Maelstrom – Gary Vosganian

Fans of European tech-thrash are strongly advised to pick up It Was Predestined from Maelstrom. The self-released EP is available on iTunes and it’s a must for fans of bands like Sabbat, Coroner, Anacrusis, and Voivod. After a long hiatus, the Long Island band reunited and picked up right where they left off in the early 90’s. Hopefully an indie metal label has the balls to sign these guys because they deserve the attention. SMNnews spoke with Maelstrom vocalist Gary Vosganian about their long history, their new EP, and his hopes for the band’s future.

I used to go see you play out on Long Island back in the early 90’s but then you seemed to disappear. What happened and what lead to you finally reuniting?

Well first I would like to say thank you so much for this interview and how great it is to be talking with someone who saw us play way back when.

Basically it is just the classic story of some guys wanting to go in one direction and me feeling that we were losing the heart of what Maelstrom was.

The specifics go like this – After we released our second demo This Battle to Make History, Yet History Never Comes. We wrote a few more songs, which I feel is some of our best material ever, and then John our drummer had this life changing idea and wanted to move to Atlanta.  Which left us looking for a replacement, that took almost 6 months and we definitely lost momentum, and then we found Elliot Hoffman ( [carbomb] ). He was an animal behind the kit, and truly an incredible talent, but he wanted to drive things in a much more syncopated polyrhythmic manner. Joey Lodes (Guitar) and Jon Model (bass) were really into this new vibe and that was the direction that the music began to follow. It was really not my thing and I just felt we were losing the true essence of Maelstrom, we wrote some more material but I could barely write lyrics to it. The feel just was not there and I became more and more disheartened with what we were doing. And they knew it, and ultimately asked me to leave. They went on under with a different vocalist and with a new name; they were called spOOge and became a sort of Mr. Bungle type of act.

As far as us reuniting, it is really just Joey and I. The two of us stayed best friends thru all those years and actually had some businesses together. We decided that this was an unfinished part of our lives that we really wanted to see though, to complete that album we always dreamed of. We found a new drummer named Daniel Kleffmann and taught him the material. Then we recruited Greg Marchak who had done our second demo back 18 years ago to cut the drums and we flew down to Florida to begin the process. It has been longer then I would have hoped but has been coming out better then I ever thought it could. I have been extremely happy and proud of our efforts.

Were you disheartened by the lack of underground support you got back then? I don’t remember seeing too much international press on the band. I think local bands like you guys, Injustice, and Kronin were creating great stuff back then.

No, I can’t say that I was disheartened with the underground support. Locally we were the yearly top draw for two consecutive years and internationally we got a fair amount of press from the zines, and we were as high as number 4 in the metal forces readers demo chart – and held there for a while. So I thought the press was pretty good to us. It was different back then, everything was snail mail and many zine writers were on typewriters and photocopying their issues to dupe them off. And there were many countries that this stuff was not even allowed, Poland, Czechoslovakia, it was all black markets.

Thanks for the compliment on the material. We played with Kronin quite a bit, and that was a lot of fun, every so often I still run into some of them – they had some great music and were one of the first bands I ever saw as a kid. Cold Steel was another band that we played with a lot – those were classic shows Kronin, Cold Steel and Maelstrom and drew a ton of kids. However I do not remember the Injustice guys.

The interesting thing is that your music always seemed so forward-thinking that it still sounds really fresh today.

Well that is one of the greatest things we can hear! We were hoping that the music would stand the test of time and we felt that it probably would, of course we did change some things up, and we are 20 years older, but to hear that it is still fresh today is perhaps the single greatest compliment we can get about our material. These are our babies and they are being re-born again so to know that people feel this way about it – especially those who had experienced it the first time around is a wonderful thing to hear. Thank you sincerely.

Tell us about some of the band’s influences? I hear some Sabbat in there and a definite European feel.

