 Okay, we are live and back again, Brian Slago, CEO Metal Blade Records. It's wonderful having you back, Brian. Thanks for having me. Yeah. How's everything going in Vegas with the store? Good. The store and the museum, both doing well. The museum is open every day now. We got people showing up every day. We had like 20 people there the other day. So it's all good. The store is doing well as well. And Lizzie Borden is doing something. Is there every Saturday or something? Yeah, Lizzie is there every Saturday. So it's been a lot of fun. A lot of people are coming out to see him. So it's been great. Yeah. Great guy. The wonderful interview with Lizzie a few years back. And wow, what a great guy. What a great voice. What great music. Yeah, he's got a new record coming out sometime soon. If he ever finishes. On the show today, we asked Brian on because, of course, Armored Saint is a big part of the Metal Blade record family, as well as he's just a music fan in general. We're going to talk about Queenswright. The warning is they're going to, Queenswright is on tour right now with Armored Saint. The next three dates are in Canada, Toronto, tomorrow, Montreal, then Kitchener, then they go back to the US on the East Coast. And you just got to go to queenswrightofficial.com where you go to Armored Saint's website and you can see the dates where they break off and they play together. So basically, on the show today, we're revisiting the warning. You know, there it is. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Yeah, why? Oh, wait a second. There it is. Young lads. Look at that. Look at these guys. I don't have one on me. Sorry. I have it though. I'm sure you do. When did it come out, Jim? 1984 with the warning. What month? You know? Oh, yeah. So it came out on September the 7th, 1984. So we think they did, right? We don't know. But we assume it did. I got my copy November 17th, 1984. OK, it makes sense. So make sense. So overall, Brian, first time you heard of this band called Queenswright. What were your first impressions? So I have stories about Queenswrights. We need stories. Tell us something I can't. Basically, I was working in a record store in 1981 when the EP came out. And of course, brought into the store, loved it immediately, sold tons and tons of them, did really well. So then they came to the country club, which was the big local Los Angeles area venue. So I went to the show, very excited to see them, because I loved the EP. And they were so bad that I left halfway through the show. Rarely ever leave shows. I might be able to count on both hands how many I saw. But they had so many problems. The PA was a mess that all sorts of technical problems, they were awful. So I left halfway through. So that was that. So then I went to London in 1984 and had, I talk a lot about shameless plug in my book. I went to London for 10 days and I saw two shows with Dio at Hammersmith Odeon and two shows with Iron Maiden at Hammersmith Odeon, which was phenomenal. So I was waiting in line at the very first show was Dio, like the day or two after I got there. And I was talking to the punters as we were. The punters, yes. Because Queen's Rite was opening for Dio. This is before the morning could come out. This was, I forget, sometime in the summer of 84. So they're asking about them and I told them my story about it. I love the EP and I saw them in LA and they were awful. That being said, I'm going to give them a chance. And oh my God, they came out and I hadn't heard anything off the warning yet obviously because it wasn't out and they played probably, you know, I don't know, 40, 45 minutes, something like that. And half of that was all stuff off the warning. I was blown away. They were phenomenal. They sounded amazing. All the stuff from the EP sounded great. So I did a very fast turnaround on Queen's Rite. And then of course the album came out and it's, you know, it's an absolute masterpiece. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we had a little bit of a taster on the EP, like you said, and then we were all waiting for this album and it certainly didn't disappoint. So this is the exercise we did last time, Ian Allen, when we were talking about the EP. Up to that point in 1982 to 83, 84, I don't think I've ever heard a band sound like Queen's Rite, sort of like between Iron Maiden and Rush in a way, like they filled that gap. Would you agree with that, Brian? Yeah, absolutely. They were, you know, they were interesting because they had a very different sound obviously and, you know, sound that I obviously very much loved because I always, I'm amazed by Fear of Man of All Time and I've always been a big fan of any sort of progressive, you know, mixture of rocks that I love long songs. In fact, Roads to Madness is probably in my top 10 all time favorite songs. Certainly my favorite Queen's Rite song, although they have a million great songs. So yeah, but I liked the way the EP sounded. Like I said, I loved it. I mean, I played in the store constantly. We sold, no, we probably sold 150 of them. That's why I felt so bad when I left the show. Years later, I became pretty good friends with those guys when they were out touring with Metallica because I was on a bunch of dates. And I think one night I