If
you've been a reader of the Metal Rules!! website for any amount of time then you'll know
that we've supported Imagika since the beginning. We thought that after reviewing their
two CD's and then making their newest one available from our own CD Store that an
interview was definitely needed. So I had the pleasure to talk to Imagika's guitarist and
mastermind, Steve Rice. The entire interview is below in it's original unedited format. I
think it really gives a good indication of what Imagika are all about.
Metal Rules!!:
Let me start by thanking you for your time and for agreeing to this interview!
Steve:
No problem!
MR:
Your latest CD "Worship" has been out for a few months now, how has it
been doing?
Steve:
Everything’s been really good from all the reviews we’ve been getting in Europe,
it’s been pretty consistent over there. But we’re still trying to work out
something that’s going to be decent for over here as far as distribution goes.
It’s been a little bit more difficult over here because I want to get the right
situation for us. But from that perspective it’s been a little more difficult, but
things have been progressively getting better for us over in Europe as far as sales go and
just the reviews. The record has universally been accepted pretty well. Of course some
people don’t like that type of music, they may not like it but….
MR:
Yeah well, there’s always someone who won’t like what you’re doing…
Steve:
(laughs) Yeah, I mean for the most part I think everybody thought it was good.
Right now from what we could see when we toured Germany they are really into this stuff
like Hammerfall and stuff like that, that has become very popular a little more positive
type of stuff, a little more melodic I guess. The thrash thing is still kind of bubbling
under the surface, and there’s still some people that like that but it’s going
to take a little more time and it will hopefully pick up a bit.
MR:
Whose idea was the opening track to "Worship" – Golgotha? Dino Alden is
credited with the writing, how was he approached for this?
Steve:
He’s actually a really good friend of mine from years ago. On the first CD we had him
handle the production and he handled it on this one also. What he does is compose a lot of
stuff for soundtracks and stuff like that. He demoed some stuff for us that he had that he
composed for a horror film that we kinda liked. One of the things we did was say "hey
could you come up with an intro for the record that kind of fits some of the tunes and the
lyrical content" and that was the idea that he came up with.
MR:
So he had pretty much the freedom to go for it?
Steve:
Yeah, and first when we first heard it was like very different than we thought it
was going to be but once we got used to the way it sounded it kinda worked for the record.
MR:
The CD title, "Worship"...why did you choose that, was it the working title
before the song worship was written, or was the song already done and you just decided to
use it as the CD’s title?
Steve:
Exactly, it was more of the fact that we had a song called "worship" and we had
no idea of what the working title of the album was going to be, we had no concept then.
When we put that song together we kind of liked "worship" meant numerous things.
Of course it had the religious aspects to it but also because it’s heavy metal.
People that are involved in heavy metal that make it a lifestyle and make it a thing that
they consciously deal with. The album is like a kind of worship, they worship heavy metal.
It kind of has that implication so that with these two concepts together and plus the
songs talks about as far as the religious aspect of how religions sometimes have a little
too much control on people and people involve themselves pretty heavily in that it
dictates what they do in their lives and sometimes make decisions that really don’t
make much common sense. We kind of wanted to have that and it really worked out cool with
both meanings.
MR:
Tell me about the cover art for "Worship", who conceived it?
Steve:
What we did was, there’s an artist, he’s French Canadian, I think he’s from
Quebec. We contacted him because we had seen some of his art that he had done in a heavy
metal magazine. Basically we sent him some of the songs so he could hear what they sounded
like. We asked him to see if he could come up with some ideas for a cool cover. He then
just submitted this one to us with his interpretation of what he was hearing, what he was
reading lyrically. We took a look at it, we liked it…
MR:
Yeah it’s really a cool piece, even better than your first.
Steve:
Yeah we wanted to be a little more expanded this time, to have a little more for
the package. What’s really important, for obvious reasons, when you package a record
you want it to look good and you want it to sound good. All those things really help the
person who buys it and in the end listens to your music to get more involved. It was
really cool back in the days when you had album covers you could sit there and stare at it
when you listened to the record (laughs…). Now it’s cool with CD’s you need
it packaged as slickly as possible.
