Interviews

Interview with DORO: “We already have six songs for the new album”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on December 10, 2020
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: , , , , , , . 7 Comments

Interview By Alison Booth

Metal Queen DORO has certainly earned that title, with a career spanning over more than three decades. From the first album release with her band WARLOCK in 1984, Doro paved the way for women in metal and has long been an inspiration, empowering so many artists in the rock and metal industry.

After releasing her first album post-WARLOCK in 1989, Doro has never looked back, with a steady stream of albums and collaborations with many artists over the years.

Just a few weeks ago, Doro released a best of album, “Magic Diamonds – Best Of Rock, Ballads & Rare Treasures”, via her own label Rare Diamonds Productions. The album contains a fantastic collection of 56 songs with 20 rock songs, 18 ballads and 18 rare treasures!

Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth, recently caught up Doro who was the special guest on the 8th anniversary of her radio show Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem at TotalRock. The whole show can be heard at this location.  You can hear the chat on the audio player below, along with a selection of excerpts to read:

Discussing the new album, Doro explained:

“There’s another box set and it has two double vinyl, one is white, the other is clear. It all looks nice, sounds great.

I did it because it was impossible to tour this year and we had two European tours and two American tours, Australia, South America. Everything was lined up, tons of great festivals and everything got cancelled or postponed. So I thought yeah I wanna go back into the studio, working on some new songs, which I did. And then I thought, maybe I want to put out a best of record. At first I started with like fifteen songs, then it was twenty five, thirty five, forty five and now fifty six songs!

And there’s still some songs I would love to put on maybe volume two in the next couple of years or something. There are so many songs that deserve to be heard in a different arrangement or live. That’s what I miss the most. There’s tons of live versions on there, so even if people can’t come to the concerts, they can definitely get the excitement and the power when you listen to it.”

Doro expressed her thoughts about the pandemic:

“It was a big shock. My last normal gig was actually March and we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Saxon in my former hometown in Düsseldorf, Germany. And there was Saxon and Diamond Head, Tygers Of Pan Tang and us and we had a great, great night – it was awesome!

Then, two days later they announced only a thousand people allowed in the venue, then it went down to five hundred people, then nobody and yeah, so March was our last normal gig. Then we thought maybe we can hang in there till the summer festivals. Yeah and then summer festivals one by one got cancelled or postponed, it was shocking, it was shocking.

I did a couple of things which was like totally different, was a big challenge. We did some drive-in shows. For the first time it was weird, because it felt exactly like our All We Are video that was shot in 1987, where everybody was in their cars and we were performing on top of the tour bus and then with the magic of metal and you know and Warlock, it came to life and we were rocking out together and it felt exactly like that. I hopped on stage and I saw only cars, it was so surreal but it was fun. We made it I think that everybody had a great time, it was exciting! And we actually recorded some songs and one song is on the Magic Diamonds album, which I like so much. It’s Love Me In Black and you don’t see any audience participation but you can feel there’s a good vibe going, a nice, magical version.

It was a rough year I think for everybody and we try to stay positive, but it’s hard when you’ve nothing to do – especially for the band and the crew. But we’re hoping next year we’ll get back to normal kind of, it would be awesome. And if not, then we’ll work on a new album.”

Doro had lots to say on the topic of duets:

“Actually, all my duet partners were always great because we stayed great friends. Like there’s one song on this album with Udo Dirkschneider and it’s a cover version of Breaking The Law, because Judas Priest was my first band I’ve toured with in 1986 and I always wanted to say thank you to Priest, so we recorded Breaking The Law and I was just working with Udo Dirkschneider on his album and said ‘hey Udo you wanna work on my album as well?’ with an orchestra, it was really nice, came out so great. We always love to play Breaking The Law.

There’s another duet with Tarja Turunen who sang for Nightwish and this song’s called Walking With The Angels – something that fits so perfectly because she has such an angelic voice.

And then there’s one song, Bad Blood, that’s with Blaze Bayley. We are great friends for a long time. And Descent, that’s another song with Pete Steele and unfortunately he is not any more with us, but he was a great guy. He was the tallest guy I ever met, he was such a gentle giant.

