{"id":23620,"date":"2012-01-21T00:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-21T00:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=23620"},"modified":"2015-02-08T00:18:02","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T00:18:02","slug":"feature-cirith-ungol-01-12-pt2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-cirith-ungol-01-12-pt2\/","title":{"rendered":"CIRITH UNGOL – Kings Of The Dead, Part Two (January 2012) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cirith Ungol 1984 (l-r): Michael \u201cFlint\u201d Vujea, Robert Garven, Jerry Fogle and
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Bass parts on Frost And Fire<\/em> were actually handled by Greg as well. \u201cIt was kind of a weird situation because we had already laid down the tracks if I remember right, and at the same time we recruited Flint (Michael Vujea, bass until 1987) from another band,\u201d Tim clarifies. \u201cWe\u2019d known him for a while. We\u2019d played gigs together with the band that he used to be in, and we always liked his bass playing. We\u2019d say \u2018Hey, someday we\u2019re gonna steal you away.\u2019 Greg really wanted to play guitar \u2013 I guess nobody really wants to play bass (laughs). We thought \u2018We need a bass player right now. We\u2019ve got two guitar players, Greg and Jerry.\u2019 At the time Flint didn\u2019t really know the songs that well, and with Greg \u2013 like I said \u2013 they were basically all his songs, because he had written them and played them. That\u2019s how that evolved. As for Flint though, he\u2019d been playing the songs for a while before the record came out and he played just as well as Greg, if not better. There was no harm in putting his name on there, and nobody else had any issues with it either. It could\u2019ve been either him or Greg that played, and it would\u2019ve came out just as good. That\u2019s how that came about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGreg was always a good guy,\u201d Rob compliments. \u201cEven though he left the band… I feel badly about every guy that left the band and I have all sorts of regrets and ill feelings, but Greg was cool. He played on the album but Flint was our bass player, so he goes \u2018We\u2019ll credit him on the album.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo harm, no foul,\u201d Tim reckons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Greg did some pretty radically bass things on \u2018Better Off Dead\u2019 and stuff,\u201d Rob feels. \u201cThere\u2019s some cool bass stuff on there but for anyone who doubts Flint\u2019s playing ability, if you listen to the bass intro on \u2018Master Of The Pit\u2019 on King Of The Dead<\/em> then you\u2019ll hear a lot of his good bass playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fantasy cover artist Michael Whelan designed the artwork for Frost And Fire<\/em>, a relationship which lasted through all four of Cirith Ungol\u2019s studio affairs. Later on, Michael designed artwork for groups like Sepultura, Soulfly, Obituary, Evile, and Meat Loaf. \u201cWe wanted to put out a record, and had already finished recording,\u201d Rob tells. \u201cThe cover that I wanted actually was… I liked fantasy literature; we were reading a lot of Conan The Barbarian<\/em> (by Robert E. Howard), and Elric (Of Melnibon\u00e9)<\/em> by Michael Moorcock \u2013 a famous English author. We were reading all this sword and sorcery fantasy stuff, and once again, Greg was a guy who\u2019d go \u2018Read this book.\u2019 He\u2019d hand me Stormbringer<\/em> (1965, Michael Moorcock) or something like that, and I\u2019d read it and be like \u2018Wow, this is unbelievable.\u2019 I was reading all the Conan books, and one of the Conan<\/em> books had a cover by Frank Frazetta called Berserker<\/em>. It shows a guy on his horse, and he\u2019s jumping over all these dead bodies. He\u2019s got a sword over his head, and he\u2019s like a half-goblin monster guy. We go \u2018Wow, this is really cool,\u2019 but almost at that very exact same time a band in the United States \u2013 some Southern rock band called Molly Hatchet \u2013 came out with this cover (for September 1980\u2019s Beatin\u2019 The Odds<\/em>, Hatchet\u2019s third album). We\u2019re like \u2018Oh damn, that\u2019s what we wanted.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe never contacted the guy so we never really knew how to get hold of him, but we were saying \u2018If we could use this, this is what we would use.