Impellitteri - Rob Rock
After six years, IMPELLITTERI made a powerful return with the killer album “Venom”. METAL KAOZ got on the phone with the band’s singer Rob Rock to learn why it took them so long and what are the band’s immediate plans. Check out our pleasant conversation below:
Hello Rob, and welcome to METAL KAOZ!
Hi Dimitris, thanks for having me.
It’s a pleasure, Rob - especially since there is a new IMPELLITTERI album to talk about. “Venom” was release six years after “Wicked Maiden,” so what happened in between?
Between the two albums, we did some side-projects: Chris did ANIMETAL, I did “Countdown” with DRIVER and worked with Timo Tolkki on his project AVALON and then basically we were waiting until we heard from JVC Victor Japan; so they called us and told us “hey, it’s about time we need another IMPELLITTERI record”. And this is what kicked us off to get back to together and make another album. Everybody was excited to start working together so it was JVC who did this.
If JVC hadn’t made that call, we would be still waiting for a new IMPELLITTERI album?
(laughs) Maybe, I really don’t know, Dimitris.
I guess we’ll never know… So, how long did you work on “Venom”?
Well, Chris had been stashing away guitar riffs and song-ideas on his computer for several years and I had been collecting song-titles and song-ideas over the time. Last summer, we got together in LA to rehearse before the tour in Korea and then we got a call that the tour had been cancelled because a typhoon went through there and destroyed the site of the festival that was the main gig of that tour. So, we ended up not doing this tour but since we were all together in the same room jamming Chris thoughts it would be a great opportunity to present his song-ideas he had been working on. And this is how we started working on the new record.
It seems to me this process was pretty fast, like in the old days…
Yeah, from the time we got together as a band, it was a period of six to nine months. But we are always thinking ahead and if you come up with a guitar or a vocals idea, then we store them, so we can probably use it in the future. And if it still sounds good after two years, then we will definitely use it.
How did you choose the title for the album and how is it connected with the cover artwork?
“Venom” was a working title which Chris had but did not have any lyrics, so when I was listening to the song, I thought that this is a strong title. So, I wrote a song around it and basically once the record label heard it, they loved it and sent as the photograph that you see in the cover. We thought it was cool and kind of different but I kind of stood up and said that the photo was lacking power and something to connect it with the album. So, I proposed to put some snake eyes there, a serpent’s tongue and some skin to relate more to the song “Venom” which would be the title track. Then, the artist made some subtle changes and everyone liked the result.
What about the rest of the lyrics; is there any song which stands out due to the lyrics?
I really like the lyrics of “Domino Theory” which I think are modern talking about the terrorist problems that we have and the modern warfare. I was watching a show one year ago about the history of wars and there were a bunch of Generals speaking; one of those guys mentioned the term ‘domino theories’ and my ears picked it up as ‘domino theory’. He continued explaining this be describing how an army is taking over one city after the other and once you have the momentum build up the cities seems to be falling in line like dominos. I liked this term, so I applied to this song and to the modern day.
This does not apply only in warfare because the moment I heard this song, I started thinking of how the economic crisis moves from one country to the other. Sadly, there is another domino effect there.
Yeah, you are absolutely right.
So, is there any other song that feels more special to you lyric-wise?
“Nightmare” is another one and has a pretty modern groove going on there. We tried to make this one a little bit more modern and I really like how it came out. Also, “We Own The Night” is a kind of a classic Rock song with a late '80s or early '90s WHITESNAKE kind of vibe. The lyrics of “Empire Of Lies” are strong talking about the media here in the US and how you can sit in front of the TV, watch three different channels and get three different slants of the same story but nobody is telling the truth; they are just saying their side of the truth or what they want you to think about.
Well, this is not only in the US; it’s everywhere.
Yeah, but I am talking from a personal experience and based from what I am watching and there are many times I go “come on, man, give me the facts and stop talking about whatever agenda you have running in the back”.
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. In the IMPELLITTERI lineup, there is no keyboardist listed, so who played these parts in the album?
Chris did all those but there are not a lot of them. The keyboards are very subtle in the mix and they are mostly used to support chords and stuff like that. We didn’t think that the group of songs we chose for the album needed more keyboards this time; we wanted them to come out heavier and more aggressive and this is what we did.
Did you write more songs than the ten we see in the album’s tracklist?
We have a couple of songs that will be in the both US and Euro releases as bonus. We recorded these songs but we didn’t finish them. The album was first released in Japan and then we signed with Frontiers for the rest of the world and they were like “oh, since Japan released the album first we really need some bonus tracks”. So, we returned to the studio and finished those two songs.
Is “Venom” available on vinyl?
Yes, it is. Ulterium Records has released 350 copies on black and 150 copies on white vinyl. This is a special edition.
Cool, I will check it out. You formed this band with Chris back in the mid-'80s, so how do you think IMPELLITTERY has evolved or matured throughout all these years?
I guess, we all have grown up a bit (laughs)... We did a lot of albums during the '90s in Japan which came out later in Europe and, in fact, this is the period when we hit our stride with “Answer To The Master” and “Screaming Symphony” albums. We did “Wicked Maiden” six years ago and I think at that point we had obtained a more mature way to look at the record as a writing team. And in “Venom”, this is more clear because we have written so many songs over the years, so we trust each other to come up with our own parts. So, there is more fun and less stress in the process. It’s more like “hey man, you know what to do so do what you have to do” instead of trying to micro-manage every little thing you know. And this reflected to the album; we’re having lots of fun and there is lot of energy in there.
Of course it shows, so what are your touring plans to promote “Venom”?
We have the live dates in Japan in the end of May. We have signed with a European promoter and he is going to be looking out for tours and gigs in there. We are also talking with some promoters here in the US although I am not so what opportunities we have here but even we can find a place to play we’re going to play.
Touring has become really difficult economic-wise…
Yeah, and this is the hard thing to do; find a way to do it which will make sense. Plus, it is not like the old days when you could stick with one band and make a living; you have to do other stuff in parallel to keep things going.
Since you mentioned this, do you have something in the works right now?
No, right now have nothing going on aside from IMPELLITTERI. I mean, everything is about this album and putting together a tour. The last thing I did was TIMO TOLKKI’S AVALON and before that was DRIVER’s “Countdown”.
Is there any chance to work again with Timo?
I don’t know; I haven’t heard anything - originally, I hoped that we’d be touring for the first album but then he decided to release a second one which I wasn’t a part of, so I imagine he was other singers for the third one.
What about a solo album?
I am thinking to put something together in 2016, I have to come up with a budget and a plan. Some labels are interested in this, but during these modern times, they do not offer that much to make this happen. So, maybe I consider something like crowd-funding or something like that.
Thank you, Rob for taking the time to speak to METAL KAOZ and hope to see you soon here in the States.
Thank you, Dimitris for the invite. I’d like to thank the fans for their support and I hope they will like the new album because we put a lot of work into it. Maybe we will meet in a concert someday.
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Written by Dimitris Kontogeorgakos
Friday, 29 May 2015 12:46
인터뷰 원문 : http://www.metalkaoz.com/interviews/15871-impellitteri-rob-rock.html
