FIREWIND Interview with GUS G

By: Scott Alisoglu

Guitar wizard Gus G of Greece's FIREWIND is certainly one of the hardest working men in metal. After playing in and recording with several bands at once, including NIGHTRAGE, MYSTIC PROPHECY, and DREAM EVIL, Gus decided to shift focus to FIREWIND and hasn't looked back since. With five studio albums under his belt and having done limited touring in the U.S., including a stint at the prestigious ProgPower USA festival in Atlanta last year, Gus G, guitarist/keyboardist Bob Katsionis, drummer Mark Cross, bassist Petros Christo, and vocalist Apollo Papathanasio get ready to release "The Premonition" and begin touring the world in earnest. Gus phoned me from Greece to bring everyone up to date.

Q: "Allegiance" was your defining moment as a band, at least as far as recognition in North America is concerned.

Gus: Oh yeah, I think so. It was the most successful one so far.

Q: Tell me about the ProgPower experience last year. The set was on fire.

Gus: Yeah, it was cool. Everybody was talking to me about this festival, how great it was, organized, and all that stuff. I saw it for myself. Everybody was right. It was cool because a really specific type of fan goes there. They really know every band that plays and their history and everything. It was the first time we did a signing session and all the fans had all our albums. Everybody brought all their booklets. I've done 12 or 13 album with other bands and they brought all the booklets out. Everybody was a dedicated, hardcore fan. They really knew their metal and they really knew who they were going to see and that makes it a very special gig. It's a very different type of connection. Of course, you always have to win over some people, but it's not like you're going in front of a crowd that doesn't really know you. I guess all the bands feel that way. They probably feel like every band is kind of a headliner there. We met a lot of cool people, a lot of cool fans, and they seemed to travel from all over the world and all over America. Great venue, great sound, great crew… It would be cool to do it again some time in the future.

Q: And Henning Basse did a great job filling in for Apollo.

Gus: Yeah, Henning is really good. He's a professional; he's one of the best singers in heavy metal these days. He's a showman, man. He knows how to handle the crowd; he knows how to get them going.

Q: Apollo couldn't make it because he had personal issues at home. He lives in Sweden, right?

Gus: He lives in Sweden, yeah. He's a Greek guy, but he grew up there.

Q: It was interesting to see [former FIREWIND vocalist] Stephen Fredrick come up on stage at ProgPower and sing some of the old tunes.

Gus: Yeah, that was cool. It was cool and weird at the same time because it was the second time only meeting him after all these years. We didn't rehearse at all. He just joined on stage and we did it. We talked a little bit briefly about how we were going to do things and all that. Stephen comes from a different background and you could see that. He's not really the heavy metal type of guy. He's got more of a blues/hard rock type of background. But his voice is metal as fuck.

Q: In fact, isn't Century Media re-releasing "Between Heaven and Hell"?

Gus: Yeah, I don't know about the U.S. release date yet, but it's coming up at the end of March/early April in different countries and Europe.

Q: You did some dates around that festival as well.

Gus: It was kind of like a mixed tour because we did some shows supporting SONATA ARCTICA and then we did some headlines shows. Then we did a one-off with EDGUY and a one-off with EPICA.

Q: Were the shows successful?

Gus: Yes, yes, especially the ones with SONATA ARCTICA! Some of our headline shows I didn't expect it actually; they went much better than I expected. So it was good.

Q: With "The Premonition" you've got the same lineup for two albums in a row for the first time ever. It must be a relief to go into a recording session without having to worry about member changes for once.

Gus: Yes, exactly. Even on the first two albums we changed the rhythm section from one to the next. It feels more relaxed now. The band had some momentum with "Allegiance", like you were saying, which was our most successful album. We have this type of momentum going on everywhere for the band. We've got to strike while it's hot. The songs were there already. We were done with all the pre-production before the U.S. tour started and we had already been touring for the past year before that. The writing and recording was much easier this time. We know each other much better now. We've toured the world; we've been together since the end of 2005. We've been through highs and lows together as well. We went through moments that really made us wonder, like when Apollo could not do shows and stuff like that, but we stuck together through it. I think this bonded us even more

Q: My impressions of the new album is that there it's more compact and the songs flow together very well. Melody may even be more of a central focus this time. It is still a melodic heavy metal album, but the hard rock elements are significant too.

Gus: Thank you, first of all. I agree that it is the most compact and solid album we've done so far. Part of it has to do with the lineup staying the same. Now we have an identity and you can really hear that it's FIREWIND. The sound has evolved; you hear the same things working. In regard to the songwriting, maybe other people can tell me, but I don't know if we've really done something different. It's really hard to criticize your own music and really sit down and analyze it. I just felt like writing these songs and I did it. I worked together with my guys and they contributed, just like the last album. We just did it. The only major difference I can tell you about the new album, comparing it to "Allegiance", is that this is a much more guitar-oriented album compared to the last album. The last one we had more keyboards. Now there are less keyboards. And I like that because one of FIREWIND's qualities was always that it's a guitar driven band. It's cool that on some songs you've got more instrumental parts, more guitar work, and all that stuff.

Q: For the most part, there are no keyboards as prominent as was the case on "Falling to Pieces" on "Allegiance".

Gus: No, it's not like we didn't want to do that; it just didn't happen this time. There is a song called "Angels Forgive Me" where the main theme is keyboards and it's a great song. But it just didn't happen on the songs in general. For example, on "Falling to Pieces" and "Deliverance" on the last album I actually wrote the keyboards. It's kind of weird because Bob was writing some of the guitar parts and I was writing some of the keyboard parts. We traded kind of like that on the last album. This time I was just jamming on my guitar and came up with a lot of guitar riffs.

