INTERVIEW: Firewind is ready to ‘Stand United’ in the United States
Photo: Firewind will begin its Stand United tour April 11 in Clifton, New Jersey. Photo courtesy of Tim Tronckoe / Provided by Atom Splitter PR with permission.
Firewind, the power metal band from Greece, recently released its much-anticipated album, Stand United, which features buzzed-about singles “Chains” and “Fallen Angel.” The group, headed by guitarist Gus G, is about to embark on a United States tour, no doubt bringing some of these new tunes to adoring fans around the country. Their first gig is set for Thursday, April 11, at Dingbatz in Clifton, New Jersey.
“The thing is, this album was recorded sporadically,” Gus said in a recent phone interview. “It was very unorthodox, for me at least. I’ve never done an album in parts throughout the year, like in different sessions. Usually what we do is we rent a studio, we’ll go out and do drums, and then we’ll just do everything right after that, within a month or two months or whatever. This time we did the drums last January in 2023, and then we went on tour. We came back from tour and started working on a couple of songs, and then went out and toured again, then came back and did a couple of other songs. It took quite a while. The songs were compiled like usual, for me at least. I always write and have riffs and ideas in my folders on my computer, and I just dig them out and eventually, if they’re half-finished, I’ll finish them. And then we’ll see where we go from there.”
This new recording process had positives and negatives, according to Gus, a guitarist known for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, Arch Enemy and Dream Evil. On the plus side, the band was able to fully flesh out the concept of the album, trying out different lyrical themes and revisiting vocal lines. Helping Gus realize this vision were Herbie Langhans on vocals, Petros Christo on bass and Jo Nunez on drums.
“We had a few months to think it through, think it over if we wanted to change something,” he said. “That’s one good thing. The negative side of it is that it throws you off. When you’re traveling and touring, your mind is there. It’s just a different mindset. It’s tour mode or recording mode. Would I do it again? I don’t know. I really don’t know. The thing is nowadays the format has changed. Our label requested from us to work singles primarily and then put those singles in an album. That’s why we did it like that. Back in the day, you would do the album, and that was it. You’d go out and tour the album. Now, you have to put singles throughout the whole year. I guess I can see myself doing it. … It really depends on what kind of music business situation we’re talking in three years from today. Will it be a totally different scenery out there? Who knows? Will there even be records, like long-play records? I don’t know.”
“Fallen Angel,” the first single off the recording effort, came from a riff that Gus thought of a while back. He stored it away for a rainy day and knew he would come back to the sonic pounding of the guitar, and that’s exactly what he did. Thus, “Fallen Angel” was born.
“It was one of those songs that we really went back and forth a lot with,” Gus said. “I had a different chorus in the beginning. I remember I sent it to Herbie, our singer, and he said to me, ‘Cool riff. This is [not] really a chorus. It’s more of a bridge.’ That got me thinking. Oh man, I have to rethink about this, so we went back and forth with different versions quite a bit on that one. Yeah, it has a lot of parts. It has this chorus, and then it has this breakdown part. It’s kind of an epic breakdown with the melody. It’s an interesting arrangement. I think I went all in on the arrangement maybe because I had that initial comment, ‘Your chorus is not a chorus.’ I wanted to have really catchy parts, striking parts. Lyrically speaking on that song, I think it’s pretty much a song about temptation, the eternal battle of good and evil.”
Gus is a native of Greece, a country he still calls home. In his hometown, he’ll hear American music on the radio, and he went to that radio for inspiration on what cover song they should include on the album. It seemed as if all the good ones were taken by other metal bands, but then he found “Talking in Your Sleep” by the Romantics.
“It’s a big radio hit here as well,” he said. “It’s one of those evergreen songs that you hear on a radio all the time. First of all, it’s one of those songs that I grew up listening to on the radio, and I always loved it. … We wanted to do a cover on this record, and we wanted to cover a classic ‘80s song. We were struggling because all the ‘80s pop songs are pretty much overly done by metal bands. Someone would suggest a song, and so and so did it. So and so did that one. OK, then one day I was driving around in my car, and the song came on. Ah, maybe this one. I Googled it to see if anybody had done it. Luckily no metal band has covered that one, and then I brought the idea to the guys. It turned out that everybody loved that song. Everybody wanted to do it. They jumped at it, so here we are.”
Gus promises that Firewind will play several of these new tunes on the upcoming tour. Coupled with the Stand United tracks will be greatest hits from their back catalog, which is numerous at this point.
“I’m very excited, but I’m also very nervous because I want everything to go right,” Gus said of the tour. “I want the shows to be successful. There’s so many things that can go wrong when you put a tour together. We’ve already been going through a lot of obstacles, like I had to switch a crew in the midst of making all the plans. As we speak, we’re waiting on visas and things like that. There’s a lot of stuff to worry about before a tour even starts, before you even go to the airport, you know. Once we start rolling, then I’m in the mode. I’m rolling.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Firewind recently released Stand United, and the band kicks off its United States tour Thursday, April 11, at Dingbatz in Clifton, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
