-First of all thank you for your precious time and welcome to metalitty webzine! So let's start by a little biography of the band. And how did you come up with the band name?
Hey friend! My pleasure. Well OK lets see, the band has been around in some form or another since 2005ish. I came into the picture in 2007 when the band was still called Allegiance. The lineup back then was James Cummings vocals, Ryan Glisan and myself on Guitar, Aaron Donahoe on Bass, and our drummer at the time was named Nick and I forgot his last name. Nick was an amazing artist and kinda got called up to draw Batman for DC comics. Of course we all said "get the hell outta here and go save Gotham!"
So we brought Jordan Belfast into the band. Around the beginning of 2008 we started getting cease and desist letters from a couple bands around the world called Allegiance. Hence changing our name to Allegaeon. Which is gibberish, and all it meant was we weren't gonna be sued for the name because it's so stupid who'd want it? HA!! Our vocalist James was focusing more and more on his career and he ended up leaving, so we brought in Ezra a few weeks before we did our first EP. Between the EP and getting signed, we parted with Aaron, and got a new bassist by the name of Mike Papajohn who appeared in the Cower Before Me, and Nex of Terra videos. He couldn't take off work for a tour so we got Corey Archuleta, and then signed with Metal Blade records in 2009. Fast forward a couple years and a couple albums, everyone besides Corey and myself have managed to suffer enough to still be doing this. haha
-As mentioned before, you're releasing your new album soon! Can you tell me more about it?
Sure it's our 4th album for Metal Blade, we're incredibly excited for it to come out which will probably be in September. Its our longest record to date and has some new things on it. Still continuing with the orchestration thing we started on Elements but a little more on the epic scale. I wish I could go more into it but I'm forbidden!
-Who inspires you to write music? And is there any particular process in writing it?
We take inspiration from everything going on that interests us in music. From Dimmu to the playing of Ben Woods. It's a very wide array. we love music so if it's good we find use for it.
-Who writes the lyrics?
Well historically it's shifted around quite a bit. Ezra, Ryan and Myself split the lyric duties quite heavily on the first two albums. On Elements Ezra did most of it, and I contributed only 1 tune. This new record I think I had my hands in 5 of the 11 originals. However Riley would always kinda finish what I started after he saw how I wanted it. Riley did an amazing job.
-So this is your first album with Riley! Do you think the vocals in this album will be kinda different? I mean did Riley add his own touch to your music?
Yeah he did. We really pushed him to pull out everything he is capable of. Except for Opera I think we kinda touched on everything. Throat singing, pitch screaming, singing, gurgling death metal vocals, shrieking highs and crazy lows. We've usually only been limited to mids, and variations of those mids before, so hearing the full range thrown in is pretty amazing.
-We all know how you guys are so cool and funny, so I had to make a funny question haha! We noticed that you had so much fun in the studio with Dave Otero... what's the story behind the back of his head? Many people are really curious to know.
The joke spawned I think because all the pictures we ever see of him are from behind. I guess his girlfriend Chelsea made the comment they should count. Well that sounded like a challenge to me plus I was bored.
-Tell me more about your news and upcoming events!
Well right now we don't have anything really planned apart from just getting the record out and getting all our music videos put together. We filmed so much studio footage we need to get that all edited, plus there was a little documentary of the album we need to release. All good stuff.
-Thank you again Greg! Do you have any message to your Moroccan fans and Metalitty readers in general?
Thank you to everyone! We heart your face! Keep metal strong!
