Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Location: Cvetličarna VPK, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interview date: 10.03.2011
You could call them sonic provocateurs and sound manipulators. In their musical epics they’ve always been bold, and with their concept of creativity they pushed the boundaries of metal psychedelia and built monuments that are hard to match with anything else out there. The quintet from El Cajon has been writing its history since 1988, but since 1998 there’s been a huge void gaping in their timeline. Years of legal wrangling over senseless court proceedings (in 1998, while they were shooting their last video, Faded, a crew member allegedly lost their sight due to poor safety conditions. The bitterness of musical differences got tangled up in this nasty twist of fate, and the band sat inactive for almost 14 years. The first to leave the sinking ship was singer Buddy Lackey, better known as Devon Graves. Buddy then found himself more in Deadsoul Tribe than in Psychotic Waltz. The rest of the crew soon followed suit. Dan Rock founded his own band, Darkstar. Norm Leggio and Steve Cox fired up the engine of Teabag. Then last year the silence was broken. New hope was poured into the engine of the old machinery, and the cleaned-out valves of the once well-oiled machine are humming with fresh verve. They talked exclusively to us about the past and the outlines of a promising new future: the legendary nonconformists of heavy-me(n)tal psychedelia, the psychotic shamans of sound: Psychotic Waltz!
It’s almost unbelievable but true: after long years away and clinical death, you’ve found enough joy and drive to pick up the flight that was cut short too soon, amid the progressive mists of daring, heavily spiced psychedelic metal! But first, let’s talk about tonight’s show and the lineup of bands you’re sharing the stage with… Do you think the metal palette is well rounded out when the sounds of Simphony X, Nevermore and an elite of somewhat harder sounds ring out from the same stage on the same day, and how do you add to that palette?
Devon Graves: Being different is actually our job, because the whole point of doing something is not to be exactly the same as what other bands are doing. And if you’re asking how we feel about being here in this kind of company, I can only tell you after the show… (laughs)
Ward Evans: The shows have been really well received, the bands get along great, and we’re having a hell of a good time through all of it. I think the lineup is great, and since we’re having such a blast too, it’s just amazing! It’s really great that we’re back!
The tour is about halfway through now. How have the shows been so far?
Norman Leggio: The shows have been very good so far, and halfway through the tour I can honestly say we feel amazing. There are a lot of people at the shows who are genuinely happy to see us again. I even saw quite a few people in the crowd with tears in their eyes, singing along with us. Lots of people who followed us before we broke up are coming back in old, almost forgotten shirts… What’s incredible is that we’re playing markets we’ve never played before, because we used to do our own shows in really tiny clubs, with almost no promotion, where hardly anyone knew we were playing… On top of that, there are plenty of people at the shows who are having their first contact with Psychotic Waltz and their first concert experience of the band…
Devon: They come to the shows with both sets of CDs (the albums A Social Grace, Into The Everflow, Mosquito and Bleeding differ from each other both in their degree of progressiveness and in the amount of sonic experimentation Psychotic Waltz indulged in in the studio — editor’s note), which really encourages and motivates us.
Norman: So the experience is very positive, and like Ward said, the lineup is really outstanding. All the bands we’re playing with are great, and we’re having a lot of fun!
Has it really been 14 years since the news that you were calling it quits shook the music world, and now you’re coming back with a completely fresh drive? What was the key thing that gave you new strength, and how does it feel here and now, revived and back in action?
Brian McAlpin: It feels like not that much time has passed in between. Like we hit the fast-forward button and – poof – here we are!
Dan Rock: Exactly! It doesn’t feel like an unbelievable 14 years have gone by, but like you said, and like everyone who meets us says: “You were off the scene for 14 years…” … It doesn’t feel that way to us, because time has flown by, and now that we’re together and playing again, it feels like we’ve escaped the tooth of time. Some fans told us we sound like we picked up right where we left off 14 years ago when we went on hiatus. But yes, it really has been 14 years – check your watches…
Time is undoubtedly a mighty factor, but on the other side there’s the energy that binds you together, and in it lies the power of metal, “power of metal”, if I may use the umbrella phrase of this tour… What does this “power of metal” mean to you guys?