SABBAT!!!! Absolutely – no doubt my all time favorite vocalist and lyricist was Martin Walkyier of Sabbat, and they were a big influence on our material. Other influences would have to be Kreator, Destruction, Coroner, Celtic Frost, Testament, and Death. As well as Vai and Yngwie on the guitar and soloing side of things.

But Yes definitely a lot of the 80s euro thrash, that is stuff we were all into.

Lately I really dig Dark Tranquility, Children of Bodom, and Amon Amarth. Also I think Bal Sagoth’s music especially, on The Power Cosmic – is really interesting material.

Can you tell us what the storyline is about on It Was Predestined?

It Was Predestined is the title of the EP we have recently released, it is 3 songs or chapters, if you will, of a 10 chapter story. This EP represents chapters one, four and nine.

With respect to the story, basically there has been a horrible war, which has ravaged the planet, the war is led by two dominant demigods, which have influenced and forced all of mankind into one faction or the other. Fundamentally a Good versus Evil story, however it becomes apparent that both these good and evil ‘gods’ try to influence and puppeteer mankind for their own gains.  Arise tells the story of Greadon (pronounced Grey – a – Don)- the force of good calling to life his chosen leader to form a new army in the wake of the planets decimation, to go on and lead the remaining faithful against the forces of darkness which now dominate.

“A Futile Crusade” introduces Deamous the evil demigod and describes the epic viscous battle that takes place along the coastline between the newly formed rag tag army of light and the army of evil. As the title implies – both destroy each other almost utterly leaving very few alive but in this battle Evil is victorious, barely.

“Predestined” jumps way ahead and depicts the tale of the new leader of few good who had survived, it speaks of how he was raised by the original leader and snatched from a horrible fate as an infant and how it is destiny his to ultimately bring down the heads of the evil army but also to ultimately destroy both the gods who forced this war upon mankind.

The new EP is culled from your classic demos. How much new material do you have written and how does it compare stylistically? Will it follow a specific storyline?

Yes the EP is from our classic demos, Joe an I took the songs we felt were the real crowd – pleasers from back then and figured lets go with that for the EP, when we had played the last year we were around in 93, the other guys did not really want to do these songs and it really bummed me out because I felt it was quintessential Maelstrom material that the fans really loved. So when we went to do the EP I really wanted to re-visit those days, and those tunes, that I knew truly defined us.

As far as new material – all of these songs have been re-tooled in one way or another, but actual new material, I will say there will be 2 songs that no – one has ever heard and 1 song that only retains its intro, the rest is so new – I have not yet heard it! Stylistically it is all pretty close to what we have done before. Though we always want to try something a bit new – we usually leave that up to song structure. I think the closing song will be really special, I am trying something vocally I have never really heard before and I think it will be fantastic, and crazy,  but its going to be a bitch to mix (have fun Tue).  Musically it has both some power style riffing and some real death metal speed picked stuff that I just love. All in all the new material is real Maelstrom, that is something Joey and I wanted to make sure of as we wrote new tracks that would have to sit side by side with these classic ones for this album.

Aside from that we have some other material that I would love to record that was never recorded before, it is some of our best stuff, but that will have to wait till a second album, right now its all about this one.

And yes – it all follows the specific story line I described before. This debut record was always a ten-song concept album and that is still the vision we have for it.

I know your guitarist Joe Lodes has been really active as a musician in the years away from Maelstrom. Did he continue to follow metal the entire time? I know he was always into different types of styles.

I will let Joey take this one himself:

To paraphrase Spock …. “I have been ….. and always shall be” …. METAL!!!

Guitar wise … I was always checking out the metal scene while studying Jazz, Fusion, Classical, and even Country/Bluegrass styles … but really didn’t like anything I heard during the mid and late 90’s in the mainstream metal guitar scene … except for the better Pantera stuff. I guess it was that whole “nu” metal thing going around that had absolutely NOTHING to do with excelling on your instrument. Absolute Rock bottom shit if you ask me. When the guitarist of Garth Brooks is pulling off a MUCH more challenging piece of music than anything the late 90’s metal had to offer  … I knew there was a problem!  Of course there were players in the guitar world like Dimebag (RIP), Chuck (RIP), Yngwie, and Zakk who were still putting out good metal guitar … but WAY to far and few between.

