SHADOWS FALL's BRIAN FAIR Is Hoping To Begin Work On New Material In The Fall

On June 18, Metal Mark of SkullsNBones.com conducted an interview with SHADOWS FALL singer Brian Fair at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, New York. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On when fans can expect to see the follow-up to 2012's "Fire From The Sky":

Fair: "Yeah, hopefully we can get some stuff going on. It's been tough, the last couple of years. I had my first kid and Jon [Donais, guitar] joined ANTHRAX, and it's definitely made things a little more difficult just to all kind of have the same free time at the same time. But hopefully we can get some shit going. We've got his tour, and then we're going to Europe with UNEARTH, and then we're probably gonna do another U.S. run sometime in the fall, and then see where we're at. Those [other] guys [in the band] have always got riffs they're putting away in the bank, so hopefully we'll get some new stuff soon. But I don't know even know if we wanna go traditional record at this point. I almost wanna do an EP we crowdfund and give away for free and then drop a new song every month — do something wacky like this. The music industry is all upside down, so let's try and do something different. It's, like, fuck it."

On his DOWNPOUR project, which also features Matt LeBreton (FROZEN, CANNAE) on guitar, Pete Gelles (BIRCH HILL DAM, SORROWSEED) on bass and Derek Kerswill (ex-UNEARTH, SEEMLESS) on drums:

Fair: "DOWNPOUR's been a lot of fun. It kind of started with Derek Kerswill, who used to be in UNEARTH and plays with KINGDOM OF SORROW and was in SEEMLESS with Jesse [Leach] from KILLSWITCH [ENGAGE] — and actually was in SHADOWS FALL for a minute. [He's been] a great friend of mine forever. And he hit me up and he was, like, 'Man, I've been working on these songs with our friend Matt for years,' and he was, like, ''We're looking for a singer. I know you've got a million things going on, but I'm gonna send it out.' And I heard the songs, and I was, like, 'I don't care what's going on; I wanna be a part of this.' It's just awesome stuff. We finished, I think, six songs for the record with vocals, and I've got about five or six more to do. We're hoping for maybe a fall release, but we don't wanna rush it. Since it's been two years of getting these songs right and getting all the music tight, there's no reason to rush it now by a few months. But it is happening; it's coming. And, again, I think we're gonna do something non-traditional with the release. We don't wanna kind of go the normal way, so we'll see. And we definitely wanna put it out on vinyl. All we do after practice is have vinyl parties, so we've gotta keep the vibe going. But the songs are killer, man. They're kind of a weird mix of a lot of stuff we grew up listening to; there's a lot of PANTERA in there, there's a lot of TOOL, even some MESHUGGAH in there. And then just a lot more just big, old crazy riffs. It's a lot different from SHADS, which is more in the thrash metal kind of world, [with] a lot of shredding. This is a lot more grooved out, wide-open stuff, so it's been a blast."

"I do see it more of a studio project first and then we'll probably play some shows here and there. None of the guys are really in a place where they can tour. Our guitar player is a prison guard, so he can't get much time off — he's busy choking people out — and Derek's kind of working full time these days and teaching a lot of drums. So we don't plan on touring a bunch. Maybe the right circumstances will come up where everyone can get some time off, but we're gonna be making music for awhile; so it's not gonna be a one-and-done type of thing."

"Fire From The Sky" sold around 10,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 38 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD was released on May 15, 2012 via Razor & Tie.

Recorded at Zing Studios in late 2011, "Fire From The Sky" reunited SHADOWS FALL with longtime friend, producer/engineer and KILLSWITCH ENGAGE/TIMES OF GRACE guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, ALL THAT REMAINS). The album was mixed by Brian Virtue.