And then my favourite duet is Love Me Forever with Lemmy. That was my first time that I did a duet and it was in 2000. We recorded it for my Calling The Wild album. We did two songs, one was Alone Again and the other one was Love Me Forever and Eric Singer is playing drums on it, the KISS drummer and Bob Kulick, he played guitar on it and it was in his studio. And Bob, he passed away a couple of months ago, I couldn’t believe it. We always stayed friends. So these duets, they mean a lot to me, especially Love Me Forever with Lemmy and Descent with Pete Steele, because you know – I feel we’re very connected in heart and soul, but it’s kinda tough to live without them. Lemmy was my best friend, I loved him so much.

On the “Ace Of Spades” anniversary:

“Somebody sent me the nice box set, oh it’s awesome! If people want to get something really special, this is wow, it’s so nice. Yeah Ace Of Spades was my favourite album. I had my first band in 1980 and when this one came out, like wow, it was so inspiring. I still love that song Ace Of Spades, oh my God. And Love Me Like A Reptile was the second song on Ace Of Spades and it was by coincidence that Dave Ellefson said ‘hey you want to sing a MOTÖRHEAD song?’ And it was oh yeah! Maybe it was meant to be, it was a lot of fun!“

Looking ahead to the future, Doro revealed:

“If I could do ten or twenty more records it would be awesome. I love people and that’s I guess what I’m here for and yeah, I just wanna make people feel great and get inspiration, motivation and positive metal power – that’s what I would love to continue doing. There’s not much, I don’t have any other dreams – I’m definitely living the dream, making music. I always wanted to become a singer since I was three years old.

But I love animals too, that’s my other passion and I just wrote a song for the new album and it’s called Heavenly Creatures, that’s a work title.

Yeah next year and hopefully a tour behind the new album, but we’ll see. But we already have six songs so I think middle of next year the album will be done.”

Official DORO Facebook

Official DORO Website

Interview with WOLF HOFFMANN: “I’m sure we can all meet again”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on November 25, 2020
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: , , , , , . 7 Comments

Interview By Alison Booth

During these difficult times, there is always some positivity to be found when it comes to music. So, we are very lucky that metal giants ACCEPT were not going to let a pandemic stop them and have created their forthcoming 16th studio album “Too Mean To Die” over this last year! The album is set for release on 15th January 2021 via Nuclear Blast.

Metal Shock Finland Senior Manager Alison Booth, recently caught up with ACCEPT mastermind and guitar legend Wolf Hoffmann, who was a guest on her radio show Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem at TotalRock. The whole show can be heard at this location. Of course the new album was discussed, plus lots more! You can hear the chat on the audio player below, along with a few excerpts to read:

Discussing the recording of the album, Wolf explained:

“Yeah it’s crazy, we couldn’t finish. We had about half of it recorded and we all went back home to regroup and write the rest of the material and we wanted to meet again later in the year and all of a sudden the countries were closing down and nobody could come or leave. I mean, we could travel within the U.S. but Andy couldn’t come back. So we had no choice but to try to find a remote solution and after lots of trial and error, we found a solution that seemed to work technically quite well. Unfortunately, my internet connection broke down the whole time. But we made it work in the end and when the connection was stable, it worked surprisingly okay. You know, it’s not your first choice, but it worked. It was almost like a Zoom call, it’s kind of okay. It’s not perfect, but it’s still better than nothing if it gets the job done. But you would still want to be in the same room with people you talk to basically.

Wolf discussed how the pandemic has affected ACCEPT:

“Tell me about it, it’s been terrible for us. We had all of last summer’s festivals cancelled and pushed back to 2021. So everything was pushed back to next year for the festivals and then our headline tour was to coincide with the release of the album in January, but that won’t happen. It’s all been pushed back one complete year to 2022. Yeah it’s a long time, so we have to wait and see how things are going.

A lot of bands have been postponing their releases, but we decided that it’s probably not a bad idea to just go ahead and release it now, give the fans at least something to listen to. I’m sure we can all meet again basically, but it serves nobody’s interest if we just wait with the release until we can tour again, because who knows when that is.“

Talking about the new songs:

“‘Symphony Of Pain’ was one of the songs that was actually written first. I had that sort of more or less finished, just sitting there waiting to be performed. And then one of the other earlier songs I did was ‘Undertaker’ which was based on some lyrics Mark wrote. Mark gave me these lyrics and he wrote ’em sort of like a poem without any music in mind, just a bunch of words about an undertaker. I thought it’s kind of a cool subject title and I wrote the music sort of to fit the lyrics and you know, with that little intro it turned out quite a little eery and spooky, which kinda fits the subject obviously and turned out alright.

