ICED EARTH

Time For Opus Magnum

- Let’s stay by personal matters. Many has changed since the last two years. How would you describe the role of Troy (Seele – guitar), Dennis (Hayes – bass) and Brent (Smedley – drums) in the band? Are they the full members yet?
First of all I think that we have a really solid line-up. We’ve played a few festivals together so far and it was great. Brent has always been a vital element to the band. And the fact that he was absent on „Something Wicked”, „Horror Show” or „Glorious Burden” is painful. He ought to have played there. It’s the best drummer I’ve ever worked with. He left the band several times for the personal reasons but now he’s ok. He’s ready again to be with us. He’s the only band’s member I really missed when he left. We just feel great together. We’ve always played fucking precisely. Dennis joined us quite late but he’s a great bass player. Tim has known him for ages as they’d been playing together in BEYOND FEAR. To tell the truth it was me who recorded bass parts on „Overture Of The Wicked” (EP preceding the album’s premiere – M.M.) and “Framing Armageddon” apart from “Reflections” and the beginning of “The Clouding” which were played by Dennis. He recorded about 25% of the bass parts for the second part of the album and I did the rest, as we had little time and it was impossible for him to record everything again. I hope he’ll show you what he really can on the next releases. I must tell you that I recorded the bass parts on almost all the ICED EARTH’s albums. No matter whose name stands there. I like playing the bass really much and other thing is that either we didn’t have time or a bass player wasn’t doing what I expected well enough. But I don’t think it will go on like this, as Dennis is a great instrumentalist. Troy is my good mate since 10 years. When Tim Mills had to quit the playing I asked Troy to play a few solos. He did. Then I offered him playing a few gigs. And it turned out that he’s going on quite well. We have a very solid line-up. But any personal reshuffles can’t stop me. Many musicians were coming and leaving the band. I hope we’ll play together for some time but any reshuffle would seriously affect ICED EARTH.

- Soon we’ll get a chance to check the new line-up’s abilities. You’re going with HEAVEN AND HELL to UK for common gigs. It’s undoubtedly a big deal. Especially, as you’ve mentioned that Ronnie James Dio is one of the most inspirational figures in show business. What is it that you respect this outstanding vocalist that much?
It’s just the way he is. Let alone the fact that I love his voice and what he did in RAINBOW, SABBATH and on solo albums. But what makes Ronnie special is how great man he is. He’s very frank and clever person. A total contradiction to a typical rock star. He knows what it’s all about. He’s not a jerk and there’s plenty of them around. I met him for the first time 10 years ago and since then I’ve been impressed with his person. Recently we’ve been talking about a joint project. It seems to come into effect. We’ll probably record an album together. It’ll be something special for me to have an opportunity to write music for such a great singer as Ronnie. It’s a real compliment for me that he agreed. I wish we went on tour over Europe with them in October. Unluckily, they decided on MEGADETH so we had to quickly think over organizing a headline tour.

- Unfortunately you won’t reach Poland when on tour with H&H. Are there any plans about an ICED EARTH’s gig in our country?
I think we’ll come to Poland during this tour. But even if we won’t make it in Autumn, our next album will come out in Spring next year and for sure we’ll come to you then. If it were up to me I’d play in Poland even tomorrow. But all depends if we find a promoter. If we find somebody who deems there are ICED EARTH’s fans and it’s worth to make a gig, we’ll surely arrange it. I promise we’ll do everything to eventually reach Poland. I know it lasts too long. We’ve never been there and we know there are our fans.

- The tour promoting your two new albums seems to be a nice occasion to film a new DVD fully showing the stage power of ICED EARTH. Do you have any plans about it? The more so, as you weren’t much satisfied with recently released „Alive In Athens”.
Yes. There is a plan. I think that before we get down to it we’ll poll our fans what would they want to have on such a release. If they’d prefer to see a single concert record or maybe a compilation of gigs from different venues. If they’d like to hear all the „Something Wicked” albums played or maybe some tracks from these albums compiled with the older ones. To tell the truth, “Alive…” came out quite recently but this stuff wasn’t put together and edited well enough. Besides, CENTURY MEDIA was promoting this stuff as a newly-found material which got lost before. It’s bullshit. We knew it was being filmed. The recording was made for a show for a German TV VIVA which, by the way, I hosted. They even didn’t have the rights to this material. I could sue them. But I was halfway through working on the new album and I didn’t want to get involved in a legal action which would cost me lot of time, energy and money. So I said - fuck it. They did it at little cost. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen but also not the best. So probably after the second part of the promotional tour we’ll make a DVD release.

- Well, great. Unluckily we’re running out of time. So let me ask you about distant times when you played in PURGATORY. Was the name kind of homage paid to IRON MAIDEN’s work?
Well, not really. We chose the name because of its meaning and what it stands for in Christianity. It’s a place of a temporary suffering, waiting for the judgement. When giving a name to the band I didn’t know about existence of this composition. We found it cool to name the band like this. I was brought up in a Lutheran community, we didn’t believe in purgatory but I knew that the Catholics did. My first contact with IRON MAIDEN was “Number Of The Beast”. I love the 3 first albums of this band. “Children Of The Damned” is a fucking awesome track!

Line Up:
Tim Owens - vocal
Troy Seele - guitar
Jon Schaffer - guitar
Dennis Hayes - bass
Brent Smedley – drums

Discography:
Enter the Realm - demo (1988)
Studio Demos '89 - demo (1989)
Iced Earth (1990)
Night of the Stormrider (1991)
Burnt Offerings (1995)
The Dark Saga (1996)
Days of Purgatory - best of (1997)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1998)
The Melancholy EP (1999)
Alive in Athens - live (1999)
Horror Show (2001)
Dark Genesis - box (2002)
Tribute To the Gods (2002)
The Reckoning - SP (2003)
The Glorious Burden (2004)
The Blessed And The Damned - best of (2004)
Gettysburg (1863) - DVD (2005)
Alive In Athens - DVD (2006)
Overture of the Wicked - SP (2007)
Framing Armageddon (2007)