MR:
What songs are you the most proud of either new or old?
Steve:
I think that the songs that are probably my favorite on the new CD are "Sky is
Falling", "Redemption", and another song I really like is "Away."
Probably as far as musicianship or guitar-wise is concerned, I think the instrumental
"Beyond" on the end is pretty cool.
MR:
Yeah, that song was kind of different for you.
Steve:
It was just one of those things we came up with and kind of put together and everybody in
the band liked it. When we started working with Dino again he really fleshed it out with
the keyboards and some different stuff. It was just kinda cool, it was something different
that we wanted to put on the record so we figured hey we’ll just have a lot of just
heavy stuff on the beginning of the record and mix this in to the end of the record. It
gives a really relaxed way to close it out. We also tied it in because it fit with the
second last song "Redemption" which is about a person who tries to redeem
themselves through suicide. The person decides to kill themselves because they feel their
life is incomplete and because of all the things they’ve done wrong they feel the
only way to redeem themselves is this way. It ties into "Beyond" which is more
of a mystical type of thing where maybe that after they are gone to the other side that
there’s maybe something beyond. So through the instrumental we wanted to show that
there might be something there.
MR:
From "Worship" I really like "Hall of Desire", the title track,
and "The Conflict."
Steve:
I like all those tunes too. It’s kind of interesting to know because when
you’re so heavily involved in a project or writing and when you put it out there you
always get attached to something that you like but when the fans hear it they go
"well this is what we like." That’s always the interesting thing for me.
Sometimes it’s totally opposite of what you’d expect.
MR:
What's your deal with "Radiation / Nuclear Blast" how did it come
together?
Steve:
The guy that’s doing our management for us in Europe is the singer for Grave
Digger (Chris Rosenthal). He has a small promotion company called Flying Dolphin which is
also listed on the back of the album. He does a lot of promotions for a lot of different
labels in Europe. The original intention was to find a label to pick the record up or sign
us. The general consensus at the time was, "yeah this stuff is really good guys, but
we dunno if thrash music is going to sell"…or maybe they thought that we should
change our name to something a little more typical. We weren’t comfortable with that,
maybe if we were a European metal band we’d be different but since we’re from
America we just don’t view these things this way, especially from the Bay Area.
MR:
Has there been any other major label interest in Imagika?
Steve:
Well in reality it’s not as much as we would of thought. The record’s
been doing very well, it’s been getting a lot of positive response and the tour went
really well but I think that some of the labels are still a little bit gun-shy about
signing thrash bands. It tends to be trend oriented. Right now bands tend to be a bit more
melodic like your Hammerfall’s and stuff like that which does well over there. Labels
are looking for bands of that nature.
MR:
From what I’ve seen and read power and thrash metal seem to be on the
rise…
Steve:
Yeah I think it’s cool…bands like Nevermore get the power metal tag but I
don’t know why. To me I’ve never really viewed them as a power metal band to me
they are more thrash with a gothic edge to them. I think that’s cool because they a
are little bit more unique. When we were over in Germany a lot of these bands they all
sound like Helloween to me…very typical, very fast type of stuff. That’s all
fine and dandy but they tend to go in that direction too much. Where here in the states
stuff like death metal tends to be more popular then that kind of stuff.
MR:
Well we have bands like Nevermore and Iced Earth receiving high praise and they are
from America.
Steve:
To me, for America, they are really the key bands to help metal again here. Iced
Earth to me have one of the better chances because they have some really good songs that
are commercial. I can actually hear those guys being on the radio if they were given half
a chance I think people would really respond to that. In Germany, or Europe they are like
gods. They’ll go top 20 on the record chart, but over here it’s a little bit
different. But sooner or later that will translate over here.
MR:
So you consider Nevermore and Iced Earth to be at the forefront of metal today?