\u2019 In fact, one of our influences \u2013 the band Dust that was from New York \u2013 had one of Frank Frazetta\u2019s pictures (Snow Giants<\/em>) of three giant dwarf trolls or something fighting on top of a mountain in the snow. That was on their second album Hard Attack<\/em> (1972) and that was from the same painter, and we were going \u2018This is cool.\u2019 After Molly Hatchet came out with that album, we were going \u2018Hey, what are we gonna put on here?\u2019 I was reading Stormbringer<\/em> and I\u2019m looking at this going \u2018Man, this is better than anything we could ever use,\u2019 so I wrote to a publishing company and they put us in touch with Michael Whelan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody had asked him to do a cover up until that time, which is kind of amazing because his stuff was so great,\u201d Tim exalts.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was mainly doing book covers,\u201d Rob informs. \u201cHorror books like H.P. Lovecraft, and he did almost all of the original Moorcock books. They\u2019re pretty amazing paintings, so we actually made friends with him. I kind of feel bad for Michael because, once again, our hope for us was to become really big and famous, and all these people that had supported us and stood by us… He had the actual painting for Stormbringer<\/em>, and I said \u2018I wanna buy that.\u2019 He said \u2018I\u2019m gonna hang onto it because it\u2019s my favourite painting.\u2019 I go \u2018Someday when I\u2019m rich I\u2019m gonna pay you whatever,\u2019 and goes \u2018Don\u2019t worry. Okay.\u2019 We never made it big though. Him allowing us to use his paintings on our records I think really helped the band, and I believe that actually they fit our music. It\u2019s not like he was giving us any kind of charity or anything, but I don\u2019t think we ever compensated him thoroughly for the paintings that he allowed us to use.\u201d<\/p>\n

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King Of The Dead (1984)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Greg Lindstrom departed in 1982, Cirith Ungol becoming a quartet. \u201cGreg was a really smart guy who wanted to be an engineer,\u201d Tim reveals. \u201cThat\u2019s what he is today \u2013 he\u2019s an engineer. He was going off to college, and we were going in a different direction. We wanted to play a little bit more heavier stuff, so it was kind of a good time for it to happen. He went to college, and we just reformed, regrouped and got on with it, and got heavier and better as the years went on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he went away to college it wasn\u2019t that far away,\u201d Rob notes. \u201cWe still practised every weekend, but his influences were changing. At the time that new wave stuff was coming out. I\u2019m not gonna insult Greg by saying he was listening to new wave music because he wasn\u2019t, but there were a bunch of bands that were coming out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you listen to Frost And Fire<\/em>, some of the stuff has a lot of weird synth keyboards and quirky stuff,\u201d Tim judges. \u201cIt kind of reminds me of The Cars or something, and I didn\u2019t wanna be The Cars (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also wanted to move to Los Angeles,\u201d Rob acknowledges. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you: one of the reasons we never made it big was because we didn\u2019t live in Los Angeles. We\u2019re like around an hour up the coast, and I like to try to tell people we\u2019re the last civilised outpost before you get to Los Angeles. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve been to Los Angeles, but Los Angeles is like a giant city that maybe stands a 1,000 square miles \u2013 you can drive for days without seeing a tree. There\u2019s a lot of rich people and a lot of nice areas, but it\u2019s also so large and so congested and confusing, and back then really polluted and stuff. It was kind of creepy. We live right on the ocean, and we\u2019re around an hour north of there. There\u2019s trees, hills. There\u2019s not that many people living here; there\u2019s fresh air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as playing and stuff, there\u2019s a lot of people competing for the same slots at all the clubs down there,\u201d Tim expounds. \u201cActually for a time, the clubs down there \u2013 the Whisky A-Go-Go, the Troubadour, the Starwood, and all these clubs \u2013 would encourage you to play. They would make you pay in advance for your slot to play, and they would make you sell tickets. If you didn\u2019t make your money back, then that was just tough shit. That was kind of a turn off for a lot of bands, too. I think they changed their policy now because they figure they\u2019re gonna make money anyway from