1. In between
festival dates in Europe and the bands first ever and highly successful gig in
America (At Maryland Death Fest), the band is currently working on an album of
new material, to be called “Never Quite Dead”. Some of the songs the band has
been performing are more than 20 years old! Was the idea of going in to write
new songs a bit scary?
Obviously you will always have a
few self-doubts after this length of time about your ability to hack it and
produce material that will still compare with what has gone before when we were
younger! Is it possible for Al and I to maintain the standard we have set
ourselves or has the well run dry, only time and the feedback we receive will
answer that one? As far as we are concerned this album will be a compilation of
the previous ones if pushed into a corner to describe it and we are happy at
what’s going down and also the other newer material we are composing! So as far
as we can judge we don’t have a problem but the acid test will be how it is
received! The hard part is to continually find subject matter that I can get my
teeth into and compose lyrics that will at least make people think or at least
find interesting, I’ve always believed that if I’m bored so will they be and I
do suffer with a low boredom threshold which acts a good filter! Producing
great riffs has never been a problem to Al and he can churn them out almost at
will and as for composing lead breaks… We do not write ‘Fillers’ as to our eyes
that is cheating people that would buy the album in good faith and in so doing
would not appreciate being short changed even if at first it wasn’t that
obvious. People now are totally aware if considerable thought, time and effort
has been put into a song/album even if they don’t particularly like it! Gone
are the days when an album consisted of two or three good songs and the rest
padded out with songs that had been thrown together in a studio and recorded as
they went along! WE have to like a song before it goes anywhere near one of our
albums and when we get a chance to play them live they tend to find themselves
and we can make adjustments that moulds it into a coherent whole in it’s own
right! We have always done it this way and even with the passing of time to us
the principle is the same!
2. How far along is the
recording process? When can we expect a release?
We purchased a whole load of
recording equipment and fitted out our own studio for this purpose but found we
didn’t have a clue how to work it. We then transported the guide tracks over to
a friend of ours studio Banana Road in Erith London and have been working on
them between the two studios ever since. This is now working extremely well but
we did lose a shit load of time initially. We are steaming ahead now but more
importantly we are really happy with the results! I haven’t done any of the
finished vocals yet just the guide tracks for the others to follow. As for a
release date we never set ourselves a time schedule, that’s the beauty of
having your own label your not under any pressure to release something just
because it’s cost effective to do so in a given time frame! We still have two
very long songs to do, one of them ‘The Ripper’ is over ten minutes long with
lots of changes etc so that will slow us up a bit and ‘The Rising of the Dead’
is about seven minutes so quite a mouthful! I am so glad to finally get the
‘Rising of the Dead’ down at long last as that has been with us for the longest
and is the forerunner to ‘March of the Dead’ and Judgement of the Dead!
Many of the ideas for the songs on
this album started life in embryo form many years ago and it was whilst we were
recording Mythical and Magical in about 2006 that we finally put them together!
Trevor Portch (Bass) and Mark Elliott (Drums) could not find the time for
various personal reasons to continue recording and we have been searching for
the right line up to get this album recorded in the correct manner it was
intended since then! This is in no way detrimental to a portion of the past members
concerned as some were good musicians in their own right but perhaps just not
right for Pagan Altar at that time for whatever reason! We now have finally
found a line up and blend that can achieve this end in the manner we would like
to represent our music!
Actually, whilst waiting to get
NQD down and finished we have got the bug again and have been quite prolific on
the writing front and have actually almost written the following album!
From a playing perspective none
whatsoever! Everything was so much tighter live and there were fewer mistakes
on stage so this has got to be an improvement! Obviously there are songs that
perhaps we couldn’t do because it needs the other guitar for double leads etc
but there are ways around that! We started life as a three piece and a lot of
the earlier songs were written and performed in that format so it would only be
the later studio versions that would suffer a bit. Al has always put down all
the guitar tracks to every song himself so no one would be in a better position
to make the necessary adjustments to make them fit!
Did we enjoy Geggan, is the Pope
Catholic, we had a great time both on and off stage? The on-stage monitor sound
could have been better and more constant as things kept coming up loud or
disappearing but what the Hell the guys know their parts blindfolded so not
really a problem!
