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BraveWords Interview: AYREON – Everything’s Electric

By Carl Begai

Twenty-two years ago, a struggling Dutch musician by the name of Arjen Anthony Lucassen released what would be his breakthrough album. Buoyed by the attention he received for his first two records – The Final Experiment (1995) and Actual Fantasy (1996) – Lucassen adopted a “go big or go home” strategy and concocted a progressive metal opera featuring the talents of musicians he admired dubbed Into The Electric Castle. It was the beginning of what has become an internationally successful and lucrative career, allowing Lucassen to pursue his musical fantasies and ideas as they formulate in his hyperactive brain. With each album that followed Into The Electric Castle – six more at press time, not including his numerous side projects – the calls for Ayreon to perform live grew louder, and in 2016 fans were treated to a stage performance of The Human Equation album from 2004, The Theater Equation. Lucassen’s participation in the production was minimal compared to Ayreon Universe in 2017, the first ever official live Ayreon shows featuring Floor Jansen (Nightwish), Jonas Renske (Katatonia), Anneke van Giersbergen, Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian), Damian Wilson (ex-Threshold) and Tommy Karevik (Kamelot) to name a few. Two years later, Lucassen decided to gather his cast of original characters and returned to where it all began with four shows celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Into The Electric Castle. The end result is another jewel in Lucassen’s crown, Electric Castle Live And Other Tales.

BraveWords: Over the years you’ve maintained that Ayreon is not something you could see being performed live because of the scope of the production required and all the moving parts. Between Ayreon Universe and Electric Castle Live – and Star One for that matter – I call bullshit (laughs).

Arjen: “I know (laughs). And the reactions to Electric Castle Live have been unanimously positive. It sounds arrogant, but this time I was pretty sure of it. When we were editing the video and I saw all the material, and I was mixing it, I thought ‘Oh my God, we did it.’ We had plenty of camera angles to choose from, every shot was cool, the sound was good…. I think this was the first Ayreon release ever where I believed in it 100%. You’ve known me for years, and I’m always insecure when it comes to releasing a new album: ‘Are they going to like it? I wish I had done this…’ This time there we no ‘if only’s’. For the previous live stuff there were so many of those, but this time everything aligned perfectly. If there has been any negative response it has been towards the encores, which might be a bit too much for some people. And some people don’t like the narration, but that’s just a personal thing so I don’t give a shit about that because John de Lancie was great.”

Noises In My Head: DEPECHE MODE – “Blasphemous Rumours”

By Carl Begai

Depeche Mode – “Blasphemous Rumours”

Album: Some Great Reward

Heavy without the metal. Some Great Reward was released when I was a mere 15 years old and had only just started my musical journey. While my high school peers into Depeche Mode and MuchMusic were going apeshit over “People Are People” and “Master And Servant”, I discovered the bizarre closing track, “Blasphemous Rumours”. It was so different from the music in my primordial music “collection” and what I was being pummelled with via Top 40 rock radio, thus I was drawn in by the song’s epic weirdness. It was unlike anything I had ever heard; I still remember listening to the song through my father’s billion dollar Marantz headphones, feeling the darkness of the track in my bones while the percussive violence made my head swim. Even the song arrangement itself is twisted, casting traditional songwriting structure to the wind.

I loved Dave Gahan’s voice (I still do) and there was something about the way he sang “Blasphemous Rumours” that was hypnotic. And the lyrics….. jeez. The chorus is probably one of the most brutal things I’ve heard if I sit here and think about it, and Gahan’s almost happy delivery is a wonderful contrast to the dark dark dark subject matter. As someone who dabbles in writing lyrics I can only dream of writing something as brilliant as that. I’m convinced that being Depeche Mode fan is one of the reasons I was drawn to the dark / gothic side of metal as I started to branch out from Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, thrash royalty and the hair bands. I also know I’m in good company as far as being a Depeche Mode fan, as many metal fans / artists I’ve spoke to over the years have expressed appreciation for what Gahan / Gore / Fletcher / Wilder accomplished in their early years.