It’s nice to see people’s reaction. But I’m getting different reactions from journalists and big fans all over the board. Some people like the more moderate songs like ‘Undertaker’ and ‘Overnight Sensation’ and then other people go for the kill basically, with ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ and ‘Too Mean To Die’ – the more in your face metal kinda riffs and songs.“

Wolf talked about the changes in the band:

“Yeah it’s crazy – we lost one guy but gained two new guys, two for one (laughs). I mean with Peter, it’s just sad. It just killed me at the time but I’m sort of over it now, because it’s just after all these forty years, it was a sad departure. But I have to respect it and I mean, people move on and he made the decision. He no longer wanted to be in the band and what can I do? I just move on and move forward. I wouldn’t say Martin stepped right in his footsteps, that would be ridiculous because hey, I played with Peter for forty years. But Martin really is doing his best and he’s doing a tremendous job filling in, he’s great. He even contributed a lot to the songwriting, which took me completely by surprise. He wrote some great songs for this album and that was a blessing, he’s awesome. I really didn’t want the album to be all mine, mine, mine – I didn’t want it to be like a solo album, so I welcomed input from everybody and Martin was the guy who really stepped forward and delivered some cool stuff.“

We discovered what a great player, nice guy and easy going and perfect fit for the band Phil is. You know, when we toured with him on this orchestra tour last year, Headbanger’s Symphony, Symphonic Terror tour and we found out what a great guy he is. We basically didn’t want to let him go after this tour, it’s as simple as that. And we decided, why not have three guitar players? We did some shows together and it worked brilliantly. I gotta say I was not one hundred percent sure it would be as good as it is, but I was actually pleasantly surprised how well it sounds and how well it looks and how well it works on stage. It’s a good camaraderie in the band and yeah, it’s just one more guy, awesome! And he plays a lot of lead on the album too, so we deliberately made enough space for him to be on the album and especially with that in mind for live shows. We gave him enough space to play leads and with trading licks and we do a lot of twin leads together – so there’s a lot of room for Phil on this album.“

Order “Too Mean To Die” here

Official ACCEPT Website

Metal Shock Finland’s Exclusive Premiere: IVORY MOON – New Single And Video ‘Man With A Face’ + Interview

Posted by tarjavirmakari on October 29, 2020
Posted in: Int. News, Interviews, News. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

After releasing their new album a few weeks ago, Italian Symphonic Metallers IVORY MOON, have teamed up with Metal Shock Finland to premiere exclusively their new single and video for the song ‘Man With A Face’, taken from the band’s new album ‘Lunar Gateway’, released on October 2nd, via Volcano Records & Promotion.

‘Man With A Face’ is a melodic and powerful song, accompanied by an intense and delicate video, illustrated and masterfully created by Sergio Giardo, designer of Nathan Never. The video tells a story of a hyperuranic journey, between planets and oneiric visions, which ends in an unexpected way.

Watch and enjoy ‘Man With A Face’ here:

To celebrate the video premiering Metal Shock Finland‘s Tarja Virmakari had a pleasure to interview the the band, please read below:

  1. Hello IVORY MOON and welcome to Metal Shock Finland. Today we’ve a pleasure to premiere your stunning new single and video ‘Man With A Face’, please tell us the story behind it?

Hi Metal Shock Finland and hello to all your readers too! The new video was a beautiful unexpected gift from our graphic designer, Sergio Giardo, a fantastic artist, illustrator and cartoonist of the comic Nathan Never for the comic book publisher Bonelli Editore; The song is about how in the world people have and forced to wear many faces. Therefore it is always difficult to be yourself and not feel judged for what you are.

  1. What are your musical influences, besides symphonic metal?

Our musical tastes range from extreme metal to 70s progressive rock, from Metallica to Yes, Queen, Megadeth, Slayer, Dream Theater and each member of the band has a different musical background.