Ward: Hmmmm… Power of metal… That’s something that means different things to different people. To us it means the force that brought us back together and called us back. It’s the chemistry between all of us, the reason we care about carrying on, and the reason it’s so amazing to be here and back doing what we love. Like Dan said – it’s as if we never stopped creating. I don’t know if that’s the power of metal, or whether “power of metal” can be tied directly to our template, since we’re not a heavy metal band and we’re not Manowar or anything like that… But there’s definitely a shared power in the crowds of fans and in us, who came back and are doing what we do best. That’s all I have to say about that…
We can pick up on the progressive angle. If you had to label and categorize the music you make, even though that doesn’t describe all of it, which label would you use?
Norman: Personally I’d say, OK… If I were in my record store (Norman actually owned his own record store in the meantime — editor’s note), and the shelves had a lot of punk and hardcore next to the metal, I’d actually file us under progressive metal, because that’s how plenty of stores market us, but we’re not a prog metal band. We have certain leanings, but we only write music we love. We could list countless influences that shaped us as teenagers – a lot of them are shared, but among them there’s easily plenty that one of us likes and the others don’t. Psychotic Waltz is like a bowl where all these different influences come together, and that’s why we create what we create. We never limit ourselves by writing something on purpose or to satisfy some definition! The first record (A Social Grace from 1990 — editor’s note), which has lots of complex stuff on it – we didn’t set out to make something like that. We simply did it and poured our hearts into the record! And that’s the principle we’ve always followed. All four records are like that. What I’d point out is that all four albums are very different from each other, but what they share is that whenever you hear anything we recorded, you just know it’s us – you hear the harmonizing of the men who make up Psychotic Waltz. You hear me and Ward locking into the rhythm, you hear Devon’s voice, and you know: that’s Psychotic Waltz! And that’s something we’ve always had – from day one we always made music that was Psychotic Waltz music.
Devon: What Norman is trying to say is that we’ve always made music we wanted to hear and listen to ourselves. It’s not about following clichés or formulas or defining a genre – it’s always been a hunger to create music that didn’t exist, but that we wished would come into existence.
You haven’t had a label behind you for quite some time, but I’m still curious how work on new material is going and how close you are to planting what Psychotic Waltz stand for today out into the world?
Devon: We can’t reveal anything yet, because not a single note of new music has been written. When the idea of getting back together came up, the intention was clear: to record a new album. Dan was the last to agree to the reunion, and this very Power Of Metal festival was the reason for it, and a weighty enough reason for him to give his time to making everything possible that would make this comeback happen. When he agreed and came back, the main goal was to get out on this tour. He actually had to sit down and relearn everything he’d once written. So before this tour, instead of writing and digging into new music, all his time went into relearning and drilling the old material from our repertoire. When we get back home, I’d like us to return to the old, tried-and-true method, where Dan and Brian sit at the same table or in the same bedroom, grab their guitars and just play ideas, adding or stripping melodies, building the material up and shaping it into something concrete, then show it to Ward and Norm, and when they land on the arrangement they want, they send the recorded draft to me so I can put the finishing touch on it and lay my voice over the top of it all!
So what are the short-term plans, and what are the long-term plans for the band?
Dan: In the short term, we want to finish this tour successfully, play the rest of the shows and have fun, make new friends in the crowd, which at the current shows is half our age, which is great! At the same time, it’s great to meet again all those people our own age whom we haven’t seen in so many years! That’s the short term. Then we get home safely and start writing. Long term – who knows?
Brian: Personally, I’d like to record a bunch of new albums!
Devon: We want to keep going and follow the idea that the roads into the future are wide open, though we can hardly guess what the future will bring.
Let’s put the finishing touch on this really in-depth conversation and wrap up with your closing thoughts!
Ward: I’d say it’s amazing to be here and back again! We’re all really looking forward to it, to the tour as well as to hanging out again, and we want to return to Slovenia as soon as the new record is finally ready. You have a beautiful country and we really like it here!
Norman: Basically, what Ward said is the real deal. It’s really great that we’re back. I’m enjoying it a lot, and above all it’s great to be together with these guys. I’m also looking forward to making a new record – we all want to give birth to it soon. When we get back home, we’ll write it, and you can bet we’ll be back sooner than you think!
Devon: Delicious! (laughs) I’m glad you waited for us patiently and didn’t completely forget about us! Thanks for your support, for coming to our shows, buying our records and staying loyal fans! That’s amazing, and now I’m handing the mic over to Brian!
Brian: Hi! Slovenian coffee in Europe has no equal!
Dan: Greetings, folks! You have a gorgeous city! What I wouldn’t give to be able to pronounce its name properly… (laughs)
Interview produced in collaboration with the show Aritmija, RockLine and Rock Hard Slovenija.
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