Description

No doubt about it, Crystal Viper is one of the most active new European heavy metal bands of the current decade! And they are also one of the best metal bands around at the moment. Having already played major festivals like the Czech ’Masters of Rock’ (in 2006), ‘Battle Field Metal Festival’ in Spain (2008), ‘Up the Hammers’ in Greece (2009) and ‘Keep It True’ in Germany (2010). The band, coming from Poland, has already three albums under their belt: ‘The Curse of Crystal Viper’, ‘The last Axeman’ and the most recent ‘Metal Nation’. But how did it all begin, I ask front lady Marta Gabriel? ‘We started in 2003, doing demos, recording rehearsals and so on’, she answers. ‘We had many, many line up changes before recording our debut album, as most of the guys were not serious enough for us to work with them any longer. You know, we exactly knew that we wanted to form a real band, which records albums and plays serious live shows. And most of them wanted to play in a local pub for a beer, to have something to do after working hours. The first official line up was established a few months before recording ‘The Curse of Crystal Viper’, and we have almost had the same line up until now. We are deadly serious in what we do, and everyone in the band understands that’. The mentioned first album ‘The Curse of Crystal Viper’ got fantastic feedback from press and fans alike, German Rock Hard magazine gave it 8 of 10 points, Heavy! magazine thought it was worth 10 out of 12 with Metal Maidens even awarding it 10 out of 10. Quite an achievement for a young band, I would say. Marta agrees but keeps quite cool: ‘Yeah, it's always nice to read such ultra positive reviews. Actually, I don't remember any review being worse than 8/10 or 4/5, we got many 'album of the month' awards. The only negative voices we heard were from a few extreme metal fans, who don't accept anything melodic at all. You know, you can not make everyone happy with your music. But still, there were no bad reviews of any of our releases so far’. If you look closely at the credits of the ‘Curse of Crystal Viper’ album, you will recognize that Marta still called herself ‘Leather Wych’ at the time. Why? ‘Well’, she reflects, ‘The 'Leather Wych’ nickname was connected with the story behind the lyrics, ‘The Curse of Crystal Viper’ was a concept album. Some people still call me 'Leather Wych', others just call me Marta. Both names are fine to me, actually’. ‘The Curse of Crystal Viper’ was quickly followed by ‘The Last Axeman’ in 2008. It was originally planned as a mini-album but soon developed into a full-blown long player with an assortment of really cool cover songs (e.g. ‘Atlantis’ from Angel Witch, ‘Out there Survivors’ form Mirage and ‘Flaming Metal Systems’ from the mighty Manilla Road). Although the album is kind of a compilation it does have a really nice flow to it, very consistent. Why does Marta think that is? ‘We wanted this album to sound like a Crystal Viper release, and even if there are many cover songs on there, all of them sound like us. ‘The Last Axeman’ was a very special and limited release, we wanted to make a single, but we realized that we really had a lot of tracks that our fans would have loved to listen to and own. So we added a few songs, and later on even more songs, and finally the release was around 70 minutes long. Not that bad for a single, right?’ On ‘Blood and Gasoline’ the band even joined up with David DeFeis and Josh Block of Virgin Steele, as Marta explains: ‘We wanted to record an exclusive cover song for our single of ‘The Last Axeman’, something from a band that was really important to us. We decided to do a Virgin Steele cover song, because they were one of the very first heavy metal bands I started to listen to. Bart and David DeFeis have been friends for a long time, and one day he said: 'Alright, you will record this song together with the Virgin Steele guys.' It was like a dream come true for me! The funny thing is that fans started to call this special line up Crystal Steele. We were even more happy after David had placed another version of this special duet song on the re-release of his ‘The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell’ album, it was something really incredible. Thank you David!’ The vinyl edition of ‘The Last Axeman’ does feature yet another surprise, namely a version of the title track sung in Polish. A very unusal choice, wasn't it? But then again, in the 80's, Polish bands like KAT or Turbo recorded several albums in their native tongue. Marta thinks that would not be an option for her band: ‘No. Crystal Viper is not big enough over here to record an entire album in Polish. It would probably make more sense doing an album in Spanish for example, as we are much more known out there. Actually, the problem is that we would need a separate label for this, separate budget and so on. But I don't think that sales would be good enough to cover all these costs, as most Polish fans don't support artists by buying original releases, as they prefer illegal downloads. From what I know, our download album was downloaded more than 15,000 times, can you imagine? But, of course we respect our die-hard fans from our homeland, and we recorded this special Polish version of 'The Last Axeman' for them’. Crystal Viper's third full length album ‘Metal Nation’ was eleased in early 2009. The band has further progressed musically and sonically as well. The sound of the album (including yet another cool cover, this time the classic ‘Agents of Steel’) is really great. It surely helped that no other than Andy La Roque of King Diamond fame was responsible for mixing and mastering the ten songs’. Marta thinks the same: ‘It was again Bart's idea. Except being a great guitarist and composer, Andy La Rocque is one of the best mixing/mastering engineers around, he worked with such acts as Hammerfall, Evergrey, Falconer, and of course he is responsible for some of the King Diamond releases. We wanted our album to sound perfect, and that's why we decided to work with him. Bart and Andy met a couple of times, and they have been in touch for many years from what I know. And yeah, Andy is definitely a cool and down to earth guy’. Special guests fatures Manni Schmidt from Grave Digger, Lars Ramcke of Stormwarrior and Frank Knight from X-Wild Track listing: 1. Breaking The Curse 2. Metal Nation 3. Bringer Of The Light 4. 1428-with Manni Schmidt 5. The Anvil Of Hate 6. Zombie Lust (Flesh Eaters) 7. Her Crimson Tears-with Frank Knight 8. Legions Of Truth-with Lars Ramcke 9. Gladiator, Die By The Blade I. Entering The Arena, II. Clash Of The Titans, III. Glory And Victory 10. Agents Of Steel-Agent Steel cover