drinks or whatever, but it was just outrageous at the time. All these bands were fighting for the same little slots, and these guys were holding this over your head that you had to come down and pay to play. You\u2019d play on a Wednesday night at two in the morning and bring a bus load of your people down, and you wouldn\u2019t get paid. It was just really outrageous. We made it down there a lot of the time to play gigs and stuff, but it was kind of tough to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was coming in right near the end of our career, the pay to play thing,\u201d Rob observes. \u201cThe way we got jobs was you\u2019d go down there and hang out, and you\u2019d try to get backstage and talk to the booking agent. You\u2019d give him a cassette, and try to explain to him \u2018Hey, we\u2019re this big band. We\u2019re playing all these shows and stuff. Will you let us play?\u2019 We got to play some pretty good shows; we played the Roxy, we played the Starwood which was that famous place from the movie Wonderland<\/em> (2003). But I\u2019m not kidding, to get in there wasn\u2019t easy. You\u2019d spend six months courting these guys almost like you were gonna marry them just to get a gig, and then we\u2019d have to print up posters and tell everyone, and a lot of people would come to our shows. A lot of people look at the last video on the web of us playing here in our hometown, but that was the last show we played and the band was breaking up. There were only a few people there, but most of the shows we played in Los Angeles were in small clubs and they were packed to the guilds.\u201d<\/p>\n

July 1984\u2019s King Of The Dead<\/em> \u2013 Cirith Ungol\u2019s sophomore album \u2013 is generally viewed as their greatest. \u201cThat\u2019s the general consensus of most people, and most of our fans,\u201d Tim agrees. \u201cIt\u2019s got a lot of good stuff on it. Yeah, I like all of our albums and they all have some great stuff on them. Really, any of them with Jerry Fogle on them are great, and Jimmy (Barraza, guitars from 1998 until 1992) too. Most people are in consensus that this is our best album, and there\u2019s some really good stuff on there. You can\u2019t deny how great \u2018Master Of The Pit\u2019, \u2018King Of The Dead\u2019, and \u2018Finger Of Scorn\u2019 are. There was a new energy in the band with Flint and everything, and we decided that we wanted to do what we wanted to do, which was get really heavy and epic. I think that came across on King Of The Dead<\/em>, and that\u2019s why people still love it to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI go on Amazon and write reviews \u2013 small ones \u2013 but I try to make them really truthful, and here\u2019s what I like about King Of The Dead<\/em>,\u201d Rob begins. \u201cMy parents actually loaned us some money for it which we paid back, and once again my poor mom is really sick. She may not make it much longer and my dad\u2019s gone, but if they hadn\u2019t paid for that album we couldn\u2019t have done it. We paid for it, we produced it, and we mixed it. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard the stories about Paradise Lost<\/em> (August 1991, Cirith Ungol\u2019s fourth and final studio album), but on Paradise Lost<\/em> each member wasn\u2019t even allowed to be in the recording studio while the other guys were recording. On King Of The Dead<\/em> every night all of us would go down there, we\u2019d listen to the tapes, and do guitar overdubs. Tim would sing along and we\u2019d go \u2018Yeah man, that\u2019s great,\u2019 or Jerry would play a guitar riff and we\u2019d go \u2018Oh, that don\u2019t sound good.\u2019 He\u2019d redo it, and we\u2019d go \u2018Oh, that\u2019s really great.\u2019 <\/p>\n

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Cirith Ungol live in rehearsal circa 1983 (l-r): Michael \u201cFlint\u201d Vujea, Tim Baker
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\u201cIt was the first and last album that we had a 100% control over because we paid for it, we recorded it, and we mixed it. There was no-one telling us what to do. Getting back to Jerry, Jerry has passed away now but I tell everyone this, and this is what I want people to do. If you listen to King Of The Dead<\/em> then listen to the double lead guitar solo on \u2018Cirith Ungol\u2019, the song named after the band. That to me is Jerry\u2019s finest hour, where he\u2019s playing two leads intertwined and there\u2019s so much emotion involved. Once again, that\u2019s why I liked Mountain and bands like that. It wasn\u2019t how fast Leslie West played the guitar, but how much feeling he put into every note and guys