Connect with us

Interviews

Alestorm Interview w/ Elliot Vernon & Máté Bodor

JJ Ulizio

Published

on

Empire Extreme Interview with Alestorm

Alestorm Interview w/ Elliot Vernon & Máté Bodor

By JJ Ulizio & George Archibald

ssttMyself and a fellow Empire Extreme staff member George Archibald had the pleasure of sitting down and having a chat with keyboardist Elliot Vernon and guitarist Máté Bodor of the pirate themed metal band Alestorm. We caught up with them as their “Super Smashed Turbo Tour 2016” with Aether Realm and Nekrogoblikon sailed into the Smiling Moose in Pittsburgh, PA. It was great talking to them about various topics and they put on one hell of an awesome show later that evening. But enough of my rambling, on to the interview!

JJ Ulizio: How far into the tour are you?
Máté Bodor: It’s day 6 or 7 so far… I think.

JJ: How have things been going?
Elliot Vernon: Its been going great! We did have some shows in Canada that got canceled so we suddenly had to find some last minute U.S. Shows. This is the second of those, I think. We are playing a couple of smaller places that we were able to get kinda last minute. But, its really cool because I like playing these smaller venues. Everyone is really sweaty and things fall apart. So that’s really fun. Its cool.

JJ: Do you have any new material that you have been working on?
MB: We’ve recorded demos for the new album. We have written everything already. We have ten or eleven songs done.
EV: We will be playing one of the new songs tonight. We will be playing one of them every day. We were just listening to the demos just now on the bus. Listening to them over and over again. Listening to them and taking notes, like this needs changing or that. It’s really good to be prepared like that.
JJ: Have you been happy with how everything has been turning out then?
Alestorm (both): Oh yeah its been great.
EV: The new album is even more in like a catchy, poppy direction. Its still metal. It still heavy. There are still screams, guitar solos, really heavy riffs, and stuff. All the songs are just super straight forward and catchy.
MB: There’s been a lot of time, all summer. We have been working on it, taking our time and working on each of the bits. I think we are really prepared now.
EV: In the past we have gone into the studio, and it was the first time Chris had ever sang those songs. Looking back we realized well that song should have been in a higher key, or we should have done things differently.
MB: Now we run things past each other every day and we just see what works and what doesn’t.
EV: That should help really streamline the process at least when we record.

2744763alestormJJ: Do you think it’s better to do the song in the studio first or to break it in on the road?
EV: It’s not really on the road. We have so much time at home, you know this is our full time job so when were not on tour we really don’t have anything else to do. So we really do spend a lot of time writing songs.
MB: We just do it over the internet, we all live in different places
EV: We have a Dropbox folder and we record demos and bits and send them back and forth that way. We don’t ever get together to rehearse or anything, it’s just all online shit. Now I do live near him so we’ve been recording demos together. But it’s cool; it’s really cool to spend all our free time getting stuff prepared.

George Archibald: I was listening to some of your stuff and the song “Magnetic North” it’s got a part in there that I really really enjoy, I’m a big heavy heavy heavy kinda guitar. The part I am talking about is when you have the bass drum and its almost like a breakdown. Can I expect more of that kind of stuff on the new album with the other dynamics as well?
EV: The song “Magnetic North” is on the album Sunset on the Golden Age, and that was my first album with the band, and it was me doing the screams. It was the first time we got to do that, really heavy thing. So this is going to be my second album and there’s definitely going to be parts with big heavy screaming sections. We were a little worried that the fans wouldn’t take to it so much, because we were this cheerful happy band and suddenly we but this big heavy section in there. But the people love it, so we decided to do more of that kind of stuff. It changes up the song, and makes it different. Otherwise it would get a bit boring if it were just happy all the time.

GA: Any other dynamics we can expect that you maybe haven’t really used in the past?
EV: There is definitely more guitar/keyboard solos and harmonies then we have done in the past. Think Children of Bodom or Avenged Sevenfold and that kind of stuff.

JJ: What are your biggest influences musically that you guys pull from?
MB: All different really.

JJ: Well, that helps meld it into a better sound usually.
EV: Solos and stuff we both have our influences with guitarists in metal bands that we look to for solo styles. The song structures and melodies are all pop influenced. We just like it to be super straight forward and catchy. You can hear it once and it gets stuck in your head. When you hear the chorus of a new song live for the first time, when you come around to the second time everyone should know the words already. That’s how we like to approach things. A lot of our influences are really just based on our old songs and which bits worked. We can see, this thing was good, let’s do more of that. We try not to directly steal from other people…
MB: We steal from ourselves, ha-ha
EV: Yeah we steal from ourselves, ha-ha, We’ve found our style and we are sticking to it.
GA: That’s the evolution of your sound.