Q: If you look at it, you've got "Into the Fire" and "Life Foreclosed" as the two triumphant metal songs and sandwiched in between are mostly the more classic, melody-driven type of songs.

Gus: Yeah, but you also have songs like "The Silent Code", which is a very heavy song. There is a lot of riffing, a lot of cool guitar melodies, solos, and all kinds of things.

Q: And no instrumentals on this album.

Gus: No instrumentals, although we did record an instrumental, but we had to leave it out because it was a cover of a famous old '60s Greek song. We made a cover of a song from a very famous guy in Greece. It sounded very exotic. We made a very heavy, but a little bit prog, type of cover of that, but it was an all instrumental version because the song has lyrics. But for some reason we were not able to secure the rights so we had to remove it for the album. This was not really a cover because we changed a lot of the parts. Then you have to deal with other types of rights I guess, which I was not aware of. It became too much of a hassle and we had to leave it out.

Q: So the extra tracks, like "Spirits in a Digital World", appear on the CD single for "Mercenary Man".

Gus: Yeah, that's on the single and we also have another song called "Wild Rose" that's like a ballad. And I think it's going to be a digital bonus track.

Q: You did an acoustic version of "Mercenary Man" for the single as well.

Gus: Yeah, we did that too.

Q: Of course, everyone is asking you about the cover of "Maniac" on the new album. I was shocked to see it, but you've managed to make it into a FIREWIND song.

Gus: I want to point out that a good song is a good song and I've always felt that way. Why should we be ashamed that it's a song in "Flashdance", a cheesy movie from the 80s? Michael Sembello is actually a great songwriter. He was working with Stevie Wonder and that song won a Grammy… That song is quality. Fuck, I wish I'd written that; I'd be fucking rich now [laughs].

Q: I'm betting that there is a contingent of folks trashing it publicly but harboring a secret love for the song.

Gus: I think so too. Sometimes metal heads don't want to admit that stuff. In doing interviews in different countries, the only country I've noticed so far that hates it a lot is Germany. The Germans gave us a lot of shit about that. Everybody thought it was such a terrible idea to do that. The rest of the people in Europe thought it was great, man, really cool. There is no real story behind the song. It's just that Bob came in one day and said when we were thinking about doing a cover, "you guys want to do something that's not a metal song or a rock song and do this?" Everybody was like "yeah, why don't we try something different." So he played us this song and it was really challenging because the song is mainly keyboards, so we made a hard rock version of it. I felt like we brought it to our own direction and sound. It fits there.

Q: I was reading the news postings on the FIREWIND site and you had mentioned that you tried a couple of different things with the engineering on this album, mainly with the guitar and drums.

Gus: I was just trying out some technical stuff. For example, I tried to combine different amp heads together to get a different sound and stuff like that. I recorded together with an Engl, a Randall amp, and a Peavy 5150 and my signal was a stereo signal coming from two cabinets. Like one guitar track was actually two produced by three amp heads. So we did stuff like that, for example. And we tried out different mics on the drums. While we did get the Studio Fredman quality, we did experiment with that type of stuff. I liked the quality of "Allegiance" sound-wise, but this one is tighter and more in your face. "Allegiance" had a more spread out type of production. On "The Premonition" it just sounds very central, very tight.

Q: You're endorsed by Randall Amps, aren't you?

Gus: Yeah I am, those are really great amps. I've been playing with them for over a year now. It was a new model they suggested for me called the T2. I really love this amp and took it on the road with me. This is the first album I recorded with them.

Q: You did a special hometown show in January in Thessaloniki, Greece and played the album in its entirety.

Gus: Yeah, we did a hometown show, which was a pretty scary decision actually because we never played such a big venue in our hometown. The last time we played in our hometown we had like 300 people. We were not really popular here for some reason. But we said let's give it a try and see what happens. We announced that we were going to play the new album from start to finish plus an extra set of all the old stuff. We invited press from all over Europe, the label people came down, we had a professional film crew to film the whole thing, so there was a lot of pressure, a lot of things to take care of. And it came out really fantastic. It's probably one of the best shows we've ever done.

Q: And this was a much bigger venue than the last time.

Gus: Yeah, it was 1,300 capacity and we sold it out.

Q: You'll be releasing it as a DVD then?

Gus: Yeah, I would like too. That's the main thing right now to release it next year. We've already managed to audio mix and edit four songs, which we will include as a nice little teaser with the new album, like a limited edition run, at least in Europe.

Q: You've got a big North American tour coming up with DARK TRANQUILITY, ARCH ENEMY, and DIVINE HERESY. I'd imagine most of those shows would be sold out.

Gus: I hope so [laughs]. It's cool that we did the first tour and things went well, we saw a lot of interest for the band and the label saw that. The next step is to capitalize on that. It's not easy to secure a big tour like the one we're doing, so I'm glad that we have the chance to do this. It's a very cool tour because there are a lot of good guitar players in these bands. So from a guitar player's angle it's a very interesting package and at the same time it's very versatile. All the bands are good; we have different styles of music, so I think it will be a good crossover for all the bands. ARCH ENEMY is a band that is extreme, but at the same time they have a lot of hard rock sounds and traditional metal roots. So you can have on that bill a band like DIVINE HERESY with a band like FIREWIND. There is only one more date to be announced, but after that we're going to keep it up and stay in the U.S. for two weeks with DARK TRANQUILLITY and DIVINE HERESY.