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CYNTHIA NICKSCHAS & FRIENDS – Is’ Halt So!

By Carl Begai

The long- awaited and oft-delayed third album from German singer / songwriter Cynthia Nickschas is exactly what and ultimately more than what the fans expected. Truth be told, as gut-wrenching as it is for any artist to be forced to wait to unveil new work, the pandemic and dealing with assorted life-related curveballs seems to have worked in Cynthia’s favour. And the fact this is her first record to truly be billed as “Cynthia Nickschas & Friends” – the moniker she has played under for years – speaks volumes as to the creative energy that went into this record.

It definitely shows, 200%.

Cynthia’s acoustic-based, big band stage sound made a flawless transition to the studio for Is’ Halt So!, delivering her trademark jazz / blues / folk compositions with a live-off-the-floor warmth that a lot of records released in 2022 don’t have. Every instrument can be heard (saxophone, trumpet, violin, acoustic and electric guitars), everyone gets to shine even though Cynthia is the intended star of the show. The fact that many of these songs have been performed live for the last couple years (when that sort of thing was allowed) enabled Cynthia & Friends to arrange and refine them to the level we hear in recorded form.

RICKY WARWICK – County Downtime

By Carl Begai

Black Star Riders frontman Ricky Warwick will tell you he’s made the most of the downtime shoved down our collective throats by the ongoing pandemic. Having spent a huge portion of his life on the road going back to his days with The Almighty, if he wasn’t busy writing and recording new music, Warwick could be found on a tour bus or on stage somewhere in the world. Instead of going out to promote the latest Black Star Riders record, Another State Of Grace, Warwick has been forced to satisfy himself and the fans with Instagram livestream shows, writing new music, and promoting his latest solo album, When Life Was Hard And Fast. It’s been a long time coming, what with When Patsy Cline Was Crazy (And Guy Mitchell Sang The Blues having been released in 2014 followed by a cover album, Stairwell Troubadour, in 2015. The new album is not, however, the result of COVID-19 keeping him locked up. It was finished a good year-and-a-half before the official release, all according to plan.

“I’ve been looking at it positively,” Warwick says of the pandemic forcing him to stay put. “I have my daughters and I’ve spent so much time away from them over the years – pretty much their whole lives – so to be at home for a year has been lovely. It’s been amazing to just be home every day; I’ve really enjoyed that. But, it’s been a year and I live for playing live, going on tour is what I do. It’s my job and I’m certainly ready to get back out there, but it hasn’t been the worst year of my life. My family doesn’t seem to be sick of me which is a good thing (laughs).”

“The solo albums are very much dictated by Black Star Riders and getting involved with Thin Lizzy right after Belfast Confetti (2009),” he continues. “And what a great problem to have. I’ve been sitting on a lot of these songs for quite a while and really just waiting for a worldwide pandemic to come along to give me time to put them out there (laughs). I’m always writing so I’ve always got a wealth of ideas on the go, and when I got together with Keith Nelson we actually started demoing this new stuff in 2018. The album was actually recorded in April 2019, so it was in the can before this pandemic started. We were supposed to be touring last year to promote the new Black Star Riders album, but this solo album was always slated to come out in February 2021. We just stuck to the plan.”

BraveWords Interview: EINHERJER – Tales From The Norse West

By Carl Begai

Norwegian Viking metal pioneers Einherjer have a career spanning close to 30 years, boasting nine studio albums, three EPs, history with four record labels, and an odd break-up between 2004 and 2008 when they reformed as the thrash act Battered for one album before putting Einherjer back together. Through all of this their sound has remained constant, with any major discernable changes between the early days and latter years coming from changing production values rather than musical focus. This chat with frontman Frode Glesnes began by addressing the head-scratching Wikipedia entry claiming “some of the band’s albums are heavily folk influenced, while others have a more traditional symphonic black metal sound.” Everyone knows that Wikipedia descriptions can be painfully inaccurate for the artists in question, but in Einherjer’s case Glesnes can only smirk and suggest the person who posted the information mixed them up with another band.

