Discussion: Shadows Fall

Written by Steven Kowalski

Monday, 29 June 2009 01:09

Shadows Fall – the melodic death metal five-piece bred out of New England – is a band that in many ways encompasses metal as a genre.  Love them or hate them, they’re a band that, in essence, represents the resilience of a genre that is all too often written off as dead.   And while critics will contend the merits of Shadow Falls’ classification as a legendary metal act, it’s hard to argue of their influence as being anything less than extraordinary.    Let’s not forget this band has been nominated for a Grammy award twice, people.  Yes, twice.   Sitting with Swigged! backstage before their set at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival 2009, Shadows Fall bassist Paul Romanko discusses their upcoming album Retribution, their new life as an indie act, and what it took to get his grandparents to realize Shadows Fall was more than just your average garage band.  (By the way, he cut his hair.) Shadows Fall is unique because you first started off by getting signed to Century Media , an independent label, then you moved to the major label Atlantic Records.  Things have since come full-circle with the band releasing its own music.  How would you compare those three different points in the band’s career? When you’re starting off, getting signed to an indie was a huge step.  At that point we were getting national recognize for something we loved.  It was sort of the same situation on the major.  It was a different sort of challenge.  We did what we could with the indie thing, but we wanted to see where this could go.  Not necessarily by changing our sound or views.  It simply gave us a bigger force through which to push us.  They both have their pros and their cons.  The thing that we’ve learned is that it’s best to own your own music and try to control as much of your career as you can.  Since we’ve parted ways with Atlantic, we’ve set a deal with Independent Artist Group.  It’s kind of going back where we came from, but taking the lessons we’ve learned along the way. Whose decision was it to try the “on your own” route? It was a discussion between us, our management, and some other people involved.  The way things are going, with the whole industry being shaken up with sales going down, there really are no secure places as far as labels go.  We worked out some deal with a distributor who wanted to work for us with a passion and not use us for such a commodity. Looking back, what would you consider the low point of the band? I think one of our low points was when we split with our drummer Dave.  After Of One Blood and The Art of Balance, we went a whole year without a drummer.  Most of The Art of Balance was actually written with Brian playing drums at practice.  It was a cool way for us to get in sync with each other as songwriters and having Brian so involved.  When Jason joined, we had most of the album actually written.  I would consider that our low point because it was hard to stay creative and we weren’t playing shows.  It was a very slow 9-10 months. Is there anything you would change? Overall, we’ve been pretty fortunate.  Perhaps if we listened to some other people who came ahead of us or were doing things at the same time as us and take some advice.  WE haven’t gotten ourselves in a situation business wise where we’ve been completely screwed over for very long.  We’ve made mistakes, but they’ve been smaller.  Obviously being connected and having the band be involved online is the way things are going in the music industry, what has band done to adapt? Right now we just finished recording a new album and we’re going to try and come up with some cool package ideas – make some download applications.  We’re going to try and incorporate things like songs, videos, unreleased material and things like that.  Staying active and current – like with Facebook and mySpace.  That’s become the new avenue of promotion. You mentioned you just finished recording a new album – is the band nervous knowing this is the first one on your own? When it comes to writing music, we’re pretty selfish.  We pretty much go into the studio and it all depends on how we’re feeling when we decide where an album goes.  There’s never really been an expectation to make a specific sound.  With this album, I think it’s more aggressive than the last – maybe more feistiness than the others, if you will.   But there’s also some melodic choruses and rock songs that are even bigger.  I think we’ve done a very well rounded job on this one – I’m proud of it.  When is the record slated for release? September 15th I believe is our release date.  Retribution is the title of it.  Ah, does the title bare any sort of meaning? Well, we’re taking some things back with regards to the business side of our careers.  I think the title is paying tribute to that. Last year you guys were nominated for a Grammy – was there any disappointment about not winning or were you guys simply happy to be there? Yeah, for a bunch of guys who got together to play death metal over 10 years ago, we’re pretty shocked to have gotten to that point.  We’ve been nominated twice now – so I think our goal now is to be nominated three times and strike out. [Laughs]  Stuff like that, you never even consider it when you’re playing music like we do.  It’s a pretty cool honor – something that makes the parents and grandparents think,  “Hey, my son is actually doing something with his life.”   It’s kind of sad it takes something like that to get their attention, but hey, who cares? Was your family supportive of your decision to be in a band? They’ve been cool with allowing me to do pretty much whatever I want, but really they don’t have a clue as to what we’ve been doing or have any idea what level of success we have or have not reached.  There really is no musical history in my family.  What made you decide to be the first one and branch out? When I was really young I was totally encompassed by bands like KISS.  From there, I got into the Clash, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag.  Then it was Metallica – my love of punk and metal came together. Playing at Bonnaroo must be a bit of an experience, what are your thoughts? [Laughs] Bonnaroo is wild.  When we were first asked to perform, we thought someone was joking with us.  Talking with other bands, like Mastdon who did it I believe last year, they said it was great for them.  It’s not every day you have the opportunity to branch out to a crowd who normally would not have heard your music.  There are definitely going to be a lot of kids here who probably have no idea who we are.  They may not be in the tent, but they’re going to hear us. [Laughs]  You’ve played several European festivals – how does Bonnaroo compare? This is actually quite similar to those European festivals – not like the OzzFest or Warped Tours.  The ones in Europe tend to have the weekend of camping out and have a very similar feeling.  It has a bit of a community going on.  Personally I like a mixture of things.  I mean, I could understand if someone buying a ticket wanted to see more of what they want for the dollar.  I’m going to give the political correct answer here, but I prefer the diversity. [Laughs] For more information on Shadows Fall, visit www.myspace.com/shadowsfall.

Last Updated ( Monday, 29 June 2009 01:19 )

 

Add Comment

Name

Email (will not be published)

Personal Web site/Blog URL

Subject

Comment

Enter the letters you see in the image.

Click to get a new image.