Lords Of The Trident Interview – Fang VonWrathenstein lead vocals for the american metal band.
– What’s new in the world of Lords Of The Trident?
Many new things have been happening as of late! As many of our loyal minions know, our longtime guitarist Killius Maximus departed the band almost exactly a year ago this April, in order to study the forbidden yoga techniques to stretch his fretting fingers to inhuman lengths. The noble Baron Taurean Helleshaar was brought in to replace Killius, and we’ve been writing non-stop since then! In December 2015 we released a covers EP called Re:Quests, which was comprised of songs picked by our Frostburnkickstarter backers. From that EP we completed two music videos – Shine on Me and a shot-for-shot remake of Beyonce’s “Diva”, which we called “Djiva”. Additionally, we’ve got 3-4 songs completed for our next album, and we’ve been writing more and more every day. We’re hoping to start recording the next album in late Fall 2016. Many of our Patreon backers have already heard the completed demos, and we’re getting fantastic feedback!
– Making videos must be fun since you do put a lot of creation into them. How long does it take to get a video completed?
Making videos is one of the things I enjoy the most – well, other than pillaging, or a good ol’ barbarian arm-wrestling match! The amount of time it takes to make each video varies quite a bit. Some videos are completed in mere weeks (Shine on Me, for example), while some take months to do. Almost all of the shooting, directing, editing, and visual effects work are done in-house by us, so we’re able to keep costs low and also maintain creative control. As much as I enjoy making things explode on stage, I enjoy making things explode in videos twice as much!
– When writing a song, is there such a thing as investing too much time?
Yes, I think so. When you’re too close to the song in question, you can start second-guessing yourself. There’s almost always a period during the recording and mixing of our songs where I feel like what we’ve written is the worst song in the world, and our fans will grab their pitchforks and burn down our castle. This has never been the case, but it doesn’t stop us from feeling this way! If you get too caught up in this feeling – that what you’ve created isn’t good enough – it will prevent you from ever playing it, and then you never output any new material! Sometimes you just have to bit the bullet and put it out there.
– Are the equipment and instruments used on stage mostly the same as the ones used on the albums?
Yes, in almost 99% of the cases, what you see us play is what we use to record. We spend so much time crafting the tone of our live sound, we don’t want to throw all that work away when we enter the studio. I wish we could say that we had the financial means to create a dedicated recording setup, but unfortunately our gold coins are in short supply these days, as they are with most working musicians.
– Do you have any tours coming up in the near future?
Absolutely – we’re heading out on our US & Canada tour starting on May 27th, 2016. This is our first foray into the frozen lands to the north, so we’re looking forward to conquering new territory and eating as much poutine along the way as we can! We have full details on our dates and locations on our website,www.LordsOfTheTrident.com.
Next year, we’re hoping to do a tour of Japan or Europe!
– What would be some of your main musical influences today?
As immortal musicians, we actually pre-date many of the bands that a standard metal band would list as influences…so I prefer to list music that we enjoy listening to often. Dio, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest are of course quite worthy material in the eyes of the LORDS, but we also enjoy a lot of modern metal as well. We’re all fans of Scar Symmetry, Dream Evil, and even bands like Polyphia. We try to keep an open mind, and listen to many various genres of music in our TRIDENTMobile Van as we traverse the countryside. However, we have all unilaterally decided that Kanye West sucks.
– How important is it for a musician in this generation to spend time on social media?
Incredibly important. This is an age of unparalleled connectivity between bands and fans. Before social media, if you were a huge fan of a particular band, you could write them a letter or attempt to stalk them outside of their tour bus, but there’s a very low probability that you’d get an answer from them. Nowadays, you can message your favorite band on Facebook or Twitter, and most bands I know will actually respond directly! It’s an intensely powerful tool to create connections between those who make the music and those who want to support it, and I think anyone who shies away from social media is missing one of the most powerful ways to connect with and grow your fanbase.
– How important are music videos in the industry today? How do they compare to videos from 20 years ago?
I think video, in general, is potentially the most important tool for bands today. Twenty years ago, a video was created to market the music, sell tickets, and create buzz about the band or artist. This is still valid today, but the cost to create these videos has dropped to almost nothing. It’s now easy enough to create a music video for just about every song on an album, greatly increasing your chance that more people will see and share your creation. A band with enough gumption could use the internet to teach itself camera techniques, VFX, editing, etc. and create amazing music videos for pennies. That’s certainly what we did. No longer do you need special green screen studios to create incredible effects – just hang some green fabric from Wal-Mart in your basement, and you’re in business!
In addition, if the video is creative enough, the band could go viral (even if the music doesn’t stand out). OK Go made it big with a cheap one-take video using four treadmills. They used the success of that oneviral video to secure a following that will likely support them for the rest of their careers. And even if you never have a viral success, you can still use video on sites like Facebook and YouTube to effectively communicate and connect with your audience. Show announcements, “leaked” footage from albums, video podcasts – the list goes on and on. There’s no good excuse for any serious band to shy away from video.
– Where do you see music in general going in 100 years from now?
With the collapse of record companies, and the general loss of revenue from music sales in general, I firmly believe that the next era of music creation is going to be led by independent, crowdfunded projects. We may not see the rebirth of “megastars” like Metallica, but instead we will find ourselves with a larger number of popular and semi-popular national and regional bands who output a lot of material, and are supported directly by fans. Services like Kickstarter and especially Patreon make it possible for bands to potentially earn an consistent, dependable living through their music, which is something that almost no unsigned bands can currently say. The amount of technology we have at our fingertips already makes it trivial and inexpensive for bands to record professional-sounding tracks in their basements…what’s next will be an arms race of those bands who learn more, do more, and create more than their counterparts. They will be fighting against the output of all other bands to survive, which creates more music for everybody.
In short, I guess you could say that in 100 years we plan on ruling the musical world with an iron fist! Mwahahaha!