3header

 

JJ: Can you talk briefly about how you first got together and how the pirate theme came about?
EV: Oh, I don’t know. It was so long ago. It’s Chris’ thing. I joined the band in 2011 and Máté last year. So he’s been in the band like a year, year and a half or something. I’ve been in the band 5 years. It was just a practical joke that got out of hand. I think they wanted to start a power metal band. A general power metal band, with different songs about fantasy shit and one of the songs was about pirates and it kind of just took off from there, let’s just stick to this gimmick you know? Because so many bands were already doing Vikings and all that nonsense, it just seems to be our thing now.
JJ: Well, it’s working. When I first checked you out I was like, “wow, these guys are awesome”. I am really looking forward to your set tonight.

GA: Is there any place in the United States that you guys would like to visit or tour? Or any place you guys consider a second home or anything?
EV: Well, I’m English and he’s Hungarian. So there’s many places we like, everywhere is cool. The United States is like a big group, every state is almost like its own country. LA is so much different from Pittsburgh.
MB: This is my first time here so I don’t really know yet. I’ve just been on the east coast for the past four or five days, it’s nice but I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of everything.
EV: We’re just excited for all the food every day. We like trying the local stuff everywhere.

GA: It’s so much different, if you do eat local here there’s a lot of Polish stuff like pierogis, sausages…
EV: We went to the sandwich shop up the street, the Primanti Brothers.

JJ: Did you like it?
Both: Yeah it was good.
JJ: I live about 45 minutes from here, so every time I am up this way if I get a chance I always try to swing by that place. I love it there.
EV: That’s the kind of stuff we are excited for every day, I mean obviously the shows are great but every day we get off the bus and look around and are like “ ok, what’s a good place to eat?” We always try to talk to the locals and get some opinions on where to go.

GA: Do you have a time-line or a rough idea on when that album is going to come out?
EV: We’re recording in January
MB: May or June or something like that. It should be out before the summer festivals.

EV: We didn’t do any of the European festivals at all this year and next year we are planning on doing all of them, or a lot of them. We would really like to have the new material done by then. Otherwise it would have been the third year we did festivals without any new songs, and even if its not out yet, we’re definitely going to have some new songs and new videos out for them. The last album, we finished it in February and released it in August. So it was just sitting there for six months. We were so eager to have it out. We are definitely going to try and push it faster this time. It all depends on the label, we don’t really decide these things.

JJ: I was going to say was that a label issue?
EV: Yes, they wanted to spend a long time hyping it up before they put it out.

JJ: Since you’ve mentioned festivals. Is there a festival you would like to play that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
MB: You’ve played Wacken, I haven’t yet & Grasspop, which I haven’t yet.
EV: We’ve never done Download Festival in the UK; it’s like the biggest rock/metal festival in the UK. We’ve never done that one. As for Europe we’ve done almost all of them. I’d like to do that Woodstock in Poland. There’s like a million people that go to that or something. It’s a free festival. So that would be cool. We did Heavy MTL Canada and that was great.

JJ: What do you like about playing the festivals as opposed to being on the road. I know they are totally different entities.
EV: They are two very different things. When you play a small club, even if there is just 100 people there, you know that every single person has come to see your show. Which is great, but then when you play a festival there may be 30,000 people there and some of them are your fans but they’re not all there just to see you. So playing small shows on the road is cool. Because it’s a very focused direct thing, just for us. Festivals are also great because there’s tens of thousands of people and that’s also cool. Its really different. Playing outside in the sun is different from playing in a small dark venue as well.

JJ: Winding things down here, we don’t want to take up to much more of your time. Is there anything else you want to say or anything you wish to plug before we let you go?
EV: Not really. I mean new album next year, but we don’t really have anything else coming up.

JJ: Alright guys, thanks for your time.
Both: Not a problem, thank you.

Connect with Alestorm:

Facebook_logo_36x36.svg
twitter-bird-white-on-blue
youtube-logo-square
WWW_icon

 

About Author

Interviews

INTERVIEW WITH OF VIRTUE

Ron

Published

on

By

Where does the band name come from? Wanting to be the best version of yourself at all times. The name is a reminder to hold ourselves accountable.

How is the music scene in Michigan? The Michigan music scene has always been vibrant and in my opinion, important. Do we get the credit we deserve? Absolutely not. But for the state that brought you Motown, Eminem, Lizzo, The White Stripes, I Prevail and so many other incredible artists – it’s kind of hard to believe that Michigan remains a hidden gem.

