{"id":22290,"date":"2012-01-21T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=22290"},"modified":"2015-02-07T23:25:38","modified_gmt":"2015-02-07T23:25:38","slug":"feature-cirith-ungol-01-12-pt1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-cirith-ungol-01-12-pt1\/","title":{"rendered":"CIRITH UNGOL – Kings Of The Dead, Part One (January 2012) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

CIRITH UNGOL – Kings Of The Dead<\/strong><\/span>
\nAnthony Morgan<\/span>
\nJanuary 2012<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cirith Ungol 1984 (l-r): Tim Baker, Robert Garven, Michael \u201cFlint\u201d Vujea and Jerry Fogle<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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\nRoughly translating as \u2018pass of the spider\u2019 from the fictional language Sindarin, the name of Californian heavy metal group Cirith Ungol was lifted from the Lord Of The Rings<\/em> series, a trilogy of fantasy novels written by English professor J.R.R. Tolkien and published between 1954-55. Located in the western mountains of Mordor, Cirith Ungol is guarded by the spider Shelob who attacked Frodo Baggins according to the fable. 1972 was the year of the metal outfit\u2019s formation. <\/p>\n

\u201cGreg (Lindstrom, guitars until 1982) and I were in a band in English class in around seventh grade,\u201d Robert Garven remembers, drummer and co-founder of Cirith Ungol. \u201cIt was kind of an outdoor building and we\u2019d always meet before class, talking about music and stuff like that. We talked about starting a band because he was starting to play guitar and I had always wanted to play drums, so we said \u2018Hey, let\u2019s get together and start a band.\u2019 We knew this guy Jerry Fogle (guitars until 1987) who was a friend of ours and he was already playing guitar, so we said \u2018Well okay, let\u2019s get together as a band with him.\u2019 In English class at the time the required book was Lord Of The Rings<\/em> by J.R.R. Tolkien, and so that\u2019s what kind of gave us our first taste of fantasy literature. That\u2019s where we got our name from, but actually we first started off as a band called Titanic. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had another guy in the band, Pat Galligan who went on to be in a band named Angry Samoans who were kind of a punk band. I can skip over this briefly though because back then we were playing a lot of Beatles covers and stuff like that, but Greg, me, and Jerry really wanted to go in a heavier direction. Greg would always turn me onto albums; I remember I would go over to his house, and he gave me Climbing!<\/em> (1970) by Mountain when it first came out. He goes \u2018Man, you\u2019ve gotta listen to this record.\u2019 I took it home and I played it, and I was like \u2018Wow, this is really great.\u2019 The whole time we were in this band Titanic, we were playing covers and doing some school dances and stuff like that. Me, Jerry, and Greg wanted to split away, and so at one point we said to Pat \u2018Hey, this isn\u2019t working out. I think we\u2019re gonna split away and start our own band.\u2019 That\u2019s how Cirith Ungol was formed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started in seventh grade, so we had five more years of school,\u201d Rob continues. \u201cWe were playing places, and this is where I\u2019m gonna put in a shout out to my parents because my mom\u2019s really sick and not doing so well right now, and my dad passed away around ten years ago. We bounced around from parents\u2019 to parents\u2019 houses because no-one would let us play at theirs, and finally we ended up at my parents\u2019 house. They let us practice in my older sister\u2019s bedroom for like maybe I would say seven years at least, from pretty much the time when the band started until we came out with our first album (Frost And Fire<\/em>, April 1980). If it wasn\u2019t for my parents I\u2019m not sure whether we would\u2019ve had a band because we started off playing at Jerry\u2019s house, and his mom yelled at us that this was too loud. We then started playing at Greg\u2019s house, and Greg\u2019s mom came in one day screaming at us going \u2018Turn that off \u2013 you guys have to leave.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year we\u2019d get bigger amplifiers and we\u2019d start playing louder and louder, and so finally we ended up at my parents\u2019 house. Because the neighbours next door were related to us they couldn\u2019t say anything, so we put a big board in the window and we actually had a really cool band room there. That\u2019s where a lot of the early songs on Servants Of Chaos<\/em> (September 2001) that just got re-released \u2013 \u2018Last Laugh\u2019, \u2018Hype Performance\u2019 \u2013 some of Tim\u2019s unbelievable singing on there too… That was all recorded in that bedroom at my parents\u2019 house, and so we\u2019re going to school. