SHADOWS FALL Bassist Talks About New Album

Underground Video Television (UVTV) recently conducted an interview with SHADOWS FALL bass player Paul Romanko. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

UVTV: Working with [producer] Nick [Raskulinecz], is this a new thing because you haven't worked with him before or have you?

Paul: Oh, no, we did all our other albums with Zeuss back up our way, he's been like a sixth member. Nick had been talking to us before about wanting to work with us even before we were with Atlantic and all that bullshit. He called us out of the blue, he heard from a mutual friend of ours that we were looking to possibly do something with somebody different and he started calling me about two years before we actually worked with him. That was kind of nice to have somebody like that who really wanted to do it, see he's a metal guy but he's worked with a lot of rock bands, at the root of it is, his favorite bands are SLAYER and RATT, so he's a very metal guy.

UVTV: He worked with the FOO FIGHTERS, right?

Paul: Yes. So, when Zeuss and I talked and we just kind of came to the conclusion that it was time to pull someone else in. We kind of felt like the idea's pool had kind of dried up a little bit, we were finishing each other's sentences, so what we did was brought Nick in and we hit it off really really well him right off the bat and once we got the tracks down we said let's have Zeuss mix the album, so we had to have this new approach coming in but we said this guy really knows us on the other end, maybe keep some familiarity to it and I really think the combination worked out great and they worked really well as a team, so that's that.

UVTV: You guys have been in the studio a lot, so do you kind of know what's going on?

Paul: Yeah, we all pretty much have an idea of what's happening.

UVTV: Anything intrigue you to do it yourself one day like producing your own albums?

Paul: In a lot of senses, ya know, we have kind of done that with a lot of the older albums, yeah, Zeuss did that with us but the last album he did with us was pretty much, there was a lot of things that we pretty much brought to the table as far as producing this, I mean, that's something I can think of down the road, who knows.

UVTV: Did Nick help you guys with a lot of vocal harmonies too?

Paul: Yes and no. We really offered a lot of ideas around, everybody's ideas, some of them were trash, some of them stuck, it really didn't matter who came up with the ideas, it came down to what was the best. Nick would have some ideas and we'd just go "No way, that's not us, that's not going to happen," and then there were other times we were like "OK." Matt and Brian came up with a lot of the harmonies, everyone kind of pitched in.

UVTV: The record label changing was this something you guys had set a goal for to get on a major?

Paul: Not really, no. The thing with us is we did something that a lot of bands don't do anymore, we finished our contract. It's kind of an unheard thing these days. I was talking to some of my friends in bands and they're like your probably the only band that finished their contract. So, we weren't tied into anyone, so it wasn't like a major came in and bought us out, we just kind of fielded offers from everybody. Eight or nine labels were after us. So we were like, "Ya know what? This is probably the last record deal we're going to sign." We're not the youngest kids in the world anymore, we asked for everything we wanted, it was a very artist demanded contract and little by little labels backed off, a couple of them stuck around and we wanted to go with a label that was going to be able to provide for us and wanted us for what we do, not for what they thought they'd make us. That's where Atlantic was great, the only thing we really was strong about is we didn't want to sign a worldwide deal, strictly a U.S. deal with a major because we wanted to license all our record though Roadrunner for the rest of the world. Which we did, UK, Japan, Australia, that's what Roadrunner does for us. But we felt going to a major over there would have been too big of a step over there, we would have been lost in the shuffle again.

UVTV: So if Atlantic hadn't come to you and accepted everything you wanted to do, you would have stayed with Century?

Paul: Possibly. They were in the mix.

UVTV: They seemed to be very good to you.

Paul: Yeah, they were, they made a very good offer, some of it was just even, not that Atlantic was better or worse but it was just a matter of change, you need to do that sometimes just to shake things up just like going with Nick to produce the record. There is no disrespect on either side of them but sometimes...

UVTV: You need a new perspective!

Paul: Yeah, just to change it around, ya know. I don't know, just to have the balls to go for something new instead of saying what if we had gone there in five years wondering, now at least if we crash and burn, we know we tried.

UVTV: You guys are releasing another single cause I know that "Redemption" went kind of well, the video is playing everywhere?

Paul: Yeah, it's doing OK. I guess that's in the works. For us hearing the words "second single" is already coming out, WHAT! (laughing) We're not GWEN STEFANI or something, so. I don't know, we'll see what happens, I think they are probably going to go to better radio with another song. I know a couple of them have for some of those specialty shows, commercial specialties for college radio. There are probably three or four songs they are charting in like the hundreds, so we'll see what happens.

Read the entire interview at this location.