Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Blind Guardian singer Hansi Kürsch about the bands upcoming tour and new music.
Watch the interview below.
Legendary German power metal band BLIND GUARDIAN has announced its long-awaited return to North America with a headlining tour set for fall 2025. The band will perform across the United States and Canada, bringing their celebrated album “Somewhere Far Beyond” to life on stage. The band decided to re-record Somewhere Far Beyond while preparing for its tour.
The tour will kick off on November 19 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and will make stops in major markets, including New York, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles and more, before concluding on December 13 in Los Angeles, CA, at The Wiltern.
After their North American “Somewhere Far Beyond” concept tour (late 2025), Blind Guardian plans to take a break to focus on songwriting and family life. Hansi told THE METAL VOICE we will spend 2026 composing and aim to release a new album in early 2027, followed by another tour later that year. He continued “The band wants to take their time rather than rush we go for quality. Give us 2026 to compose songs. Give us the beginning of 2027 for maybe finishing the production and releasing the album, and then another tour hopefully at the end of 2027.”
“There won’t be a new album coming out after the tour directly because we have to compose the album. We will take that momentum after North America and do the break, which everyone in the band is desperately looking for. We traveled around the world twice, I think, and it is about time now to really keep our focus on songwriting and on family life. We all want that privacy back for a while, not for too long, but I think give us a year, maybe one and a half, and then you’ll have your new album As said, I believe it’s in the tradition of what Blind Guardian stands for and maybe has a bit of the more melodic, old-fashioned style, but I cannot promise it. It’s just a feeling.”
When asked about the musical direction of their future album. Hansi explained that after the massive orchestral scope of Legacy of the Dark Lands, they felt they had gone “as big as we can go. ”The next record will likely “strip things down” and focus more on classic, melodic, and old-fashioned Blind Guardian style, more direct and energetic, less orchestral. He called The God Machine (2022) a “hybrid” that bridges their early sound with modern production, and said the new album will probably continue that trajectory, more straightforward, but still epic. “”However, he admitted that once the band gets into the studio, the creative direction often evolves naturally: “We don’t have that much control where the journey finally leads us.”
BLIND GUARDIAN 2025 tour dates with ENSIFERUM and SEVEN KINGDOMS:
Nov. 19 – Ft Lauderdale, FL – Revolution Live Nov. 20 – Tampa, FL – The Orpheum Nov. 21 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade Nov. 22 – Charlotte, NC – The Underground Nov. 24 – Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore Nov. 25 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza Nov. 26 – Worcester, MA – The Palladium Nov. 28 – Montreal, QC – MTELUS Nov. 29 – Toronto, ON – Queen Elizabeth Theatre Nov. 30 – Cleveland, OH – The Agora Theater Dec. 02 – Chicago, IL – The Vic Theatre Dec. 03 – Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater Dec. 05 – Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre Dec. 07 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot Dec. 09 – Seattle, WA – Showbox Market Dec. 10 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theater Dec. 12 – Berkeley, CA – The UC Theatre Dec. 13 – Los Angeles, CA – The Wiltern
Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice spoke with Co-founding Venom Members guitarist Mantas and drummer Abaddon about them reuniting for upcoming festival shows.
They also spoke about how Venom cannot reunite with Cronos and their exit from Venom Inc.
When asked if there are three versions of Venom now since Mantas and Abaddon have reunited?