like Jerry. I know Leslie West was one of his heroes, but if you listen to those kinds of guitarists it\u2019s almost like it\u2019s singing like a person. Once again it\u2019s not how fast he played or maybe even how perfect he played, but it\u2019s how much emotion that travels from the musician into the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s what people get out of King Of The Dead<\/em> too, that they can feel all that passion and everything that we put into it,\u201d Tim guesses. \u201cI think that\u2019s why it\u2019s a lot of people\u2019s favourite. Frost And Fire<\/em> was never supposed to be an album, so it was a conglomeration of things at the time that we thought would be more of a commercial effort to get a record deal. Like Rob just said right there, King Of The Dead<\/em> was a group effort that we really felt passionate about. We wanted to show people \u2018Screw all this commercial crap; let\u2019s do the heaviest thing that we can do, and the best thing that\u2019s ever been done.\u2019 That\u2019s King Of The Dead<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third outing One Foot In Hell<\/em> arrived in August 1986, the only Cirith Ungol studio affair to be originally released by Metal Blade Records. \u201cGreat,\u201d Tim proclaims of One Foot In Hell<\/em>. \u201cI like it. It\u2019s a bit different than King Of The Dead<\/em>. I think we had matured a little bit by then, and kind of had it down a little bit. It\u2019s a little bit heavier and faster, I think. I don\u2019t know why. It was just the way we felt like playing at that time. By that time Flint had been in the band for a while, and we were all really involved in doing the songwriting together. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s got some really good stuff on it, some really crazy guitar stuff from Jerry, stuff like \u2018War Eternal\u2019 with a long freaking double guitar solo in it. As a matter of fact, during the recording process it must\u2019ve taken weeks to do some of this stuff because Jerry would be in there just doing leads, leads, and leads and we\u2019d just be going \u2018Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do more.\u2019 It would just take forever to do some of that stuff. I think it\u2019s a great record too, and I actually listen to it all the time. Some of my favourite stuff is on there; me and Rob wrote \u2018Doomed Planet\u2019 together and that\u2019s one of my favourite songs, especially some of the vocal work on it – Rob doing the crazy background stuff with me. There\u2019s some great songs on that album; we\u2019d start off concerts with \u2018Blood & Iron\u2019, so it\u2019s one of my favourites. The artwork on the album is obviously great, too. All those covers by Michael Whelan are just fantastic, and I\u2019m sure a lot of our fans had no idea who he was. Maybe someone was sifting through the record bin and came across something like that, a giant fly-god sitting on a throne while a guy is hitting him with a glowing sword. It\u2019s like \u2018Geez, I\u2019ve gotta hear what\u2019s inside of this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wrote \u2018Doomed Planet\u2019, so when the planet is over we want credit for that,\u201d Rob chuckles. \u201cWe signed with Brian on that one. I\u2019m not really sure what happened, but for some reason we did that on Metal Blade and I don\u2019t know why we didn\u2019t go back to Metal Blade after that \u2013 whether they didn\u2019t want us, or whether we didn\u2019t sell enough records. I agree though, I like it. The music is as good as King Of The Dead<\/em>, but I don\u2019t think it sounds as good. I think some of that could be attributed to… When we recorded King Of The Dead<\/em> we had all the time that we needed, and we actually went down to Los Angeles to a bigger recording studio. <\/p>\n

\u201cGetting back to Martin Popoff\u2019s book on these bands, I\u2019m reading about some of these things about MC5 or whoever… They go \u2018If you record the album and don\u2019t like it, we\u2019ll do it over,\u2019 and so they record it and say they don\u2019t like it, but they go \u2018Well, it\u2019s a wrap.