NEVERMORE Frontman: 'OZZFEST Is Getting Awfully Predictable'

Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an in-depth interview with NEVERMORE frontman Warrel Dane. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

On how they landed a spot on Gigantour:

"Well, Jimmy (MacDonough),the bass player in MEGADETH, we know from touring with ICED EARTH many times, and the Drover brothers [MEGADETH guitarist Glen and drummer Shawn] would come to shows when we were on tour so we knew them as well. They were all pretty instrumental in getting us on the tour. They really, really pushed hard to get us on there. And it didn't hurt that Jim [Sheppard, bass] and I knew Dave Mustaine already, so…"

On Gigantour being a breath of fresh air on the American summer touring market that has been dominated by Ozzfest for the last decade:

"It is. It's a really diverse bill. I think that that is what is special about it because you're gonna have a lot of fans from different bands that are gonna be exposed to music they've never heard before. I think that is a great thing! Ozzfest is getting awfully predictable because it's always the same thing every year. Different bands but it's always structured kinda the same. I think this is a good alternative and we'll see what happens but I think it's gonna do really well."

On re-signing with Century Media Records prior to the release of "This Godless Endeavor":

"Basically, they wanted us to re-sign and do a new contract before our old one was done and we didn't want to do that. We wanted to fulfill our original contract and then go on from there because there were a number of labels that were interested in working with us. Basically, the way the business works, it sucks. We were playing hardball back and forth with the label and that's why that record [2003's 'Enemies of Reality']… it was a difficult period for us. We were all pretty pissed off and angry and that shows in the music. Our budget got slashed for that record just because of the fact that we had not re-signed. I think it came down to 'Well, re-sign now or this is your budget because that's what is says in your contract.' You can't argue with that. We didn't re-sign. We didn't buckle under and I think it paid off in the end because we got what we wanted. We got everything that we wanted in our new record deal… everything that we've worked ten fucking years for and deserve, we got. We learned how to play the game and we played it very well."

On the band's current relationship with Century Media:

"Well, we're really happy with them right now. The thing, too, that we had to consider was, if we had switched to another label… I mean, we really have personal relationships with a lot of these people, and we've known them for ten years, that are working there. It would've been weird to start that whole cycle over again. It was an important thing and they gave us basically the best offer because they wanted to keep us. We made sure that the problems that happened during the recording of 'Enemies', the contract is structured so that is impossible to ever happen again. So everything is now rosy in world of Century Media and NEVERMORE."

Read the entire interview at TheMetalForge.com.