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re writing new songs, we\u2019re trying to do stuff. The reason it took so long to get a record out was because we were sending in demo tapes to record companies, and no-one would ever respond. We were trying to set up jobs in LA, and it was really hard to set up jobs unless you were on a record label. It was really hard to play some of the big clubs so we would always play all these Battle Of The Bands \u2013 any concerts that we could set up, we tried to set up and play. What really started us off was \u2013 and this is where we hit the radar with our first album \u2013 we played a Battle Of The Bands, and I think we came in maybe third place. They gave us a $500 gift certificate for a local recording studio. We had never actually been in a real studio before, so we were like \u2018Wow, this is really cool.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a friend named Randy Jackson who had been injured in an oil field accident and almost broke his back. He got a little bit of money, and so he said he would actually pay for the production of our first album. We paid him back of course, but he loaned us some money to actually finish the recording and actually produce our first album, which we produced completely on our own and paid for. All that time went by and it seems like we weren\u2019t doing anything, but back then unless you were on a record label nothing happened. When we put out our first record there wasn\u2019t really anyone in Los Angeles at least that was doing that. Now right after we put out our record, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce<\/a>, Brian (Slagel) at Metal Blade, and all these guys started putting out their compilations and stuff, but to my knowledge \u2013 and I\u2019m not saying no-one before did it \u2013 when this new wave of independent heavy rock was coming out we were the first band in Los Angeles to actually record, produce, and release our first album.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Original vocalist Neal Beattie wasn\u2019t to feature on any of Cirith Ungol\u2019s four studio full-lengths, though recordings including Neal\u2019s vocals do exist. \u201cThere are a few songs,\u201d the sticksman confirms, laughing. \u201cHe was a great guy, and a great showman. As a matter of fact we played a couple of places, and this was when Iggy And The Stooges was coming out. He threatened to take his clothes off and stuff, and we were actually on the front page in the newspaper: \u2018Singer Threatens To Disrobe In Front Of Audience.\u2019 He was in the band for a while, and it\u2019s really kind of sad. I don\u2019t want to say he was a bad singer, because he wasn\u2019t. If you think Iggy (Pop) was a good singer then Neal was a good singer, but we were looking for something… We took ourselves very, very seriously, and a lot of people ask me this. The M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fces, the Ratts and all those hair bands, they were coming out after we put out our first record. To us, they were a joke. We thought of ourselves as a Deep Purple, a Black Sabbath<\/a>, and all those bands. Cactus, Budgie, Captain Beyond. These are the bands that we were listening to, all the serious rock bands were trying to stand on their music where the music was really important. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a box of some old cassettes though, and that\u2019s another story where the DVD came to fruition. We had a couple of videos of us, and you\u2019ve gotta remember this wasn\u2019t for MTV or any of that crap. With the video of us in Servants Of Chaos<\/em>, here\u2019s what happened. We\u2019re playing this club, and a guy had a video camera on a tripod up on a balcony. He goes \u2018If you pay me $20, I\u2019ll record your show,\u2019 so we bought him a VHS tape, gave it to him as well as $20. The camera had a little microphone on it, and like I mentioned, we were a pretty loud band. We always played really loud and so the video actually looked halfway decent, but the sound of it was just destroyed. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking through one of these boxes, and I think Tim (Baker, vocals) was over here that day. I was looking through a box, and I go \u2018My god, look \u2013 I think this is the actual mixing console tape off of that really bad video that we have.\u2019 We played it, and it turned out that it was. Brian said \u2018We wanna re-release Servants Of Chaos<\/em>, and we wanna put some other material on there.\u2019 I said \u2018We\u2019ve got this video, and now we have this tape.\u2019 Brian actually has a couple of other tapes, and they may come out \u2013 he talked about maybe re-releasing Frost And Fire<\/em> and King Of The Dead<\/em> (sophomore full-length, July 1984). We basically have two other videos. Neither one of them I\u2019m not sure are as good as the one on Servants Of Chaos<\/em>, but both of them are distinctly unusual because on the first one Greg and Jerry are playing together, and on the other one we\u2019re playing at the Roxy and it\u2019s actually a really cool show. We\u2019re hoping that if they re-release Frost And Fire<\/em> and King Of The Dead<\/em>, they might put a bonus DVD in there with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The departure of Neal Beattie paved the way for the addition of vocalist Tim Baker, who fronted Cirith Ungol until their May 1992 demise. \u201cI met them in high school,\u201d Tim recalls. \u201cI met Greg first and at the time he had patches and crap on his jacket and stuff like that, Blue \u00d6yster Cult and stuff \u2013 bands that I knew. I struck up a conversation with him, and he said \u2018I\u2019m in a metal band. you should come up and check us out.