finally, you know, after a couple of adult beverages brought up, remember that show you did at the Country Club? And they go, oh, yeah. I think they did one of their worst shows ever. And I go, yeah, I was there. It was pretty bad. But that was the only time I saw them when they were amazing. I was there for a while. Yeah. I should have mentioned, I wasn't clear about this. There are the R on tour Queens, right? Playing the EP and the warning complete back to front. And they're also touring, of course, with Armored St. They're opening up. This is probably one of the best packages, I think, in 2024 as a fan. That's what I think. So this is what we got out of our interviews over the years with Queens, right? From their EP, they signed to a six album deal, Brian. Is that unheard of on a major label, a six album deal? What do you make out of something like that? Well, you know, that was kind of the time when, you know, the majors were getting involved in metal, obviously. So and that Queens, right? EP, like, set fire to the world. I mean, everybody was like, oh, my God, who is this man? This is amazing. So it didn't surprise me necessarily. I mean, that's a long deal for back then, obviously. But I think that what was happening then was all the major labels were starting to get involved. You know, Armored St being one of the early ones to get signed as well. And so all the major labels were getting into it. And they were all battling each other to sign all these bands that were hot on the metal scene at the time. And Queens, where I was absolutely one of those bands. And they're also coming from Seattle. And, you know, there's obviously this is way before the grunge scene happened. But Seattle, you know, had quite a part, a bunch of other stuff, even though Hart was originally from Vancouver. I don't want to upset all you Canadians up there. Well, no, no, actually, they half the band was from Vancouver. Well, the sisters were from Seattle. Yes. Yeah. But, but so they had, you know, so they had a, you know, Seattle had a pretty good reputation of that. I just think it was really all the labels were battling to sign the band. And, you know, when everybody's like upping the ante and so, hey, here's going to be a guaranteed long term deal. And those guys were also, you know, very, very smart guys. And, you know, they knew business. They knew how things run. They weren't, you know, they were young, but they weren't as naive as a lot of bands were. So I think they knew going in kind of what they wanted. So they, you know, they ended up quite, quite an amazing deal. And it obviously worked out very well for everybody involved. Yeah. Yeah. Alan, the songs and Brian, the songs that, you know, when we talked to Michael Wilton, you know, he was telling us that they're 18, 19 years old, maybe even 20 years old. The maturity in these songs, the structure, you know, sometimes it takes bands like 10 or 15 years to reach that level of songwriting. But they were right at the start. When you listen to songs like, you know, take hold of the flame and force and M one, five, six, the lyrics are mature. The musicianship was mature and Jeff Tate was just on fire. Yeah. They, I mean, it's an amazing record. Like I said, I had heard obviously, you know, seeing them open two shows for deal. I had heard some of the songs. It's not all of it was, was completely amazing. And then getting the record, obviously I was completely blown away by, by how great it sounded. And yeah, the lyrics and everything. I mean, like I said, I became friends with those guys and Jeff is a very, very intelligent guy, very smart. All those guys were, it was a lot different for me, you know, hanging around with metal bands, you know, they're all good guys and, you know, all very young at the time. But those guys were definitely a little more cerebral, I guess, is probably a word to use because you, you know, you would talk about them, not just about music and girls and whatever else, you know, also, you know, talk about world, the fair, you know, a whole bunch of stuff that you don't normally talk about with metal bands. So they were, they were really sharp guys, even at that young age. So you can see why, how those records would be even more mature as well. Yeah. Alan? Yeah, I mean, you know, A, there's not a bad song on here. And the maturity level, like Brian was saying, I mean, you take the break in, in before the storm or the outro to on force, leading into deliverance. I mean, that's mature writing that we weren't seeing that for a lot of bands back then. And this was their first full EP. I mean, no matter how many bars you play, and apparently they weren't all that together with Jeff kind of flip flopping between bands that much before. So you look at other bands like Rayman or never together for quite some time, you can see the maturity of the writing compared to, you know, some bands that may be only hit it on their third or fourth album. So, yeah, and this was an American band too. That's the big thing. And, you know, American bands being, becoming something because this was, you know, a while Slayer and Metallica and you know, the big four bands were happening. You know, Queensborough kind of jumped them a little bit in terms of getting a big deal