Steve:
Yeah I think so. Those are probably obviously the two bands that I respect most in
the genre. There’re really making a push for it and I think that Century Media is
doing a really good job with their exposure. As long as they build up an underground
following to a point so it doesn’t get overexposed. That was the problem during the
80’s when metal got so big with all these hair bands, it over-saturated. I just hope
metal doesn’t go in that direction again, I just hope it gets a really good large
underground following.
MR:
So you think that metal would be better off staying in the underground? Or you
think it’s good to have a big scene with say metal all over the radio?
Steve:
If you’re looking at in dollars and cents, every musician would go "yeah
we want it everywhere so we can maximize our profit" (laughs)…if you’re
looking at it money-wise. But from an artistic point of view it’s better to have a
really large underground scene so it’s not congested with a bunch of people who get
into it for all the wrong reasons.
MR:
Yeah, when it stays in the underground you know that all the guys there are in it
for the right reasons, the music.
Steve:
They’re dedicated, money is not the motivating factor. It's more like I want
to artistically express myself, I want to have some kind of dialogue with my fans.
It’s more honest, where I think that the other way around it becomes dishonest. You
get all of these bands popping out of LA with guys that used to be these alternative
people who now decide to grow their hair out again and start playing metal. They are just
looking for the next bandwagon and it gets old after a while.
MR:
As a guitarist what players would you consider as being crucial in the development
of your own style?
Steve:
For me there have been numerous guitar players, but some I really keyed in on. My
all-time favorite guitar players are Michael Schenker,
Toni Iommi, definitely Judas Priest, also guys like Eddy Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen,
all these guys had a big influence on me when I was younger. There too many to name but my
favorites are Michael Schenker and Tonni Iommi. Tonni Iommi definitely because the guy wrote just
about every heavy metal riff there is…
MR:
Yeah he’s the riff-miester.
Steve:
(laughs)Every heavy metal riff to this day is just a version of what he’s
already played. He really setup the whole sound of heavy metal with his chord
progressions. Nobody else used to do anything like that.
MR:
Are you self-taught? Or have you been trained?
Steve:
I kinda picked it up on my own and I had some formal lessons for about a year just
to get the basics together. When going to guitar class they want to teach you stuff like
row row row your boat (laughter…). They think that’s what you need to learn in
order to build your chops. I took some guitar courses to get some of the theory together
and knowledge about what chords and notes are. After that is was pretty much branching out
on my own and jamming with riffs.
MR:
When writing guitar leads to you agonize over scales, theory and what fits best over the
riffs or does it come naturally to you?
Steve:
I’ve kind of taken all the theory concepts out of it. I don’t even pay
attention to that stuff anymore. I just want to know what key it’s in basically, what
key am I going to be soloing in and obviously if there’s a couple of different key
changes in the solo you have to work out those things. On some songs I’ll be able to
just lay it down on the fly in the studio with just few takes at it and get a lead
together right off the bat just like improvising. Other things are more involved where I
might want to have more of a melodic content to it, then I actually work that stuff out.
MR:
I noticed that on your new CD that the leads are more often backed by rhythm
guitar, on the first CD you played a number of the leads with just the bass and drums
backing. Was that a conscious decision?
Steve:
With the newest record it all came down to a matter of how much time that we had.
We had a lot more time to pay attention to the details this time. On the first record it
was very much an on the fly thing, even though we did it over the space of a few months we
only had maybe enough money to work on it one day no the weekend.
MR:
Despite this, it still came out pretty good though…
Steve:
Yeah it came out OK. When I look at it in retrospect now and the fact that we had
to mix the thing in like one day and all the other bullshit that goes along with it of
course we could of done a lot better job if we had more time. What was really important
about that CD is not so much the production aspects of it but the energy was there and it
conveyed the message we were looking for. As long as the production is good enough so
people can actually hear the instrumentation and it doesn’t sound like a staticy tape
then that’s cool.
