By: Dr. Matt Warnock
Ladies and gentlemen Heavy Metal is back. It’s been twenty long years since three-chord, teenage angst ridden Grunge and Alternative Rock pushed aside sweep picking, screaming vocals and thrash-inspired grooves. Without fail, as has been the case in every phase of rock history dating back to Little Richard and Elvis Presley, what was once old is new again, and hard-rock is being reborn with a whole new generation of metal heads. One of the bands that is leading this new metal surge is Phoenix based Age of Evil.
Comprised of two sets of brothers, Jeremy and Jason Goldberg, vocals-guitar and bass, along with lead guitarist Jordan and drummer Garrett Ziff, Age of Evil is looking to bring metal back to the forefront of the modern music scene. After releasing their first CD, when they were barely old enough to drive, the band spent last summer on a two month tour of Europe opening up for such classic metal bands as W.A.S.P., Tesla and Manowar, bringing audiences to their feet all over the continent with their unique mix of classic and modern metal.
Not a band to rest on their laurels, Age of Evil recently released their second record, a six-song E.P. that features two new songs, two covers of metal classics by Judas Priest and Skid Row, and two live cuts. The E.P. has been getting positive reviews across the board, bringing much deserved attention to a band that should have a long and successful career ahead of itself.
Age of Evil front man Jeremy Goldberg recently sat down with Guitar International Magazine to discuss the bands recent tour of Europe, their new E.P. Get Dead and plans for a new full-length studio album.
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Matt Warnock: People might be a bit surprised when they hear your music to find out that you’re all in your teens, with one band member barely twenty. The brand of metal that you play is reminiscent of the thrash and heavier bands of the ’80s, even though most of you weren’t born when that music was popular. How did you first get introduced to metal and what drew you to that style of music?
Jeremy Goldberg: When we were really young we got into classic rock and heavy metal. Some of the first bands that we were really drawn to were Santana and Ozzy, both with Randy Rhoads and Zack Wylde. I think Ozzy was one of the first live DVD’s that we saw and it just blew us away.
As far as guitarists, Marty Friedman and Jason Becker were also very influential in our early years. Our parents did listen to classic rock and metal, bands like Van Halen, back when they were our age but they didn’t really introduce us to that style of music. We sort of stumbled upon it on our own.
Matt: Bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden are often mentioned by people when they talk about your influences, but one band that I hear creeping into your playing is Pantera. Could you talk about how Pantera has influenced your sound over the years?
Jeremy: One of my favorite albums of all time is Cowboys from Hell. They were just one of the heaviest bands in the world, flat out. Some people think that the heaviest thing a band can do is have screaming vocals or use blast beats in the drums, but it’s the groove in the song that makes it heavy, which is what Pantera had. They were a great mix of heavy grooves and melody, which is what we’re always trying to achieve in our writing. I think you can hear that influence coming out in our songs.
Matt: As well as recording original material you guys recently recorded two covers of songs by Judas Priest and Skid Row. What was it about those two songs that inspired you to record cover versions?
Jeremy: About a year ago we were playing with Girl School in London, and we knew that the fans probably didn’t know who we were at that time, so we decided to give them something that they’d appreciate and remember us by. Since we were London we thought, “why not play a Judas Priest song?”
We didn’t want to do one of their big hits that’s been done before so we picked “Electric Eye,” which we thought would sound great with our guitar tone and groove. When we played it live we got a great response and so we ended up recording it between dates when we were on tour in Europe this past summer.
On the same tour we had one day off and we decided to use it to record a new track, but we didn’t know what it was going to be. We were all sitting around and Garrett came up with “Slave to the Grind” and instantly we all knew it was the perfect song to do.
Since we didn’t have much time I pulled out my phone and we listened to it on there, learned it quickly, and laid down the track in pretty much one take. What people hear on that track is us at our rawest. It’s the pure, Age of Evil sound.
Matt: Are you still featuring both of those songs in your live sets?
Jeremy: Yeah we do, especially if we’re playing a forty-five minute to an hour set we’ll play both of those covers, but we won’t do more than two. A lot of the time we’ll use one of the covers for the encore, and if it’s a shorter set we may not use them at all.
We really enjoy playing them and people seem to really love hearing those tunes, so it helps audiences connect to our music, especially for those people who may not have heard us before. We’ll be learning more covers, maybe not for future records, but we’ll probably sneak them into our live show.
Matt: You recently released an E.P. instead of a second full-length album, why did you decide to use that format for your second release?
Jeremy: We really didn’t know what the record was going to be when we went into the studio, so we decided to go in and lay down the songs we had been working on at the time. We figured the E.P. would be the perfect representation of what Age of Evil is all about.
