Gloryhammer interview (Michael Barber)
Interview by Davide Sciaky
Puoi leggere l’intervista in italiano qui.
Last week you released your new album, “Return To The Kingdom Of Fife”. Since the previous album you went through a singer change and of course there was the pandemic, so I was wondering how those things influenced the writing and recording of this album.
Not too much, I mean, we kind of always write in the same way: we’re always in different countries anyway and usually most of the writing is handled by Christopher or Ben, our drummer, and myself. So, the actual writing team didn’t really change and the writing style is kind of the same, to be honest. I guess the pandemic meant we had a bit more time to prepare. Other than that, it remained mostly the same, to be honest.
Did you approach the writing in a different way because of the way Sozos sings, like maybe he can hit different notes?
Yeah, to an extent, although he contributed more himself than in the past. For example, we would normally have to write the harmony parts ourselves, but he actually has probably a much better knowledge of harmony than we did, to be honest, and he knows his voice quite well, so when he’s feeling to include certain harmonies we just leave him in charge.
He joined the band a couple of years ago and of course you all got your characters, but he joined as Angus McFife. Why didn’t you create a new character for him and he just used the old one?
Well, because I mean he’s actually our third singer. And so he’s the third person [that sings] as Angus McFife. It’s the same as like a James Bond movie, you know, whoever’s the actor is James Bond and likewise with Angus McFife.
With the last two albums you first moved a thousand years after the story of the first album with “Space 1992”, and then to an alternate dimension with “Legends from Beyond the Galactic Terrorvortex”. So, now you’re returning back to Kingdom of Fife, can you tell me a bit more about this story that you tell in this album?
Yeah, it’s kind of like following on from Terrorvortex: at the end of the album there’s a transmission made by Zargothrax which then triggers the sequence of events in a kind of alternate timeline of the first album where he’s actually had a clone as a kind of like dead man’s switch failsafe. This transmission reaches the clone about 30 years after the events of the original album. The clone awakens and destroys Dundee and kills Angus McFife and then the next chapter of the album is set a few years later. His son returns to Dundee to kind of exact his revenge, or try to exact his revenge, on Zargothrax the clone. But meanwhile the clone is trying to awaken the original Zargothrax so this kind of chaos ensues.
Right, do you already have a sort of idea of where to go with the next album, of where the story continues from here?
Yeah, we have, we do actually, this fourth album is kind of, I guess, the final part of the sequence that began with the original album and we kind of deliberately wanted to leave a clean slate as to where to go in future. So we already started discussing where to go on the next album. Although we can’t talk too much about it just yet.
Of course, of course. As we said, there is a larger story that continues through these four albums. I was wondering, I mean, of course you weren’t involved with the band at the very beginning, but as far as you know was there always the idea to continue the story through different albums?
Yeah, I think originally it was going to be, well, kind of jokingly, the story was meant to go on for 21 albums is what Chris used to tell people. But even towards the end of the last record, you know, it becomes apparent you can’t really stretch out the same story for that long or even four albums, it’s kind of, we’re beginning to push it a little bit. So, yeah, the idea was there in the beginning but it’s kind of evolved now where hopefully in the future we’ll kind of begin new sequences and maybe even just kind of standalone albums, you know, not everything has to be like a huge long storyline we can maybe condense it or like have like a EPs which tell like a kind of small back story or like an alternate reality story or something like this.
Gloryhammer has been founded by Chris who at the beginning was playing keyboards live, then of course you came in and you’ve been playing live ever since. I was wondering, is it just a matter of conflicting schedules? Or maybe with Gloryhammer he just prefers to focus on the writing and recording?
Yeah, it began that way, the first show I ever did for Gloryhammer I think was in Switzerland and maybe even like 2014 or 2015, I can’t remember, but Chris was still in the band and that was simply because he’d accidentally double booked Alestorm and Gloryhammer for the same day or the same weekend. Then when it came to 2016 Gloryhammer was getting a lot of offers and growing as a band, Alestorm was obviously growing in parallel and Chris didn’t want to hold back the guys from Gloryhammer by limiting them to the amount shows he could do so he asked me in the beginning just to cover that summer, I believe, and then the next year there was a few more shows, I think we did a tour with Hammerfall, and it went on for a couple more years. I was trying to balance this with a day job and other stuff and in the end I just had a conversation, you know, “Are you ever gonna come back?” and he was like, “Nah, you do it”. So, he’s still a member of the band in a way, you know, he’s involved in the writing and the creative process, but not as a live member or in any of the press materials since I think like 2015 now.
And what happens in the studio? Do you record your parts yourself?
Most of the keyboard parts are actually orchestrated by our drummer, Ben, and usually previously Chris would go to oversee the project. This time he entrusted it to me. So we recorded… because I’m now more involved in the writing, we recorded last December and so Chris wasn’t even at the studio.
Okay, so at this point, I guess it’s fair to say that you are a full time member, the full time keyboard player, while he’s part of the creative team in the band.
I would probably consider myself to have joined full-time in like 2019.
Talking about the singer change I mentioned before, after Thomas Winkler was asked to leave the band he went on to form a new band called Angus McSix, which of course is a reference to what he did with you. So, I was wondering if there’s been any kind of contact between the band and him to maybe discuss this name choice of his.
Well, yeah, only through lawyers [laughs].
Okay, so it’s not been a very friendly process so to say.
No, not really, unfortunately.
Talking about Power Metal in general, I think it’s fair to say for about maybe a decade or a bit more there’s been a rise of bands who don’t take themselves too seriously, both in the way they present themselves, their lyrics, their whole image. Of course there’s you, Alestorm, I’m thinking about maybe Beast in Black, Nanowar of Steel and a bunch of other bands which are becoming more successful recently. At the same time, some metalheads seem to take offence at the fact that you don’t take Metal too seriously. How do you feel about that?
We still take the band quite seriously, it’s more just the approach. Like, for example, I tried to explain someone recently: you have this school of fantasy writing where it’s very serious, it takes itself very seriously, like for example Tolkien which is about as serious and complex as it gets. And then in parallel you have, for example, Discworld from Terry Pratchett. Yeah, and he’s still loves what he’s doing but he just is a little more playful with it and I don’t think personally that one is worse than the other. I wouldn’t compare to Nanowar too much because I think they’re obviously, you know, quite actively a comedy band and that’s what they’re good at, whereas we’re not really trying to be kind of funny so much as like a bit absurd. I suppose it’s like a kind of British humour like Monty Python or, you know, this kind of stuff.
A couple of years ago there was some controversy when some texts from an internal chat of the band was leaked, and I don’t want to go into what was said and whatnot, but I’d just like to ask you: when something like this happens, what happens with management and labels? Did they require you to issue a statement, did they give you suggestions on what to do, or did they leave the matter completely into your hands?
Actually, it wasn’t so much the label but some professionals, managers from other bands actually took an interest at the time and their suggestion was kind of not to say anything, you know.
Apparently the music industry standards is supposedly to, you know, just deny and don’t address when anything happens. But we didn’t really feel like that was the right thing to do. So me and Chris and the others decided to ignore that suggestion and try and own up to our mistakes as it were.
Now that it’s been a few years, do you feel like you made the right decision?
I think it was the right thing to do because I think if you do make mistakes then it’s on you to address them. You know, you can’t just sit back and pretend it didn’t happen. I mean, it’s quite immature, you know.