  1. Please introduce us the band members and their roles when writing music and choosing song topics.

Fabrizio zucchini is the founding member of the band and rhythm guitar. He is the composer of almost all the songs. Andrea Campisano is the solo guitarist and arranger of the songs. Fabrizio Sclano is the band’s bassist and historical member of the band. Fabio Bonuglia is the keyboardist and composer, together with Andrea, of the atmospheres of the new album. Patrizio Izzo is the male voice and singer who has been active in the field for a long time. Loretta Venditti is the female voice and composer of some of the album’s lyrics. Emiliano Cantiano is the drummer and is another well known member of the metal scene. Mainly, as anticipated, the songs were born from a collaboration between Fabrizio Z. And Andrea with the contribution of the other members.

  1. Your new album “Lunar Gateway” came out on October 2nd, via Volcano Records & Promotion. How it’s been welcomed by Symphonic Metal lovers?

We had good feedback from old fans and new ones, positive reviews from the press. We can be satisfied with how the promotion and listening of the new album is going.

  1. We’re living now quite difficult times, due to Covid-19 pandemic. Now that touring and playing live seem to be nearly impossible, how will you promote your new album?

We would have liked to do some dates in the national territory starting from December but with the current situation we have to adapt to the new provisions and we hope to be able to return live as soon as possible, and in the meantime we are preparing to be ready!

  1. What are your highlights, so far?

The songs: Based on the feedback from the critics we can say that the songs have all had a good response as we hoped.
The line-up: having changed almost completely, has a lot to give in view of the live shows and can guarantee continuity to the project

  1. Now the word is yours, what is your message to our readers, your fans and music business?

Thanks for the support from our old and new fans! Listen to all the music possible, go to concerts to be able to support and keep the scene alive! Support those who, like us, have the same passion as you! Stay metal!

———-

IVORY MOON was born in the summer of 2000, in Italy, and May 2002 saw the first Ivory Moon promo cd being released. In early 2004, the debut album, “On The Edge of Time” was recorded and released by Battle Hymns Records. In late 2005, the line-up underwent some changes, and the band started to work on new songs and ideas for the next album. During 2006, Ivory Moon took residence at Temple of Noise Studios in Rome, to record “Human Nature”. The album was tracked, mixed and mastered by Christian Ice and released by Ulterium Records. “Dark Time” was released in 2012 by Spider rock promotion and was followed by a promotion tour with Freedom Call. The New album ‘Lunar Gateaway’, released on October 2nd 2020, via Volcano Records and Promotion, was mixed and mastered in Temple of Noise studios, with a renewed line-up made up of old and new friends: Patrizio Izzo and Loretta Venditti voices, Andrea Campisano and Fabrizio Zucchini guitars, Fabrizio Sclano bass, Fabio Bonuglia Keyboards and Emiliano Cantiano drums. ‘Lunar Gateaway’ will keep true to the style of the previous records but with a much more modern sound. It will surely be the most complete album of the band: 10 songs of pure metal with symphonic, prog and hard rock influences, in the classic style of Ivory Moon.

“Lunar Gateway” tracklist:

  1. Human Greed
  2. Here We Are
    3.Man with a Face
  3. Darkside-The Angel of the Night
  4. Astaroth
  5. Breath
  6. Blood Vampire
  7. Lochness – The Legend of the Lake
  8. The Dominion Saga
  9. The Game of Life
    Running Time: 50’59”

IVORY MOON Line-up:
Loretta Venditti – Voices
Patrizio Izzo – Voices
Fabrizio Sclano – Bass
Andrea Campisano – Lead Guitar
Fabrizio Zucchini – Rhythm Guitar
Fabio Bonuglia – Keyboard
Emiliano Cantiano – Drums

Also watch/Stream:
Here We Are [OFFICIAL AUDIO] – https://youtu.be/XIqhLz9LL0k
Human Greed [OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO] – https://youtu.be/2nGAmewEusc
The Dominion Saga [OFFICIAL VIDEO] – https://youtu.be/rpwLry05mx4

More information at:
BAND: https://www.facebook.com/ivorymoonofficial
LABEL: http://www.volcanopromotion.com

Interview With Rob The Witch, NECRONOMICON: “As long as I play my music I’m happy”

Posted by aliblackdiamond on August 24, 2020
Posted in: Interviews. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Interview By Alison Booth

Rob The Witch

Since their incarnation in 1988, the Lovecraftian inspired pioneer of blackened death metal, NECRONOMICON, has certainly established itself as one of the hardest working bands in the industry. Founded by composer, guitarist and frontman Rob The Witch in Quebec Province, Canada and following an early demo and EP, the band released its first full length album “Pharaoh Of Gods” in 1999.

