Description
Black vinyl with poster and insert.
Legendary US Metal band Warlord was formed in 1981 by Mark Zonder and William J. Tsamis. One year later, in 1982, the song Lucifer’s Hammer (based on a novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) appeared on the prestigious compilation album Metal Massacre II. This resulted in a deal with Metal Blade Records, with Warlord recording their debut mini-album. Deliver Us was released in 1983 and is today considered as the blueprint for what was later to be called Epic Metal. Deliver Us was followed by And The Cannons Of Destruction Have Begun in 1984. After a long hiatus, Rising Out Of The Ashes appeared as the comeback album for Warlord in 2002, while it took another eleven years for the follow-up The Holy Empire to see the light of day in 2013. Up until the present day, The Holy Empire would remain the last Warlord studio album with all new material, as William J. Tsamis sadly passed away on 13th of May 2021 at the age of 60. However, with Free Spirit Soar, a brand-new studio album by Warlord with all songs having been recorded between March and September 2023, it’s Drummer Mark Zonder and singer Giles Lavery paying tribute to the musical heritage of Bill Tsamis. They are joined by Jimmy Waldo on keyboards/synthesizer, Phillip Bynoe on bass and Eric Juris on guitars. We wanted to finish these pieces of music ‘for Bill’, explains Lavery, and the material we felt was certainly strong enough to inspire us to do so. Regarding the guitar parts he specifies: Bill is there where we could pull his tracks off the demo recordings, in much the same way the Beatles were recently able to rescue John Lennon’s voice from an old demo tape. Eric does most of the heavy lifting on guitar, but all music was written by Bill and we stayed very very faithful to what he wrote. All in all, Giles Lavery is very satisfied with how Free Spirit Soar turned out: It was a bit of an uncharted adventure delving into Bill’s demos and unfinished music, and also having to write lyrics and vocal melodies to the songs – the only two exceptions being the two Lordian Guard songs that we selected to Warlord-ize …as has been tradition on every Warlord album since Rising Out Of The Ashes. Everything but two songs have vocals for the first time, so that entire area of the composition is new … I wrote lyrics and vocal melodies for seven songs and had my friend Steve Blaze from Lillian Axe write lyrics and a vocal melody for one other song. As for the music, I think much of it is unheard, a few bits and pieces you might recognize from some of the catalog reissues, instrumental bonus tracks etc. (which I am sure very few people have listened to intently as they are extras really, only for the most die-hard fan), but even in those cases we worked from either alternate versions that had different arrangements, or we had to arrange the songs from the start as the demos/ideas were just musical themes and parts, not actual developed songs … As producer of the album it was my job to sort through all the pieces and pull together songs. He continues: Free Spirit Soar was the song most difficult to sing because it required a very very high harmony/double in the chorus. I could only go that high in a somewhat soft voice, so I layered it, it’s about 25 vocal tracks at once. The song was never completed with lyrics, and our version is a different arrangement, however, you will hear that we kept all of Bill’s musical parts. On Conquerors Giles Lavery’s voice sounds quite a bit like Michael Kiske. Also musically Conquerors has a bit of a Helloween Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part I vibe going, possibly it’s the happiest sounding song on Free Spirit Soar. That’s quite a compliment, beams Giles Lavery, I guess a main influence of mine was Bruce Dickinson, whom Michael also sounds a bit like (I remember some people said Kiske should replace Bruce in Iron Maiden, but they got the amazing Blaze Bayley instead so all was okay in the end), so maybe Michael is somewhere in my vocal DNA, but not purposefully … If the song sounds happy’ then it is because those are the chords that Bill used on his demo, while I wrote the vocal melody and lyrics, there was no getting away from the chords he used. The last number on Free Spirit Soar is called Revelation, it’s an old Lordian Guard number (first recorded for Woe To The Inhabitants Of The Earth… in 1995), featured here in a new version called Revelation XIX. How would Giles interpret the lyrics? Are they Christian, or just relating to the bible (in some shape or form)? The song includes passages like Christ is the Life and the Way – we hail to the Lord, our King … His answer is short and straight to the point: Bill was a Christian academic, therefore I do consider them Christian, the lyrics themselves obviously are a retelling of a biblical story. One thing a lot of people tend to forget is that apart from Bill Tsamis there was (and is) another musician being of utmost importance for Warlord: drummer Mark Zonder. Giles Lavery speaks: Listen to the two Lordian Guard re-recordings, or any of Bill’s Lordian Guard songs Warlord have redone on past albums, notice how the moment you add Mark’s drums it sounds like Warlord? And without his drums it sounds like Lordian Guard … While Bill was the songwriter, Mark’s style completes it as Warlord – they were very much partners. One thing not many people know is that Mark handled everything to do with Warlord, from the first day, he facilitated everything from where the band originally rehearsed, to dealing with the labels to co-ordinating the whole thing day to day. So it was very much Mark’s baby too. There would be no Cannons Of Destruction video if not for Mark, there would have been no studio to record Deliver Us if not for Mark. Bill was talented beyond comprehension, but he was not a business guy or logistics co-ordinator, nor did he wish or claim to be.
Track list:
1. Behold A Pale Horse
2. The Rider
3. Conquerors
4. Worms Of The Earth
5. Free Spirit Soar
6. The Bell Tolls
7. Alarm
8. Revelation XIX