“Honestly, I don’t care about the labels we get, but sometime I wonder ‘What the fuck are people thinking?'” Glesnes laughs. “Since the start we’ve had this Viking metal stamp and that’s okay because in the beginning it was something fresh and new. We felt it was very fitting for the stuff we were doing at the time, and as time went on other bands began using the Viking metal label as well. Many of those bands were quite different from us because we are basically a heavy metal band; we were the old school and they were the new school. In the later years we haven’t actively avoided the term Viking metal, but these days we’re just using the term Norse heavy metal. It’s what we do, and we add our spice to it. There is a small amount of influence in our sound from Norwegian folk music and Norwegian composers like Edvard Grieg, but we are basically a heavy metal band.”

BraveWords Interview: ANNEKE VAN GIERSBERGEN – “I Am 100% Imperfect”

By Carl Begai

Vocalist Anneke van Giersbergen made a name for herself in the ’90s with Dutch metallers The Gathering, and since the leaving the band in 2007 her career has blossomed as a solo artist. It has also grown to include repeated collaborations with Devin Townsend and Arjen Lucassen (Ayreon, The Gentle Storm), session work with some of metal’s finest, and the launch of her progressive metal band VUUR in 2017. When the world isn’t being plagued by a global pandemic, Anneke is also known for doing live solo acoustic shows regularly – most often in her native Netherlands – but up until now she had never committed to recording an acoustic album. The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest is her first and likely not het last shot at doing so, and for fans of the lady’s work it will come as no surprise to discover this isn’t your average paint-by-numbers slow burn acoustic record. It is next level organic music powered by Anneke’s unmistakable voice and unwavering drive to create something that stands out from the crowd.

So yeah, when it comes to Anneke’s mindset going in, this is the most metal acoustic record you’ve heard.

“There you go, my work is done,” Anneke laughs. “Like you said, I do a lot of acoustic shows but I’ve never ever made an acoustic album. It surprised me because my last effort was a progressive metal album (VUUR’s In This Moment We Are Free – Cities from 2017), so I would think that everybody would be totally weirded out by this album. Not only is it a much softer album, it’s a different kind of album, much more folk influenced… or a song like ‘I Saw A Car’ (laughs). But for some reason all the metalheads are into it and the music comes across, so they stop thinking in terms of genre. That’s a very nice thing for me.”

BraveWords Interview: MOONSPELL – Reduced To The Maximum

By Carl Begai

The one constant in Moonspell’s career is that a new album will always piss off some of the band’s fans; fans that have most likely abandoned ship at some point only to return out of a mix of curiosity and loyalty. This has been the case since the 1997 release of the band’s breakthrough second record, Irreligious, when Moonspell traded in the black metal-isms of their 1995 debut album, Wolfheart, for a distinctive gothic metal sound that became the foundation of their career from that point forward. Even so, the band hasn’t been shy about messing around with their musical / metal dynamics and either twisting or straight up ignoring the “gothic” stamp they were branded with thanks to Irreligious. Their twelfth album, Hermitage, continues this tradition, and anyone who is a fan of Moonspell’s previous two albums are in for a shock. The straightforward goth metal of Extinct (2015) has been trimmed back and the monstrous tribal / symphonic attack of 1755 (2017) is gone, with Moonspell serving up a record that demands to absorbed rather than devoured. Credit or blame these latest changes, as always, on frontman Fernando Ribeiro, who is the self-proclaimed catalyst for the new musical direction on Hermitage.

“The first time I wrote down ‘hermitage’ as an idea was 2017,” says Ribeiro. “I have this mania or routine, or whatever you want to call it, that when we finish an album I’m already thinking about the next one. I don’t even know what will be going on in six months, never mind a year from now, but when I close a chapter I open a new one. Hermitage was an idea that struck me in 2017 because when I was thinking about the lyrical part of a new album, the poetic part, I was already looking at people social distancing. I got away from social networking because I think that awareness brought division, connectivity brought solitude, and people were stonewalling themselves without the imposition of a viral crisis. Our values are the exact opposite of what we are feeling. I don’t think people have ever felt so alone, there’s no sense of community, and one thing led to the other. I started reading about hermit saints, modern day hermits, and one of the things I learned that really inspired me was that contrary to what a lot of people think, hermits don’t go to the desert or to the mountains and mind their own business. Most often these old time hermit saints took a break from their community and then returned to hopefully improve it. On the other side, modern day hermits leave an oppressive society where they have to work to fit into the system. I felt very deeply that we should write an album about that because this is what’s happening in our world.”