MR:
Do you prefer the one guitar situation or would you like to have a second
guitarist?
Steve:
That’s something that’s been debated for a long time. I wouldn’t
mind playing with another guitar player but it’s really hard to find exactly the
person that I’d want to play with. There’s never been an opportunity where
it’s like hey this guy is really cool, we really have a repoir, let’s work out
this two guitar thing. So I end up being the sole guitar player in the band. Sometimes
when I’m composing stuff and putting things together I really need another guitar
player to work out some harmony. We’ve talked about this numerous times and maybe in
the future we’ll add another guitar player maybe by the time we record the next
record. Maybe if I do enough work on there which would justify bringing a guitar player
with us just on the road.
MR:
Do you find it difficult to pull off any of the songs live?
Steve:
I really don’t find it limiting. In reality, one of the good things about
being the only guitar player in the band is sometimes when you have two guitarists in a
band and both fight for sonic space and doing leads it always ends up that one guitar
player gets shafted. Being the only guitarist I don’t have to worry about stepping on
toes and that kinda crap. I really have a lot of freedom. I don’t have to worry about
what I’m doing. The only bad thing is for example when we were on tour there was this
one show when played the first song. We go out there, I hit the chord and go right into
the riff and my whole pedal board just goes out. There’s like no guitar. The whole
first half of the first song is just bass, drums and vocals. I get the roadie over and we
get together to get the guitar up again. If there would have been a second
guitar…laughs…
MR:
In January you did a tour in Germany with Grave Digger and Iron Savior. How was
Imagika received over there?
Steve:
I think things went really well. For being a band that obviously nobody was
terribly familiar with we did some pretty good work. It was one of those situations where
people are just looking at you like "who in the hell are these guys" for the
first couple of songs. We played a 40 minute set and by the end of the set we were usually
able to gain a few fans, and that was really cool. Plus I think that people really
don’t expect to see a band like ourselves that much anymore playing this type of
music especially being from America.
MR:
Yeah especially that (laughs)….
Steve:
Yeah that kind of gave us a little bit of an edge. People were like, oh wow
you’re American, and thought, hey that’s cool. And of course bands like
Nevermore and Iced Earth are big over there so fans know those guys and they kind of tie
it into that wondering if we like know the guys in Iced Earth..well they live in Indiana
and we live in California (laughs). It was really cool, it’s a different scene over
there. I haven’t seen people wearing leather with patches and spikes and stuff like
that in years here in the Bay Area! It was cool to see that and fans that are really into
the music with a lot of headbanging, they sing the songs. That’s vastly different
from over here. Mosh pits really don’t exist over there, people don’t do that.
MR:
Who lined up this for you? Was it also through Flying Dolphin?
Steve:
Yeah it was through Flying Dolphin because when Chris was putting his package
together for his band Grave Digger to do the tour, it was something we had been discussing
for over a year about him wanting to take us out to open some shows. It was just a matter
of waiting around for those things to happen. So he put it all together for us.
MR:
Did you get much time to hang with either Grave Digger or Iron Savior?
Steve:
We got to see those guys all day long. They were all really nice guys. Grave Digger
and Iron Savior toured together in the same tour bus. We had our own separate bus because
one bus held like 14 people and our bus was a smaller one that held 8. Before every show
there was numerous hours during loading and sound checking so there was plenty of time to
hang out with each other.
MR:
Was this the largest group of shows that you've played to date?
Steve:
Yeah it was the first time that we had done any substantial touring with
consecutive days. Here in California maybe we’ll go out of town for a couple of days
and play on a weekend. It’s like a small little get out. So yeah, it was definitely
the first big tour we’ve done. I think at the first show we played there was over 900
people packed into this club. They were just staring at you wondering who in the hell you
were. It was quite an experience with jetlag and everything else. Probably the person who
had the most difficulty at first was our singer because he had to get over the language
barrier, even though they spoke English well he had to kinda talk to them in a way that
wasn’t his usual rapid fire stage banter that nobody could understand.
