(1)
HOLY DRAGONS is now started working on
the new album tentatively entitled
"Judgement Day". What's the
current status of the recording session?
I heard the band has finished to work on
the first instrumental part… did you
really satisfy this, I mean the end
result of this instrumental part? How do
you proceed with the rest i.e. vocals,
mixing, mastering, etc?
CC:
Well, so far we’ve recorded 8 tracks
and after that we decided to postpone the
recording session till autumn to have a
short rest in summer.
JT:
We have made the preliminary mixing, but
it’s not the final result yet, we will
do the most important part when we’ll
work with the voice. May be we’ll have
some special effects, different noises
there etc. We did’t do it in
“Thunder...” and “House...” but
“Judgement Day” is different in
musical material and the special effects
are gonna suit there, I think.
(2) Could
you please briefly inform us about the
contents of this new album?
CC:
Well, the conception and the whole idea
of this new album is not the one from the
Bible. We didn’t mean anything
connected with the end of the world. The
thing that we actually meant is that
someday, very very soon there’s gonna
come a HEAVY METAL REVOLUTION on the
heads of different pop-performers, false
metal kids and these alternative shit!
And on this day everybody will understand
what real music is!
Talking
about musical evolution, how do you see
the band progress as to compare with
previous albums, especially the latest
one "Thunder in the Night"?
JT:
Comparing “JD” with “Thunder”, I
can say that “JD” is more powerful in
sound and, I hope more, melodic in
vocals. Though, may be it’s more
straightforward and we’ve more
emphasised the riffs. In general, it
develops from such songs from
“Thunder...” like “Glory War”,
“Fury under control”.
What do you
guys expect from the new release?
CC: What
do we expect from it? Well, we didn’t
think much about it
(3) I think
"Thunder in the Night" was not
too old since it's released back in early
2001. What made you decide to release the
new one in a short time?
JT:
By the period of 2001 we’ve got a lot
of unrecorded songs, despite the fact
that some people consider metal a
conservative musical genre, only
self-confident people can say that it’s
not developing, and the non-expressed
musical material is getting old. There
are some situations when you compose some
lick, some years pass and some band
invents something alike. And if this band
is well-known, there always will be a
couple of unsigned bands who will do the
same and you start to doubt if you have
invented it yourself! I think that if we
express our ideas in time we can avoid
such situations. And anyway, heavy metal
keeps changing (I don’t know if it
changes for the bad or for the good...
but now it is much different from what it
was in the end of 80ies ) and we must
keep up with it. Since the beginning of
Holy Dragons we had a great deal of the
musical material for 50% composed before
HD. Some songs were composed in the last
century (in the 80ies). Only now I feel
that we have settled all the scores with
this mountain of material and now we’ll
be able to compose together songs, going
along with the new age, age of Aquarius.
How did you
hook up with DRAGONIGHT AGENCY for this
release? And will you again work with the
same label for "Judgement Day"?
CC:
Well, Dragonight Agency actually is not
directly a label, it’s an agency for
the international heav metal supporters,
which really helpls to keep the flame of
metal alive. And it’s ruled by a great
guy Bart Gabriel, whose heart fully
belongs to metal. We have met him through
Internet and established contacts. And
for the next album I ust say that it’s
also planned to be released in
Dragonight.
(4) HOLY
DRAGONS is not so well-known in my
country as well as the Asia continent, so
could you please describe your personal
views on each of your previous recorded
stuffs:
(a)
"Thunder in the Night" (2001)
(b) "House of the Winds" (2000)
(c) "The Best (Fair Play)"
(2000)
(d) "Rock Ballads" (1999)
(e) "Knights of Camelot" (1999)
(f) "Dragon Steel" (1998)
CC:
All members of our band like both
“Thunder” and “House” most of
all. We like them equally and perceive
them as one sometimes. Well, you know
like Helloween’s “Keepers” 1-2 ? As
the musical material is good and it was
fun to work on them.
JT:
Specially about “House”. This album
was created fully from the songs composed
in 1989-93, “Thunder” has two such
songs also: “Mr. Drunkenstain” and
“Legend of the Warriors” and I think
they sound rather good.
CC:
“The Best” was a very castrated
collection of songs, chosen by a local
label for release.