A steady release of five further albums and a high level of commitment to touring and performing on stage has been a constant in the life of NECRONOMICON, all the while establishing an ever growing fan base around the globe. Changes in line up and other issues haven’t been a deterrent for the charismatic Witch King, resulting in the sixth brutally dark album “Unus” being unleashed in October 2019, via Season Of Mist Records.

Alison recently caught up with Rob The Witch for her Blackdiamond’s Metal Mayhem radio show on UK station TotalRock. The whole show can be heard on Mixcloud at this location, but the audio interview (split into two parts for radio) can be listened to below. Many topics were discussed with the eloquent frontman, from the worldwide pandemic to Dean guitars and more in between! Check out a few excerpts from the chat, followed by the audio:

Discussing touring, Rob stated:

“Touring is what I like the most, it’s being on the road – I don’t get enough of that. I did like around twelve hundred shows in my career, I lost count, I know it’s over a thousand. It’s just doing my music you know – recording albums, going on tour and just rocking the stage you know. That’s just what I want to do. When I started Necronomicon, I was seventeen, now I’m almost fifty, I never stop. As long as I play my music, I’m happy, I’m satisfied with that.”

Regarding the Coronavirus pandemic and getting back to touring in 2021, Rob expressed:

“Really, really not easy, that’s one thing. I think that pretty much any artist that does this mostly for a living will feel the impact pretty well. When you’re going on full tours like months at a time and spend many, many, many, many hours you know practice by yourself, but I mean like many hours per week – days per week literally practising with your band, you have situations like that coming out of nowhere in a way, it’s pretty challenging actually. For example, our drummer is stuck in California, can’t come to practice and it’s been months, so it’s really not easy.

Of course we’re trying to see what we can do now. Nothing is certain at this point how it’s going, it’s totally out of control, especially in the U.S. I mean in Canada we’re doing really good, they responded really quick, I don’t know how it is in Europe. I really don’t know how we’re going to do that, because when we finished the U.S. tour we were already planning to go in Europe and something happened and we had to pull out. And that tour started without us and the tour went to hell because Covid started. So, at first I wasn’t really happy because we had to pull out of the tour, then I realised after it was almost a blessing. These bands that were on tour in Europe were in a really shitty situation because of that. They’re having some major financial problems due to what happened there. If we’d been on that tour it would’ve really fucked us, really in a bad way. So, the fact that we’d been forced to pull out of that tour and not going, saved our ass in a way. That’s the irony of that.”

On videos and being creative, Rob had lots to say:

“I don’t wanna bash any of my friends or other bands – there’s a lot of bands I respect musically and stuff like that. But if you have to shoot your band in an abandoned warehouse, stay home come on, I mean be more creative. It’s supposed to be art.
I don’t get the people going on stage with their flip flops and Cannibal Corpse shirts, even their glasses. Even fucking Judas Priest, they go on stage with outfits and stage clothes. Even Metallica, ok they don’t have armour and stuff like that – but if you see James Hetfield or Kirk Hammett in the street, they’re not dressed like they’re dressed on stage, it’s totally different. Music is art, so why don’t you do it properly you know?

When you go to see a show, you need to see something, you need to have a visual of it. I’m going to take a band that’s really shitty music to me right now – that’s Ghost, I really don’t like what they’re doing. The first album was really good, I really liked it, the rest – ugh! But they would never have succeeded if they didn’t have the image. The same for Slipknot and the same for Dimmu Borgir or any bands that had success with that, it’s a part of the game. You sell a product and the image of a band is fifty percent of the job, if not more.”

If you’re lucky, you can see the uncensored video of ‘The Thousand Masks’ – unfortunately some countries have blocked it:

Some live NECRONOMICON with ‘The Time Is Now’:

NECRONOMICON:

Official Facebook Page
Official Instagram
Official YouTube

HANGARVAIN’s Exclusive Live Show Streaming On Metal Shock Finland Tonight, July 15th at 9pm CEST

Posted by tarjavirmakari on July 15, 2020
Posted in: Int. News, Interviews, News. Tagged: . Leave a comment

HANGARVAIN-LIVE-FOR-MSF

Italian rockers HANGARVAIN have teamed up with Metal Shock Finland to stream exclusively the band’s live show, tonight, July 15th at 9pm CEST from BrutusVox Music Recording Studio. Facebook event page, at this location.

