KORY CLARKE Talks Next WARRIOR SOUL Album, Working With TROUBLE

Attila Timr of ber Rck recently conducted an interview with WARRIOR SOUL/TROUBLE frontman Kory Clarke. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ber Rck: A few days ago you aired some new WARRIOR SOUL demos on your Facebook profile. How would you describe the direction of the new songs for those who missed the 24-hour pre-listen chance? Are the songs going to be as kick-ass as "Destroy The War Machine" or can fans expect some psychedelic tripping infiltrating into the new WARRIOR SOUL output?

Kory: It's going to be a WARRIOR SOUL album, and due to the title ("Rubicon") and theme, we will probably be once again majestic, soaring, aggressive, proud. I went to the studio at Christmas in Stockholm with Rille Lundell [WARRIOR SOUL guitarist] and we tracked about eight songs. It might have been more, I can't remember. It was great writing and we found a deal and we are getting ready to release in mid-September 2011. The album is called "Rubicon", which means "past the point of no return." Some of it was written in Salon, Sweden; most of it in Rille's apartment.

ber Rck: And how are you feeling yourself in [TROUBLE]?

Kory: Well, I feel myself in every band. [laughs out loud] Irate! I mean... great! [more laughing] This is going to be one of my proudest/best records. To work on a debut with Rick Wartell and Bruce Franklin is pretty amazing. To be able to cross genres and truly speak a new language and excel at it is the ultimate fulfillment. By the way, we did a cruise in January 2011. We did the 70,000 Tons Of Metal cruise in January. It was great to play with all those guys and we used the time as well to record in Chicago.

ber Rck: Your artistic versatility is clear from your current activity: you have a new spoken-word CD coming out, you sell your original artwork, plus photos of you. Please, tell us about all these projects. Are you the one who takes care of the business part of all these, or you have someone handling this?

Kory: I've decided just do art and be creative and expand the horizons of what an artist can do. All the "Kory The Words" pieces and projects have been successful on many levels and I enjoy making them. I have wonderful people that help out on the business side and I'm truly indebted to them for their dedication to my projects. I also have close friends like John Dryland from Cargo Records throwing out ideas to me all the time. I started painting in preparation for a gallery show in London while waiting for tours to start and people started buying my stuff so the idea was to have a limited run of these as a special collection up until the beginning of the tour dates. Then I was reading some of my new poetry I was working on and thought, "Why not put it out with the paintings?" Then the 'Warrior Soul For Download' Facebook page got my attention as I was receiving so many messages and decided to make "We Are The Government Flags" to protest not being allowed to play and they started selling! Now I'm expanding on all of it and introducing my first "Metal Flag" this week and it looks great in person, I'm still trying to get it photographed properly. I'm also working on a Kory "The Words" acoustic album that many of my friends will play on. I'll have a teaser up on Kory Clarke Facebook page in a couple days as well as some other fun stuff for free like my new Kory's Compliments and WARRIOR SOUL ringtones. If anyone is curious about "The Words" project, go to [email protected] and someone will answer all inquiries about showings, solo performances, my art pieces, all that stuff.

Read the entire interview from ber Rck.