“As far as I’m concerned, even with us, you know? I’m just going to speak the truth. The absolute truth, right? I’m the founder member. If there’s a co-founder, it’s Abaddon. Cronos was the last one to join (the band). Everyone knows that, right? I wrote all the early material. Blah blah blah. Right? And at this very moment in time, the way I look at it is that there isn’t a Venom (Band) out there There’s bands out there who are playing Venom material. And that’s the honest way that I’ll look at it right now. When this came about (reunion with Abaddon at Keep it True Festival 2026), um, it all came about basically through a mutual friend contacting me and saying, “Can you ring Abaddon? And I must admit, I was like, I’m going to be honest, “Oh, I don’t really want to get involved in all this kind of stuff again.” And I mean, Abaddon will tell you, we hadn’t spoken since 2017. So anyway, I did contact (Abaddon). And then I got um I got a message from the Japanese promoters who wanted me over for Venom Japan. And then I said, um, look, if I’m coming over, what about if Ababbon was to come over? We (with Abaddon) sort of reconnected. And they were like, really? I was like, yeah, yeah, why not? You know, so all that was kind of arranged. I spoke to Abaddon, said, “Would you like to come to Japan, play a few songs?” “Yep, great.” So, flights are booked. We’re off on the 27th of November. We play on the 30th, I think it is. “
“Then I got a message from the guys at ‘Keep It True Festival’, and they said “Venom reunion” And I was like, “Good luck with that, pal.” I say, you know, that everybody’s kicking each other’s shins in court at the moment (intellectual property dispute). So anyway, I made contact with Cronos through a mutual friend and just said, “Look, tell him I want to speak to him. There’s an offer coming in. It’ll be a good offer. Um so, let’s just talk. Even if nothing comes of it, let’s just talk.”… Nothing. So, the court case thing (in regards to the Venom Logo), then the lawyer spoke to his lawyer and mentioned about the reunion and what we got back was basically it’s not worth my time.
When asked about 45 years anniversary of Welcome to hell
“So, myself and Abaddon, we said, “Look, why don’t we just do something to celebrate this [ __ ] band?” And that’s all we’re doing. It’s the album, it’s a celebration. Yep. It’s a celebration of Welcome to Hell. 45 years of that album, and this stupid [ __ ] band has missed every major anniversary in its history. We’ve never celebrated an anniversary of this band. So, I spoke to the guys at Keep It True, Oliver in particular, the owner of the festival. I said, “Right, here’s an idea. why don’t we get some special guests, people who have been influenced by the band, all that kind of thing, you know, and he went, “Great. Great. Let’s do it.” So, that was how it all came about and now we’re getting offers from other places to do the same thing. We’re going to go out and if nobody else will do it, we’re going to go out and celebrate this band.
When Asked what will this new band be called?
“As far as I’m concerned there’s no [ __ ] name to it. There’s Abaddon’s Venom logo which is his (Abaddon’s). It’s up there.. And then underneath it, it says Mantas and Abaddon and then special guests. And that’s what we’re doing. It still amazes me to this day how this band has had so much influence on the metal scene from day one. Every comment I’ve seen so far 90% has been really really positive (about Mantas and Abaddon) and then get the one (person) no Cronos, no Venom. It’s like right okay listen to me right now you can imagine the most toxic relationship and the most stressful relationship you’ve ever had in your [ __ ] life and now go back and invite it back in. And that’s what we tried to do. If everybody knew the real reason I left (Venom), you wouldn’t even [ __ ] look at that guy again right now. All these people who say about Cronos and stuff like that, yes, he was a part of the band. I appreciate that. He didn’t write all the [ __ ] early material. He didn’t found the band. He was the last person to join. The woman who introduced me to him via her best friend is in my house now. If you were having problems with your wife and you put it on the [ __ ] internet, I would never go, “Oh, yeah, well, I know what’s going on.” Because you don’t you don’t know the personalities of the people involved in it. All you see from the outside is a band. I mean I love Kiss. I love Judas Priest. Now there’s [ __ ] problems with KK and all the rest of [ __ ] Priest. There’s problems with Ace and [ __ ] Gene and Paul and Peter and you know, but we don’t know what’s really going on, you know? It’s ridiculous to comment on people’s careers. And that’s the way I feel about it. And all I’m saying is that myself and Abaddon as the two original members of Venom, we’re going to go out and we’re going to celebrate this band and its music and that’s it. Nothing more.”
Abaddon weighs in
“My take on that is very straightforward. If you’ve got three bands using the word Venom to sell the music, originally Venom were a three-piece. And I don’t think unless you’ve got two members of that three-piece, you can’t call it Venom because it’s Cronos and some other blokes, or it’s Dolan and some other blokes. If you’ve got me and Jeff, you got two thirds of the original [ __ ] band. Yeah, that’s as straightforward as you can get.”
When asked how Venom Inc Fell apart?
