One of the best debut albums of 2010 was the self-titled release from Charred Walls of the Damned, featuring drummer Richard Christy (Death, Iced Earth), vocalist Tim “Ripper” Owens (Judas Priest, Iced Earth, Dio Disciples), bassist Steve DiGiorgio (Death, Testament, Iced Earth) and guitarist Jason Suecof (producer, All That Remains, Trivium, DevilDriver, Chimaira). Less than two years later, the band is back with its sophomore effort, “Cold Winds on Timeless Days,” which, like its predecessor, combines elements from several styles of metal to create a concoction all its own. Christy, who also is a regular on “The Howard Stern Show,” an actor and standup comic, recently called in to Live Metal’s Greg Maki to talk about the new album, touring plans and more.
LIVE METAL: The new album, “Cold Winds on Timeless Days,” comes out Oct. 11. The first one was your return to music after being away for a little bit, and it was pretty well received. So what were your goals when you started working on the follow-up?
RICHARD CHRISTY: I get a lot of emails from fans. I read every email that I get at my website, and even though it takes me a little while sometimes to catch up to them, I definitely listen to what fans say. And, also, even the reviews. For the first album, I read all the reviews and really listened to what the people were saying. And the reviews were really, really positive about the first album. One thing that a lot of reviews said was that they wished the album was longer, that it was 34 minutes long and the album was great, but they wanted more of it. So I listened to that, and for this second album, I wanted to make sure that we had a lot more music, that it was almost an hour long and a really full album. That was one thing that I really took to heart. And another thing was for the first album, a lot of people said they wished the bass guitar was up a little louder. So we made sure in the mix for this album the bass guitar was louder.
As a whole, I learned a lot about writing music during the first album and about working with Jason as a producer and having him let me know that there are certain things we can do to streamline the songs and make them shorter. Originally, the first album, when I recorded the demos, it was a lot longer, and we kind of chiseled it down to 34 minutes just to have all the best parts. For this second album, I had learned a lot from recording the first album about songwriting, and I think I was a lot more prepared for this second album. What is on the demos for the second album is really close to what’s on the final album just ‘cause I knew what Jason wanted as a producer, and when I was writing the songs, I kind of gave him exactly what he wanted.
So yeah, I think those are the big differences between the first album and the second one.
Was the process similar to the way you did the first album, where you had pretty much all the music and lyrics demoed before the other guys came in and started working?
Yep, yep. I write and record all the music on the demos, and I even sing my lyrics and the vocals parts, ideas—things like that—on the demos. Once I get everything to where I think it sounds really good and pretty close to what I think the final album should be, then I send the demos out to Tim and Steve and Jason, and let them really soak it all in and listen to it and learn their parts, but also get some ideas on what they can add to it and what they want to change and things like that. I pretty much finished writing the album about two months before we were scheduled to go into the studio. So I had a good two months to rehearse all the drum parts and get everything exactly the way I wanted to and be very prepared in the studio. Also, the guys had two months to listen to it and get some ideas.
Everyone in this band is so busy. How long do you have to actually get together in person and work these songs out?
You know, that’s the thing. We don’t have a lot of time to do that. Luckily, that’s one great thing about Jason and Tim and Steve, is that they know they have to come into the studio prepared because we have to pretty much start recording as soon as we all get together. We don’t really have a lot of rehearsal time together, but apart, we make sure everybody knows their parts, and everybody comes in very well prepared. I have no worries when it comes to these guys and knowing that they’re going to be ready once we get into the studio, and that’s how it always is. And same with me. I want to make sure as soon as we get in to do the drum parts, I knew exactly what I needed to do ‘cause studio time’s not cheap. Also, another thing is, too, especially for the second album, I want it to feel like a live recording and capture that energy, that spontaneity. Even though we’re very well rehearsed, I wanted us to get in the studio and not over-analyze everything and just kind of jam and make everything sound very natural.
What kinds of things inspire you as a songwriter?
Definitely other music, even composers like John Carpenter, who’s a director and he also composed the music for some of my favorite movies like “Halloween” and “The Fog.” So that definitely inspires me. I listen to a lot of horror movie soundtracks and horror movie music. So that definitely inspires me. And, also, just bands that write great songs, like Iron Maiden and bands like Coheed and Cambria, that just write these amazing, intricate but really catchy songs. That really inspires me, as well.
Lyrically, things all around me inspire me. I’ll see something like when I was riding a year ago on the train, on the Long Island Railroad here in New York, I looked out the window and I saw these people around a campfire in the middle of the woods along the train tracks, and it looked very eerie and creepy to me. I was like, “What are these people doing out there in the middle of the night surrounding a fire out in the woods?” And so I wrote the lyrics for “On Unclean Ground” about that.
There’s a lot of different things that inspire me, but I would say mostly it’s just metal music in general. Going to shows inspires me. I just went to see the Big 4 at Yankee Stadium, and that definitely inspired me. The next day, I was writing guitar riffs. I was so inspired by it.
The thing that really strikes me about this band is that it’s rare to hear a band this heavy with almost all melodic vocals. And with Tim as your singer, that didn’t happen by accident.
Yeah. I’m a huge fan of a lot of death metal bands and especially the band Amon Amarth. I’m a massive fan of them, and I love that style vocal. But I’m also a huge fan of Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden and singers like that, and King Diamond. I think Tim has an amazing range of singing very melodically but also very heavy in almost a thrash style, and I love that about him. I wanted this band to be a good mix of every type of metal. At times, like the song “Zerospan” starts out like a death metal song, and a lot of the parts for a lot of this second album sound like they could be a death metal band. I love the contrast of having the very melodic, catchy singing with death metal-type music, and I like to kind of change it up like that.