\u2019 I said \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s cool.\u2019 The first time I go up to Rob\u2019s house he hangs his head out of the window and screams \u2018Hey, it\u2019s up here,\u2019 so I go up there. Like Rob said, they practised in a bedroom. Full drum set, giant stacks. Greg, Jerry, and Rob playing in a bedroom full blast. I just got blown away the first time I went up there. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just mind-blowingly loud and great, so after that I started hanging out all the time and then me and Rob became really good friends. Greg ended up getting some recording equipment there to do demos and stuff, and Rob and I started playing around with it. After practice we\u2019d go in there and do vocals and just mess around and everything like that, and then we got serious doing it. It just evolved into that, and the whole time they were looking for a singer. Then they didn\u2019t have one so they tried a couple of people and this and that, and then things were going okay. I guess they decided to go with me. That was lucky for me, and that\u2019s how I got in there. At first I was doing sound for the band. Like Rob said, they\u2019d go out and play Battle Of The Bands and stuff like that, and they\u2019d be a three-piece. A lot of the time it would just be instrumental stuff, and I would learn the lines, do the mixing, and all that kind of stuff. It just evolved over time, and I\u2019m glad that it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot to plug this re-release, but a lot of people ask us why this came out,\u201d Rob chimes in. \u201cIn around 2000 or so Metal Blade Records was contacting me, going \u2018Do you guys have any other stuff? Are you guys gonna reform or anything?\u2019 We weren\u2019t really thinking about getting back together, but they said \u2018Do you have any other old tapes? Old stuff or anything?\u2019 Me and Greg looked at all of our stuff, and we had a bunch of original recordings. My theory was if we didn\u2019t put this out then this stuff was gonna get lost to history because a lot of the tapes were starting to deteriorate, especially the really good studio tapes. The really expensive tapes were actually starting to fall apart, and they actually had to be sent out to a lady who baked them in an oven like a cake which puts a kind of magnetic powder on the tapes. They ran them through the machine and put them onto a digital audio cassette, and if they hadn\u2019t done that those tapes would\u2019ve been lost forever. All that original stuff that Tim was talking about where we were experimenting around and singing… Like I said, the songs \u2018Hype Performance\u2019, \u2018Last Laugh\u2019 \u2013 those songs on Servants Of Chaos<\/em> \u2013 are ones that we did where our studio was actually a closet in the bedroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it was a four-track machine,\u201d Tim confirms. \u201cRobert and me would go for hours, and just do crazy vocal stuff. It was pretty awesome really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, I thought I sang some really good songs, but they never made it,\u201d Rob laments.<\/p>\n

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Cirith Ungol didn\u2019t cut an album for Metal Blade Records until the August 1986 issue of third outing One Foot In Hell<\/em>, though a demo version of \u2018Death Of The Sun\u2019 (a finished recording appeared on second outing King Of The Dead<\/em>) was included on June 1982 compilation Metal Massacre<\/em>. \u201cWe knew that Brian Slagel worked at a place called Oz Records down near Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley,\u201d the drummer discloses. \u201cHe goes \u2018I want to put out my own records and start my own record company.\u2019 We say \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s really cool,\u2019 and he goes \u2018Would you guys wanna be on it?\u2019 We said \u2018Yeah.\u2019 We had a song called \u2018Death Of The Sun\u2019, one of our demo songs. At the same time, we were finishing up production of our first album Frost And Fire<\/em>. He goes \u2018I know these guys who are importers and exporters, and maybe they would be interested in selling your record overseas.\u2019 We met up with these guys, and the company was called Greenworld. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we originally did was we\u2019d sell them 500 to a 1000 records, and then they\u2019d sell \u2019em. They were actually importing records into Europe, so they weren\u2019t a big record company but a distribution company. After a week they called back and said \u2018Can we have another 1000?,\u2019 so we sold quite a few records through \u2019em. They then finally came over one night \u2013 it was probably a bunch of bullshit and lies \u2013 and said \u2018We really wanna support the band, and take you guys onto the next level\u2019 and this and that, so we sold the rights off originally to this company Greenworld. At the same time Brian was coming out with his first Metal Blade record ever \u2013 Metal Massacre<\/em> \u2013 which we were on, and we always reflect back there, thinking \u2018What if we hadn\u2019t gone with these Greenworld guys, and maybe stuck with Brian?