“My wife got pregnant and we moved to a different place from where her parents were and uh she was quite young. She was married when she was 21. She got pregnant and I asked for some time off. I asked Tony and I said I need to take some time off and as soon as I was gone there was a new drummer in. I was never sacked. I was never let go. I didn’t do anything. I just wanted to take a month, maybe two months off with my wife while she was having the baby. That’s all it was. And I never heard from Dolan again, apart from toxic things online.” Abaddon
Mantas weighs in and is asked if he wanted back in Venom Inc
“Nope. No. Nope. It was like, I can remember the last show that I did. And before we go any further, you have to remember that both myself and Abaddon, we’ve just been in the Royal High Court of Justice, right? Where we stood in the witness box and took an oath to tell the truth. And that’s what we did. I told the absolute truth and so did he under oath. I would go back into that same courtroom and say exactly what I’ve already said about the Venom Inc situation, right? Because I’m telling the truth. And when I had the second heart attack, it was in April and I had the last conversation I’d had with Tony Dolan was March 26th. Previous to that, we had done two festivals. I think it was one in Crete and one in Poland. Anyway, there were two festivals to do and I said, “Okay, look, I’ll do the festivals.” And the reason I was pulling out at that point was because Anita, my partner, had been diagnosed with cancer. Now, that was a misdiagnosis, but we went through 18 months of hell, not knowing what the [ __ ] was going on, right? So, anyway, I had said there, you know, there was a second leg of an American tour to do. And even I suggested Mike Hickey. I said, “Look,” you know, and we were sitting outside the airport waiting to come home after the second festival. And I said, “Look, just do the [ __ ] tour, right?” You know, get Mike, do the tour, blah, blah, blah blah. So anyway, that’s what happened. And from then on, contact was very, very sporadic. No matter what anybody in that camp says, it was very sporadic. And then I’m not going to go into all of this [ __ ] but four times I was on the brink of leaving Venom inc because of behavior, right? Four times. One of those times was when Abaddon was still with us and I can remember coming home off that particular tour and Anita said to me, “Oh, how’d it go?” I says, “That’s I’m [ __ ] done with this.” I was like, “What? What? What?” She couldn’t understand. I was like, “Fuck enough of this.” The last time it happened, it was the sound guy in the back of a cab in New York on the way to JFK who persuaded me to stay with the band. I just had I [ __ ] had enough. But anyway, I continued. I kept going, kept going. Um,
So like I say, the contact got less and less and less and less and then they were off doing other things and whatnot. And yes, they said, “Oh, we’re going to do this festival. Do you want to do it?” And I was like, “No, I’m staying at home with Anita. I’m staying at home.” And obviously the second heart attack, I was scared of flying. I’ll admit that. You know, I’ve never been a I’ve never been afraid of traveling, but I thought 37,000 ft up in the air, if this [ __ ] happens again, [ __ ] this, you know. Um, so and then the straw that broke the camel’s back was when I saw a gig advertised on Facebook for Newcastle, our hometown, where I founded the band and I thought, “Okay, right, okay.” So, I just got on with what I was doing. And I had um about 18 months previous to that, I had written a song and it was called ‘Losing My Faith’. And uh I did the vocals on it and everything. And um I did myself a video for it and um I put a 30 second clip of it up on uh on Facebook one night saying, “Oh, look, new song blah blah blah blah blah.” Tony Dolan within seconds had unfriended me, blocked me, and deleted me off everything as soon as I put that up. Right. Okay, that’s it. Done. And there’s been no communication since. Venom Inc. they I’ve I said this ages ago. They can continue. Go go go just go do your thing. It’s like, you know, go and play every club on the planet, every stadium on the planet. I don’t care. I really really don’t care. I’m not following what you do. I’m not bothered. Right? And it’s the same with Cronos. It’s like, right, if you don’t want to be with us and you want to be with your two hired guns, then great. Just get on with it. But particularly with Cronos, I think, yeah, why not? You can go back to doing your thing with those guys, whatever you want to do. Just as Abaddon will go back and do his Abaddon UK gigs and, you know, I’ll probably go back over to Japan and do my thing with the Japanese musicians. I’ve got four recording projects on the go at the minute. So, I’ll go back and do that as well. ” Mantas
Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Vocalist of Testament Chuck Billy about the bands upcoming new studio album, Para Bellum that will be released on Nuclear Blast on oct 10 , 2025
In the chat Billy talks about the writing and recording of the new songs as well as talks about Steve Zetro’s (Ex singer of Exodus) contributions.
