Shadowlord
Shadowlord is a great heavy/power
metal band located in South Africa and they recently released their incredible
debut album entitled "Shadowlord". This is a highly recommended release!
Make sure you get it and listen to it, so that you can be able to take
pride in being one of the first that discovered this band! Here we have
Herman the band's mainman and leader covering a lot of ground regarding
the band, their debut album and lots of other issues as well...
1.FIRST OF ALL CONGRATULATIONS FOR "SHADOWLORD"!
IT'S A GREAT ALBUM!
Thank you, and thank you for the excellent
review, it means a lot to us.
2.SO, WHAT HAPPENED TO SHADOWLORD FROM THE RELEASE
OF YOUR PREVIOUS DEMO CD TILL NOW?
Wow, too much man! Of the members on the demo
only I remain. After the demo we received pressure from overseas about
how crap our drummer was. Labels said that the band was ok but the drummer
was too out of time, so naturally I put a lot of pressure on him to practice
with clicks and all that, in the end he quit. We have gone through another
drummer since then and the man we are sticking with is Leon, he is incredibly
tight and solid not to mention he has technique and skill to die for. He
is also much more into our style of music and shit so he is the man! Then
the guitarist and bassist had to be fired on account of laziness and negativity.
Ross was let go because he couldn't practice enough and he is currently
back in the band as stand-in second guitarist (he is amazing, he taught
guitar for 12 years, god knows how long he's been playing) but we are keeping
him until we find "mr right". Gregen just has the most amazing voice but
I'll deal with that later!
3.IF I ASKED YOU TO PRESENT THE ALBUM YOURSELF
TO THE FANS, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM? HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE "SHADOWLORD"?
The album is the culmination of 10 years worth
of song-writing and band-related toil. It is so incredibly diverse in style
from song to song and we are going to use it as a model for the rest of
our albums for all eternity. I believe that bands shouldn't drastically
change their styles because they build a fan base based upon that particular
sound and when the next album comes out the fans can expect another "Shadowlord".
4.I WROTE IN MY REVIEW THAT THE RUNNING WILD INFLUENCES
HAVE BEEN REDUCED AND THAT ALTHOUGH YOU STILL HAVE A GERMAN HEAVY/POWER
METAL SOUND, YOUR MUSIC IS CLOSER TO HELLOWEEN AND IRON MAIDEN. ON THE
BALLADS NOW I DISCOVERED A MANOWAR EPIC TINGE. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY
ON THAT COMMENT? DO YOU AGREE?
Shadowlord is not a typical metal band, we
don't fit into any category. We have some songs that are more reminiscent
of early 80's thrash than to modern German metal bands. I dont use other
bands as models when I write songs, they mostly come from within. I do
know that you have to compare us with other bands so that the readers would
learn more about our sound but the truth is that we don't really sound
like the others, it's quite a quest for us to find our unique sound and
we are still building on it.
5.HERMAN YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRODUCTION
AND IT TURNED OUT TO BE GREAT WITH A CLEAR SOUND! HOW DIFFICULT WAS IT
FOR YOU TO CREATE THIS SOUND? DID YOU KNOW FROM THE BEGINNING HOW YOU WANTED
THIS ALBUM TO SOUND OR DID YOU EXPERIMENT? HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO
FINISH IT? ARE YOU SATISFIED BY THE FINAL RESULT OR IS THERE ANYTHING YOU'D
LIKE TO CHANGE?
Well I am quite picky about guitar tone and
things like this. It took me a couple of days just to get the amp placed
at the right spot in the room, not to mention tweaking and working with
different mics and guitars. The same went for all the instruments. For
the drums we hired certain parts from different people and got an external
drum engineer in, we recorded the drums in a different, more "alive"(more
wood and reflecting surfaces) studio whereas the guitars were recorded
in my "dead"(much more insulation, foam and things like this) studio. All
the drums are live and no triggers have been used. In the end I think we
achieved more or less the sound that we were looking for. The vocals for
example were recorded in 3 different locations (one of them being my bedroom)
for different tones. In the end the album took from October 2003 to April
2004.
6.WHERE ARE YOUR LYRICS REFERRING TO? WHICH TOPICS
ATTRACT YOU AND INTRIGUE YOU TO TALK ABOUT? BY THE WAY, WHO IS THE "HEAVY
METAL MADMAN"?
Well, this answer would be too long if I go
into too much depth, but the lyrics are about topics that interest me,
from ancient history to metal. Heavy Metal Madman is about when we were
young metalheads and it was always hard to get what we wanted (especially
in this country) people are very conservative and religious here so metal
stuff were frowned upon harshly back then. In the song we busted a friend
out of his house cause his dad wouldn't let him go to a metal concert so
we stole one of our parents cars and we snuck him out of the house, drove
away from the cops and shit like that. The rest of the song is about how
majestic the concert and the power of metal is. Age of Discovery is about
a friend of ours that died. Dark Messiah is about religion's negative influences.
Steel Wings is about Harleys and stuff and so on and so forth. We have
a wide range of different topics and shit in our music.
7.NOW TELL ME WHO CREATED THE ARTWORK AND
WHAT IT REPRESENTS. HOW IS IT RELATED TO THE LYRICS? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO
SUGGEST WITH IT? WHO IS THIS ANGEL AND WHAT HE WANT TO "CAST" UPON THE
EARTH?