And, like The Cure catalogue, there are certain Depeche Mode songs that should never be covered. “Blasphemous Rumours” is at the very top of that list.

“I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours
But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humour
And when I die I expect to find him laughing.”

BraveWords Interview: WOLFHEART – The Fuck It Principle

By Carl Begai

“The only similarity between me and Devin Townsend is that we’re both bald.”

So says Wolfheart frontman / founder Tuomas Saukkonen as this interview kicks off, reacting to the suggestions that he is the Finnish counterpart to Canada’s own Hevy Devy. It’s a comparison meant as and taken as a compliment, made in reference to Saukkonen’s assortment of bands / projects that have surfaced since he started making noise with Before The Dawn in 1999. Dawn Of Solace, Black Sun Aeon, Routasielu and The Final Harvest also bear his name, all of them a testament to Saukkonen’s drive and need to create music. Things came to a head in 2013, however, when he shut everything down to focus on a new solo venture, Wolfheart. Since then he has stayed the course, building it into a real band, and it is arguably his most successful work to date. Wolfheart’s fifth album, Wolves Of Karelia, is a short but melodic death metal sweet record, brandishing the band’s now signature sound in unpredictable fashion. Saukkonen will be the first to say he’s come a long way over the past 20 years.

“Dawn Of Solace was already fucked up back in 2007 thanks to being on a shitty Spanish label,” Saukkonen begins, looking back on his mindset of stopping all his other projects for Wolfheart. “And with Before The Dawn there were issues with labels, with band members, so even before the last album came out the label knew that would be the last one for them. All the other bands that I had running alongside Before The Dawn, they were just side projects to basically keep me balanced because I was getting frustrated with the main band. So, it made more sense to me to drop everything and take a break from the music business for a while. I released the first Wolfheart album on my own and then started to talk to the labels again. Looking back now, it was a really good decision to do things that way. The more shitty contracts you sign the wiser you get. It’s called learning things the hard way (laughs).”

“It was more like a mental thing. I don’t need those side projects to keep myself distracted from being frustrated by the main band. Nothing worked with Before The Dawn, and things are on a completely different level with Wolfheart. I don’t need another outlet for additional music. Of course, now that we’re all being forced to stay home there’s going to be some kind of side project again (laughs), but for completely different reasons.”

BraveWords Interview: ME AND THAT MAN – How To Build A Better Monster

By Carl Begai

It’s a safe bet that nobody expected the man responsible for Behemoth’s soul-wrenching metal and creating albums such as Satanica, Demigod, The Apostasy, and The Satanist would turn around and release a record of original songs steeped in American country, blues and folk. But, in 2017 Adam “Nergal” Darski did exactly that, much to the unexpected delight of the metal world. Sure, not everybody bought into it, but the positive feedback from those fans that gave Songs Of Love And Death a chance was enough to cement Nergal’s belief that he was onto something. Thus, following the release of Behemoth’s critically acclaimed I Loved You At Your Darkest in 2018, he set to writing songs for the album that would become New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1. His game plan was different this time out, however, as Nergal was no longer working with collborator John Porter, and he brought in a host of vocalists to take over the singing duties he’d looked after on the debut. The end result is an album that is very different from Songs Of Love And Death yet remains uniquely Me And That Man, even though Nergal is the first person in line to call the music cliché.

“I was positively surprised by how the debut was received,” Nergal begins. “It wasn’t magnificent. It was good and very good, and I think the debut is a solid album. It’s legit, it’s honest, and it’s pretty well done. It was my debut when it comes to using my regular voice as a singer, so I can hear that when I listen to the album now. I was still learning, so when I listen to ‘Mestwo’ on the new album – the only song that I did the vocals for – I can hear the progress that I’ve made. But yeah, I was surprised that people didn’t want to lynch me for the first record (laughs). We had a good following, and every time I would do an interview for Behemoth, every third person would tell me how much they love Me And That Man. It was a job well done, that’s for sure.”