The two new songs show where we’ve come from since our first album, the two cover songs show that we can hang with the big bands out there and the two live songs give fans a chance to hear what we can do on stage. So the six-song E.P. was just the perfect two-two-two combination of what we’re all about, and the full-length album will come next.
Matt: Are you currently working on your next studio album?
Jeremy: Yeah, I’m just looking at my ITunes playlist and we have thirteen tunes that are pretty much ready to go. The next album is going to be a great combination of tradition rock and heavy metal, and I’m really excited about it.
The E.P. turned out great and we’re going to build on that momentum when we get the full-length record out, hopefully next year. Before the full-length comes out we’re thinking of releasing a few singles to give people a taste of what’s going to be on the record, so that’s a possibility as well.
Matt: It seems like it’s been long enough since metal faded at the end of the 80’s that it can now be cool again with younger fans. As you tour around the U.S. and Europe do you notice that metal is becoming more popular and that it’s OK with younger fans to like metal again?
Jeremy: There are these twenty-five year cycles that tend to happen with rock music, where it’ll be popular for a while and then fade into the background a bit while pop music takes over. I’ve definitely seen resurgence in the metal scene recently, especially compared to what it was in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
In Europe it’s a bit more mixed. There’s a lot of metal going on over there, but it’s not necessarily the metal I enjoy listening to. There are a lot of bands singing about Dungeons and Dragons and stuff, which just isn’t my thing. I do think that games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are helping bring back rock and metal and are making it popular again.
But, having said that I just hope it doesn’t get to the point where people are writing songs in the key of blue, or green, or whatever color their controllers are. Hopefully they’ll go out and actually learn how to play the guitar and form their own rock bands.
Matt: You opened for some big named bands this summer over in Europe, bands like W.A.S.P and Manowar. What was it like as a young, up and coming band, to open for these heavy hitters?
Jeremy: We’ve known the guys in W.A.S.P. for a few years now, we’ve played with them at numerous festivals, though the only guy we don’t really know from the band is Blackie. We had a great time this summer playing with them, but we also were able to open for Judas Priest, Nazareth, Yngwie Malmsteen, so a ton of classic artists.
It’s always an honor to be playing with bands like that. It also shows that we’re a versatile band. We can alter our songs and set list to fit a wide variety of genres depending on who we’re playing with, I think that’s really helped with the success we’ve had so far as a band.
Matt: You guys recently made a music video that’s up on your site, and on YouTube etc. It seems like the music video went out of vogue in the ’90s along with metal and hard rock, mostly due to MTV becoming more focused on reality TV shows and less so on music videos. Do you feel that it’s still necessary for a band to make a music video, even without channels like MTV playing them anymore?
Jeremy: I think videos are getting pretty big now, especially with MySpace and YouTube. The video we made has gotten over thirty-five thousand views through all the different sites that host it, which we wouldn’t have had if we didn’t make the video in the first place.
TV is still a big medium as far as marketing new music is concerned, but MTV should really be called RTV, with all the reality shows they’re doing now. Even when they do play music it’s not what it used to be, it’s mostly Rap, Hip-Hop and RnB. But, I still think bands need to do videos, maybe not one for every song on the album, but just something to give the fans something extra, and to show people that a band has more to offer creatively than just the music.
Matt: Age of Evil is made up of two sets of brothers, which can be cool because you’re really close, but we all know that brothers can also fight as well as anyone. How has that family dynamic helped or hindered you as a band as you move forward in your careers?
Jeremy: The pros definitely out weigh the cons, that’s for sure. We’re not some gimmick where someone put together two sets of brothers as some sort of marketing thing. We’ve known each other since we were three or four years old, so it’s almost like we’re four brothers, we’re that close.
Over the years we’ve all learned what each others strong and weak points are, and so in the early stages we got a lot of those kinks worked out. This summer we were on the road, in close quarters, for sixty days, just breathing down each others necks. After the tour ended we kind of told ourselves that we’d take a week off to just chill and be apart, but we ended up hanging out the whole time anyway. We do have arguments, but after a few hours or the next day we’re all cool again.
Matt: A lot of people, whether they’re musicians, actors or athletes, experience some level of burnout after they’ve achieved success early on in their careers, similar to what you’ve experienced with Age of Evil. How are you going to avoid becoming burned out after so much early success?
Jeremy: We’re all really humble guys and I don’t think we would let anything get in the way of our music and what we do. Some people let the fame, money and drugs get to them, but we have our heads on straight so I don’t think that’ll ever be a problem for us.
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