\u2019 We went down there and threw down some basic tracks, and once you do that you can\u2019t really go back and change them. Once again, I hate to keep going back on this book because Tim hasn\u2019t read it yet… With Captain Beyond on their first album, they had an engineer that had never been an engineer before. They recorded the whole album out of faith, and so they had to spend thousands of dollars trying to get it to sound good. We didn\u2019t have any of those really, really bad problems, but once you record a basic track you can\u2019t go back and change anything to it. I agree with Tim though, that some of the best guitar work\u2019s on there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Perhaps a remix of One Foot In Hell<\/em> would alleviate grievances with the album\u2019s sound. \u201cMetal Blade has the original tapes for that,\u201d Rob responds. \u201cI have all the original tapes for the first two albums, and Brian has the original tapes for One Foot In Hell<\/em>. That\u2019d be something they\u2019d have to do. I do know this… We did have some experimental background vocals that didn\u2019t make it on there, and they were pretty wild and I didn\u2019t want to see them disappear. Brian did the final mix on that though; I\u2019m not really unhappy with it, and I think every album has its own tone to it. I like King Of The Dead<\/em> the best. I\u2019m not picking on our other records but it stands out as the one I feel the proudest of, and maybe that\u2019s because I feel like all of us as a group had the most to do with it. Once again, once we signed with Brian on Metal Blade and you bring in a record company and other people, there are more cooks working on the recipe. It doesn\u2019t mean that the end results aren\u2019t good, but just means that it takes less of the actual personality of the band and colours it with different influences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swansong effort Paradise Lost<\/em> saw the light of day in August 1991, though recording sessions didn\u2019t run smoothly. \u201cThat was horrible,\u201d Rob deplores. \u201cWe had a producer (Ron Goudie), and you can look on the record for his name \u2013 I don\u2019t wanna really say bad stuff about people \u2013 but it took so long to do that we actually lost some members and that was horrible and stuff. Once again, on Servants Of Chaos<\/em> there\u2019s a copy of \u2018Fire\u2019 and a copy of \u2018Fallen Idols\u2019 that we did in our regular studio as a demo. That was to, once again, try to get big record companies interested in Paradise Lost<\/em>. If you listen to those, I think the whole album would\u2019ve sounded more like that than it did the way it came out. I was taken into the studio with a click machine and I played all the drum tracks to no music, just me humming the songs in my head to a metronome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s no way to make a metal album,\u201d Tim insists.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like taking Van Gogh, giving him a ruler, and putting a scarf over his head so he can\u2019t see,\u201d Rob surmises. \u201cHis lines are all gonna be straight, but that\u2019s not the point. The point with this producer was your drumbeats have to be perfect and perfectly aligned with the computer, and to me that takes away. So anyway, that ruined the whole album for me. The guitar parts none of us listened to, Tim singing none of us heard. I actually cried when I heard the album for the first time. It wasn\u2019t bad. We kind of felt upbeat because at least we had another record out, but I look back on it and what destroyed that album was the way we recorded it. Once again, we had a producer tell us how to do it. I mentioned this in another interview… Every time I complained \u2018You know what? This is bullshit. I\u2019m not gonna do this.\u2019 The guy said \u2018Well, we can just cancel the whole deal right now.\u2019 That was the alternative; either do it their way, or you aren\u2019t gonna do it. The best part on that is probably Jimmy\u2019s guitar playing. Jimmy did some unbelievable guitar stuff on there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a tragedy that things didn\u2019t work out with Jerry, because our original plan was to have Jimmy and Jerry in the band together,\u201d Tim concedes. \u201cIt\u2019s too bad that that never really worked out; that would\u2019ve been frickin\u2019 awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cirith Ungol 1984 (l-r): Michael \u201cFlint\u201d Vujea, Robert Garven, Jerry Fogle and Tim Baker Bass parts on Frost And Fire were actually handled by Greg as well. \u201cIt was kind of a weird situation because we had already laid down the tracks if I remember right, and at the same time we recruited Flint (Michael […]<\/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-23620","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\/23620","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=23620"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23663,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23620\/revisions\/23663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}