RICKY WARWICK Talks THE ALMIGHTY’s Forthcoming Box Set, Reveals His Favourite Album From The Band’s Catalogue

By Carl Begai

During a soon-to-be-published BraveWords interview in support of his new solo album, When Life Was Hard & Fast, vocalist / guitarist Ricky Warwick discussed the forthcoming box set from The Almighty. Warwick launched the band in with drummer Stump Monroe and bassist Floyd London in 1988; original guitarist Tantrum was replaced by Peter Friesen in 1991. The Almighty went on indefinite hiatus in 2008 when London announced he was leaving the band.

Warwick revealed the box set has been a long time in coming and only became a reality in 2020.

“It was a nightmare purely for that reason, just getting clearance from all the various labels and everything,” he says. “It took a while. Some labels were very cooperative and were very fast, others dragged their heels and took forever: It was definitely a labour of love, so big kudos to my management for pursuing it. I wanted to put the house in order because it was so messy; so much stuff was unavailable, so much stuff was all over the place. It bugged me for so long and I needed help to do that. I didn’t even know where to begin, so to have management helping me… they were fantastic. We’ve been working along with Stump for the last five or six years trying to put this together, so to finally get it all in one place is just wonderful. It’ll definitely come out this year. We’re just waiting on a release date.”

COLDBOUND – Winter Is Coming

By Carl Begai

Launched in 2012 by Finnish multi-instrumentalist Pauli Souka, Coldbound is a symphonic / progressive doom metal project that has taken on new life with the addition of former Theatre of Tragedy vocalist Liv Kristine Espenæs and former Ensiferum keyboardist Meiju Enho to the creative team. Coldbound has released a new single, “Slumber Of Decay”, offering a taste of what’s to come on the forthcoming full length album. Following is a brief interview outlining Coldbound’s vision as they gear up to finish and release the record.

Carl Begai: Coldbound was launched as a project solely under your control. What do Liv and Meiju bring to the creative process that you couldn’t achieve on his own?

Pauli Souka: “That’s a very interesting question. For this album recordings I’ve had the priviledge and honour to work with almost 43 people; 43 wonderful musicians and fantastic personalities. Some of these people had a huge impact on the way I see music. Two of them were definitely Liv Kristine and Meiju. The main reason I brought them into this is that I knew I could trust the project in their hands 100%. The results I received left me speechless, as the sounds they created were unique and definitely beyond any expectations I had. To be able to co-exist in the same project with these two fantastic ladies is a huge honour. They’re both unique and exceptional in their fields.”

BraveWords Interview: TORN BETWEEN TWO WORLDS – “Hey God, We Have A New Plan…”

By Carl Begai

If a musician is fortunate enough to write a song – never mind a full album – that continues to resonate with fans years and decades after its release, he or she has every reason to be proud. Particularly in this day and age, when attention spans have been seemingly reduced to nanoseconds and music comes off as being as disposable for some people as used tissues or what passes for food at McD’s. When vocalist Sarah Jezebel Deva and guitarist / keyboardist Chris Rehn, the brains behind Angtoria, saw the release of the band’s one and only album in 2006, they never imagined God Has A Plan For Us All would embed itself so firmly in the hearts of those that discovered the music. By no means was the record a million seller, but Sarah’s and Chris’ respective histories – her with Cradle Of Filth, The Kovenant, Mortiis to name a few, him with Abyssos and Takida – guaranteed from the outset that people would be paying attention. Sadly, after a solid response to the album Angtoria just faded away without an explanation. Fourteen years later, however, Sarah revealed she and Chris had decided to take a stab at releasing new music for the Angtoria fans that have continued to hold the band so dear, albeit under the project’s original name, Torn Between Two Worlds. The first sign of new life is the single “The Beauty Of Deception”, a song that would be well at home on God Has A Plan For Us All… which is just what the diehard Angtoria fans wanted.

BraveWords: How long has this comeback been in planning even though you aren’t using the Angtoria name anymore?