\u2019 Maybe we\u2019d actually be big and famous like Brian is now (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenworld would eventually morph into Enigma Records. \u201cAfter a while Greenworld got to the point where they were distributing a number of bands, so they said \u2018Let\u2019s turn ourselves into a kind of pseudo-record company,\u2019\u201d Tim explains. \u201cThat\u2019s when they changed over to Enigma. They were more kind of a semi-record company, but they were still kind of the same thing. They just had a different name so they could promote themselves as a record company. They didn\u2019t have the resources to promote us though. Like I said, they were more or less a distribution company and had a pipeline to just distribute stuff. They really had no idea what they were doing, to tell you the truth. We would\u2019ve been much better off if we had waited and signed with Metal Blade instead, but at the time that wasn\u2019t really rolling yet or anything. We just did what we felt we had to do at the time to get our record out there. I\u2019m sure that the company doesn\u2019t exist anymore, so that just tells you what kind of a good business model they had. All they wanted to do was have us hand them a finished product, and just more or less distribute it. They weren\u2019t really a record company, because they weren\u2019t promoting or anything like that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember this, and Tim will remember this too,\u201d Rob offers. \u201cThis is what they said: \u2018Instead of producing one or two records and hoping they\u2019ll make it we\u2019ll try to put out a 100 records, throw them against the wall, and see which ones stick.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s who they\u2019d throw the money at,\u201d Tim finishes. \u201cIt was kind of a bad deal, but it\u2019s just the way things were back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen King Of The Dead<\/em> came out I remember showing it to Brian, and Brian had actually started his label then,\u201d Rob reminisces. \u201cIt had some bands and it was kind of primitive, but he was still getting his first start. He looked at me and goes \u2018This should\u2019ve been on my label,\u2019 and I\u2019m thinking \u2018Probably, yeah.\u2019 At the time though, we didn\u2019t do that to cut him out or anything. We were just focused on trying to get up to the big time, and I gotta tell you this… If you read the Martin Popoff books on these bands (Ye Olde Metal<\/em>), with a lot of these bands that we worshipped like Trapeze or Captain Beyond or any of these early, heavy bands \u2013 Sir Lord Baltimore, Dust, or whoever \u2013 their stories are so much more depressing and sad than the story of our band it makes me feel good. Greg gave me this book for Christmas, and I said to Greg \u2018Thank you for giving me this book, because I feel seriously suicidally depressed over our whole band. After reading these stories about these bands I worshipped…\u2019 I saw Captain Beyond open for Black Sabbath at the Hollywood Bowl, and these guys are like Gods. I\u2019m reading in the book that they were so broke that they had to take turns eating meals like once a day or something.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the first band Enigma signed, and the second band they signed was M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce. I\u2019ve gotta clear up some stuff about this too… They actually had some guy from Grass Valley \u2013 it\u2019s a city up in northern California \u2013 and he spent around $300,000 or more promoting the band. When they got signed to Enigma, they were all like \u2018Wow, not only do we have a band here but we got a guy who\u2019s gonna spend a bunch of money on \u2019em.\u2019 Within a really short period of time though, the big record companies saw \u2018Well not only here\u2019s a band, but here is someone who\u2019s gonna promote \u2019em and pay that money\u2019 so they moved off to Elektra. From what we understand they actually never paid the guy back, and ripped the guy off who gave them a start. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can put every one of those bands in a hat, and I have little respect for any of them. Those hair bands were a joke. We played with Ratt, with all these creepy bands, and they were just disgusting. Not only that, they screwed us on the sound. Like I said, I\u2019m reading a book right now by Martin Popoff on all these old heavy metal bands that Greg gave me called Ye Olde Metal: 1968 To 1972<\/em>, and in there is Captain Beyond. As a matter of fact, I talked to him the other day. He told me that when he puts out the 1980 version of Ye Olde Metal<\/em> he\u2019s gonna put a Cirith Ungol section in there, but Captain Beyond said that they played the Hollywood Bowl with Alice Cooper. They screwed them on the sound and the lights, and that was our life story. Every time we opened up for a band, they\u2019d go \u2018You can use half the mixing board, and we\u2019ll give you three lights.