Well I created the artwork. My original idea
was something completely different but the artist I hired fucked everything
up completely so in the end I was reduced to doing the damn thing myself.
As you can see the angel has one wing that has been reduced to just bones
and stuff. The angel is looking at the earth kind of judging all the people
and seeing that we are destroying the planet and ourselves.
8.YOU HAVE STRONG RELATIONS WITH THE GREEK HEAVY
METAL FANS. HOW WAS THIS CONNECTION CREATED? HAS THEIR SUPPORT HELPED YOU
AS A BAND? WHICH OTHER COUNTRIES SUPPORT SHADOWLORD?
Well, the Greeks are the hardest metal fans
on the planet. A lot of old bands that nobody has ever heard of still sell
records in Greece on account of the die-hard fans there. In other countries
"old" metal styles aren't as popular, people embrace mostly the new stuff.
The Greeks don't discriminate between what is old and new, only that which
rocks is important that is why I have a lot of respect for the Greek metal
fans. The relationship was created by my friend Basil (a Greek South African)
who was in Greece with our previous demo and gave it to some people. We
instantly received tons of feedback (even from you!! :) ). As for
the rest of the world, there are countries that definitely support us.
The two biggest (after Greece) would be Germany and Russia. But that's
another story altogether.
9.HOW IS THE CURRENT SITUATION IN THE SOUTH AFRICA
METAL SCENE? ARE THERE ANY INTERESTING AND PROMISING BANDS YOU CAN PINPOINT
FOR US?
Well the scene is small, when I met you in
Greece there were about 10 000 people at the show we were at. In SA our
biggest festival is about 17 000 people but that is all kinds of music,
it's our biggest festival. So our biggest (and only) Metal festival gets
about 800 people, so the scene is very small here and its mostly ruled
by death metal. It is definitely picking up though. Our best bands (after
us of course! :P) is Agro (kind of reminds me of Onkel Tom and Crematory)
and ATFN (progressive, punk, metal thingy).
10.WHICH WORDS DO YOU THINK DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC
BETTER FOR YOU? WHAT TITLE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUR CAREER THIS FAR?
Our music could be described as "Tyrannosaurus
in mating season" but then again it couldn't. My career this far? Mein
Kampf (my struggle). Well maybe not so bad but its quite hard over here,
that's why I went to Greece and Germany to visit you people because it's
you guys who really support us. Well of course we have a very very die-hard
fan base here but it's very small compared to Europe, plus we want to spread
the SHADOWLORD sickness to the whole universe!!!
11.GREG IS YOUR NEW SINGER AND HE IS REALLY TALENTED!
HIS VOICE SOUNDS REALLY CLOSE TO MICHAEL KISKE'S ESSENCE, BUT HIS PERSONAL
TOUCH AND APPROACH INTO INTERPRETING THE SONGS IS MORE THAN OBVOUS. HOW
DID YOU SELECT GREG? DID YOU DO AUDITIONS OR NOT?
Well, I had to let Ross go and I felt quite
depressed, I was driving around the way I do when I want to think and then
I saw Gregen's car at this house. Me and Gregen were in a band at school
and lost touch after Andrew died (the guy who "Age of Discovery" was written
for, our bassist). So I stopped at this house and knocked on the door not
knowing if he still had that car after all these years and behold he opened
the door, I asked him if he still sings and he said he'd give it a shot
and the rest is history.
12.DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR LIVE SHOWS? HAVE
YOU PLANNED OR ARE YOU PLANNING A TOUR? WHICH WILL YOUR NEXT STEPS BE?
Well we have played hundreds of live shows
all over SA. The moment we can afford to tour Greece you guys can bet your
asses we will be there.
13.ARE YOU SATISFIED BY THE FEEDBACK YOU GOT THIS
FAR? WHICH REVIEW YOU RECEIVED YOU THINK DESCRIBED YOUR MUSIC THE BEST
POSSIBLE WAY? WHICH ONE, ACCORDING TO YOU, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR
SOUND?
Well the album was only released a month ago
so we have only received 2 reviews, the magazine reviews will only be here
in the August editions (it's July now). I have mailed the album to about
50+ magazines across the globe so we will probably get more soon, I'll
keep you posted.
14.IF YOU COULD BE AN IMPORTANT PERSONALITY FOR
A DAY, WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE AND WHICH PERIOD OF HIS/HER LIFE WOULD
YOU LIKE TO HAVE A TASTE OF?
At the moment all I can think of is I'd like
to be (what do I mean like to be? I AM!!) Alexander. Especially just after
he sacked Babylon and then Persepolis. Hmmm... Gregen would be Buchepalas!
HA HA!!
15.WHAT TITLE WOULD YOU LIKE THIS INTERVIEW TO
HAVE?
"Alexander of Macedonia is back!! All bow
to your true leader!!" ...hmm, maybe the Greeks wouldn't find that too
funny...
16.THANK YOU! LEAVE A MESSAGE TO THE FANS
AND READERS ALL AROUND THE WORLD...
Don't be what the world tells you to be, don't
wear what the damn cosmo tells you to. Just be what you want to be and
forget what people will think of you, think of what you think of yourself.
Respect your history and your fellow humans and your planet. Just be good
and leave all negativity and dogma for the stupid people and above all
else.. ...KEEP POUNDING METAL!!!
Christine Parastatidou
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