We will probably install another
guitarist at some point or maybe Keyboards as that would certainly fit into
what we do but as yet haven’t had a chance to get our minds on it properly. We
are quite capable of continuing as we are for a bit as we are enjoying it and
don’t feel the need to be particularly rushed into anything, although I do like
the freedom another guitar can give you!
4. Do you consider
yourselves a “Doom” band?
Haven’t got a clue, I suppose
people will perceive us in their own manner for better or for worse, so be it!
When we started out years ago no one knew what Doom was and we were just a
heavy rock band the same as many others, even Sabbath were considered a heavy
rock band back then whereas Iron Maiden for example were a NWOBHM rock band but
were still all humped in together! All these new Genres that have since
surfaced to pigeonhole various bands are somewhat of a puzzle to me and some
Genres seem quite hard to distinguish between!
The content of the songs we write
hopefully matches the mood conveyed within the accompanying music making it a
complete entity and not just words put to music regardless! We have always
written in this fashion, which to us makes sense, but trying to keep within a
certain Genre is not the criteria or in the forefront in our minds, the songs
come out the way they do regardless of what Genre it fits into and does anyone
really care, certainly not us? We are what we are, Pagan Altar!
5.You're pretty active on
Facebook in promoting the bands music and shows. Do you think the band would be
doing this well if it weren’t for social networking as far as getting the world
out?
I’m not too sure about being pretty active
but I do try to keep things moving and also let anyone who’s interested know
what’s going on as much as I can! Also, we consider it only fair to do our own
share of advertising etc and not just leaving it to the promoters to advertise
us! The other aspect is that some of the festivals we have played at recently
have been really good fun and well organised especially in Scandinavia so why
not blow their trumpet a bit for them and let others know how good they are,
seems pretty fair to me!
It also gives us a chance to let people get
know what we are like personally as well and that we don’t take ourselves too
seriously or have our heads stuck up our own arses!
Without the Internet I’m not sure how far
we would have got under our own steam, not too far I wouldn’t think? So with
all it’s evils and stupid trolling etc it does have a lot going for it,
especially as far as we are concerned, I wouldn’t be doing this interview
without it let alone getting our music out etc!
How long have you got, I have been in so
many different types of bands since I was first old enough to hold a guitar?
Sometimes playing guitar, vocals, vocal harmonies and I even played bass in one
or two but wasn’t great at it!
The last one I was in prior to
Pagan Altar and was also with Al was called Hydra and as we were all mates
together was great fun. We did a mixture of covers and our own material some of
which have appeared on our albums since!
Hydra was doing the rounds at the
same time Angelwitch started and we often played the same venues on alternate
weeks, one of them being the ‘Dutch House’ on the ‘mad mile’ a biker’s venue!
7. When did you realize your son Alan was
talented on guitar and wanted to be in a band with him?
Since I first
started to teach him to play, he wanted to play drums but I wasn’t having any
of it!
8. Who are your musical
/singing influences? Who did you grow up listening to?
Initially I tended to listen to
vocalists and bands that used a similar vocal range or timing to myself, people
like early Cat Stevens, Roger Chapman (Family), Joe Cocker, Ian Anderson
(Jethro Tull), Roky Erikson, Jose Feliciano and many others of that ilk along
with the usual catchall of bands playing rock music as did most! I always liked
harmonies and especially good female backing vocals, which also included bands
like ‘Vinegar Joe’ with Elkie Brooks and Robert palmer! I had always had the
desire to incorporate female backing vocals into Pagan Altars music as well as
my own harmonies as I thought how much more scope it would give to writing
songs and creating the mood! It is like having another instrument if used
properly and could tear at the heartstrings or accentuate a feeling within a
song! That being said I finally got my opportunity to put it to the test when we
tracked down one of the best female backing singers we could have wished for in
Valery Watson and used her to great effect on both the ‘Lords of Hypocrisy’ and
‘Mythical and Magical’ albums! People have no concept of how professional and
good she was to work with; she did most of those backings, harmonies and vocal
infill off the cuff and in one hit, amazing!