and putting out a record that became a big thing even before a lot of those bands really did. So, and especially that type of sound as well. Yeah. I was going through our interviews. We did so many interviews with either Jeff or Queenswright or Todd or, you know, Michael Wilton, Eddie Jackson. There was two mixes for this album. Basically there was one mix that the record company was kind of pushing on them versus the original mix that they had and the band apparently wasn't too happy with the, let's say the label mix. We'll call it. And it was actually a different sequence where NM-156 and FORCE was the first two songs and no sanctuary and so on. So it was actually two track listings. The original one and the one that came out. They were way over budget. They felt at times the producer who was James Guthrie from Pink Floyd, I believe or actually not him. It was the guy who was mastering it. They felt that they were sort of closing the door on them. They wouldn't let them in on the mastering or the sound of what it would sound like. They wanted to have more creative control even at a young age, which is a lot to say. You know, I think even King Diamond felt that way about Abigail, not Abigail, sorry about Melissa and the second album. Don't break the oath. He felt like, you know, the producer, he had a vision, right? But he wasn't allowed to sort of participate in that vision with whoever was mixing the album at the time. So those are some cool, fun facts. Jeff Tate, I asked him, what was that spoken word on Road to Madness? What are you saying there? Because the lyrics don't have them. They don't identify them. And he goes, I wrote them down. I did my part and then I tossed it and I'll never know what those words were. So it sounds loud. Oops. Also, NM156, I was reading online and I don't know if this is true or not. I think we should ask the band one day, Alan. They said that it's about computers sort of taking over one world government, social control, social population control. But NM156 was like a lottery ticket that the guy who was actually at the controls, his number was up for termination. So I don't know if that's just chat, chat boards online, talking about lyrics, assuming. But when you kind of think about that and you read the lyrics, it kind of makes sense. Well, you're not going to get a lot out of Jeff in terms of what all these lyrics mean necessarily because I would always bug him. We're hanging out on the road like, hey, what's this about? I suppose he might give me a story. And he's like, yeah, you know, you get little things here and there. But I'll not get it. A lot of songwriters are like, look, these lyrics mean something to me. It's going to mean something completely different to you. And you decide, especially with mind crime, you decide the story. And I think that way, even going all the way back to warning where, yeah, songs like NM156 and Warning and that even Roads to Madness. You can kind of see what's happening there and you get a picture of it. But you never know your vision of it. It's probably a bit different than even Jeff's vision of it. And I think he likes it that way. Yeah, I agree. Well, I mean, it's got to be a little loose, right? So the fans could also incorporate their own imagination in the songs, right? And that's the beauty of it all. Sure. But it's interesting with lyricists because some of them will be very open about, you know, what it's about. And I was influenced by this and this was about another guy. And other ones will be like, you know, hey, I wrote it. And like I said, it means one thing to me. It could mean something different to you. And there's no wrong answer anywhere. We also, when we talked to the guys in Queens, right? What happened was Michael Wilton, DeGarmo and Jeff Tate, they lived together, right? So that's where they were recording a lot of the music together. And the rest of the guys weren't living together. So they didn't get a chance to participate in the early years as much as they would have liked to. The point that I'm getting to is Michael Wilton, the quiet guy who's written maybe six out of the eight songs or nine songs or how many songs we have in this album. Nine songs. So he's wrote, I think like right now in his, what, six? He co-wrote six songs. Yeah, the warning he co-wrote. Deliberancy wrote, you know, N.M. 156. He contributed to that one as well. Before the storm, Child of Fire, and Rose to Madness. So I mean, that's quite a few. I think there's only a couple that he didn't get credit for. Fans always say, I want DeGarmo back. I want DeGarmo back. I get it. But at the same time, they never seem to speak about Michael Wilton's contribution. You know, it was just as much as DeGarmo's at the time. But I think, you know, to put in a quick plug for their new record, which is phenomenal, by the way. That's where you really see, you know, Michael Wilton shine. Is this new record? I mean, I don't, I even, I saw them in, they put this festival in Cuba. So I asked Michael afterwards. I go, because I mean, honestly, you know, I mean, they've written a lot of good records over the years, really nothing like the early days. And to me, this new record stands up to anything they did in the early days. It's just an unbelievable record. I was asking Michael, like, what, what happened? He's like, COVID. So this is angry COVID record would make sense because, you know, a lot of people wrote some really great music there. But yeah, he's a, you know, he, he doesn't get as much credit probably as he should for being an instrumental writer in the band. And now, you know, the band pretty much in terms of the writing of the song. It's hard. Yeah. 100%. Here we go. Look at this hit parader 1984, right after the EP, that article. Can you see that? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. There you go. I was just looking at one here that they were talking about hit parader just as this album was being released. Ryan, here's one for you. There we go. Look at a young day. Look. That is photo. That is the most iconic picture that has lived in everybody's memories. Right. We were kids, right? You know, the interesting thing too about the Queens right, about the warning is that it was as, as far as I remember, it was pretty much universally loved even by the critics, even in, in Europe and, you know, London and, and where they, you know, the music press is notoriously not liking a lot of bands. But I don't remember it really that record getting any bad reviews anywhere. And, you know, the big, bigger magazines like hit parader. I don't know. I can't remember. Rolling Stone might have, but who knows? Ryan, when, when you had to put ads like, I mean, did you have to work with the magazines to get stuff like this? No, you know, the good thing back, especially in those days is everybody was running all those magazines were all metalheads. So they get it. So, you know, you obviously give them whatever they need in terms of access to the band and, you know, promo photos and all that sort of stuff into the music. But they're all, they're all fans. So, you know, you don't really, there certainly were bands that, or labels that probably, you know, did something somewhere to get a certain band more publicity than others, but ultimately the fans know. I mean, you know, if the band's good, it's good. If there's not, it's not. And especially back in those days, it was, they, everybody loved the music. So it wasn't that hard to get press. Like today, the metalheads sort of are in the infrastructure of the industry. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah. And especially with everything that happened, you know, with, you know, just the music industry in general and, you know, people getting in and out, especially who battle. It's like, if you're, pretty much, if you're in any part of the industry at this point, you're going to be a fan. Yeah. No, I mean, back when this was released, to go back to the Brian's point, I mean, there was so much music in 84, right? We had to chose from, you know, being what, 16 years older that time, not, not even having a job yet to choose wisely. And my friend had bought it before me and he said, Hey, there's a poster inside. I said, well, there's a poster. I'm going to go get it. This is what he meant by a poster. What is this? Photos on the inner sleeve. I was a little disappointed when I didn't find a poster inside, but man, I wasn't disappointed with the album at all. So there it is. This is the original one in 1984 or two. And I guess we'll close off on Queens right, Alan, your three favorite songs off this album. I mean, take hold of the flame. I like before the storm and I think the piece, the resistance, I got to, I got to agree with Brian is the road to madness. I mean, the more I listen, even today, I listened to it a couple of days ago. You can't believe how mature and progressive and it has everything in it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like that black Sabbath, you know, the song black Sabbath, you know, it's slow. And then at the end it sort of picks up tempo. It sort of got that same sort of vibe. How about you, Brian? Okay. Before the storm, sorry, road to madness. What other two would you pick? And then 156 for sure. I love that song. And then it gets difficult because it's like three or four to choose from. So I'm going to pick in force. In force. I love that. I actually listened to this record even before they announced this tour. I was flying somewhere and just got into a Queens right mode and listen to. Warning. Rage border and my crime back to back to back. Which was interesting. But I had forgotten about some of these songs. Cause I hadn't listened to the record probably for a minute other than, you know, road to madness or something coming popping up on my, my. Music on my, my car on my iPod. But yeah, in force was, I mean the whole record's good, but I kind of forgot how good that song is. So I'll throw that one. Yeah. You know, you know, deliverance, no sanctuary. They can all be named, right? Yeah. There's no wrong answer. Warning. Yeah. And this album continues with the whistle or Jeff whistles on no sanctuary and he continues on rage further with on the last track. I would agree with you in force. It's like a deep cut in a way. You know, it's just, it's just a beautiful track and then 156 because it's so creative and it's so futuristic. And it applies to today in a sense, right? And Rhodes to madness is, you know, that big epic track. Um, any last words on