JOEY VERA Offers Update On ARMORED SAINT, FATES WARNING

ARMORED SAINT/FATES WARNING bass player Joey Vera recently spoke with Metal Asylum about his new solo effort, titled "A Chinese Firedrill", as well as the current status of ARMORED SAINT, FATES WARNING, and the new SEVEN WITCHES album. A couple of excerpts follow:

Metal Asylum: So tell us about why you called your solo album "A Chinese Firedrill"?

Joey: Well with this solo album I am doing everything on my own, shopping it around and that. It's not out on a label yet but it is available through www.cdbaby.com. It's an online distributor. They basically sell your stuff for you, you have to produce and print everything up, which I did, and then you ship it to them. They keep it in stock for you so it's pretty cool. I've actually sold quite a few through them already so it does the job. The name of the album is something I just came across one day. If you look up what a chinese firedrill is in the dictionary, it's defined as a chaotic and ineffective exercise. So I thought that was kind of funny, and ironic given the type of music I was writing for this solo album. Made sense to me.

Metal Asylum: Who played on the songs?

Joey: I did everything actually accept for the drums, arranging, singing. Took me a whole year to finish it. Some songs were rewritten. A lot of people asked why its not more flashy, you know with a lot of soloing and riffing, the impressive musicianship you know what I'm saying. I wanted to make a record for me that I would find interesting. My intention was to make it very self indulgent to me. Going back to why it was called "A Chinese Firedrill", essentially it was an exercise in my songwriting and arranging ability, be the end result chaotic or not. Its pretty gratifying.

Metal Asylum: How is the new SEVEN WITCHES material sounding?

Joey: It's sounding really good. It sounds like he has been listening to the TRIVIUM record a lot. Jack [Frost] has a tendency to write some things that are a little bit modern sounding so the new music still has that part of it. But many of the new songs are really fast. I think some of the fastest songs he has ever written. The drum beats are flying by like really quick.

Metal Asylum: Status of ARMORED SAINT?

Joey: Right now not very much. We are doing the Rock Hard festival in Germany on May 26; it's one of the smaller ones but really cool. I have played it before with FATES WARNING and TRIBE AFTER TRIBE. John Bush just had a little boy so he's busy being daddy right now taking some time off to be with his family. As far as new music, we get asked that all the time, the thing is that I just had a baby last year as well and I'm just rearing my head again to do music, same thing with John and his thing with ANTHRAX has pretty much ended. So right now after having a baby he's in no hurry to just back into the band and going back on the road. Its not to say he wont come back to do anything with music its just not the time right now to dedicate to something. And for us it's a huge commitment to do the band thing so we have to be ready to do it full on. But I am getting the itch back to make music and do some touring. I mean there has been some loose writing but we haven't said, "OK, let's sit down and write the record."

Metal Asylum: FATES WARNING update?

Joey: It's kind of on hold right now. They are doing some writing but nothing really has been planned. We did the Rock Hard festival last year and were supposed to do some touring in Europe but that fell through unfortunately. And from what you were just telling me "Pleasant Shade of Grey" was reissued packaged with a second disc of a live show from Germany in 1997 on the tour for that record, which I had directed and edited. That show was a mess when we first got a hold of it, we got the tapes from the people who shot it and it was a real mess. They were gonna scrap the whole idea but I said, "Let me do it, let me do it. (laughs)"

You can read the entire interview at this location.