There were many obscure bands that I
liked and to be honest can’t for the life of me remember who they were now off
the top of my head but they were usually for one album or even one song and
before they went AWOL!
I never intentionally
tried to emulate any of the aforementioned Vocalists but if certain aspects of
their style rubbed off and became part of my own presentation I’m not too sad
about it!
The thing about Pagan
Altar and it’s music is that as far as we are concerned it reflected our own
natural progression and wasn’t so much me needing to hit top C but more of
telling a story or making a point that we find much more rewarding…just as a
matter of interest I couldn’t hit top C if my life depended on it!
I am not that well
versed with many of the new bands that are around at present, only those that I
know personally! I don’t think it’s particularly fair to make a list of bands,
as I like different bands for different reasons depending on the mood! I
suppose those that I listen to most would be Forsaken and Nomad son from Malta,
Litany/wrath blade from Greece, Hooded Priest and quite a few that I can’t
remember their names and this is because they are the auto changer in my car!
I’m not one for sitting down and listening to music due to the fact that I just
don’t get the time and when your in amongst and involved in music all the time
sometimes you just want to give your ears a rest, probably an age thing!
There is one band that
both Al I really like although haven’t got anything of theirs on record and
that’s Drakkar from Portugal. We have played in Portugal a few times and they
have been on the bill with us and we thought they were outstanding, great
guitarist and vocalist and good material, can’t think for the life of me why
they haven’t made a bigger impression!
The Geggan festival
recently was a real eye opener because apart from being a great festival to
play at there were some bands on there that I for one certainly hadn’t heard of
before but were really good at what they do! It’s not often I watch a whole
festival from start to finish but I did there!
10. Where can people find
your albums/CD's/etc
Anywhere now I would have thought, we
have more or less superseded the bootlegs and have now licensed our albums out
to Cruz del Sur to cover Europe and Shadow Kingdom to cover the United States!
These two supply multiple outlets so obtaining them shouldn’t be too much of a
problem anymore! We just couldn’t cope with the demand ourselves and people
were complaining they could find them, only on eBay at inflated prices so we
let others more geared up for it handle that side on the understanding that
they kept their prices low which is exactly what they have done!
Buried By Time And
Dust records (BBTAD) in the USA deals with all our vinyl output and what a
great job they have made of them, we are really proud of everything they have
done and they also have kept their prices reasonable even with regard to the
large outlay required to produce such outstanding statements and that helps
everyone! So there is no need to pay through the nose for any of our material
just go to the labels I have listed here and get them at the right price
because that is why we set it up this way right from the start! (most BBTAD records are available at Heavy Ripples Distro)
11. You've been in the
music industry a long time; do you ever see yourself retiring? Would you have
someone else take over your vocal duties?
Of course and there have been a few
times in the past when I have given it more than a little thought for one
reason or another! How much longer I can go on doing the live stuff without it
becoming a parody I’m not sure although I do still enjoy it and what else would
I be doing… cutting the grass, washing the car, no thanks not for me I’m
afraid!
I have put it to the
rest of the band a few times that perhaps new blood might help them along a bit
and do they want to get someone else in but they have refused and Al has always
said that should I pack it in he would not want to continue and THAT would be a
loss! I suppose after all these early years of struggle and disappointment, the
trials and tribulations, the good times and bad times and the euphoria of
seeing something we started back in 1978 finally seeing the light of day
through a sheer fluke he feels the same as I that there is nothing left to
prove so if we go, we go together… as it as always been!
With the recording
side, that would not be so bad as we could take our time writing songs, putting
them together and recording them but to be solely a studio band is not what
Pagan Altar is all about!
So, I’m a bit stuck
between a rock and a hard place really but I certainly don’t have a problem
with playing live and as long as no one destroys my portrait in the attic I
suppose I can go on for a bit longer as there are many people I still want to
meet!
I think most people
have a good time when they come to see us and with each passing gig the crowd
gets better and better at singing the words so perhaps there will be a time
when all I have to do is introduce the songs and let the audience sing them for
me?
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