this album, Alan? No, five stars, right? You know, five out of five. What more can we say? It's, you know, I said that and then them being creams, right? Then raise your forwarder kind of goes in a little bit of a different direction. And they've, they've done that their whole career. I mean, Were you happy with rage forwarder Brian, when it came out? It was like a little bit of a departure from traditional heavy metal at the time. You know what? I actually loved it when it came out. I loved it because I felt they were, it was kind of in their DNA, so to speak, that they would kind of go in that direction a little bit. So I love the record. I think it was a phenomenal record. I mean, Noy Rick Al is brilliant and, you know, it's not as heavy obviously as, as warning was or the EP was, but I loved it. I thought every song on there was really good. I do remember when it came out that some of the hardcore fans were like, Oh, it's not heavy enough, but I thought their songs were great. And, you know, there's some phenomenal stuff on there. So I mean, I got no problem with that. I love that record. I think, I think all three of those first three records and including the EP were all masterful. And I don't have any, I don't have any problems with the three. I would agree with you. I actually listened to all three of them as well for the preparation for Saturday. I listened to the first three albums and man, I'm getting excited and hats off to Todd Lattori. I love Jeff Tate. Don't get me wrong, but hats off to Todd Lattori from the videos I've seen and we've seen him also before. He is singing them like the way they were recorded, you know, in that same sort of standard tuning, the same way they were recorded. He's not, you know, he's not faking it. He's not dialing it in. And that's not an easy feat at all that, you know, I dare any vocalist to pull that off night after night. So hats off to Todd. Yeah. He's a talented guy and also one of the nicest people on the planet. Yeah. All right. Let's talk a little. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've seen rage for order tour creams, right? I've seen the, you know, empire tour. I've seen the operation, mine crime too and a few other tours in there. But man, this will be my first time to experience John Bush and the boys armored saint and I'm looking forward to it. Like Jimmy said, what a, what a package. Ryan, first time you heard lessons, it's lessons well learned, right? From their EP. Well, so here's my story with armored saint. So there was a publication called BAM, which was a very music magazine, but it was, it was throughout the entire state of California. So they had won some sort of battle of the band. So they had a full page ad in BAM. I had never seen or heard from them before, but they, this full page ad, these guys and leather and spikes. I'm like, oh my God, this looks amazing. So there was a phone number on there. So I called the phone number and somebody answered. I said, hey, you know, is anybody from armored saint there? And they said, yeah, somebody, I talked to somebody, I think, I think it was John, but it also might have been guns where I can't remember exactly. But, but I said, hey, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I have this regular level metal blade and I saw this ad. I'd love to, you know, go to the band and, you know, do these guys have any music? And they said, well, we don't really have anything yet. And we're, that show's going to get canceled. We can't do anything for a while because our bass player hurt his hand. And the story goes unlike the story in the dirt, by the way, by Motley Kroger, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Joey was in a band with Tommy Lee and they played a show, I believe up in Mammoth Mountain or something up in the snowy mountains and they were coming back and Tommy had a BZ, which is a two-seater. So Joey was in the back and the trunk was kind of a glass. It wasn't really a trunk. It was like a back of the car. And, and they got into an accident and Joey went flying through the window and really severely hands, always hands. So he didn't, they didn't play for like six months. So finally six months comes around and I got a phone call and said, hey, you know, we've got a show now at the troubadour. We'd love for you to come see us. It's true, but I'm just blown away. I hadn't heard anything. I heard no demos, no music, no nothing. And I just walked in. I was like, whoa, this is, again, you're talking about mature bands. Like, like here's a band that was ready to go. Like they looked amazing. John sounded phenomenal. Like they were like, they were the whole package. So I immediately said, we have to do something. So, so that became the, the EP. And, and then they went on to Joey Vera gets money somehow through the insurance, right? For his recovery. Yeah. I think, yeah, I believe, yeah, I believe that actually what's what paid for the EP. Left over. Which we did five songs and we none of us can really remember why we didn't put all five out. The only thing I can vaguely remember was that this was in the days where these three song EPs were like a big thing. It was huge in the new wave of British heavy metal, which is kind of my guidance for everything I was doing