Psycho Las Vegas 2017 will be taking place from August 18th-20th at the Hard Rock Hotel And Casino Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. The initial lineup seemed to feature every band ever, but now they’ve added Mastodon as the final headliner, and it’s officially one of the sickest bills ever created. Continue reading
Playing epic, classic heavy metal is not a road to travel if fame, glory and success is your goal. Visigoth front man Jake Rogers showed his warrior spirit by talking to Ghost Cult and defending the honour not just of his tribe, or their new album, The Revenant King (Metal Blade), but also their place in the metal world.
It’s been 25 – 30 years since most of your influences were at their peak, and while there is a lot of love and respect for bands like Manilla Road et al, but what makes Visigoth relevant at a time when heavy metal in that form has long moved on in style and sound?
We aren’t concerned with ‘relevance’, we are simply concerned with heavy metal music. True fans of heavy metal don’t care what is “hip” or “cool” or “in”, they simply enjoy what they enjoy and that’s that. I love all sorts of metal music, be it heavy metal, black metal, black thrash, death metal, doom metal, USPM, speed metal, thrash metal, etc.; if it’s real, I dig it! And of course we love plenty of non-metal music as well, because we’re music obsessives! But the type of music we wanted to do with Visigoth was powerful fist-raising, sword-weilding heavy metal, no more, no less.
Playing such a traditional style could be said to have its limitations. What can you do with Visigoth going forward that you haven’t already, or that metal in general hasn’t already done before?
We won’t be doing anything that hasn’t been done before. We are not interested in experimentation or progressive elements or trying to be “genre-defying” in any way. We are not a special snowflake band whatsoever, we are simply a heavy metal band. Some people will scoff at the notion, calling it quaint and regressive, and that’s fine – those aren’t the type of people we would want to talk music with anyway! We’re just a heavy metal band playing heavy metal music for people who love heavy metal music.
How do you balance the irony vs the seriousness with the band? I mean, at what point, (such as say during the writing of ‘Dungeon Master’?) do you think “Ah, this may be a bit close to the line”? I know these are tropes that have been prominent in traditional metal for years, but what’s the thinking around subjects, image, song titles, live presentation and balancing that with being concerned about being too cheesy?
Nothing we do is ironic. This band is passionately from the heart and 100% serious. I am completely against irony in heavy metal. If you think metal is a joke, you have no business playing it. Of course, there are some great bands that have a sense of humour about their music (take Metalucifer, for example), but their humour isn’t ironic, it is a humour born of affection and love for the genre, and they still take the music seriously.
The distinction is a very important one, in my opinion. Sure, some people will think a song like ‘Dungeon Master’ is “cheesy”, but I honestly wrote those lyrics because my experiences playing those table-top roleplaying games and computer games throughout my formative years were really important to what would later become my appreciation for heavy metal aesthetics. A lot of people who are into heavy metal music can relate to this – those who can’t, will call it cheesy and move on. That’s fine, because it’s not for them.
When writing lyrics, coming up with song titles, or devising concepts for artwork or general presentation, I never concern myself with whether or not some toughbro or cool-dude beardo on the internet is going to think it’s cheesy – they can look elsewhere for bands with the modern, up-to-date, hip, cool image that they’re interested in.
Actual metal people tend to understand and unironically enjoy fantasy/barbarian aesthetics and classic heavy metal imagery, and that’s our target audience.
What will make Visigoth stand tall for years to come?
Our dedication to heavy metal music, our passion for playing live gigs, and our drive to improve – we know we aren’t a great band yet, but we’ll keep trying until we get there!
STEVE TOVEY
Let’s make this absolutely clear from the start – Manilla Road are undisputed legends of Heavy Metal. That their name does not carry the same mainstream recognition as some of their peers should not mean that it is spoken with any less reverence. Between 1983 and 1990 – following a slightly awkward but extremely interesting two-album start – they put out a run of classic Heavy Metal albums that is almost unmatched in terms of quality, consistency and a genuine sense of the mysterious.
Since returning in 2001 with Atlantis Rising (Iron Glory) and an entirely new line-up, founding member and authentic Metal hero Mark “The Shark” Shelton has never quite reached the heights of the classic material, but has nevertheless put out some captivating and powerful material that confirms both his lifelong devotion to arcane, true Heavy Metal and his talent for creating it.
Following the previous two albums, the worthy but patchy Playground Of The Damned and 2013’s disappointingly flat Mysterium (both Shadow Kingdom), I was starting to worry that Shelton was finally losing his way. But first, Manilla Road’s greatest blessing and curse (and I know you can see what I did there) has always been the same thing – they’re absolute refusal to do things the “right” way, or to make any attempt to meet their audience half-way. It’s what invests their classic material with such charm and power, but it also leads them to settle for a muddy, washed-out production and to front out three of the least catchy songs on the album. Make it through to track four, however, and ‘The Dead Still Speak’ kicks in with riffing so primitive and ugly that it calls Hellhammer to mind – and then things get interesting.
As always, the strengths here are Shelton’s powerful riffs and distinctive vocals (complemented by Bryan “Hellroadie” Patrick since 2001, but here mostly falling into Shelton’s classic 80’s style, rather than the Death and Black Metal vocals they’ve experimented with on previous albums. There’s also a flow to the songs, a sense of continuity that extends across the tracks and makes The Blessed Curse (Golden Core) feel like an album again, rather than the disjointed collections that Playground… and Mysterium both came across as. There’s nothing “new” on here, but expecting there to be seems, frankly, unreasonable – neither Shelton nor Manilla Road have anything to prove.
Neither a full-on return to former glories nor a sign of complete redundancy, The Blessed Curse finds itself in the rather awkward position of being “just another” solid Manilla Road album – proof that this most idiosyncratic and individualistic of veteran Metal bands still has life in it, but not quite the statement of utter mastery that we hope they still have left in them. Fans will have bought it already, and won’t be disappointed, but anyone wanting to catch up on what they’ve missed would be better advised to start elsewhere.
7.5/10
RICHIE HR