ION VEIN (Eng.)
1- Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you guys currently up to?
Hi, you’re quite welcome, thanks for having us! We are currently preparing a big release party for the new album this fall and trying to parlay that into a small US tour.
2- First off, could you make some history of the band?
Sure…we were formed in 1995 from the ashes of Latent Fury, released two albums with our original singer, Russ Klimczak, called Beyond Tomorrow (1999) and Reigning Memories (2003), and just recently released our latest, self-titled album, with new singer Scott Featherstone (Ex Attica/Enertia). Chuck White (Michael Angelo/Winterkill/Spirit Web) has been in the band since 2003 on drums, and original bassist, Brian Gordon, laid down the studio tracks but left the band in 2010. Both the new album and Reigning Memories were produced/engineered/mixed by the legendary Neil Kernon who’s done Judas Priest, Queensryche, Nevermore, Flotsam & Jetsam, etc, etc…
3- How could you describe your sound?
The first two albums were classified by most as prog/power metal and the latest has been considered more of a power/traditional metal album with prog influences. We basically simplified our approach a bit and went for more balls, chunk, and hooks, if you will. Let’s say that if you mixed Metallica, Maiden, Fates Warning, and Iced Earth musically with the vocals of Dio, Russell Allen, Lajon Witherspoon, and Erik AK, that would give you some idea, I suppose. 🙂
4- What are the band’s main musical influences?
I would say our main influences are Maiden, Metallica, and Fates Warning peppered with some, Dream Theater and maybe Meshuggah. We all listen to a wide variety of music outside of metal ranging from pop to jazz so hopefully it keeps us pretty well-rounded.
5- How is the feedback for your new album being?
The feedback has been really positive for the most part, which is quite exciting, but you’ll always get a few clunker reviews here and there which is pretty typical and part of the game. We realize that you’re not going to please everyone but we feel that we’ve put our best foot forward in taking the next step as a band and we’re most happy with that!
6- And are you personally satisfied with the final outcome?
Yes! While it took quite a while for the final album to materialize due to many obstacles that were out of our hands, we are very proud and excited with how things ultimately came together from the songs to the mix to the artwork, it’s a great feeling indeed!
7- How could you describe this opus in just 3 words?
Kick Ass Metal!
8- How has the production process for your new release been?
Well, it was certainly less than ideal due to parting ways with our original singer during tracking and several scheduling obstacles along the way but we recovered from all of that and the final mixing/mastering came together quite well to yield an album that we feel is on par, production-wise, with anything being released today.
9- And how do you use to work on the songwriting?
A lot of the song writing for this album was pretty organic in that I would plug in at rehearsal and just start playing a riff (sometimes written ahead of time, most times on the spot) and things would develop from there. I felt it was best for this album that we just try to let things be as free-flowing and unexpected as possible and I think it worked out pretty well. In some cases, I would bring in a song idea somewhat developed as a starting point but most of the time we
would just beat on arrangements as rehearsals went along until we all felt we had something special.
10 – Finally, what are you near-future plans?
The near future plans are to continue to support this release in any way we can with the most important thing being some level of touring in key locations around the world along with festival appearances if possible.
11- That’s all from our side, thanks again for taking your time to answer our questions. If you now want to add some final words; feel free to do it.
Great, thanks, and we just want to give a shout out to all the music fans and metal heads around the world for reading this and keeping the scene alive, we hope to see you on the road soon…cheers!
https://www.facebook.com/ionvein