JT: Some
“smart” guy hoped to gain money on us
by this album! And to gain a lot of money
he wanted it to be suitable for everyone:
from little kids to old ladies. So, we
don’t release our albums on our local
labels.
CC:
“Rock Ballads” appeared after we had
a lot of ballad material, which we
didn’t use in any of our albums, so we
decided to make up a special ballad album
out of all this material.
JT:
“Knights of Camelot” was closer to
progressive metal and not so fantasy-like
as it may seem from the name. Something
progressive with lots of keyboards sound,
many special effects etc. And as I can
see now it has too much synthetic sound,
which I don’t like now.
CC: “Dragon
Steel” is our first album and
everything is said by that!
(5) Yes I
know that your band exclusively played
Power Metal the German heavy metal style
which reminds me to such great bands as
Helloween, Running Wild, Gamma Ray and
even Scorpions… what encouraged you to
approach such music style? What made
Power Metal music really interesting in
your eyes?
CC:
All the bands, that you’ve mentioned
and especially Gamma Ray are very close
our understanding of power metal and
things that we are doing. And I
personally think, that power metal is
that style, which is more close to me
spiritually, technically and
ideologically.
JT:
I like power metal and especially power
metal of German style, because this music
has the best balance of melody and heavy
riffs, symphonism and energy and spirit
of living rock-n-roll, technical
perfection and soul. In the best bands of
this style everything is perfect:
fantastic guitar and drums techniques,
vocals, caring far away into the
stratosphere, and at the same time
there’s no fixing only on the
techniques as in bands of progressive and
neoclassic. In power metal technical
perfection doesn’t shadow the
expressiveness of musical material. The
best representatives of this style are
able to carry listeners from the fields
of metal battles to the psychodelic world
as Gamma Ray do or to the world of
fantasy, Tolkien as Blind Guardian do. A
good power metal band is able to play
compositions in any musical genre, but
they play only music, which they consider
worth to play.
Are you
also interested in NWOBHM?
JT:
Oh, it’s my first love!!! Many people
feel the influence of NWOBHM in our
music. I think that if not for NWOBHM,
there will be nothing now, at least
nothing worth to speak of. This style
influenced power metal a lot and for
good. Our first album was more in this
style and in every album we try to make
at least one song in this style. In
“Thunder...” it’s “Turbo, 911”
and in “Judgement Day” it is “Altar
of the Second Chance”.
(6) Looking
at your way of working that's really
productive yet innovative, may I ask you
about your way of composing music… was
it really hard to the band to create such
brilliant riffs and memorable melodies,
etc? Do you refer to others to call ideas
& inspiration to write a song? Are
the songs composing by a single person or
teamwork? What sort of elements really
emphasised in each composition?
CC:
Our riffs manner developed step by step
from the first album and till now and
this tendency is going to be developed in
the “JD”. What concerns melodies, it
is our trade mark: catching melodies :-)
.
JT:
Also about riffs, the thing is that we
have to give concerts here very often,
but the equipment is not always powerful
and so the sound quality is lower than is
should be on a proper metal gig. So, to
make the audience rock on a very
“silent” equipment, we have not only
to work for 150% on the stage, making
show and also to invent powerful riffs. I
think we can do it!
CC:
We even had a gig, when we played only on
back combo-line amps, because the concert
organiser “forgot” to rent all the
necessary equipment. But we managed to
rock the audience!
JT:
What concerns song composing, we usually
have several song ideas as a team in the
band, I usually compose the main
instrumental part of a song and
thoroughly develop and work out the
guitar line. I have a “data bank” on
my computer, where I put some licks,
riffs, any musical ideas not only mine,
but also of all the HD members. Then I
use all this material in composing songs.
CC:
Oh, yes, and when a song is ready, here I
come to blow life and idea into it ?. But
seriously, I always listen to the musical
material very attentively and the music
itself gives me the idea of what it is
about. Then I start to write the text.
JT:
Lately, our vocalist Dan comes up with
very nice ballads and he is doing them
very carefully and thoroughly, one or two
a year, but they are worth it! And the
ballad on “JD” is his. Our bassist
has a lot of ideas, but unfortunately he
has no enough patience to develop them
and he makes a good contribution into the
bass line of songs and on “JD” we
have a song, which we can say we composed
reall all together and we think that in
future we gonna have such songs more and
more.