Metal fans are arguably the most open-minded music fans in the world. According to Nergal, the number of Behemoth fans that gave him stick for Me And That Man when the project initially surfaced were in a very clear minority.

“I’m pretty immune to people’s expectations because art, in the first place, is made to satisfy your own ego. You want to get it out of your system and you have to be happy with it. After that you bring it to the masses and if they don’t like it, what can I say? I’m fulfilled regardless. You, as a listener, can make my life even more complete than it is by enjoying the music that I’m making and supporting it. That makes the world perfect for an artist. The bottom line for Me And That Man is to get these guys together, play some stripped down rock n’ roll, and have fun.”

Noises In My Head: SAIGON KICK – “My Life”

By Carl Begai

Saigon Kick – “My Life”

Album: s/t

I discovered Saigon Kick quite by accident, through a rock magazine (I forget which one it was) that came with a split 45 featuring “What Do You Do” on Side A; no idea who was on Side B. As a punk fan I was immediately hooked, and I picked up the album the next day as it had just been released. Fact is I love this album to death and I could write a 5-page essay on everything that’s right about it; this one and follow-up The Lizard are two of my favourite records of all time. From the Middle Eastern vibe of opener “New World” to The Cult-isms of “Love Of God” and ‘”ICU” to the Brit-punk vibe running all the way through…. man, it never gets boring. But “My Life”… that song takes the cake and leaves you wondering what the hell just happened.

Ten songs into what is a wonderfully obnoxious listen comes a song I – and nobody else – could have anticipated going in. From the get-go it sounds like The Beatles have joined the party as Saigom Kick turn out music suitable for a Sesame Street soundtrack. It’s entirely too happy by half, but the groove, the vocals, the over-the-top chorus… somehow it all makes sense for a band that clearly had no interest in catering to the hair band scene they were (unfortunately) lumped in with. But that isn’t even the best part. Nope. It is the iconic, mindblowing KAZOO SOLO in the middle of it all that binds everything together, making you realize (a) only a special kind of creative madness could come up with this, and (b) there is no fucking way you cannot like this song.

The album is artistic chemistry at its best. “My Life” is one of the most original songs I’ve ever heard. Love it.

Noises In My Head: HELLOWEEN – “Save Us”

By Carl Begai

Helloween – “Save Us”

Album: Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part II (1988)

Helloween is one of the building blocks of my metal persona, and my permanent residency in the pumpkin patch truly started with “Save Us”. I have no idea why I missed out on Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part I, released in 1987 – because this love affair would have begun a year earlier – but I suspect it had to do with many (not all) European metal artists having limited exposure on the Canadian market if a major league label wasn’t involved. In any case, mega-hit “I Want Out” was making the rounds on Toronto’s / Canada’s video channels and pushed me to buy the album, but when Side 2 of the cassette I’d purchased for my car kicked in I was floored. “Eagle Fly Free” and “Dr. Stein” had impressed me, “I Want Out” was a no-brainer, but “Save Us”…. it grabbed me by the balls and wouldn’t let go.

The guitar shred was over the top – making me a Kai Hansen fan for life – and as a huge Queensrÿche fan who worshipped Geoff Tate as a vocal god thanks to Rage For Order and Operation: Mindcrime, hearing Michael Kiske storm in and lay waste to everything in his path with those high-end vocals was a religious experience. I still remember sitting in the Warden Woods parking lot after work with the song blasting from my pimped JBL speakers, thinking “Who the hell is Judas Priest?” And it’s mindblowing to hear Kiske sing just with just as much power if not more some 30 years later, with no loss of vocal range.

Interestingly, I found out only recently later that “Save Us” never appeared on the original vinyl LP release of Keeper II, but only on the CD version as a bonus track. It did, however, appear on the cassette tape version, which is odd but fortunate for me.

