ARMORED SAINT Bassist Discusses New Album

David E. Gehlke of Blistering.com recently interviewed ARMORED SAINT bassist Joey Vera. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Blistering.com: What stoked the creative juices to do another ARMORED SAINT album?

Vera: The writing first started with John and I in late spring of 2008 and we wrote a few songs together for fun. There was no intention of doing anything. After we had written about four or five songs, we decided we should do something with this and the music was starting to sound ARMORED SAINT-ish and thought that we should turn this into an ARMORED SAINT record. We went to the other guys and everyone was into it.

Blistering.com: Do you think having such a casual approach to the band would produce something more inspired as opposed to having a record company breathing down your neck?

Vera: No question. One of the reasons that we take this long to write records is the fact is that we do it when we can find time to do it and dedicate our time to it and have it still be fun. Without any obligation to anyone, no one breathing down our neck, no managers, no labels or anyone like that trying to keep us on schedule. We don't have a schedule. There's no doubt we find it extremely liberating and we still feel like we can make honest music that way. It's not like we're trying to revitalize our career or sustain anything. We're just doing it because we love to do this. This is the only reason we're able to do it.

Blistering.com: I guess this ties into why you went on hiatus in the early '90s. Can you reflect upon how burnt out the band was around '91-'92?

Vera: You have to take into consideration we'd been together for 10 years and we did a few records for Chrysalis and we were dropped for two years. We lost our guitar player and main songwriter [Dave Pritchard, who passed away in 1990 due to leukemia]. Making "Symbol..." it took a lot for us to move forward and get that record done. At that point, by the time "Symbol" came out, heavy metal was a bad word in the U.S. The grunge thing started to take off and NIRVANA put a nail in the coffin. It was over. Although we got a lot of critical acclaim, it didn't sell, nobody bought it because interests changed. We had a hard time. It was very frustrating. At this point in the band, we're all pointing fingers at each other and at the label, at management, "It's your fault! It’s your fault!" It was like...it just wasn't a fun time. That record came out in '91 and we did a bunch of touring for it, by the time tours were done, we were just done with it. I remember the day we came back from tour. We felt like there was more life to the record, but the label came to us and told us we had to go back and start writing another record. We were like, "Fuck!" It was an uphill battle. I'd say the whole 10 years was an uphill battle.

Read the entire interview at Blistering.com.