(7) Do you
think to choose a proper type of
equipment and suitable brands of
instruments are really important for the
band to come up with an appropriate sound
and production quality? What about the
studio the band entered, did it provide
complete facilities and conditions for
better and comfortable recording session?
J.T:
Yes, here I fully agree with you. Then,
the selection of the studio equipment is
also very important. Because, some
equipment, which suites one musical style
can be not very good for the other
musical style. It especially concerns
guitars and everything connected with
guitars. Well, we’re lucky to have our
own studio and it has almost all the
necessary facilities for proper sound
recording. Speaking in a more detailed
way, we have 32 digital channels
record-machine, but in future we would
like to have an analogue equipment like
TASCAM, but now we can’t allow to have
it yet. What concerns guitars, we use
BOSS distortions and other BOSS products
in our work. I personally use
Fender-Stratocaster guitars. In studio I
prefer to use my fave red Strat, made in
1982. Chris plays Gibson LP model
guitars. “Judgement Day” was
recorded, using a hand-made guitar
“Siren Super Grade” with classis Les
Paul design. Our bassist constantly
changes basses and it’s difficult to
say what is he playing now :-) ! But
honestly it was a difficult job for us to
record live drums, I think we did it, but
we are going to improve it and there’s
no limits for the further perfection. But
still the results you will hear in
“JD”.
(8) I guess
you're (the band) ultimately fascinated
with the existence and cult of ancient
creature, the dragon? Dragon was
extensively applied for the band name, CD
cover…. What's so special about the
dragon? Was it the main theme you write
in the lyrics? Please further explain
about your lyrical concept? How do you
relate the content of the text with
emotion & motion of the musical
structures?
CC:
Yes, these creatures (Dragons) are really
fascinating for me and other members of
the band. And the theme of Dragons really
belongs to HM, I think. As a Dragon is an
authentic heavy metal creature. And
there’s one more reason: the dragon
theme is not deeply developed among the
hm bands, I don’t know why. All of them
just slightly touch it. Then, Dragons are
powerful, wise, large, beautiful and
wearing a lot of metal :-) !!!! And
we’ve chosen Dragon as our band symbol
due to all reasons, mentioned above and
the name Holy Dragons sounds good!
(9)
Ehmm! I think lots of people quite
confused about the difference between
Power Metal and Speed Metal… please
further elaborate your personal
definition for both music genre, what are
the similarities and differences between
them?
CC:
As for me I think, that the term Speed
Metal was applied mainly in the 80ies, as
this style was developing at that time,
but now it has developed into power
metal.
JT:
Really, the border between these styles
is very thin and you can hardly define
one from another, but in my opinion Power
Metal is Speed Metal, which inherits
certain elements from such styles as:
True Metal, Epic Metal (I myself cannot
classify Manowar to which of these styles
the band belongs), NWBOHM, Sympho-Metal
and even Trash! But as one my friend says
(he is 20 years older than me) : “Once
it was all called simply Hard-n-Heavy”?
Could you
please mention at least 5 names of the
best Power Metal bands?
CC& JT:
Gamma Ray, Blind Guardian, Manowar, Rage
and may be in future Holy Dragons will
humbly occupy the fifth place ?!
(10) HOLY
DRAGONS is hailing from Kazakhstan, a
country that is not really familiar to
the readers, to me especially. How does
metal/underground music scene looks like
in your country?
JT:
Yes, here in Kazakhstan underground is
well developed, but metal bands we can
count, using only fingers of one hand.
There are many mostly young bands,
playing punk, grunge (there are about 50
such bands only in our city!), a little
less there are alternative and folk
bands.
CC:
Speaking about Power Metal, it’s sad to
say that we are the only one (!) band
here. But there’s also a very, very
young band, playing classic metal – a
band, called Black Fox. And we are like
trying to bring up the younger generation
of bands here and may be soon there will
appear more metal bands, but it’s too
early to speak about it now.
Do you have
lot of support from metal fans down
there?
CC:
Right! A lot of support comes from our
metal fans, who are really our great
friends here.