Join and stream the show here:

Furthermore, just a few days ago, Metal Shock Finland’s Tarja Virmakari had a pleasure to interview the band, talking about the live stream, the band’s latest album ”The Great Machine”, touring, Covid-19 pandemic, #UNITEDWESTAND Project and future plans. Please, read below.

1- Hi HANGARVAIN, tonight Metal Shock Finland has the honor to host exclusively your worldwide live streaming at 9pm CEST from BrutusVox Music Recording Studio. Can you reveal something about it?

Hi Metal Shock Finland and first of all thank you from the bottom of our heart for helping us to make this project possible. It’s been a while since we didn’t play together and during the crazy period we all been through, lot of our fans and friends never stopped showing us their support and love. Hangarvain is a family of people living very far from each other so as soon as we had the chance to be in the same city at the BrutusVox Studios in Torino for some rehearsals, we decided to share with our lovely fans this very deep emotion. We really want our fans to experience again the energy of a true live show as it is when we go on a proper stage, so this is gonna be really nothing else than a pure Hangarvain’s show!

2- Your latest album ”The Great Machine” was released October 11th 2019, via Volcano Records. How has it been received by your fans?

The Great Machine is our fourth album and we couldn’t be more proud of it both for the music it contains and for the reactions people had when it was released. We always been very passionate about many genres of music that’s the reason why our albums are often full of different influences, but with The Great Machine we started a journey in the roots of what we love the most trying to give our personal interpretation to the blues and soul music. It seems that people received this new chapter in an absolutely enthusiastic way. Media all over the world spent great words with high-votes reviews on it and when we toured all Europe last year right after the release we can tell you that both CDs and vinyls went sold out several times and we had to ask for new stocks of copies three times during the tour.

3- During the years, you have been known as an untiring touring band playing shows all around Europe with many big bands on legendary stages. Indeed, your last European tour, before lockdown, was with the Danish D-A-D. What are your greatest highlights from that tour?

Touring Europe with D-A-D in 2019 has been an incredible opportunity for us to visit countries where we didn’t play before and largely expand our fanbase and supporters. We had the chance to play some legendary and massive venues like we did in England, France or Germany just to name a few, as well as super-cool, big and always full packed clubs all around Europe. We toured a lot before this also with big and legendary acts, but you never have enough and always learn a lot from an experience like that. You have to be really committed and always very focused on your mission when you play 24 shows in a row preserving strengths to hit the stage hard as hell every night and give people a memorable experience.

4- Talking about Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, how this weird worldwide situation has affected your band’s activities?

We lost about 30 shows in the first four months of the year. Some of them have been rescheduled, some of them not. We were supposed to have a very busy 2020, a great spring and an epic summer with some huge European festivals like the Hills Of Rock where we were awaited to play on the main stage on July 25th, the day before Slipknot… So you can imagine how hard it’s been dealing with what happened and how tough is still today living without anything really sure for the upcoming months. But we tried hard to stay strong and work on the future. Some shows in December 2020 with Michael Schencher have just been announced, we also have a festival in Wales on December 3rd and some headliner gigs in France and Italy plus many other things on the way to be confirmed. We really hope to be able to make it all!

5- In April 2020 your label, Volcano Records, promoted the project #UNITEDWESTAND, feat. Italian Rock And Metal Artists Against Covid-19. Please tell us more about this project.

#UNITEDWESTAND is our motto since many years now and represents well what we feel about the community of people around us and our music. So it happened that one day during the lockdown, our guitarist Alessandro wrote this song using our motto to underline that even in that crazy moment where everyone was locked in, music could make us part of something bigger and feel united. From that we took the idea to ask some friends to join the message and be part of the song so we have on board many great singers like Mark Basile (DGM), Giacomo Voli (Rhapsody Of Fire), Marco Pastorino (Temperance), Iacopo Meille (Tygers Of Pan Tang), Tiziano Spigno (Extrema) and many others. We decided with our record label Volcano Records, to use the song to support the Italian Red Cross and release it as Italian Rock Union Project.