back then. So I think we were just like, well, let's just do three songs and we'll do something else for the other three. Not thinking that they were going to explode so quickly. But, but yeah, but I was, I don't, I don't think I was actually in the studio for those. But when I got the tapes, obviously I was blown away. I'm like, oh my God, this stuff is incredible. And, you know, we were talking about great vocals of Jeff Tate and Todd Latour, but John Bush, he still has pipes. We're all getting older. We're all losing hair. But John's voice is, I would dare say as powerful today as it was when he first started. Yeah. He's Benjamin Button in terms of vocals. He still sounds so great. You guys are in for a tree because they're, they're from what I've heard on this tour. I mean, both bands really are on fire. But, but yeah, I've been hearing nothing but great things about St. And John's just so great. When, when, so you released the EP on metal blades, right? You released the EP on metal blade records, then they signed to a label, right? Then he signed to him, Chris Ilias, right? Yeah, Chris. Yeah. Chris Ilias records came. Yeah. Chris Ilias records came and, and, and it heard, you know, the EP and came to a couple of shows and they wanted to sign them. And, you know, I was, I was happy for them. It's like, you know, at that point, it was just really one man band. It was just me doing it all myself. So I didn't really, even at that point have any, wasn't sure if this was going to be a real thing or not. So then getting signed to a major label for me was great and really a huge boost for metal blade as a whole because they were really great about every interview they did and all the big magazines mentioning how we started out with this, you know, metal blade records. So that got us a lot of notoriety that, that we probably never would have had if they hadn't gone on there, which, you know, helped because back then it was just like I said, just me doing it in my mom's garage and not a lot of money. I love that. I love that, man. I just love publicity was, was very helpful. So that, so that, that definitely got the word out for us and that helped. But they did come back home, right? They came back home. Some blood salvation. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that was the one kind of bummer about the 80s with all major labels. Just everybody started signing and, you know, I'm, I'm the same as early on in terms of getting signed. But then everybody gets signed and unfortunately, you know, those guys were young and the big issue I have with that first record is that, you know, if you would have seen them live back then, they said it's so much heavier and so much better. And the raw tracks of that record were awesome. But the mix just kind of sucked the life out of it. Well, it was really good. It wasn't what it was really meant to be. And I did three records with Chrysalis and kind of broke up. But they had done all these amazing demos with Dave Pritchard before he had passed away and Dave passed away from leukemia right around the time they, they got dropped by Chrysalis. So it was kind of the band was pretty much done there. Like Dave passed away and they're off of Chrysalis so we're pretty much done. But they had all these demos. So I kind of begged the band to like, look, we can't let this music die. Like we have to record it no matter what. Like, you know, you don't, you don't have to, you know, reform and become a real band again. But we got to at least get these songs done. And at that point, we had a relationship with Warner Brothers and, you know, I was able to get Dave Jurden, who did Alison Chains and Chains Addiction to produce it. Then Q-Prime, you know, who managed Metallica and four million other people came on board. So it kind of became a real thing. And they came back to us and they've been back with us ever since. It's that vision that you've seen them play live. You've seen the energy they had. You just always had that vision. How do you transport that onto a music record? And there was, you know. Yeah. Sad thing. This actually does that, right? That thing about about Symbol Salvation was just, I believe that if that record when it came out in 1989, it would have been massively huge. But it came out in 1991 when pretty much everybody was like, okay, metal's gone and now it's all gonna be the grunge stuff. So we, as well as it did, we all thought it was gonna do a whole lot better, but it was just the circumstance of the time. Brian, amazing stories. I love hearing them all. Yeah. So on that note, Allen, do you have any closing remarks? Just want to thank Brian, like great stories and thanks for, you know, having Armored Saint still around live and kicking live music and we can't wait to see them. This is gonna be a show that's one of the ones we were looking for two months. 19th in Toronto, then Montreal, the 20th Kitchener, 21st, then they go to Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. And all the dates are listed. And when they're playing together and where they're playing apart, that's Armored Saint and Queen's Reich on the Origins Tour. Just go check out the listings on their websites. Brian, thank you so much. We will and thank everybody for tuning in.