And, in 2016, Hansen performed the song live with Visions Of Atlantis singer Clémentine Delauney sharing lead vocals, and damn, they killed it. Unexpected, but brilliant.

Noises In My Head: Y&T – “I’ll Cry For You” (Instrumental)

By Carl Begai

Y&T – “I’ll Cry For You” (Instrumental)

Album: Contagious (1987)

Y&T have been around since the ’70s and continue to tour to this day, and Contagious – released in 1987 – is by no means their best album. Two songs that have always stood out for me are the title track and “Eyes Of A Stranger”, but it’s the instrumental outro of “I’ll Cry For You” that blew my mind the first time I heard it. All these years later, it makes my world stop for not quite three minutes as I allow myself to be immersed by some of most emotional guitar playing I’ve ever heard.

The strange thing about this for me is that this was the time when I was dividing my time between the onslaught of hair bands like Ratt, Mötley Crüe, and W.A.S.P., heavier acts like Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, and discovering bands like Helloween and Warlock. Instrumental music beyond Rush classic “YYZ” didn’t really interest me.

Even now, instrumental music generally runs hot and cold with me. It either captures my attention and digs its hooks into me as any good song does, or it bores me to tears with overblown technical wankery. There has to be something about a piece that make me feel something or take me somewhere. “I’ll Cry For You” is one man, Dave Meniketti, playing from his heart and getting deep into yours. That’s probably the best way I can describe it. The only thing better is hearing / seeing Meniketti play the track live, because he tacks on an extra couple minutes of beautiful playing.

BraveWords Interview: NIGHTWISH – Come On Feel The Noise…

By Carl Begai

Nightwish keyboardist / founder Tuomas Holopainen would have you believe that Human. :II: Nature. is the band’s biggest and best album to date. In terms of scope the new record is most certainly the biggest, as it’s divided into two parts: nine songs on what amounts to an old schooler’s Disc 1, and a classical piece, “All the Works of Nature Which Adorn the World” divided into eight parts, composed and constructed by Holopainen with longtime collaborator Pip Williams on Disc 2, envisioned and assembled as something meant to be listened to as a complete experience. As for the “best”, that comes down to a matter of personal taste, but it’s easy to understand why Holopainen believes it. Human. :II: Nature. is the band’s most diverse offering ever – sometimes shockingly so – taking them into musical territories they have perhaps only touched on in the past and, in so doing, creating a much more exciting Nightwish sound. This flies in the face of first single, “Noise”, which was as trademark symphonic metal Nightwish (read: predictable) as you can get. Second single “Harvest”, on the other hand, turned the tables completely by putting uilleann pipes player / backing vocalist Troy Donockley up front and keeping singer Floor Jansen in the background for a song that is 100% folk-oriented. And this is only the beginning, as fans will discover as they navigate Human. :II: Nature.’s bold environment.

BraveWords: Choosing “Noise” as the first single… given how diverse the album is, was that done to ease fans into the record by giving them what they want?

Tuomas: “We chose ‘Noise’ as the first single for the subject matter – addiction to technology – because we knew it would make a brilliant video. I usually don’t like to put out singles because I don’t want to take out one song and put it on a pedestal, and make it somehow special, but these days that’s just how the story goes. The only reason that Human. :II: Nature. ended up being a double album is that it doesn’t fit on one CD. There was never actually a plan to do a double album. And then, when the idea of separating the two sections came up, it made sense.”

BraveWords: I find that “Noise” makes a much bigger impact on a real sound system as opposed to watching the YouTube video, which is actually where the vast majority of people experienced the track for the first time. I was much more invested in the song after hearing it large and loud.

Tuomas: “Definitely. I’ve got this constant anticipated disappointment that people are going to listen to this album on YouTube or on their phones. It’s tragic that people don’t listen to music the way they used to. People don’t listen to albums anymore, and you really want to listen to this album from beginning to end, right from the diaphanous beginning to the end of the second disc. People should take that journey more often because it might help them in everyday life.”