How’s the reception from the fans of the latest album “Omen”? It’s been incredible. From seeing people singing along at shows to us seeing new supporters of all different ages, colors, and creeds joining the journey. Omen has been a pivotal album in our career and we’re proud of it!

If you could tour with 2 bands, which bands would you want to tour with? Spiritbox and Bad Omens. They’re both making waves, changing who the metal audience is, and surely they’d be fun to hang around with.

Where do you draw inspiration for the lyrics? Honestly, the lyrics are our stories. The stories of our struggles, our trials and our tribulations.

What’s been your favorite tour or show? We just got off of a tour with our labelmates, Any Given Day. They treated us to a handful of sold out shows over in Europe, which at this point we call our second home. Those were great shows, but any show we’ve done in Europe is typically one for the books!

If you could bring back a dead musician, who would it be? Prince for sure. An incredible musician I would love an opportunity to chat or make music with!

About Author

Continue Reading

Interviews

INTERVIEW WITH TWIN TEMPLE

Ron

Published

on

By

Being Married and being in a band together. Do you feel that makes it easier or harder?

We love to do the Devil’s work together so for us its a match made in hell. 

What’s your favorite horror movie?

That’s hard to narrow down but the first few that come to mind are Rosemary’s Baby, The Devil Rides Out, Wickerman, The Devils Reign featuring Anton Lavey, Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, anything starring Vincent Price. We also got to see an advance screen of “Late Night with the Devil” featuring a very evil performance from our friend Dave Dastmalchian. We’re also looking forward to Bryan Fuller’s “Dust Bunny” and are positive it will be a new favorite. The list goes on…..we are huge horror fans.

Favorite Non Horror Movie?

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (which is horror/noir adjacent) and The Burbs (also horror adjacent…haha.)

All of Quentin Tarantino’s films- our latest favorite is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, because 1960’s LA…

What misconception of Satanists would you like to educate people on?

We’re not here to proselytize, force our beliefs on people, or educate people on them Selves, Satanism or anything else. If people are interested in exploring Satanism, we encourage them to do their research and question everything. 

If you could bring back any dead musician, who would you pick and why?

We would have loved to do a song with Ronnie Spector who recently passed. Also would have been amazing to collaborate with Jack Nitzsche who arranged so many amazing songs. 

If you could tour with any 2 bands, who would you want to tour with?

The Ronnettes & The Shangri-Las.

What has been your Favorite Tour so far?

The God is Dead Tour that we’re currently on is definitely the most evil and blasphemous tour yet. We find it very pleasurable to be able to continue expanding the rituals and seeing our nightmares come true on stage.  

You were on “Dragula” with the Boulet Brothers, how was that experience?

It was a fiendish delight to collaborate with some of our fav monsters. 

What was it like Touring with Danzig?

Another nightmare come true! We’ve both been fans for a long time and we’re obviously inspired by the wicked world Glenn has conjured. So to get to spend time with him and watch him live every night and to now call him a friend is completely surreal. He’s a legend— but was also one of the coolest, kindest, most unholy people we’ve had the carnal pleasure of touring with. 

How’s the reception of the last album “God is Dead”?

Personally, we love the record and are very proud of what we’ve accomplished. As far as other peoples’ reactions…. we don’t know and don’t care! We pleasured ourselves and that’s what matters most.

What got you interested in the style of music you play? And how would describe your music?

We’ve always loved classic American music from jazz to blues to country to rock and roll and so on. We also love the pageantry of heavy metal and theatre. So for us it was a very organic culmination of our obsessions. Rock and roll has always been the devils music. 

Have you visited the Satanic Temple in Massachusetts?

No we have not but Lucien did attend one of our rituals so we had a chance to share where we get our babies blood and all things Satan. 

Have you had any bad encounters at shows because of the misconception of satanism?

No! We purposefully foster a live show environment where all are welcome, all should come being the most important person in the world which is themselves, whatever that may be. Even Christians! We believe music is meant to bring joy, transcendence… We just want to share the things we love; pink, rhinestones, big hair, great rock ’n’ roll, Satanic ritual, you know…  but we have had churches assemble outside our shows, screaming through distorted PA speakers that God is not dead & wishing us all a “terrible time”.  Why would their God not want us to have fun? This kind of behavior is only makes us more proud to be who we are and do what we love.

About Author

Continue Reading

Interviews

FIRST JASON: LOVEDRAFTS INTERVIEW

Ron

Published

on

By

EMPIRE EXTREME GOT TO SIT DOWN AND TALK TO ARI LEHMAN OF FIRST JASON AND TALK ABOUT STARTING THE CULT OF JASON VORHEES FANS

About Author

Continue Reading

Trending

%d bloggers like this: