{"id":1728,"date":"1985-11-01T00:00:42","date_gmt":"1985-11-01T00:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=1728"},"modified":"2012-06-10T01:01:53","modified_gmt":"2012-06-10T01:01:53","slug":"feature-razor-mf14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-razor-mf14\/","title":{"rendered":"RAZOR – Under The Blade (MF14, 1985) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

RAZOR – Under The Blade<\/strong><\/span><\/span>
\nBernard Doe<\/span>
\nMetal Forces, Issue 14 (1985)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Razor (l-r): Dave Carlo, M-Bro, Sheepdog and Mike Campagnolo<\/em><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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While a majority of bands struggle to produce an album of any significance once every twelve months or so, Canada\u2019s Razor have released two albums in 1985 \u2013 Executioner\u2019s Song<\/em><\/a> and Evil Invaders<\/em> \u2013 that should take pride of place in any speed metal fans\u2019 record collection.<\/p>\n

But whilst Razor are certainly coming up with the goods, it seems the band are failing to get half the recognition that befalls, and quite rightly, the likes of Metallica, Slayer<\/a>, Exodus and fellow compatriots Exciter. So to help put matters right I recently spoke to guitarist Dave Carlo and began by asking him how it all started? \u201cThe band came together in October 1983. I formed it with our bass player Mike Campagnolo and \u2018M-Bro\u2019 (Mike Embro) our drummer. We started out playing original material, but without a vocalist and didn\u2019t get \u2018Sheepdog\u2019 (Stace McLaren) until April 1984. This was just two or three weeks before we recorded our Armed And Dangerous<\/em><\/a> mini-LP, which was self-financed.\u201d<\/p>\n

How many copies of Armed And Dangerous<\/em> have you sold? \u201cWe completely sold out the 1,200 we pressed up, and then we were approached by Attic Records.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey started to take an interest in us when they heard that Armed And Dangerous<\/em> was selling well. But when they came and saw us live, they wasn\u2019t sure if they wanted to take a chance on a band as heavy as us, because it was before they launched their all-metal Viper label and were looking at Razor as a band on a large scale commercial potential, so they turned us down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was in October \u201984. But when they saw us support Anvil, the following January, they were impressed enough to offer us a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your first album for Viper, Executioner\u2019s Song<\/em>, included four numbers from Armed And Dangerous<\/em>. Why was this? \u201cWell, we supplied Viper with a demo of 11 totally new songs. But they couldn\u2019t make up their mind whether to release a totally new album or include some of the best songs from Armed And Dangerous<\/em>, seeing that there was obviously so many people who hadn\u2019t heard it. So in the end they decided to remix all 18 songs, including the seven from Armed And Dangerous<\/em>, and we picked which out of the songs we wanted to release.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why has your latest album Evil Invaders<\/em> been released so soon after Executioner\u2019s Song<\/em>? \u201cExecutioner\u2019s Song<\/em> has sold over 25,000 copies and so far it\u2019s only been given domestic release in Canada and in Europe (through Roadrunner Records), although right now they\u2019re negotiating for an American and Japanese release. But that album was put together very inexpensively and Viper thought they had already got a lot of mileage out of it, so they asked us to record Evil Invaders.<\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t you originally going call the new album Thrashdance<\/em>? \u201cYes we were, because we thought that title would draw a lot of attention to the album. But we had this graphic artist in to design the cover, who\u2019s done album covers for Rush in the past, and he took a look at the track list and said he couldn\u2019t come up with a concept for Thrashdance<\/em> and suggested Evil Invaders<\/em> would be a more suitable title. So we agreed with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dave Carlo<\/em><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Now I remember when Armed And Dangerous<\/em> was released, that you stressed to me that Razor wasn\u2019t a speed \/ thrash band. But on the evidence of Evil Invaders<\/em>, you can\u2019t be described as anything but thrash? \u201cYes, you\u2019re right; we\u2019ve definitely developed into a thrash metal band. But the whole concept of Razor at the beginning was to be nothing more than a very heavy metal band. I wouldn\u2019t call Razor trendsetters by any means. We like to take an idea that we enjoy and work with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sort of music we heard that first got us into the whole material was like Ace Of Spades<\/em> (1980) by Mot\u00f6rhead and then Metallica\u2019s Kill \u2019Em All<\/em><\/a> (1983). I started to draw these influences into my material and we decided, inevitably, that this was the direction that we wanted to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then you would agree with my comments in my review of Evil Invaders<\/em> that the album has Slayer stamped all over it? \u201cYes I would. We all listen to a lot of Slayer. We like the speed and the fact that they play with a great amount of tightness, which is very important. They also set the trend at playing at the ultimate speed with real power. There\u2019s a helluva lot of talent behind Slayer, and I guess we try to mould our self in the same way, with the exception that we are definitely not a black metal band. You can tell by our lyrical content that Razor are more into the typical heavy metal topics like aggression and head-banging.\u201d<\/p>\n

You mean more street level subjects? \u201cYeah, that\u2019s right. More people can relate to that than all this Satanical stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about on the live front. Have you played many gigs? \u201cWe haven\u2019t played outside Canada yet. We\u2019ve done about thirty five shows, but there\u2019s not a lot of work for thrash metal bands like us in Canada. Hopefully though we may be touring the US soon with Zn\u00f6white, and of course there\u2019s nothing more we\u2019d like to do than to go over to Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I interviewed Exciter earlier this year, they were more or less turning their backs on Canada because of the poor support they were getting back at home. \u201cThat\u2019s right. I remember that interview and to a certain extent I agree with them. You see, of the 25,000 copies that we\u2019ve sold of Executioner\u2019s Song<\/em> only 2,500 of them have been sold here in Canada, which is only 10%. But even so, we still have a loyal following in Toronto, Montreal and Qu\u00e9bec.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also a lot of other bands, especially in Toronto, who are trying to break out; bands like Death Militia and Slaughter who are at the stage where Razor were eighteen months ago. The problem here though, is that there\u2019s just not enough thrashers because Canada has too small a population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, is there anything else you want to add? \u201cWell, Viper are expecting to double the sales figures of Executioner\u2019s Song<\/em> with Evil Invaders<\/em>, and I personally feel that it\u2019s far superior to anything we\u2019ve done before. But a lot of the time I get the feeling that a lot of the hardcore fans either haven\u2019t heard of us or they\u2019re not paying enough attention to what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe they think we\u2019re over-rated or something? But I\u2019d like to say that this is not true \u2013 buy Evil Invaders<\/em> and see what you think for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah, I\u2019ll second that. It\u2019s about time Dave Carlo and co started getting some more acclaim for their endeavours. There\u2019s always room at the top for the best and in my opinion Razor are a band who deserve to be there.<\/p>\n

Interview taken from Metal Forces, Issue 14 (1985)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAZOR – Under The Blade Bernard Doe Metal Forces, Issue 14 (1985) Razor (l-r): Dave Carlo, M-Bro, Sheepdog and Mike Campagnolo While a majority of bands struggle to produce an album of any significance once every twelve months or so, Canada\u2019s Razor have released two albums in 1985 \u2013 Executioner\u2019s Song and Evil Invaders \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-razor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1728"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5867,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions\/5867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}