\u2019 We\u2019re playing at a big concert or let\u2019s say a big club in Los Angeles, and you have half the sound and half the lights.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cGamesmanship sucked back in those days,\u201d Tim complains. \u201cIt\u2019s probably the same now, but everybody just had to make sure that you looked like shit so they could make themselves look a little bit better. That was just part of the games, but it didn\u2019t really bother us. We\u2019d just crank it up, and just blow their heads off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you.. Not a lot of good videos exist of us,\u201d Rob admits. \u201cThe one on the DVD is actually okay, but when our band was playing at its peak and when we were on our game, with any band we played with or at at any show we played we\u2019d just blow people away. I\u2019m not bragging and I\u2019m not just trying to be overly confident, but Tim\u2019s voice was like a razorblade. We always had giant amps so we were just blasting, and I\u2019d be beating my drums. I used to play drums so hard I\u2019d actually cut my hands, and I\u2019d have blood all over my drum set for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the material included on Cirith Ungol\u2019s aforementioned inaugural full-length \u2013 April 1980\u2019s Frost And Fire<\/em> \u2013 was composed by guitarist Greg Lindstrom. \u201cWe had this $500 from the Battle Of The Bands, and we actually came in third,\u201d Rob divulges. \u201cThere\u2019s a funny story to that. With the band that won, their amps blew up or something, so we loaned them an amp. It was primitive back in the 70s, and most of the other bands in town were pretty crappy. We actually had a couple of people that were good roadies, and even Tim was a roadie for a while. We played somewhere and I think we would\u2019ve came in first place, but we loaned one of our amps to this other band. Basically with Battle Of The Bands\u2019 back then, they wanted bands to play dances so that guys and girls could get together. This is like a beach town, so they wouldn\u2019t have a concert but a dance so some guy could make some money off of all the young kids in town. It\u2019s not like a prom but more like a dance, and everyone would show up drunk or get stoned or whatever and go dancing together. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously our music wasn\u2019t dance music, and this is where I\u2019ll throw in something that Tim can back up. We were playing one of these Battle Of The Bands or something, and some people were actually dancing to our music. I used to sing background vocals, and sometimes I would yell out something in my microphone. I remember yelling out at these guys in the crowd, going \u2018All you dancing fools sit down\u2019 or something like that. A lot of guys have been getting laughs at that over the years, but someone asked me recently in an interview \u2018How did you want your audiences to react?\u2019 I saw Black Sabbath at the Hollywood Bowl and Emerson, Lake And Palmer at Long Beach Arena, and with a lot of these big concerts the actual audiences were pretty much awestruck. People weren\u2019t dancing, and there was no headbanging. Back then a lot of people were smoking pot, so a lot of people were stoned. They were sitting in their seats almost like they were mesmerised by the music, almost as if you went to a symphony in concert. The fact that some people were almost dancing to our music was almost insulting to me. You wouldn\u2019t dance at a Beethoven symphony.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had this $500, and we borrowed money from our friends. We\u2019re thinking \u2018Okay, if we\u2019re gonna make it big we\u2019re gonna have to get some airplay and get signed to a big label,\u2019 because even on this independent label that we were on they were never gonna give us tour support and there was no money involved. They were just gonna release our records, or sell them to Europe. The plan was to make a record that was acceptable. Out here at the time, if you didn\u2019t get airplay you were nothing and you couldn\u2019t get signed \u2013 you couldn\u2019t get anything. There were some heavy rock stations who\u2019d play \u2018Paranoid\u2019 by Black Sabbath (from the September 1970 album of the same name) or at least some of the top hits by some of the heavy bands, so we put out Frost And Fire<\/em> using almost all of Greg\u2019s songs. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we had a bunch of other songs which finally showed up on King Of The Dead<\/em>, a lot of the songs Greg wrote seemed to be more commercially viable. Some of the songs like \u2018Better Off Dead\u2019 and \u2018Maybe That\u2019s Why\u2019 had lyrics that we thought were commercially acceptable, so we put out this record. The one station in LA \u2013 KRLA that played a lot of rock stuff \u2013 played it a couple of times, and then they said \u2018This is way too heavy stuff \u2013 we can\u2019t play this.