For a band that existed, in one line up or another, for more then 20 years, its quite surprising that Jag Panzer manage to sound as fresh and as relevant as a new comer to power metal.
The American veterans of metal have released several high quality releases through the last ten years, celebrated by last year's Decade Of The nail spiked Bat.
I spoke with the band's long-time guitarist, Mark Briody, about their latest release – Casting The Stones:
A: Hi Mark! The new album's sound is quite different the former ones, why is that?
M: We had a band meeting, and we decided that we want a different kind of sound for this album, to make the sound heavier, and yet more melodic this time, Chris, our other guitarist, plays a 7 string guitar, so we were able to infuse the guitar sound with some special ideas and sounds, we also did a lot of work on the amp sound, and I think it shows.
A: The art work for the album is quite impressive, the metallic hand throwing the stone on what appears to be a glass house, where did the idea for the art originate?
M: We just wanted to do something different, I'm a huge Evergrey sound, and I like their artwork, so we contacted the guy who does their covers, and he did that great artwork.
About the idea, its actually based on a song we had, that didn’t make it into the album, funnily enough, we wanted to show a ruined culture, a world with no more resources for existing, were crime is punished by capitol punishment, as things deteriorate, the capital punishment is given for petty crimes as well, making the punishment system quite a biblical one, hence "Casting The Stones", as in "Cast The First Stone"…
A: A motif that seems to be ever present in the band, is war, evident in your web-site, in your lyrics, what is the cause for your fascination with the subject?
M: I don’t think its actually a real motif, Harry, our vocalist, writes the lyrics, and he writes about a lot of things, war is one of them, but its not really a them or anything for us.
A: What is the writing process within the band?
M: As I said, Harry writes the lyrics, while the music is divided between me and Chris, each of us sits down and writes his songs, something like half an album each, and then we just put things together,
A: Does each of you have a certain kind of music he likes to write, a difference in the songs?
M: Yea, Chris likes more progressive stuff, so he writes much more complicated riffs, while I write more basic, traditional metal stuff.
A: I'd like to ask you about some of the tracks on the album, which I liked, let's start with The Mission.
M: That's one of mine, it has this Iron Maiden feel to it which I really like, Number Of The Beast is one of my all time favorite songs, and I think it has this vibe in it that reminded me of it, the song, of course, is about world war II, the guns of Navaron story.
A: Your last studio album, Mechanized Warfare had another Maiden like tune, the Take To The Sky song,
M: Its funny, a lot of reviews said that, I didn’t hear the Maiden in it, I guess its Harry's lyrics,
A: It immediately reminded me of Powerslave's Aces High,
M: Yea, but its mostly the lyrics, though it has some Maiden in it…
A: Another track, Achilles,
M: Yea, another one of mine, I wanted to do an epic song that would be no more then three minutes long, and its incredibly hard to do that, we had to cut the song and change it several times to keep it short, when Harry put in the lyrics it got long again, and I had to nag him into taking some of the lyrics out as well, since it was more then six minutes at first, and then we managed to shorten it a bit, and a bit more, so I'm actually quite pleased with it now.
A: One stand out song is Cold, which doesn’t sound like anything else in the album,
M: Yep, another one of mine, that's my least liked track on the album, I wanted it to sound different then it did, I wanted a Love Bites kind of song, but a lot of the people I talked to said its one of their favorites…
A: The last track has some strange musical bits in it, Precipice, there's something that sounds like a Sitar or something,
M: That's another one of my songs! You've hit all of my tracks!
The track is about a man who loses touch with reality, there are some synths in it as well, the thing was, I talked to our producer about this song, and he said he has this eerie, kind of thriller feel to the song, not in a horror movie kind of way, but some thing unpleasant, different, so he suggested using a Sitar, we also did some whispering and stuff that we inserted in the track, and I think it turned out great.
A: You've been doing all your latest albums with Jim Morris, did you consider using another producer, a different sound altogether?
M: We thought about it, but we really like working with Jim, he's a great producer, and he really has the same way of thinking as we do, so were very much in Synch when working on an album, we might work with someone else in the future, just to try that out, maybe Andy Sneap or something, but right now were very much satisfied working with Jim.
A: You used to do the covers for your first few albums from the 90's, which I thought were great, why did you stop making them?
M: I like the covers I did, but a lot of people didn’t, and the label didn’t, so I had to give the job to other artists, another thing is we just wanted a different look for the later album,
A: What are your plans now that the album is out?
M: Were planning a tour, there are a lot of places we haven’t been in yet, and we want to do a really good tour, another thing is we want to do it a DVD, we didn’t talk to our label yet, but its something we'd like to do and we hope they'll support,
Alon Miasnikov