When asked about the the album overall
“Once they all saw all the songs are written, it just came such a diverse collection of music riffs and lyrics where it just makes the record really flow and just has a nice, record that you can listen start to finish and just as it sound and feel the same. It’s one of those things where you’re always trying to outdo yourself every record and somehow we did it again. And the downside is when are we going to write a shitty record? It’s because we’re due to write a shitty record. It’s coming up. So, um but this one isn’t it yet. So, I’m just happy and looking forward to the fans to listen to it, check out because to me, this record sounds current. It sounds modern. It doesn’t sound like a band that’s been 40 years around rehashing the same riffs, going through the same motion, taking the easy route out. We’re still being challenged. We’re still getting creative after 40 years of making music, which is awesome. If we didn’t tour anymore, I would just be happy creating this new music. There’s just so much variety of riffs. Sometimes you might go, “Well, that’s not just Fast and Furious. Wow, that’s got some groove. That’s right. Or or whoa, what? That ripped. What is that? You know, it’s it’s And I was even the same way listening to it for the first time. So, for us to finally complete it, put it all together, it’s like, wow, man. Good job, Eric. Good job, Chris. I give them props because they worked very hard. Yeah. Chris Dovas, the new drummer for Testament. He took it to another level .”
When asked about the phrase Para Bellum and the meaning behind it
Para Bellum (meaning), ‘Prepare for War’ is such a current thing that’s going on in the whole world and it seemed to be more appropriate for this record especially with the artwork. I let Eric work on the art and we had a different title and it really didn’t fit (so when the song) Para Bellum was written and what it meant what it stood for you know it was just perfect for the fit for the album cover there is a it’s definitely a theme of war throughout a lot of the songs. “
When asked about the writing of the opening track ‘For the love of pain’
“Chris Dovas (new Drummer) wrote the lyrics to that. First time a new member has ever wrote lyrics for the band. And it’s funny because he just had some time on his hands one weekend and decided to write it and actually demo it up and sing it and sent it to us, just for fun. And we’re like, “Cool, right on, dude.” You know, he’s so into it. And I actually went and wrote the song (originally) with Steve Souza (Zetro). And when I got into the studio, it just didn’t feel right. So at that point, I said, “Hey, let’s put up Chris’ demo. Let’s have a listen to that. Pull up his lyrics and let’s have a listen.” So after we listened, I said, “You know what? let me have a shot at that and let me just put my two cents on it. And that’s what I did. I recorded it, gave it to Eric (Peterson), and then Eric took it one step further and in the little fast guitar black metal section, Eric decided to sing on that, which is right up his black metal vocal alley. So, it was kind of cool that again now me and Eric are sharing lead vocal lines on a song again, which works really well. And I know talking to a lot of people, their first impression when they heard the record and the first song, it’s like, “Wait a minute, is this New Testament? Did someone send me the wrong record? You know, but in the end, you know, it just sets the pace. Chris wrote it (the lyrics) and Chris’ wife um she works in I guess in the hospital but with law enforcement like when people are you know she has to see if they’re criminally insane. And him and her came up with the idea ‘For the love of pain’ just through her work and what she does.”
When asked if Zetro made any more contributions to the new album?
“Yeah, we wrote three songs, but only one of them made it (on the album). The other two I wrote but ended up re-writing them’
When asked about a social media post with him and Zetro working together and what it referenced
“It was like the next day that he got it might have been that day or the next day that he got the news that he was out of Exodus. So I said, “Okay.” Because me and Zet (Zetro) have been writing for a long time and I had to write lyrics. I said, “Zette, I know you’re not busy now, so I’m coming over. I got some lyrics to write, you know.” So yeah. ” (laughs)
When asked about the song High Noon
“That’s another one that we actually wrote with Zette that didn’t work in the studio and I just had this thing in my head something about a gunslinger. There was this line, you know, the life that a gunslinger lives and it just fit in the riff. And if that one line, I’m like, “Okay, I now I have this visual of this western and a a gunslinger walking the streets and sitting in a saloon drinking whiskey and just being challenged and challengers keep coming through those swinging doors all day long and all his he’s just drunk drinking defending his title.” And so I had this visual. So I go, “You know what? Hold on. Let me go home and I’m going to rewrite this thing.” And at first when I told Eric and everybody about the gunslinger, they’re like, “I don’t know, man. I don’t know if that’s going to work. That’s not very metal.” But it worked and it made sense and it felt like it was the right fit and it grew on everybody after that. Like, you know, that’s one of my favorites. So, it’s just weird the way that everything just kind of came together. “
When asked about the song ‘Witch hunt’
“Actually me and Zet wrote that song. Okay. This is one of the songs that me and Zette wrote that made it. Um it was you know Eric has working titles when he has riffs and that one had the working title of Witch Hunt. So instead of me and Zet just trying to figure out what we’re going to do in another topic, we said, , let’s just play off WITCH HUNT, but let’s take it as literally. A witch hunt with witches and burning them at the stake and stuff, but also let’s use the witch hunt like a political witch hunt. So we kind of tied the both of them together and made them both together. It worked really well because you can interpret it either way by listening to the lyrics. Yeah. But it was one of those that were just like fast and furious.”