\u2019 At that time Greg was leaving the band, because he decided that he wanted to go in a different direction. We wanted to go even heavier, so we\u2019re going \u2018Shit, if that was our commercial stuff and it was too heavy.\u2019 We decided that it was bullshit, and said \u2018With our next album, we\u2019re gonna do it the way we want to do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Rob was saying, Frost And Fire<\/em> was never meant to be an album that was on sale to the public,\u201d Tim reminds. \u201cIt was our attempt to get a record deal with a big company, so that\u2019s why it\u2019s more like a demo for us. At the time the only way to get a record deal was to put together cassettes, and send them to record companies. They\u2019d throw them in the trash, and then we\u2019d send another cassette to another record company or management company and they\u2019d throw it in the trash. We thought that if we put out a real album \u2013 the whole professional looking thing \u2013 and shopped that around, it would show these guys that we were on the ball and this is what we could actually do. It was never meant to be a general release to the public, but was more of a demo to get a record deal. Like Rob said, it just kind of evolved into getting released to the public and just steamrolled from there into the next couple of records.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTim was mentioning this, and I totally agree,\u201d Rob concurs. \u201cWe thought this was gonna get our foot in the door, because you asked what we did for all these years before we put out our first record. We were driving down to LA, we were sitting in front of record companies. One of us would run in past security, and try to get our cassette on their desk. Ted Templeman who did Montrose\u2019s first album (Montrose<\/em>, October 1973) was a good producer, and I kept sending him copies of tapes. There was this one guy who worked for Apple Records, and he kept going down to all these concerts trying to get backstage to talk to the managers. <\/p>\n

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\u201cWe met Rush; Rush was playing at the Whisky A-Go-Go, and we were trying to get to play down the Whisky A-Go-Go. One of our friends goes \u2018Hey, there\u2019s this band from Canada called Rush who\u2019s really good,\u2019 so we go \u2018Well, let\u2019s go down and see them and we\u2019ll talk to the booking agent.\u2019 When we showed up that night we were the only ones there to see Rush, so if you can believe this, Rush was playing at the Whisky A-Go-Go and there was like four people in the crowd, and it was all the members of Cirith Ungol (laughs). We actually went backstage, met the guys in Rush, hung out, and kind of made a little bit of friends with them. We were asking them \u2018How do we break into the big time?\u2019 They go \u2018Well, there\u2019s this big music convention in LA. Maybe you should go down there, schmooze the guys, and hang out,\u2019 so we\u2019d go to all these weird functions. We always had all these cassette tapes of the band, and they were getting us nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really why Frost And Fire<\/em> came about,\u201d Tim adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd right about that time though, like I said, we were one of the first bands to do that,\u201d Rob continues. \u201cAfter we released our first album \u2013 maybe it was happening all together, or maybe people saw what we did \u2013 within a matter of six months of us releasing our first album M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce had an album out (Too Fast For Love<\/em>, November 1981), Brian had his first album out. They saw that these big record companies didn\u2019t have a big stranglehold any more on at least the distribution of albums. Maybe they could still have stopped them from being played on the air, but if you make your own records you can get it out there. Right now a similar thing is happening with the internet. You don\u2019t even need to make a record any more; all you have to do is have a website and have music, and people can download it.\u201d<\/p>\n

1 | 2<\/a> | 3<\/a> <\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CIRITH UNGOL – Kings Of The Dead Anthony Morgan January 2012 Cirith Ungol 1984 (l-r): Tim Baker, Robert Garven, Michael \u201cFlint\u201d Vujea and Jerry Fogle Roughly translating as \u2018pass of the spider\u2019 from the fictional language Sindarin, the name of Californian heavy metal group Cirith Ungol was lifted from the Lord Of The Rings series, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1487,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cirith-ungol","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22290","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=22290"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23642,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22290\/revisions\/23642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}