6- And what will happen next in the HANGARVAIN -camp?

Most of all we hope to be able to confirm our tour in December adding about ten shows we’re working on these days, to the ones just announced. But we’re also very busy preparing a brand new and super-secret project that should see the light in Autumn and will bring out new music from us with a very special guest involved that hopefully will be on tour with us in Europe in Spring 2021. But before all of this, let’s have some fun tonight getting back some good vibrations with the live in studio for Metal Shock Finland. After all, that’s what music is for, staying together living true emotions.

Watch #UNITEDWESTAND video here: https://youtu.be/W0bUqdJfa1s

HANGARVAIN line-up:
Sergio “Toledo” Mosca – Voice
Alessandro Liccardo – Guitar
Gabriele “Gabo” Sinatra – Bass
Simone Crimi – Drums

Other Recording Musicians:
Alessandro Stellano (bass), Andrea Gianangeli (drums), Mark Basile (keyboards), Johnny Dema (keyboards)

Watch/Stream:
Showreel [2019] – https://youtu.be/670bJSeihyg
Black Betty [OFFICIAL AUDIO] – https://youtu.be/mY8fEyDYDDc
Rock Down The House [OFFICIAL VIDEO] – https://youtu.be/kvz6tPa0UJ4
The Great Machine [OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO] – https://youtu.be/W3T35oG98rY

More information at:
BAND: https://www.facebook.com/Hangarvain
LABEL: http://www.volcanopromotion.com

Interview With Guitarist Darren DPaul Wise, Talking About His Creative Career, And Also How Covid-19 Is Changing Perspectives On Life

Posted by tarjavirmakari on June 12, 2020
Posted in: Int. News, Interviews, News. Tagged: . Leave a comment

DARREN-DPAUL-WISE-Gibson

Interview by Tarja Virmakari

Darren DPaul Wise, the Dallas-based guitarist, is currently the music director for the Drew Pearson Live television show on ABC. This is a sports and entertainment primetime NFL pregame show based on the late night talk show format with a live on-set band led by DPaul. All themes and segment music have been written, recorded and produced by DPaul since 2013. His background includes multiple signed bands, session work for record labels, touring guitarist, published hit song writer and music for NASCAR, MLB, NBA, Chevrolet, various TV shows and commercials.

Just recently Metal Shock Finland‘s Tarja Virmakari had a pleasure to interview Darren, talking about his creative and successful career, but also how Covid-19 is changing perspectives on life.

– Hi Darren, and welcome to Metal Shock Finland. How are you doing today?

All good, just working on some music.

– We’re living now difficult times for the Covid 19 pandemic, how has it influenced your work in terms of music?

It’s actually giving me more time to work on music.

– What will be the first thing you’ll do when this situation is over?

Start performing live music again!

– In your opinion, it will change our life in some way, or will we return to our old habits?

It might give people some new perspective on life.

– How do you see the music business today, leaving out this current world situation?

Music is being consumed in many different ways now and that will continue so it should be embraced.

– You have a long and successful career as a guitarist, and you’re also the music director for the Drew Pearson Live television show on ABC. Can you tell us more about it?

I love writing music for any project I’m working on, it’s all a creative process.

– Your background includes many things, what can you reveal about the activities you are involved in?

I’m working on some solo guitar tracks and on a new original music project with some great people. Looking forward to getting that out there!

– Just recently you announced your artist relationship with Gibson Guitars. What can you tell us about this collaboration?

I started off playing Gibson guitars and I’m very happy to be playing them again! Great company, great people!

– What are your musical highlights, so far?

Having a couple of hit songs and working on the Drew Pearson show. It’s also great to work with people who have a real passion for what they do.

– What are your future plans? New shows, live dates, albums, new videos?

About to make a new video for a guitar track and then get into the studio with my new original project.

– If it wasn’t music, what would you be doing? 

Musics pretty much all that I do so not a lot of outside interest.

– What are your advices to up-and-coming musicians?

Do the best job you can on everything you’re involved in. Your work ethic and attention to detail will help build your reputation as a professional.

– I thank-you for this nice chat, and now the word is yours, what is your message to Metal Shock Finland readers?

Hope you’re all staying healthy and safe!

For More Information Visit Darren “DPaul” Wise at: https://www.facebook.com/darren.wise.12