ARMORED SAINT Bassist Discusses Songwriting Process For New Album

Dirty Rock Magazine recently conducted an interview with ARMORED SAINT bassist Joey Vera. A couple of excerpts for the chat follow below.

Dirty Rock Magazine: You announced in December you're writing material for a new SAINT album. Can you give us any idea on the progress so far and when you might expect a release?

Vera: We've been writing kind of under the radar since the summer, but we didn't make the announcement until December. So we've got a pretty good handful of songs and we are just demoing them so they haven't been recorded by the whole band yet. Basically, we'll be ready to start recording in the next month or two but I don't know if we'll have a chance before we go to Australia but we're hoping to. I don't know when the full release will be but the way people get their music nowadays is changing a little bit; actually it's changing quite a lot. You may actually here from us, as far as new recorded music, I would say sooner than later. Let's leave it at that.

Dirty Rock Magazine: Fair enough. So as a band, are you looking to continue making albums after this?

Vera: Yeah, we don't really think that far ahead. It's a big deal for us to even commit to doing this right now. A lot of us have families and other things going on, musically and in relation to other bands. Like I said before, we're not really a working group where we are constantly working on new material or working towards furthering our career or status or whatever. It's not something we do; we're not active like an "average" band signed to a label and does a record every one or two years kind of thing. It was a commitment for us to say, OK, let's write some songs, let's write a new record, let's do some dates and try to go to places we've never been before." That was enough of a commitment for us right now. To think about what's going to happen after this is a whole other level.

Read the full interview in the latest issue digital edition of Dirty Rock Magazine at www.dirtyrockmagazine.com.

ARMORED SAINT's current lineup is the same as the one on 2000's "Revelation" and 1992's "Symbol of Salvation" LPs:

John Bush (vocals)
Jeff Duncan (guitar)
Phil Sandoval (guitar)
Joey Vera (bass)
Gonzo (drums)

Working songtitles set to appear on ARMORED SAINT's new album include "Loose Cannon", "Chilled", "La Raza" and "Black Feet".

SAINT will headline one show in Los Angeles at the Key Club on March 6. Aside from the co-headline tour in Australia in March with DEATH ANGEL and a headlining appearance at the Keep it True festival in Germany in April, the band has no further shows booked at this time.

Reality Check TV has posted interview and performance footage of ARMORED SAINT filmed at last year's Rocklahoma festival, which was held July 9-13 in Pryor, Oklahoma. The two-and-a-half-minute clip can be viewed below.