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Vocalist Jon Howard of Canadian thrash metal band Threat Signal hooked up to give an insight into their highly anticipated album Vigilance due out later this year.
The band takes influences from Soilwork, Fear Factory, Pantera, Meshuggah and Devin Townsend. Threat Signal has also worked in the past with producer Christian Olde Wolbers of the band Fear Factory.
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After some line up changes, how did the present band members come together? | |
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We’ve been building the new line up since before the release of Under Reprisal in 2006. Threat Signal was never a solid line up even during the recording process of the first album. There were always weak members who didn’t last for various reasons. As each previous member quit, we would audition new members through audition tapes, then in person. Usually they would be huge fans of the band, so their playing styles are very similar. We completed the new line up in August 2007. So we’ve actually toured the first album more with the new line up than with the original. This is the strongest we’ve ever been and the longest we’ve been a full band. We are here to stay! | |
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What made you decide on Nuclear Blast over any other label? | |
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Nuclear Blast was the most enthusiastic out of any other label. We knew they would work hard to promote and get our music to the fans. That’s the most important thing to us, people hearing and enjoying the music. | |
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What is your overall vision for Threat Signal? | |
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Ultimately the goal is to play music, have fun, and be able to pay the bills. If we can make a living from doing what we love, there is nothing else in life that can beat that. We always set our sights high and strive to be the best, so hopefully all our hard work will pay off in the future. | |
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How would you compare/describe the new album ‘Vigilance’ against ‘Under Reprisal’. | |
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Basically taking all the elements of Under Reprisal and pushing them further. Under Reprisal was a learning process for us, finding ourselves and musicians and writers. Since then we’ve established an identity, we’ve been able to push our skills to the next level. Try to imagine an album with even more intense riffs and melodies than the first record, that’s Vigilance. | |
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When will Vigilance be released? | |
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Europe release is August 28th. North America is September 8th | |
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When you are writing, how do you pull it all together? | |
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We still continue with the same formula as when writing the first album. We all work with a program called guitar pro where we can tab all our ideas and have it play back in midi form. So when a band member has an idea, they tab it out, then send it to everyone else, then we all throw our ideas in and see where it goes. We then sit down and record demos with actual guitars and hammer out the kinks. We make sure to do a ton of pre production, recording every song in full as a demo before hitting the studio. | |
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Where is Threat Signal heading with regard to lyrical content on the new album? | |
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Its all stemmed from my personal views and experiences in life. I have to be motivated about an issue or topic to write about, not just throw a bunch of words together that rhyme. I touch on personal experiences along with political and world issues. But almost every song no matter how brutal the lyrical content, I try to send a positive message. I sing about strength and holding your head up high, being true to yourself. | |
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You are introducing new songs in the present headlining tour. How have the new songs been received so far? | |
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The reactions have been completely amazing… Its seems as if the crowd already knows the songs because they are rocking out so hard. There are a lot of killer grove parts in the new material which make it almost impossible not to bang your head. | |
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Your studio diary is fun to watch and gives the fans a great personal insight. Who was the main person behind putting that together? | |
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We all take turns filming, however our drummer Norm has been putting these videos together for youtube.com. He keeps the clips fast and hilarious. We don’t like to hide who we are and act serious all the time just because we are ‘metal’ These videos show just how much fun we have. | |
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How important is it to you to stay connected to the fans? | |
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That’s one of the most important things about being in music! If it wasn’t for the fans, we wouldn’t be able to survive doing what we are doing. We take time out of every day to chat with fans over the net or just hang out in person. There is a 99% chance you’ll meet us at every show, cause we always hang in the crowd. | |
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Any plans for UK dates? | |
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We are talking about some dates right now, but nothing is confirmed. Keep an eye on our myspace for dates soon! | |
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Looking to the future, what else can we look forward to from Threat Signal after this tour, and for the rest of the year? | |
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A loooot more touring. We are also working on regular you tube video updates, and possibly a DVD. We’ll have a new music video being released soon as well. |
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I’d like to thank vocalist Jon for taking the time out to do this text interview. To check out more visit www.myspace.com/threatsignal Keep It Loud!
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