided it was high time that I shoot my mouth off about the world going to hell in an American Idol-manufactured elevator with no “up” button and no brakes. Enjoy…

It’s funny. When I was a teenager and Married With Children was at its peak, some critics trashed the show, saying it contributed to the erosion of the moral fibre of society. Uh-huh. Sure. Take a look around you now. I’d much rather have my moral fiber eroded by Christina Applegate’s boobs bouncing across the screen or through hearing Al Bundy tearing the sacred institution of marriage a new one every five seconds than waste an evening watching reality TV. (continue reading…)

During an interview with me for his Guilt Machine album last year (found here), Ayreon mastermind Arjen Lucassen let slip that he was seriously considering a follow-up to his popular Star One project from 2002. Nothing had been written in stone, but Lucassen felt the music he was writing at the time was heavy enough to wear the Star One moniker. The end result of those demo sessions resulted in Victims Of The Modern Age, picking up and improving upon the Space Metal debut. Following is an excerpt from my BW&BK interview with Lucassen about the new record…

“When I did the first album a lot of people asked if there would be a second one. I kept saying that there’s always a Part 2 and it’s never as good as the original, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it again. But I was mostly thinking about the touring aspect of it because when we did that tour it was very special. I brought a group of people together that didn’t know each other, so it was a very spontaneous thing. I knew that I wanted to do a metal album after Guilt Machine, and that automatically brought me to Star One because that’s my metal project. So I was thinking that maybe I should do it, but with different singers than the first album. The more I thought about it, though, I realized there was no way I could replace Damien (Wilson / Threshold), Russell (Allen / Symphony X), Dan (Swanö / Edge Of Sanity) or Floor (Jansen / ReVamp, ex-After Forever) with other people and call it a Star One album because they’re all so unique.” (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

As I was preparing for an interview with vocalist Doro Pesch of Warlock fame (to be published on BW&BK soon) for her new DVD, 25 Years In Rock, I remembered that she was a long time friend and fan of the late, great Ronnie James Dio. With a history that goes back to the ‘80s, I figured she’d be willing to share some of her memories of him instead of discussing the tragic loss of one of the finest metal singers to walk the face of the earth. Seems it was a good call, beginning with first time Doro met Dio.

“My favourite Dio album is The Last In Line, and the first time I hear Ronnie’s music I fell in love with his songs and his voice,” she says. “It was magic. The first time I met him was in England in ’87; Warlock opened up for Dio in Europe right after the Triumph And Agony album came out. It was the best tour ever, it was unbelievable. It was awesome, but none of us could really speak English that well so we didn’t say much except ‘Have a great show’ and ‘Thank you very much…’ (laughs).”

“I did a US tour in 2000 with Dio and Yngwie Malmsteen, and it was a great time because metal was just coming back. We were out for three months and it was great. Ronnie and I talked a lot, and that tour was great because it was filled with a positive energy. It was probably my favourite tour ever. Me and the guys in my band would watch the Dio set from side stage almost every night, and at one of the last couple of gigs – it was in Florida – he went off stage during his set, which wasn’t normal. The guys were joking around saying ‘He’s probably getting a second microphone and now you’re up.’ Sure enough, he came back with a second microphone and I was like, ‘No! I don’t want to do this!’ (laughs). Ronnie introduced me to the audience and he was such a gentleman, and for the last three shows of the tour I sang ‘Long Live Rock N’ Roll’ with him. Some photos from those shows appear in one of the booklets in our new DVD.” (continue reading…)

As a long-time Accept fan, I was blown right out of my boots by the band’s comeback album, Blood Of The Nations. Definitely not what I expected given that they decided to make the rounds without vocalist Udo Dirkschneider. Assured suicide in the minds of those that remember the band’s failed attempt to go Udo-less in 1989 on the Eat The Heat record with singer David Reece. All is forgiven, said blemish on Accept’s career forgotten thanks to what has turned out to be one of their stronger albums, with new vocalist Mark Tornillo singing up a storm Following is an excerpt from my recent interview with guitarist Wolf Hoffmann…

Hoffmann makes it clear that Tornillo was an integral part of the creative process for Blood Of The Nations. As for stepping into Dirkschneider’s shoes, he didn’t spend any time worrying about how people would react.

“I think Mark talked it over with his family but quite honestly I don’t really know,” Hoffmann says of Tornillo agreeing to come on board. “He just said yes to joining the band the very next day. It didn’t take very long at all. In fact, I think it took us only a day after that to announce it to the world (laughs). Mark is a very confident guy and he knows he has the ability to pull this off. He knows there are a lot of people who are comparing him to Udo but he’s not afraid of that. And Mark isn’t trying to be like Udo, which is something that impressed us a lot. When he came in he did the old songs in his own way and he still does, and it works perfectly. What we really like about him is that he can do those screams but he’s also able to do the quieter, more melodic stuff.” (continue reading…)

Once upon a time music journalists walked around with an air of superiority, as if we were somehow better than the mere mortals we interact with. It was the delivery of advance music, often on a daily basis, that spawned this attitude of being bigger and better than everyone else. Visions of blister-packs danced in our heads each night before bed, the promise of promotional CDs stuffing the mailbox like a too-small Christmas turkey come morning keeping us warm with the knowledge that the game of Stroke My Ego would continue in our favour….

Not anymore.