Chris: “In planning… well, Sarah and I met back in 2001 and started talking about working together, so it’s been in planning ever since then. We’ve did some demo tracks with this particular project back in 2003, and that escalated and evolved into Angtoria in 2006. This particular track has been in planning for the last five years; not five years in the making, just in the planning. Sarah and I are both busy with our families and work, so trying to find the time to do things for fun versus for work… those are two different things. And when you’re working 18 hours a day and trying to set time aside to do music for fun, it isn’t easy.”

BraveWords Interview: ACCEPT – Screaming For A Wolf Bite

By Carl Begai

In 2010, German metal legends Accept ended a 14 year hiatus with Blood Of The Nations, an album that went over a storm in spite of the band doing the unthinkable (again) by replacing original vocalist Udo Dirkschneider. News that former T.T. Quick singer Mark Tornillo was fronting the band created a nasty buzz amongst Accept diehards, many of whom regarded the Eat The Heat record from 1989 a monumental bomb due to the addition of David Reece in place of Accept’s iconic original singer. Blood Of The Nations was anything but a failure, however, silencing the naysayers with band’s strongest record since 1993’s Objection Overruled and serving as a launchpad for a decade of metal mayhem. Too Mean To Die is Accept’s latest offering five albums in from their comeback, and it’s fair to say anyone who has stuck around since then or was weaned on the Restless And Wild, Balls To The Wall and Metal Heart albums will find it delivers the expected goods.

Asked if it registers that a decade has indeed passed since the Blood Of The Nations comeback, guitarist Wolf Hoffmann says “it sounds like a long time, but really, it goes by so quickly. But, sometimes I’m amazed at how much we’ve done in the last 10 years. Five albums, I made a solo album, we made a live album, we’ve toured all over the world. Yeah, we’ve done a lot (laughs).”

One of Accept’s last road trips before getting to work on Too Mean To Die was 2019’s Symphonic Terror Tour through Europe with the Orchestra Of Death. It was an important tour for several reasons and in truth was meant to be a Wolf Hoffmann solo tour. It simply grew to become an entirely different animal during the planning stages.

“That tour was really a lot of fun” says Hoffmann. “I have to say it’s one of the best tours I’ve ever done in my life from a musical and personal standpoint. It was very satisfying. And the funny thing is, yeah, it was supposed to be a Wolf Hoffmann tour; Accept snuck in as an afterthought. Originally I was going to go on tour with my solo project and an orchestra, but then it happened step-by-step that everyone said ‘Well, if you’re going to be on stage you’re going to play ‘Balls To The Wall’, right? You’re going to play ‘Metal Heart’, right?’ And you can’t really do that without a singer, which is how the Accept guys ended up getting involved. It was hard to communicate with the outside saying that it was an Accept show with an orchestra, because I was playing all these instrumentals during the show, but what are you gonna do? I just wanted to play stuff from my solo album (Headbanger’s Symphony) and we wanted to play some Accept stuff, so we did a 50-50 thing.”

BraveWords Interview: SOILWORK – Making Waves

By Carl Begai

Blame Soilwork guitarist David Andersson for the band’s new EP, A Whisp Of The Atlantic. It’s all his fault. And he’s proud of it.

Of course Andersson’s bandmates were all present and accounted for when Soilwork put the EP together over the summer, but it was the 45 year-old guitarist who fired up the machine again and put everyone back to work. A Whisp Of The Atlantic offers up some startling work from the band, spearheaded by the monstrous 16-minute title track that, once again, makes a bold statement with regards to collective talent that Soilwork bleeds into their music. For Andersson it was a chance for the band to continue exercising this creativity rather than waiting for the world to get back to something resembling normal before releasing a follow-up to their previous spotlight-worthy album, Verkligheten.

“We released Verkligheten early last year, and this line-up of the band has a really good time together, so we’re very creative and enthusiastic about what we’re doing,” Andersson explains. “I thought it would be a waste to wait two or three years before we record something new, so I wrote a few songs starting with ‘Feverish’. I made a few more and everyone seemed to like them. Since I joined the band in 2012, I’ve always had this idea of writing one long epic, progressive song. Just because I loved prog rock growing up, and I also think that Soilwork is a bit underestimated as a band. People think of us as writing catchy Swedish melodic death metal but we’re more than just that. With this line-up we’re pretty much able to play any kind of music and it would be really nice to just be able to show people that we’re much more than they think.”