MR:
Has there been anything comparable in the US for you?
Steve:
No, we’ve played some cool shows over here playing with different bands of different
status. Over there it’s a little different. People are way more into it and
you’re able to win them over a little easier. Whereas over here a lot of times with
opening bands people don’t really want to know who you are. It’s like who cares,
they show up late. Where over there by the time we went on and played it was amazing
because we just expected we’d get up there and play being the first band maybe with
half the people there. As soon as those doors opened those fans are out there, they are
stacked up in a line and the place is packed by the time we hit the stage at about 8
o’clock. It was really cool from that aspect.
MR:
Why do you think its such a different scene over there?
Steve:
I dunno, I think they just really appreciate it more over there as far as the
artistic concept. I don’t know what it is, they have a different opinion about music
and metal in general because they don’t really have any radio outlet over there they
don’t have any kind of MTV. There’s not a lot of exposure that way. A lot of
bands get their exposure through the press and through touring. So the fans actually have
to go out and see it and hear it. Here in America radio and stuff like MTV has a lot more
push and we’re exposed to that more. We wait to hear a song on the radio before we go
and buy a record. Magazines don’t do as well. Over there everybody goes out and buys
the magazines and they want to see that you get a good review in the magazine or they are
not going to buy your record.
MR:
Yeah, it seems completely different, from just talking to people outside of North
America, it’s like two different worlds when it comes to music. You wouldn’t
think it would be that different, but it is.
Steve:
Yeah, exactly. You wouldn’t think it would be that different, the world is so
small now because of technology and stuff like that that, you’d think things would be
pretty similar all over the world but you find out it’s quite the opposite. In
Germany it wasn’t that different being on stage in a lot of aspects as far as like
travelling and the road, but it’s just in general how people deal with each other is
a little bit different.
MR:
Have any bands asked you to go on the road with them in the US?
Steve:
Not really. It’s been kind of disheartening for us in the Bay Area.
There’s still some decent bands from the Bay Area that play the type of music we play
but there’re more worried about themselves so we don’t really hang out with
those guys. The only band that we really have a good situation with is "Viscous
Rumors." I don’t know what the status on those guys is as far as what will be
done over the next year but we’ve talked to them a couple of times about doing some
shows together. Maybe the next time we go to Europe maybe we can hook up with those guys.
MR:
So would you say that there is there a bay area thrash scene now, or is it long gone?
Steve:
I think it’s basically long gone. I don’t really see it, just going out
to clubs I see a lot of bands trying to jump on the Korn / Limp Bizkit stuff it’s
more hip-hop influenced…
MR:
Yeah well that’s not metal anyway.
Steve:
Yeah I know it’s not metal anyway but there’s a lot of these guys who
used to play thrash and death metal (whatever you want to call it) and now a lot of
them in the Bay Area have moved in that direction. It’s kinda weird, you see these
people walking around with their baggy pants on with their chain hanging off of it and
their beanies… So I mean…whatever, I don’t care about the fashion sense.
There’s still some bands trying to cop on the Machine Head thing…I think the
first Machine Head album was a great album, I didn’t like the second one at all.
MR:
So do you think that the reason why it seems like a lot of people in North America
have given up on heavy metal is this more a result of the record companies and labels, or
is it just the bands themselves who have turned their backs on metal?
Steve:
It’s really a combination of all those things. The labels really moved away.
They were trying to find a new trend with stuff that was a little different. But in a way
I think that metal did it to itself, you had MTV putting out a bunch of hair bands out of
the LA scene it was bound to kill it all. It killed itself because it was the wrong
direction to be going in. Definitely some musicians have turned away from it. It’s
weird because when you have MTV constantly pounding on you with stuff like rap and hip-hop
people are actually going to start liking it. But I think that metal has made some
positive steps here in the last year. Things are definitely going to pick up. I think that
the key that could really help metal, I hate to say it, but if Metallica actually puts out
a metal record that it will help again. I think those guys have obviously been one of the
negatives of the metal scene here. I don’t have any problems with them doing whatever
they want to do musically, I don’t have to buy it, I don’t have to like it, but
having the name Metallica….
