SHADOWS FALL Frontman Says Releasing New Album Through Band's Own Label Is 'Perfect Transition'

Direct Metal Music recently conducted an interview with vocalist Brian Fair of New England metallers SHADOWS FALL. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Direct Metal Music: On [the new SHADOWS FALL song] "King Of Nothing", Randy Blythe from LAMB OF GOD joins you guys. How did that come about?

Brian Fair: We've known Randy since pretty much the beginning of both bands, really. We even played with his old band, BURN THE PRIEST, which was LAMB OF GOD before they were LAMB OF GOD. So, we've just been friends; we go way back. We recorded the vocals together in Virginia, pretty close to where he lives. So he came down to cook us dinner one night. He made a veal marsala for the non-vegetarians and a tofu marsala for myself. And while we were there, we were like, "Ya gotta sing," ya know? "You can't just make dinner and leave." So, we had him sing a couple lines on that one song since that's what we were working on that day and it just worked out perfect. We had sung together before live on stage, but it was really cool to hear him in the studio on a SHADOWS FALL song. That was our first guest appearance ever, so it was pretty cool that it was him.

Direct Metal Music: This is also the first album that you are on your own label, Everblack. How does that compare with working with such a major label like Atlantic, and Century Media before that?

Brian Fair: Yeah, it was kinda the perfect transition, because it's kind of a unique situation that hopefully a lot of bands will start looking into. We are basically still with Warner on a distribution level. So we stayed with the major label for actually distributing the CD, but we retained all the ownership of the album and make every business decision on our own as far as where money is spent for promotion, video, and all the little stuff that before the label would take care of. But we know how we work and we wanted to be able to call the shots on that stuff, but we still wanted the power of a major label to get it into stores and all that. And then they [Atlantic] hired Ferret Records out of their share to do the day-to-day promotion and all that. So, it's kind of the best of both worlds — major label distributor, independent label doing the day to day work, but every decision is made final by the band. I know some other bands that are doing a similar type of thing. DOWN did it on their most recent record, and I think it's pretty cool. As the music industry changes, a lot of bands are looking for ways to try and be able to control as much as they can. Now that you can connect with your audience on such a personal level through social networking sites and just being on the road, you might as well just make the label the label that way, too, and take back everything.

Direct Metal Music: So would you say you weren't pleased with your last album, "Threads of Life"? That was your only release with a major, and also your only album that Zeuss didn't produce. Did you feel pressure from Atlantic to make a slicker-sounding album?

Brian Fair: We were really psyched about the last record. The people at Atlantic were great it was just that things changed so quickly that within one year most of the staff that we signed on with were gone. So that made it kind of easier to leave as well. We had just signed a one-album deal with the option for another one and then we just felt it would be better to restructure it and work on our own distribution deal that we did.

Direct Metal Music: Right, but "Threads of Life" did have a recognizably different sound from your earlier albums. Would you say that was from getting a new producer [Nick Raskulinecz] and pressure from Atlantic?

Brian Fair: No, it was really just where we were out. As far as the label having any influence, they didn't even hear the record until it was finished. So at that point it was too late for them to put any input into it. We made the record we wanted to make. And yeah, it had some more melodic moments in it than some of the past albums, but we always had even acoustic ballad moments going back all the way to our first album, so it was just pushing those ideas a little bit further. And me and Zeuss mixed that album, so Zeuss still had input in that one, too. It was just a matter of that being where we were at the time. We had just come off tour with IRON MAIDEN, so we were coming straight out of that more melodic vein of metal. The new album is a little more aggressive, a little more uptempo, but it still has some of those melodic moments also.

Read the entire interview from Direct Metal Music.