ARMORED SAINT INTERVIEW

One of the great American power metal bands of the eighties, Armored Saint, who reformed only a year ago (2000), have just released a "best-of" CD entitled "Nod To The Old School" - with that in mind (or should I say ear?), I sent some questions over to bass player Joey Vera (who also plays with Fates Warning and Engine);

Interview by Claus Jensen

First up, congratulations on another kick ass album J I've always been a big fan of the band, and especially "March…" and "Delirious Nomad" were faves of mine, with "Raising Fear" coming in right after as another highlight. For a long-time fan like me, it's a huge pleasure to finally be able to hear your old demos and some live-stuff (yeah, I've never seen you live … it sucks). Let me start this interview by asking you how come you decided to do this ""best-of-album""?

"We were going to do an EP of sorts with live tracks and new songs but we kept adding bonus tracks and we realized that we had quite a few songs to play with. So we decided to make it a sort of small box set style package."

Compared with a lot of those compilation CD's, yours is a real gift for the fans, as you didn't chose to just put your most well known songs on there, but instead mixed new material with both demos and live stuff. Good idea. You're a perfect example for other bands to follow -- are the fans of such high concern to you that you wouldn't "rip 'em off" by just putting already released material on there?

"Yes, this is a way for us to give something back to the fans and people who have supported us for so long. Also, it was a way for us to have some fun with a project, which is why there is some humor involved. "

There are two cover songs on the CD (Robin Trower and Judas Priest) -- what does these tracks represent to you?

"Priest, we are such old school fans of this band and we chose this song because it is more obscure than all of their more popular songs. Trower is another favorite of ours. Just a great song and we thought John would sound good singing it."

The 2 new songs on the CD ("Real Swagger" and "Unstable" are really good, but a bit more "rock'n'roll" compared to the material on "Revelation" (your last studio album) -- are they representative of the new direction of the band?

"Not necessarily. We don't think too much about which direction we are going to go. We just write and see what happens. I agree Swagger is classic rock influenced but Unstable sounds quite dark to me."

You also included 2 new versions of classic AS material (""March of the saint"" and ""Tainted Past"") -- weren't you satisfied with the old versions?

"March, we were never satisfied with the way that record came out. The production is crap so we decided to re record the song, as it should have been in 1984. Tainted Past was another thing just for fun. We wanted to do an all-acoustic version of one of our songs and Tainted fit perfectly. It's good to try this to see how the same song can have 2 different lives."

On the album you've included some demos from 1988 and 1989 -- I guess this is the last recorded material with Dave Prichard? Could you please tell us how it felt for you listening and ""re-polishing"" these demos?

"These songs are not re polished or re mixed. They are the same versions as they were back in 1989. These are 4 track recordings done by Dave Prichard. They are re mastered for the CD but that's all. It was cool hearing them again. Some are cool and some are a bit silly to us."

The album also contains 2 live songs and it's easy to hear you kick ass on stage!!! Do you feel more comfortable on tour than in the studio? What is your best live performance or live memory? Any bad tour-stories to tell us about?

"We are always different on stage. We're known for our energy and it's hard to capture that in a studio. Recently we had a great concert at last years Wacken festival in Germany. There was some kind of magic in the air that night. My worst memory was the Symbol of Salvation tour. We were in a van with 7 people for 6 weeks and we almost killed each other."

I know you've just played a festival in Germany (Bang Your Head) -- how was it? Since you've just did this compilation album, I guess you played a lot of older material that you haven't done in a long time -- how does it feel to play those songs that are now 15-20 years old?

"Well we've been touring since Revelation playing these old songs and most of them still kick ass. Some of them we only play for the fans. Bang Your Head was great. A lot of fun and too much alcohol!"

As I said in the beginning, I've never seen the band live -- are there any plans of a big scaled European tour soon? And if so, do you know if you're going to play in Scandinavia?

"No plans at the moment. John is now writing with Anthrax and I'll be doing an Engine Record soon also, I'm producing Jeff's band DC4 for a new record later this month. So, we are busy for a while for making records and touring. But I do hope to play all over Europe next time and I hope Scandinavia!"

Any last words?

"I just want to thank everyone who supported the band for so many years. We got back together because of you. I hope one day to visit your country and show you in person what Saint is all about."