MR:
I think maybe they should start calling themselves "Licca", let’s
leave off the "Metal" (laughs).
Steve:
Yeah they should really change their name. If the guys are bored playing that type
of music, then that’s cool. As a musician I can understand you want to branch out and
expand but don’t call yourself Metallica please because it’s giving metal a bad
name because hey, they don’t like the fact that metal can be constrictive and you
have to stick to a format and metal fans are not open minded about a lot of stuff but hey,
you choose to play that music, you choose that name a long time ago…so deal with
that. I mean AC/DC has been playing that kind of music forever and they still only use
three chords in their songs and you don’t hear them complaining.
MR:
I guess some bands just get bored with that they are doing…
Steve:
I can understand if it’s like hey I’ve been playing the same three chords how
many times can I write a song with the same three chords. But it’s more than that;
metal to me has a lot more aspects than that. The song is one thing but you can take the
same song and put a different energy or attitude to it, change the lyrical content.
There’s so many different variations on a theme that you can make something new out
of something old and still meet what your fans expect. A lot of it is if people get used
to a certain sound they expect you to go down the same road that made you popular in the
first place. If you do an about face, people get really upset.
MR:
I think that Imagika remain true to that original idea of what heavy metal is
supposed to be.
Steve:
The thing about that with us is it’s not hard for us to do that, it’s not done
with any commercial aspect, or any kind of – "oh we gotta look this
way"… it’s just the way that we are and the kind of music we like to play.
So it’s very honest for us to do this. You know it’s not like we hang around the
house at home wearing silk pajamas or something (laughs). Nothing like that, then we gotta
get dressed up in leather to go play, it’s nothing like that. Right now I’m
wearing my death metal skull T-shirt (laughs). That’s just the way that we are and I
think that’s the honesty to it. I don’t know what else we would play anyway, I
can’t imagine myself playing or writing anything else. I’ve been doing this for
so long that it would be hard to change now.
MR:
So where were you before Imagika, prior to ’94?
Steve:
All of us were in different bands that really didn’t amount to crap. Probably
it was just a big waste of time. The singer and the drummer used to be in a band together
towards the late 80’s – early 90’s. It was the typical bay area metal
sound, when thrash metal was still popular. It was kind of like a Testament type of thing.
I used to be in a band that was a little bit more of a Iron Maiden / Crimson Glory type of
thing. I’ve always been the guy who’s a little more into the progressive and
melodic type of stuff then the rest of the guys in the band. They are more into the thrash
and heavier stuff.
MR:
Well to me your music comes across as having both elements.
Steve:
Yeah…because I essentially write 90% of the riffs. I always come up with a
combination between the two to make everybody happy.
MR:
So you’re the main song writer then?
Steve:
We always give credit to everybody in the band as far as compositional type of
stuff but everybody knows that I’m the one that comes in with 90% of the material.
I’m the only guy that comes in with a fully fleshed out song. The other guys help
with arrangements, and obviously the singer writes the lyrics. I give credit where credit
is due.
MR:
What are Imagika’s plans for the coming months?
Steve:
The new CD is probably going to be recorded here in June or July (1999). That was
put back a little bit because Dino actually found out that he had kidney cancer about one
month ago. He had to go through an operation and all that stuff so we wanted to give him
enough time to recover from that. Everything has turned out ok with him. So we’re
going to record the next CD and then follow the steps of getting it out, doing some more
touring, and things of that nature. Right now we’re just working on some stuff with
our management to try and get ourselves some kind of deal here in the States. That’s
the only thing we are lacking right now, getting a deal here in the States to get our
record out to people, getting it exposed and making it happen. That’s our number one
priority right now. It’s one of those things that you just have to keep working on
and hopefully we'll make it happen because I think that the unfortunate thing is
we’ve been able to get both the records out in some kind of number in Europe, and
that was really easy to do. But here in the States we’ve been really beating our head
against the wall and nobody really wants to deal with it. That’s just a little bit of
a negative aspect for the band. We don’t really let it affect us because we know that
that’s business. It’s been very easy for us to make the transition into Europe
and tour over there. It’s far easier for us to do those kind of things, having to fly
all the way over way over to Europe to do that then it is for us to get out of California
here…which is kind of an interesting situation.