As the guy who put this band together, the architect of the band, beyond the songwriting, how much more work is there for you in this as opposed to other bands you’ve been in?
It’s a ton more work. It’s pretty much 100 times more work than just playing the drums. I look back at how good I had it when I was playing in Iced Earth and Death, when all I had to do was go up there and pound my drums, and I didn’t have to deal with any of the business side or any of that kind of stuff—setting up shows and tours and all that. I kind of just showed up and played drums, and I had it pretty good back then.
Now, it’s a lot of work, but it’s well worth it. It’s what I had planned on and what I wanted to do. I never knew a lot about the music business when I was just a drummer, and being in this band has helped me to learn a lot about publishing and things like that. So I’ve learned a lot from doing this. It’s a ton of work, but I love it. And I love knowing the fact that if this band succeeds or fails, it’s pretty much mostly my fault. I really hope it succeeds, but even if the band doesn’t succeed, knowing that some people enjoyed listening to the music, that makes it all worth it. Basically, what it comes down to, even if it’s a lot of work, my biggest joy is to hear people say that they love our music, and knowing that people out there somewhere are listening to songs that I wrote, it’s just a really cool feeling.
You played a small handful of shows on the first album. Do you plan to do more touring with this band in the near future?
Absolutely, yeah. We’re in talks right now, setting up some festival shows in America and hopefully in Europe. Yeah, we definitely are. I don’t have anything solid that I can announce yet, but we’re very close to solidifying some shows for next year. I definitely want to get back out and do some shows, especially now that we have two albums. That was one of the reasons I think that our first tour was a shorter tour—it was like two weeks. We did some shows in the U.S. and Canada. But we had a limited amount of material because we had only had one album out. We did a lot of cover songs and things like that. So now that we have two albums out, I think that we’ll be concentrating on doing a lot more shows and playing some festivals and things like that. I’m really excited that now we have a lot more of a set list to choose from and it’s all our original music.
On those shows you did on the first album, you didn’t have Jason playing with you. Is that right?
Yeah, that’s true. Jason—and this is true with everybody in the band, and that’s one of the reasons I chose Jason, Tim and Steve to be in this band—we’re very busy. We’re older guys, and we all have our regular jobs, as well, and we understand that if we can get together to do some shows, that is awesome. If we can make everybody’s schedules work, then that is great. But if not, if we need to get somebody to replace somebody—I’d like to have everybody from the actual band touring, but Jason is really busy as a producer. He had a band that he was working with at the time we were on the last Charred Walls tour. That’s how he makes his living, so I totally understand that. But, also, I don’t want just one or two people that unfortunately aren’t able to make the tour, I don’t want that to keep us from doing shows, and they understand that, as well.
We had a couple of guys from Ohio that were just really amazing that toured with us for the first tour. We had John Comprix, Matt Sorg and Ed Stephens playing with us, and they were just amazing musicians, and it sounded exactly like the album. I would’ve loved to have it be me and Jason, Tim and Steve, but I was very, very thankful to have these great guys go on tour with us. And I’d love to have them go out with us again if for some reason Steve and Jason can’t make it. But as of now, we’re planning on having the whole band go on tour, and hopefully we can get everybody’s schedules worked out for that.
How much have you missed playing live on a regular basis?
I miss it a ton. I really do miss it. Going back out on that Charred Walls tour last summer, it was just great, and it made me feel young again. It was just awesome. I especially miss it when I go see live bands, like at the Big 4 show. It would be a dream to be up there onstage playing at Yankee Stadium. Or when I see bands I know that play at Madison Square Garden or anywhere—at Irving Plaza here in New York—I’m just like, man, I’d love to be up there doing that ‘cause it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world to be up onstage playing songs that you wrote and just watching the crowd react, and it’s awesome. So I really do miss it, and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year with Charred Walls.
You talked about going to the Big 4 and listening to a lot of other metal. What is your take on the state of metal today?
Well, definitely seeing the Big 4, it looks like the state of metal is in a very good state right now. That was really cool to see—I don’t know how many people were there—probably 50,000 or 60,000 people chanting “die” during “Creeping Death” and banging their heads for “Angel of Death” for Slayer. Just to see that, a massive stadium packed with metal fans, it was a good feeling. Metal seems to be doing pretty good if that’s any indication. Also, I think it was last week or the week before, there were so many metal bands in the top 50 on Billboard, the new Anthrax, the new Dream Theater—just so many great new albums coming out that are selling pretty well these days.
So I think metal’s in a pretty good state right now. The music business as a whole could be doing better just because of pirating and all that, but it seems like people are buying more albums, which is good, and hopefully fans have learned that it really does hurt musicians to steal their music. That’s their livelihood and how they pay their bills. You wouldn’t go onto a construction site and take away somebody’s tools or something. It’s kind of the same thing. When you’re stealing music, you’re stealing somebody’s livelihood.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Yeah, I just want to let people know you can pre-order the album with some pretty cool additional things, some cool pre-order packages. If you go to richardchristy.com, there’s a link to Benchmark Merchandising, which makes our T-shirts and things like that, and they have a really cool pre-order package that comes with a Charred Walls 3D poster, it comes with either a Charred Walls hoodie or T-shirt, the album and also an adult diaper signed by me. I don’t know if it’s a good thing to be known for, but in the past couple years, I’ve been known for going to metal shows and wearing an adult diaper so you don’t have to miss any songs by going to the restroom. So just as a fun little pre-order thing, we have 100 signed diapers. Also, if you go to metalblade.com/cwotd, you can pre-order album there, as well. That comes with a really cool looking T-shirt that you can only get at that website, and you can also pre-order the album on iTunes.
Leave a Reply