GUS G. Talks New FIREWIND Album, Playing With OZZY OSBOURNE

AltSounds recently conducted an interview with FIREWIND and OZZY OSBOURNE guitarist Gus G. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

AltSounds: Fantastic! So, looking back at your year so far, how has 2012 been treating you?

AltSounds: [FIREWIND's] new album — "Few Against Many" — is going to hit Europe on May 21st. What should we be looking forward to from the record? Anything particularly different?

Gus: Yeah, it's actually a very different album to our previous ones — in songwriting, production, concept, pretty much everything. We made a lot of stuff pretty different. I think it's a much heavier album than our previous album, too.

AltSounds: So how long have you and the rest of the band been working on the album? Has it taken a while to put together?

Gus: It's kinda weird because we've been kind of on-and-off with it; I was writing a lot of material while I was on the road with Ozzy, over the last year. During a lot of the tour breaks I just sat down with all these ideas for riffs and things, and I was thinking, "I should make some demos before I forget them!" [laughs] Then I realized I had about six or seven good songs that had come out, which I sent to the guys. We started working on the songs — exchanging files and stuff — and then we did some tours and festivals in the summer. We went on tour in the fall and over time we just kept working on the album. It really was on-and-off for a few months, but without all the stress, to be honest. We didn't have a label, and we hadn't told anybody we were working on a new album; we just wanted to do it on our own terms. Whenever we were ready, we just booked studio time, and by the time we'd finished, we started talking to labels and that kind of thing. So it was a very relaxed kind of process, even though a lot of the writing was between tours and traveling and playing. It sounds chaotic, but it really wasn't.

AltSounds: Did you find that keeping the album under wraps gave you more creative freedom than you'd normally get from your typical writing and recording process?

Gus: Oh yeah! Once you call up the label and say, "Hey, I'm doing a new album," then they start hitting you with dates, organizing what you're doing with your time and sending people to check out what you're doing. We didn't want any of that. We didn't really have a record deal at the time either, and we wanted to take things one thing at a time. The music came first. Once we had that part down, we knew we were in for the long haul and we were going to be mixing the album and all of that, then we started negotiating with people and labels and exploring our options.

AltSounds: Obviously — working with Ozzy as a member of his band — quite the achievement! How've things changed for you since you started playing together?

Gus: Oh, my whole life has changed for the better! It's opened a lot of new doors for me, and it's definitely exposed me to a much bigger audience. It's such a great feeling, such a rewarding thing, to know that all the years of hard work are paying off now; more people are paying attention, more people are listening, and I'm grateful for that.

AltSounds: And clearly, Ozzy is a man who's got mountains of experience in the music industry; what has he taught you that you'll never forget?

Gus: The guy has many pieces of advice, it's never just one. Just being around the guy, seeing how he works and hearing his stories is just one big learning experience. You don't get to hear or see that stuff anywhere else. But the one thing that he told me that has really stuck with me was, after the first gigs, every night he would say, "You're playing great, but be yourself. Be more yourself, don't be scared about who was here before you." He was right about that.

Read the entire interview from AltSounds.