What about
death/black metal movement, does this
kind of extreme music widely spread in
Kazakhstan?
JT:
To begin with, I myself played for some
time in the first death metal band in
Kazakhstan, which was called “Izverg”
and it existed till 1995. At present,
there are two death metal bands here,
which stay rather apart from our activity
and we practically don’t have any
contacts with them. They have their own
fans, their own places, where they hold
gigs, their own ideology and they live in
their own, very limited and closed world,
and it’s a very deep underground, not
very much known to the public, not
specially interested in it. In the
beginning of 90ies, when this music was
in fashion here it wasn’t underground
but now, they have isolated themselves
from the others...
(11) How
many live shows the band ever played so
far? Which is the most memorable one and
why? Please describe how does your live
performance look like?
CC:
Well, since the beginning of the band we
had about 60 gigs big and small. One of
the most memorable gig was the first one
(it was the first underground 12 hour
festival and almost all the underground
lovers were present there), when the
public was shocked, because they
haven’t heard anything in this style
here at that time and the general opinion
of the people was that Heavy Metal is
already dead. People stood were frozen
with their mothes open, but when we
finished the first song the audience
exploded. And the next day all around the
city there appeared a lot of graffiti
with our name on the walls. And also one
of the most memorable was our recent big
gig on the 22d of June. The crowd was
overroaring the 14kvt amplifiers, so we
couldn’t hear ourselves on the stage
sometimes. And the concert was lots of
fun and good emotions.
JT:
Usually we play 16 songs, but we also had
gigs where we played 22 compositions and
we had gigs when we played 12 songs. In a
year we usually have a couple of big
shows and festivals and many small ones:
when we manage to rent a powerful
equipment, we make a big show and usually
we make smaller gigs in little clubs on
our own equipment.
CC:
How does our live performance look like?
Hmm, have you seen Gamma Ray? Well,
it’s almost the same ?!
Instead
of your own songs, do you guys play cover
song, if yes, please give examples which
the band played regularly?
CC: Actually
we don’t like to play covers of other
bands, because we have a lot of our own
material. But, we have a funny idea for
the coming Halloween this year. To make
10-12 covers of different metal bands and
go in Halloween out on the stage with the
programme made from these covers. And not
only to play them , but also to perform
the band itself, whose cover we are
playing: their looks, costumes, manner,
everything! I think it will be fun! And
to finish with several our songs. And we
gonna play covers of such bands for the
Halloween show: Iron Maiden, Helloween,
Manowar, Accept, Gamma Ray, Running Wild
and many others. I really hope that we
would make it and our friends will help
us in creating this show.
(12) How do
you see the future of HOLY DRAGONS? What
do you plan for the band let's say for 5
years to come? What do you hope for the
band as well as the entire Power Metal
scene?
JT:
I personally want to sign a contract with
a big label, like NOISE or NUCLEAR BLAST
and to release all our albums in Europe
and in the whole big world. To continue
recording one album per year, and each
new album must be better than the
previous one in quality and musical
material. To record a good live gig
(audio and video versions). And to settle
one vital problem for our band : A
drummer! We have constantly changing
drummers and it’s a big headache. So I
hope to find the right person soon!
CC:
For the entire Metal scene I hope that in
future the mass media and musical
channels will give more attention for the
good quality metal bands and that metal
people will have a serious weight in the
whole musical world and Heavy Metal will
proudly step out from the underground in
full power!!!
(13)
Last but not least, do you have something
to say to the readers? Final words are
yours…..
Feel the
power of the steel,
We will get
the score,
We were
born to fight and win,
N GLORY
WAR!!!
These words
from our song “Glory War” very well
express our message to Heavy Metal
people.
Merchandise
for sale (mention price)?
Now
“Thunder in the Night” is available
in Dragonight agency, you can order it
there, the price is 4$ without postage
(see all the information on our web-site)
In the near future we’ll distribute all
our albums ourselves, follow all the news
on the web-site.
Airmail
address:
CIS,
Kazakhstan
Almaty, 100
Abay av.17-43
Holy Dragons
Email: jt_holydragons@hotmail.com
Website:
http://truemetal.org/holydragons
P.S. the
questions were answered by Jurgen
Thunderson (JT) and Chris Caine (CC)
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