Nope. At some point a select number of my fellow “journalists” – you motherfuckers know who you are, may you rot in Celine Dion / Kenny G. hell – decided they would offer up promotional music online as a public service to anyone with a computer, trust of the record label, promo people and artists be damned. As a result the industry was forced to experiment with ways of preventing the advance music from being posted online, or at least make it unattractive to keyboard warriors with no conscience. Mid-song audio tags, merged tracks, watermarked CDs… methods varied from label to label, each one a surefire way of annoying the living shit out of honourable journalists who were just trying to do their jobs as well as the asshole file”sharing” minority. (continue reading…)

Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting much from Firewind on their new record, Days Of Defiance. I blame that on the fact their previous album The Premonition left me cold, bored, and possibly even a bit disgusted after hearing their cover of the annoyingly painful Flashdance hit, ‘Maniac’. Lo and behold, I was forced to pick my jaw up off the floor, as guitarist Gus G. and his merry men tore a few pages from Yngwie Malmsteen’s early years for Days Of Defiance and pulled off one of the stronger old school albums I’ve heard in a while. The fact Gus has also become Ozzy Osbourne’s right hand man and puts in a solid performance on the Scream record only adds to accolades. Following is an excerpt from my chat with the Greek shred-head…

Firewind has turned out what is a strikingly solid listen, head and shoulders above The Premonition. Of particular note are the number of songs on Days Of Defiance that recall guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen’s early works Rising Force (’84), Marching Out (’85), and Trilogy (’86). A pleasure for metal fans who grew up in that classic era.

“I’m glad you’re excited about it because I think this is a really strong record. It’s easily our best effort to date. I love Yngwie and his early Rising Force stuff, and there were actually a couple songs on the new album where I wanted to get that Malmsteen vibe in there. We had that on the first couple Firewind records, actually, so there are a couple moments like that on Days Of Defiance. I think the beauty of this band is that we’re able to do the really heavy songs, the more rock-oriented stuff, ballads, instrumentals… that’s our style. We can do all that stuff but it doesn’t sound like we’re switching gears to such an extreme that you don’t know it’s Firewind.” (continue reading…)

Long before Visual Kei dress-up became a trend outside Japan and girlies with deep-seated bisexual needs found gratification in getting off by abusing YouTube, Japan was known in the Western world for no-nonsense full-on shred metal. As a public service to myself and anyone else that cares, I’ve decided to fire up a monthly column offering some insight as to what’s going on in the Land Of The Rising Sun on the metal front. Not that I’m an authority on the subject, but I’ve had part of my brain wired to the East ever since I discovered Loudness and Anthem 25 years ago….

That said, onward!

Blood Stain Child, who are currently working on a new album set for early 2011, recently signed European deal with Coroner Records out of Italy. Bigger news, however, is founding drummer Violator and vocalist Sadew having been replaced by ex-Youthquake skinbasher Gami and Greek singer Sophia respectively. It’s unclear at this point as to whether Sophia is going the Angela Gossow route, providing clean vocals for the band, or pulling off both like The Agonist’s Alissa White-Gluz, but fans can expect samples to appear online once the album is complete and a Japanese deal has been finalized. According to Sophia recordings for the new record were recently completed.

Check out their English language website here. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

In the age of McDonald’s heat-rack stardom shoved down society’s throat by the Idiot Idol franchise, it’s nice to know that there’s still an appreciation for a good old fashioned Battle Of The Bands. No lights, no camera, no choreographed play-up-to-Paula action; just real musicians willing and able to do things the hard way for a shot at the brass ring. Toronto-based Modified is one such band, having garnered local attention earlier this year as one of the finalists in St. Catharines, Ontario radio station 97.7 HTZ FM’s annual Rock Search, which helped launch the careers of bands like The Trews, Finger Eleven, and Sven Gali. And while they didn’t win the event, placing third, Modified came away from it with valuable experience under their belt and all-important word of mouth. With a five song debut EP, Cruel Temptation, under their belts and a growing internet presence the band is moving forward, separating themselves from the faceless hopefuls playing the Toronto bar scene on any given night.

“It was pretty exciting,” vocalist Tricia Stanley says of the buzz surrounding Rock Search. “We didn’t have any high hopes for it; we just thought, ‘Let’s apply and see what happens.’ I mean, why not do it? We had nothing to lose. Then, one day I got a call from my cousin saying that we were in the Top 20 of Rock Search. We were featured on the station’s website, which was really cool and more than we expected, but I didn’t get my hopes up because other bands that I knew were also in the Top 20. Next thing I know we’re in the Top 5 (laughs). Everybody around us was really into it and really happy for us, so I guess the Rock Search was a much bigger deal than I thought it was.” (continue reading…)

Hails and hello! Been a while, so I thought I’d offer up some insight as to what’s going on in the loud world of Canadian metal…

First off, former Megadeth / Eidolon guitarist Glen Drover informed BW&BK today (October 13th) that his long-awaited solo album is finished and is in the process of being mixed. Entitled Metalusion, the album features guest guitarists including Jeff Loomis (Nevermore), Frederik Akesson (Opeth), Chris Poland (OHM / ex-Megadeth) and Vinnie Moore (UFO). On top of that, fellow Canucks Chris Southerland (Kim Mitchell) and Jim Gilmour (Saga) make an appearance as well. Drover has yet to release any of the music for streaming, but the album is due to be out soon. Expect a huge amount of shred, including a promises-to-be-wicked medley of Frank Zappa’s ‘The Purple Lagoon’ and ‘Filthy Habits’. Working on securing an interview with Drover as you read this… (continue reading…)