Although Lizzy Borden has never quite achieved the level of fame as other like minded artists as W.A.S.P. and King Diamond, he’s been an influential presence in the metal scene for the better part of 20 years. His albums have enjoyed success all over the world but they especially love him in Europe where he still plays stadium festivals to this day. In late 2007, Lizzy, with his band that shares his moniker, released Appointment With Death through Metal Blade Records. Even though they are in their third decade of their career, the band has never sounded so energized! Carlos Ramirez had a chance to talk to Lizzy this week where they talked about the new album, his career and the current state of heavy metal.

 

First off, Appointment With Death really kicked me in the ass! I love the conceptual twists found throughout. The album deals with death but in a very different way. You don’t go the obvious, death metal or gore route lyrically. Was that a conscious decision?

I think its way more interesting being less obvious with the lyrics. The album’s theme is definitely death but it’s not my style to be so literal about it. Death comes in different forms. It can be bloody and horrific but it can also be silent. It doesn’t always have to be laid out like the rest of the bands do it.

 

The song “Perfect World” has a really hopeless character in it. What was your headspace like when you put that one together lyrically?

The headspace I was in was the same through the entire writing process for this album. That particular one was written at 4AM at home. The character in “Perfect World” is represented by one of the 3 girls on the album cover photo.

 

That song really stands out and manages to be catchy despite the dark subject matter.

Yeah, and that’s the trick really. Taking these stories that deal in a subject has heavy as suicide and making them work in a song context.

Your Master of Disguise album had its heavier moments but it marked as a departure for you. The songs incorporated horn sections, strings and overall it had a much more melodic base to it. On the 2 records since, it seems like you’ve guided the band back into a more traditional metal approach. What do you attribute this to?

When I made that album I had people like Bob Ezrin (producer of sprawling records from Pink Floyd, Kiss and Alice Cooper) work in my head. Those dynamic songs with the huge sounding production behind them were influential when I wrote this record. It was a very self-indulgent album for me to make. I got to things to do things that I hadn’t done on previous Lizzy records. Bands like The Who and Pink Floyd were definitely on my mind. It was really exciting to get to do that!

It is my personal favorite album from you at this point and it really came at an important time in my teenaged years. It opened up my mind to all those different sounds you were injecting into the material. It was huge for me.

Thanks so much! The album came out really great and it was, relatively speaking, done in a cheap way considering how it sounds. But once I got that album out of my system, I went back to work with the band and we just wrote stuff that was more in the older material’s style.

You have guests such as Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal), George Lynch (Dokken) and Dave Meniketti (Y&T) playing some really fantastic solos on the new album. When you take this new material on tour will you have another guitarist besides Ira Black? Also, will he be playing the guest solos note for note live?

Ira is an excellent guitarist so we’re lucky to have him in the band! When he plays the guest solos and even the older stuff, he adds his personality to them. He plays his own thing but whenever there are key melodic signatures in the solos, he keeps them there. We are trying out some second guitarists right now for the upcoming tours. It’s crazy at rehearsal right now because some of these new songs haven’t been played since we recorded them. We’ve had to re-learn them in a way.

 

Another guest guitarist on the album is Corey Beaulieu of Trivium. Do you keep in touch to what’s going on in the current metal scene?

You know I have a 22 year old nephew who definitely introduces me to the newer metal bands. He plays me everything. I even have the guys at Metal Blade send me stuff so I keep up to date with the metal stuff. I listen to everything really. My iPod is all over the place musically. That’s the way I think it should be. But yeah, I was floored by Corey’s playing! He came in and in one day nailed his solo and really added a lot to the song he played on.

 

Like Glen Danzig and King Diamond, you are a front-man who writes most of his band’s music but doesn’t play on stage. How are your playing skills and how much of your guitar style comes through on the albums?

Like I was saying earlier, Ira is a phenomenal player and I couldn’t do what he does on the guitar. Somehow how do end up playing a little guitar on every Lizzy release but you wouldn’t know it from just listening. We do a great job of masking that. I’m not that great of a player and I don’t really practice. I picked up the guitar more for songwriting purposes.

 

This album sounds like some of your classic stuff but still maintains a modern edge to it. It has a thick bottom end and really showcases the vocals well. How involved were you with Erik Rutan’s mix?

We did go down to Florida and spend 2 weeks with Erik. It was very a new thing for us watching him work. We learned a lot. He was working on a few other records that were more along the style he’s known for at the same time as he was mixing ours. The drums on a lot of these modern metal records are cut and pasted and that really shocked Joey (Scott- Lizzy Borden’s drummer) and I. Joey definitely plays his parts all the way through as you hear them.

Imagine that!

Yeah exactly! It was a learning process seeing all of that. He was telling us that drummers these days rarely record live now. So it was kind of strange for him too. Erik did an amazing job with the mix. We’re really happy!

 

Appointment With Death seems to lend itself very nicely to a live show. Will you be playing older material too?

We don’t play albums in their entirety like other bands do.

 

Like Queensryche has.

Yes, exactly. We won’t go on stage and play the new album in order. We’ll play a lot of it but older songs will definitely be included too. There are some songs that have to be played. I think if we left them out, we would be killed!

 

Yeah, you have to play “Me Against The World” and “Notorious” I would imagine.

Yeah, people expect those and we love playing them. We’re going to be playing stuff we haven’t done in years. We have some European festival appearances coming up and we plan on bringing as much of our stage show as possible.

 

Thanks for doing this interview! It was a pleasure to finally talk to you after all of these years listening to the albums. When can your U.S. fans expect to see you on the road?

Thanks Carlos! We have talked to Killswitch Engage and a couple of other bands about going out together but it’s really tough getting it going from backstage talks to actually booking something. It’s scary to tour out there, financially speaking, with the way things are right now. Maybe we can do something in the major markets. For now we have these European appearances planned so we’ll see. Hopefully we can meet at a show soon. Thanks!

 

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