Interviews
Greywalker Interview
BY: JJ Ulizio Photos By: Elena D’Agostino
My first interview in close to eight years. I sat down for a brief interview with Greywalker from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, featuring former members of Ascend the Fallen, Mara, and various other bands from the area. They are fronted by Brian “Sikes” Howe of another musical project of his Sikes and The New Violence. Greywalker has a melodic, thrashy, death metal style that I would liken to bands such as Soilwork.
Greywalker is truly a force to be reckoned with their crushing rhythms, interspersed with grooves, and catchy guitar leads all while Brian Howe screams his lyrics at you with a style I find to be all his own.
They bring a solid live show that few underground bands can match and some nationals wish they could. Currently supporting their “Beyond All Mortal” release from 2015, and a recently released music video. I caught up with them at The Altar Bar in Pittsburgh on 04/28/16 where they were opening for Nekrogoblikon and Urizen.
First thing, can you give us a little history as to how the band came together?
Ricky: Yeah we’ve been a band with this current lineup for about two years. A couple years ago I met someone that wanted to start a band. We were looking for a drummer. I knew that Joey wasn’t really doing anything so I called him up. We got together and started jammin’ and the rest just fell into place.
Joey: After we got together we needed to fill the rest of the lineup. We ended up finding Evan for guitar and went through like a plethora of singers and bass players until we finally landed on this lineup. We released an EP with the old lineup. However with this current lineup we have released a full length album last year .
What was the record called where can people pick it up pick it up?
Brian: It is called Beyond All Mortal and you can get it online at greywalker.bandcamp.com or go to greywalker.net and you’ll find it.
When you first got together as a band and began writing was there a certain sound that you had in mind or did you just start riffing and that’s what came out?
Ricky: I really like to listen to Swedish, melodic, death metal. I’m into Darkest Hour and that fast and thrashy stuff. Obviously what we like bleeds over into our playing style. Especially Evan and I, that’s what we listen to exclusively… most of the time. It just so happens that we sound like that. Which is not a bad thing. I think it’s fun and I like fast, heavy, and aggressive music.
What is next for Greywalker? New recording, tour, videos?
Brian: We have a new video out for the song “Nuclear Drone”. We also have another video that just came out a few months ago for “Beyond All Mortal”. We are taking June and part of July off from shows to work on our new stuff. We been working on it, but keep getting distracted with shows. We have a few songs in the can… kinda. We just really need to focus on them. No real touring, maybe some out of town stuff, but nothing major.
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Interviews
INTERVIEW WITH MERCURY OF PRIEST
Empire Extreme got to sit down and talk to Mercury of Priest when the band came into PA at LoveDrafts.
The show was amazing all the bands that we seen put on a great show for the fans. Vampires Everywhere killed it once again. Last time we seen Priest we only got to see them open for Powerman5000 and got like 6 songs, this time Priest was headlining and we got to see much more which I was excited to see.
Priest played a good mix of old and new and even a few songs off the album “Dark Pulse” which is out in May. We got to see 13 songs played and even Mercury come out into the crowd a few times and when they played “Obey” even blessed some of the crowd. It was great hearing songs like “BlackListed”, “Signal in the Noise”, “History in Black” and “Vaudeville”. It was such a great night of music and a great conversation with Mercury. If you get a chance to see this band play in ur town, it’s a must
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Interviews
INTERVIEW WITH OF VIRTUE
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!
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Interviews
INTERVIEW WITH TWIN TEMPLE
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.
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