When asked about his relationship with Zetro today
“He got me into the band and he is best friends with my younger brother and we go way back. When we toured with Exodus, me and him were the ones who are on the five mile walks every morning and we write really well together. We sit down and we don’t mess around. We get to work and we write songs to complete them. Maybe over the years I’ve gotten a little more confident in my own writing myself, but I like bouncing the ideas off somebody and I like having somebody else’s opinion because then it opens my mind.”
When Asked about the orchestrated ballad “Meant to be” and the rumours there would be a duet
” I was originally going to have a female vocalist sing with me on the choruses. Um, but that didn’t happen. We didn’t find the right one. So Eric just said, “Just you sing it. Let’s just leave it at that. Maybe down the road we could revisit it and maybe do a a re-release with a girl singing or do something. The song, reminded me like Return to Serenity(Song). just had that classic Testament guitar feel at the beginning, but then pushing it a little bit more, you know. At first I was a little nervous because it’s like an eight-minute song. I’m like, “Holy [ __ ] there’s going to be a lot of words on this song.” And um but in the end, you know, I found my place where I needed to sing and it was a really emotional song and I really wanted to set it up and and have the listener interpret it maybe like it’s a love song between two people, but in reality it’s actually a love song between humanity and the planet Earth. So if you go back and you listen to it, you’ll hear my little references about what we’re doing to our planet. But after everything that’s said and done, what we’ve do to this planet, mankind is going to still continue and evolve and we’re meant to be here.”
When asked about a USA/Canada tour in 2026
” We’re going over with Obituary, Destruction, and Nervosa to Europe 2025. And it’s called Clash Thrash of the Titans. So, we play Thursday at Aftershock in Sacramento, the festival, and then Friday, we fly to Europe, land Saturday, and start the tour Sunday. So, we’re trying to line something early 2026 (North America). So the agents are just hustling trying to put some stuff together. I think our goal is to spread out the touring because usually we just get maybe one American tour per record cycle and I don’t think that’s enough. So I really want to split it up and see if I can cover more ground and come back to the same places in one in one record cycle. Yeah. But we’ll see.”
Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon spoke to Guitarist and founder of TWISTED SISTER about the band coming out of retirement once again for 50 year celebration shows. Watch the video interview below.
When asked why TWISTED SISTER are reuniting this time around?
“Dee (Snider) called and he said, “Hey, man. Let’s do it one more time. I thought to myself, I have a whole other life. I do motivational speaking. I have a book. I write articles, I go to audio shows. I write reviews of audio gear…etc.. I love that. That’s truly what I love. But here’s the thing. Ask a boxer why they go back in the ring. And they go because I’ll never feel that way again. And the truth is it’s a lot healthier than boxing. So, if I can go out on stage to 100,000 people and have them sing ‘We’re Noting Take It To Me’ one More Time, I’ll take that because there’s nothing as intoxicating as having 100,000 people sing your songs to you. There’s nothing better. So, it’s a chance for my daughter to be embarrassed one more time.(laughs).”
When asked about the statements made by the Twisted Sister camp in regards to Criticising artist who always come out of retirement ?
” Dee (Snider) (made those statements), he also said I think we should run that (those statements) before we go on stage every night. I think we should play all of the ‘We’re never getting back together again.’ ‘We refuse to do this or anyone who does this is an idiot.’ ‘You’re a joke if you do that.’ Why would you do that? We’ll just keep running them all. You know, of course. ”
When asked why Mark Mendoza was not being part of the 50 year reunion “It happens with bands. Bands are like marriages and things happen. Me, Dee, and Eddie (Ojeda) have played through 10 different drummers and bass players, right? Most people don’t know this. We have never spoken about why someone is in and why someone is out. We never have. And don’t forget, I go back three more years. I go back to 13 ex-members of the band. 13. I had never spoken about them. My attitude is that a realignment takes place for lack of a better word, however you have to do it to keep your business moving and you make your business move. And that’s really all there is to it. And I don’t want to bring in any more than that. People know what they know and I have no reason to throw, you know, dirt on anything whatsoever. You make the move to keep the business moving forward and it’s exactly what Twisted Sister has always done. We have four original members. We have 80% original. Joe Franco (drummer) is back with us. He was one of our drummers. He played on our albums and toured with us. So, we have a very high percentage of original band members. And I’m very proud of that because some bands are touring with no original members. And I’m proud of me, Dee, and Eddie. Let me tell you, we’ve been together shoulder-to-shoulder on stage for thousands of shows, not hundreds. Yeah. Yeah. Thousands of shows. And we’re going to celebrate that one more time. “
TWISTED SISTER has announced its first reunion concert as part of the band’s 50th-anniversary tour. The band will perform at Barcelona Rock Fest, which will take place from July 3 to July 5 in Barcelona, Spain.
Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon spoke to Sword Singer Rick Hughes about his up and coming solo album REDEMPTION which will be released on Friday, October 24 2025 on CD, Vinyl, and Digital formats.
When asked about how he reunited the Speak of The Devil Line-Up to record and shoot the video of The Who’s Classic song ‘THE REAL ME’.
“The hard part was getting them to play on the record (Rudy Sarzo, Brad Gillis, Tommy Aldridge). Once we got that and the human connection was made, if they liked the experience they would do more, if they didn’t like it they would have said said no.
He continued, “When we mixed the song we sent it to Brad (Gillis). And Brad was going wow man, it (the song) sounds amazing, he then said, maybe you should think about doing a video? I’m like ohh.. ok…(smiles).So then it was to convince the two other guys to join us in L.A., to shoot the video and they both said yes. The planets were perfectly aligned. It was something to get them to play on the album, it’s another thing to get them to be in the video. Cause when you hire these three guys for a song and then you put out the album and there is no video you have to explain to people (fans) who played on the song, so the video makes things easier ands clear..
“I should mention Brad (Gillis) also wrote two songs on my new solo album ‘Redemption’. Brad Gillis is the perfect example of how you should look at yourself. This guy is a living legend who replaced Randy Rhoads ( on‘ Diary of a Madman Tour’’ in 1982 after the tragic departure of the great Randy Rhoads). I feel so lucky to have brad Gillis on the project. Same applies to Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge. Rudy Sarzo is such a talented player, such a beautiful human being, this guy is incredible. As for Tommy Aldridge when we were shooting the video, we shot it all day and they took all the best parts and Tommy would always play for real, all takes, playing like he was playing in front of 20,000 people. He (Tommy) is a great drummer and such a great human being.
When asked if this could be the start of a new band
“They did the song on the album, they did the video, I leave the rest to luck. Let’s see where we go from here.”
Canadian-born Rick Hughes is renowned for his powerful and rangey voice as the lead singer of the legendary metal band Sword, and of the hard-rock band Saints & Sinners. A seasoned performer with hundreds of headlining shows in Canada, America, Europe and Japan over the years, and his superb stage performances while opening for bands such as Metallica, Motorhead, Alice Cooper, Black Label Society, etc.
So when it was time for him to record ‘’Redemption’’, his first international solo album, he spared no expenses and efforts to make this album a great one, hiring producer John Webster (Aerosmith, Mötley Crüe, AC/DC, etc.) and renting HippoSonic Recording Studio (formerly known as Little Mountain Studios) in Vancouver to record this opus.
The first salvo, his first single and video is a supercharged version of The Who’s classic ‘’The Real Me’’ – reuniting after 43 years Ozzy Osbourne’s superband consisting of Brad Gillis on guitar, Rudy Sarzo on bass, and Tommy Aldridge on drums. This is the band that did the last leg of the ‘’Diary of a Madman Tour’’ in 1982 after the tragic departure of the great Randy Rhoads, and that then recorded Ozzy’s classic live album ‘’Speak of the Devil’’.
The Metal Voice recently spoke to Armored Saint/ Ex-Anthrax singer John Bush about his plans to play a special three shows of his Anthrax era material with new band Category 7
Bush also talked about New Armored Saint studio album plus his time in Anthrax.
When asked what was the inspiration to go out and play Anthrax Bush material live
“Well, I’ve been talking about it for a while and I just don’t want to hear me talking about it anymore really. So, I don’t know if the timing is really right but it was more of like, let’s just do it. Let’s just do this. I’ll start off small and we’ll figure it out. I mean, sometimes the timing isn’t great in life. I’ve been touring for the last couple years. I’m gonna be 62 years old next month. I’m like, when am I doing this when I’m 70? Timing is maybe questionable but like whatever. In December, I’m not doing anything so, I figured let’s do it. So, me and my agent Dan, who’s a good friend of mine as well, we talked about this for a long time. He was the guy who was doing all the groundwork for it and he was like, why don’t we do this in December? You know, we’ll do these three shows. Let’s do it.”
When asked if this is the Anthrax hook to expose the fans to new band Category 7
“There’s a little bit of that and we’re not going to deny it. I mean at the same time if I put a band from scratch uh to do this thing I would think of those guys cuz they’re really amazing. They’re great players. They’re super cool guys and are easy to work with and I really believe in their abilities. So it was kind of like well wait a minute why don’t we do this? We could play category 7 for like you know 30-40 minutes. It’s going to be a lot of work not only for me but for those guys as well of course and then we could come back out and do these (Anthrax) song. I have this idea of maybe having a few people come in as kind of guest stars, if you will, and maybe playing a song or two on these shows. I haven’t really reached out to anybody yet. I mean, the show just kind of went on sale on Friday, so it’s still early on and tickets are doing pretty well so far. I want to make it like a real celebratory thing. I don’t want it to be like my version of this band of, the alternate to Anthrax or something because that’s not my goal at this at all. My goal is to make this a fun thing that’s exciting and is like I said it’s a celebration of those four (Anthrax) records because I believe those records are really great. Myself and the guys in Anthrax did a lot of investment in time and emotion and recording those records touring on those records. So, um, we put a lot of our heart into it and this is my way of kind of saying, Let’s get back a little bit and have some fun with these songs that pretty much haven’t been heard for years. I want to do some songs that are not just the obvious ones. I want to do some deeper tracks. So I’m kind of figuring, oh, this song, I forgot about this one. This one’s great. And it was always a fan favorite. Um, you know, obviously there’s the logical choices, but um, you know, I think it’d be fun to incorporate some other tunes as well, ones that maybe people never heard live. So, and I’m all ears.”
When asked years ago how close Anthrax was a few years ago in touring with two singers, Bush and Belladonna?
“Well, we were we were supposed to do it and then for whatever reason I don’t really remember exactly why. I certainly don’t want to get into anything negative. I think there was probably a money issue about what people were making and I guess some dissatisfaction with that and so um so then it didn’t happen with both singers. It was cool because it was a great idea and I think it would have been really fun for fans.”
“When the greatest hits (Attack of the Killer A’s) came out it kind of resurrected the band a little bit. The album had this song on it with, me and Joey (Belladonna). And I thought it was really cool. It was a cool tune (Ball of Confusion). I mean, I’m huge Temptation fan. What we should have done on that song, we should have made a video for that song. We should have done a video with both singers. There was a vibe about it. So, we should have made a video and that was a really bad decision that we did not do that because it would have probably been much more popular and just really would have helped out with promotion for this two singer thing. So, that was a mistake. I was open to it (two singers) and then it didn’t happen and then when we did ‘We’ve come for you all’ (Album) the idea came back up about maybe doing the two singer thing again and then that was at the point where I was I just think life was changing a lot. My daughter was born. I was like, you know what? I think you guys should do the reunion. And so I was like, just do it I’ll step away go fulfill that kind of feeling. And I think that was something the band needed to do. So, at that point, I was like, you know, I’m ready to step away. “
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