It wasn’t until later on when Gary turned me on to bands like Between The Buried And Me, Children of Bodom and Amon Amarth (just like he did 20 years ago with Kreator and Destruction) that I actually realized bands were starting to really PLAY again in metal. that it was ok to play a guitar SOLO again!!  To Write actual SONGS again. Some of the stuff that these bands have put out is simply killer! The state of metal and metal guitar is in a MUCH better place today!

-Lodes

When you guys got the MySpace page up and announced your return, were you surprised by the amount of people who actually remembered you? It seems like a lot of people are excited about the band now.

I figured there would be some who remembered us, of course some of the local die hards, but the most satisfying thing has been to see so many people that we did not really ever know that say they remember us and loved our material from back then. Many people have talked with us about our second demo and how great they felt it was. In fact a guy named Roman from the Forgotten Steel website had kept this awesome review of us from the second demo that he had put on his site as a cult best sort of thing, and it was that review that helped inspire us to do it all again. I have also been getting people from South America, Germany, Belgium and Greece hitting the site and leaving comments about how they loved us way back when and are psyched to see us doing it again.

It has of course been amazing to see a bunch of new fans catching on to what we are doing this time around. Considering these songs were originally written and cut 20 years ago it is great to see people hearing it for the first time feel it is real fresh ad truly embracing our work.

Do you have a stable line-up and are there plans for any shows in 2009?

The current Line up is Joey Lodes, Daniel Kleffmann and myself.  This is stable but we would need a bass player for shows, (Joey did all the bass parts on these songs) a few people have expressed interest, but we will see when the time comes-. Additionally we would probably have to recruit a second guitarist to gig live and keep things close to what we did on the EP, and plan on doing for the album. We had second guitarists on and off through the years when we were gigging and it just never worked out for us, but here again we will have to see what happens when it is actually necessary.

As far as plans for shows – we hope to do some specialty shows in the states and hopefully a short summer festival tour in Europe it is my dream to play some of those shows, but this would all have to wait till 2010, there are just too many other commitments right now and the main concern is the album.

Is there anything else you would like to tell everyone reading this?

Yes, please support this scene that we all love and are a part of, if you like a band and feel their music is worthy of your collection, then buy it. If you can attend a show – then go, if you can afford a shirt then get it. Music as an industry is becoming decimated and it will eventually implode if we don’t all help prop it up. I am personally proud to be within a genre that typically does act as a community and the binds created are tighter then any other form of music I can think of. But we all have to realize there is an actual value behind the music itself, and that value is unrecoverable if the music is not valued by the person who wants it. If it is thought of as a commodity with no real money assigned to it and something that can be downloaded and burned and duped at will, then I am afraid we are all in for some major trouble. And the problem winds up being a domino effect, with many adjunct businesses affected as well. The retailers of course, the labels, the bands, but also the cover artists, web site designers, the disc manufactures, the studios and engineers everyone gets hit. Look I am not saying buy everything you can from every band you like, that would be ridiculous, but I am saying if you can and you have the means and it is something you want – then yes please support it. I personally never illegally download music. And often if a band gives music to me I offer to pay for it. Believe me it cost them money to make it.

Also I would like to say thank you so much to the fans we have out there for embracing this music that we love to create and to those, like yourself, who were with us back in our early days, Thank you so much, we truly appreciate the support and friendship.

Stay heavy, stay true to yourself, keep it metal and never give up!

By Carlos Ramirez

(+25 rating, 5 votes)

• Digg
• Facebook
• del.icio.us
• RSS Feed
• Email This Post