STORM FORCE – Breaking Down The Barricades

By Carl Begai

Love it or hate it, it’s an undeniable fact that so-called ’80s hair metal is alive and well in 2020. Never mind the LA strip bands that are trekking around on “reunion” tours – often consisting of two original members and three guys conscripted from the local laundromat – living off their glory day catalogues; there are up-and-coming bands in all corners of the world trying to make their mark with that distinctive ’80s rock sound. And many are succeeding. Canadian rockers Storm Force are one example, having released their debut album Age Of Fear at the beginning of the year and receiving critical acclaim from the European and UK press in particular. Not an easy task considering Europe is where most of these bands originate nowadays, but something about the record has garnered Storm Force serious attention and it’s not guitarist / founder Greg Fraser’s Brighton Rock past. Sure, folks that lived through Brighton Rock’s commercial success in the ’80s with two sign-of-the-times albums (Young, Wild And Free and Take A Deep Breath) will zero in on it as a talking point, but Age Of Fear stands on its own as a solid rock album that people are happy to dub “old school ’80s hair metal.”

“It was about three year in the making, just kinda chipping away at it,” Fraser says of Age Of Fear, having been out of the limelight for several years. “Sometime I wondered if it was ever going to be finished because we’ve got different things going on, but once we got the deal (with Escape Music) it put things into overdrive. We wanted the record to be finished before we started shopping around but it didn’t happen that way, which is kind of a good thing because it could have been another year before the record was done.”

“Any kid that’s 20 years-old today, they’re never going to buy a CD in their lifetime,” he adds. “It’s the people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and older that are willing to buy 10 songs all at once. Kids today… one song at a time and that’s all they need. I’m still old school. If I hear a song I like, I wanna know where the rest of the songs are (laughs). The fact I have a label (Escape Music) that’s willing to print CDs is amazing, because that’s the only way you can make any money off of any product. You can’t make anything off of streaming.”

BLACKGUARD – How We Pissed Off Everyone That Loved Us… And Why It Took Seven Years To Release The Best Album Of Our Career

By Carl Begai

Between 2009 and 2013, a small yet volatile Canadian melodic death metal band dubbed Blackguard was out for blood. The bloodlust was awakened several years earlier (between 2001 and 2004) when they were known as Profugus Mortis, the band creating their own brand of folk-flavoured melodic death metal. They attracted a decent amount of attention with a small collection of songs – BraveWords being one of their first media followers – which were eventually showcased on the 2007 album, So It Begins. From there it was full speed ahead. Over the course of two album releases under the Blackguard name – Profugus Mortis (2009) and Firefight (2011) – the band ripped through North America with occasional jaunts across Europe for a whopping 18 tours. Having supported everyone from Korpiklaani to Nevermore to Epica to Deicide, Blackguard was a name that nobody was likely to forget, and ultimately that was the band’s downfall. Plain and simple, fans got sick of seeing them turn up at every show coming through town. When Blackguard announced they were working on a new album in around 2013, interest seemed to be at an all-time low not only amongst the fans but within the band itself. As a result, the long-suffering record known as Storm, which was teased sporadically as “almost done” by the band for years, stayed buried until January 2020.

“I guess you can boil it down to a series of unfortunate events for the most part,” says frontman Paul “Ablaze” Zinay of what he concedes was a mind-boggling delay. “We started writing the album in 2012, and it probably should have come out in 2013 or 2014. When 2013 came around we were starting to feel burnt out at that point because we were so stupid; we toured way too fucking much in North America and just ended up killing ourselves. The last tour we did was Finntroll in 2013, and nobody actually said it at first, but there was the feeling within the band that it was going to be our last tour for a long time. We didn’t have a conversation but the writing was on the wall; we didn’t want this anymore. We can’t blame anybody but ourselves for that because at the end of the day we said yes to going out as much as we did. We should have said no, but what’s the saying? ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.'”