MR:
I always find that interesting. A band can have a record deal or distribution
through like Japan, while everyone here might think that the band broke up like 5 years
ago.
Steve:
I don’t know why, it’s nothing unusual. We look at the guys in the same
musical direction we’re going in, you mentioned Nevermore and Iced Earth, these bands
have had to goto Europe numerous times and often they do the majority of their work over
there and sell the majority of their records there. And they are from America, they have
to do a lot of work over there, and hey, if that’s what you gotta do, then
that’s what you gotta do.
MR:
How important then has the Internet been in spreading the word about Imagika?
Steve:
I think it’s been very crucial and it’s been a very key thing. I think
with a webpage like yours and as much exposure as it gets, it’s very important. More
people than anybody would imagine use the Internet to find out about new bands and check
out their sounds and stuff like that. It really a key marketing tool for metal.
MR:
I’ve given up on radio or TV to show me what new bands are cool.
Steve:
Exactly! The nice thing about the Internet now is with MP3’s. I know the
mainstream record industry has been bitching up a storm about MP3’s because of
copyright issues and licenses and all that crap but what they don’t understand is
that maybe that’s cool for a major label artist who is selling millions of records
and they don’t want to give away product for free. But for guys like Imagika and
bands starting out on a certain level, I think that’s really important. People say,
"what in the hell do they sound like?" Well, what better way then to load it up
on your computer to see if you like it.
MR:
The only thing I have a problem with is when people pirate full CD’s and the
goal is not to promote the band. But having one or two songs is enough to decide if I like
band and I’ve picked up a number of CD’s thanks to MP3’s.
Steve:
One of the coolest things will be when it gets to the point where people can go
into your website and download your CD and buy the record that way. Then you could sell
the record as a per song basis, which might be kind of cool to because people might like 5
out of the 8 songs on a record. They could make their own custom albums. To tell the truth
I buy CD’s all the time and the reality is "do I like every song on this
CD?"...probably not. I can imagine some fans will feel the same way about Imagika.
MR:
I think the reason why the record industry is so up in arms over this issue is that
they are afraid of being cut out of the picture.
Steve:
Yeah, and the reality of dealing with a lot of those guys, I don’t think that
would be a bad thing sometimes (laughs).
MR:
Yeah it would be really cool if you could just get your music out and not have
someone else gouging you.
Steve:
The only thing that record companies will do well is they obviously have a lot of
contacts. They are really important for getting bands on the road and stuff because they
will put the money into getting the band on tour support. For bands that don’t have
the luxury of having a label for tour support it’s then really a matter of scrounging
to make it happen. Like on this tour that we did, I don’t think we really even made a
dime on it after all the expenses of getting over there. But it was more for the exposure
aspect of it; we weren’t worried about making money.
MR:
So I assume you guys hold down day jobs as well as being in Imagika?
Steve:
We all do our day jobs you know, I have my family, the guys have their families
too. We have to be totally realistic about it, about what has to be done.
MR:
Well man, that’s about it… Is there anything else you’d like to pass along
to fans or to potential fans reading this?
Steve: (Listen to this answer in
Real Audio)
Yeah I’d just like to say, thanks a lot for your time and for helping us
expose ourselves to a wider audience. If there’s anybody out there that wants to
check us out, if you’re a fan of heavy metal or thrash in particular them take a
listen to it, you might enjoy it.
More Imagika:
[Listen/Buy]
©1999 Metal Rules!!
