| There's
a lot of band's who become infamous over night for one reason or
another, many of whom deliberately court controversy and go out of their
way to cause trouble for others. Eden's Curse have never been one
of those desperate 'look at me'
bands and have let their music do the talking for them. Sadly
there have been occasions in the past when they have been dragged into
controversial situations by less talented musicians who seemed hell bent
on getting their 15 minutes of fame by casting unfounded aspersions on
others.
Talking
the higher ground has paid off as now after 3 1/2 years of hard work,
blood, sweat and toil, the band are finally ready to go out and meet
their fans face to face and show once and for all, they really are a
force to be reckoned with. We catch up with lead singer Michael
Eden shortly before the second date of their UK tour with the mighty
Stratovarius and Firewind in Nottingham to see how it's going so far ...
MM -
Hi
Michael, how are you today?
Michael -
I'm fine thank you, looking forward to tonight's show.
MM - How did the show go last night?
Michael
- The
gig went very, very well. The band played extremely tight and the
crowd, we pretty much had them from the get go. Being in the
position that we are in of having not toured before, we didn't know what
was going to happen. But we walked in and nailed it from the get
go. We had them and as soon as I knew we had them I thought this
was going to be a fantastic show and it was.
 |
MM
- How much rehearsal time did you have?
Michael
- We
had about a week. I
flew in from America and arrived in Glasgow, went to Paul's
house and stayed there for a day then flew to Birmingham and
that's where we met up with the rest of the band. Then we
went into rehearsals for about 7 straight days. We played
for about 7 or 8 hours a day for those 7 straight days. It
was a hell of a lot of rehearsals. The first day I did
like 30 tunes and then blew my voice out. Now it's just a
matter of the road carries on and every day is a new adventure.
We're never quite sure what's going to happen but it's all good
fun. There was a lot of work in rehearsals though, a lot
of work.
|
MM
- I believe
there's been some shower wars going on?
Michael
- Well
I guess it's just some people like to get up early to have a shower.
Our crazy German's they do things at very odd times sometimes and you
never quite know what they're going to do. TK
was taking a bath or a shower or something at like 4 am in the morning.
It woke Pete up and then the next thing you know then there's somebody
else in. So now there's two of them in. By 8 am everyone's
interrupting my beauty sleep!
I was stuck in the dungeon, which is right off the entrance to Pete's
place. It's as cold as an ice box and we had to keep turning
up the heat. We had to keep sending Jay creeping up the stairs to
turn the boiler up. Poor Jay was like a little rat creeping up the
stairs so we could get some freaking heat into this place.
We brought the record label in from America and they were like ...
"It's cold in here!!!"... "It's cold in this city!"
... (laughs), and it is compared to what we're used to back in where
they are from in Connecticut and where I am in Indiana. This is
way different. It rains all the time! So we're prepared for
the craziness that is the road, but having people get up at 4 am in the
morning to take showers doesn't make it easy.
If
anyone's getting away with anything on this tour it will be me and the
record label, beyond that anybody else can kiss my ass! (laughs).
MM
- Is
this your American record label?
Michael -
Yes
it's the American record label Metal Mayhem. We've got Ryan and
his lovely wife Sara along
and they are 100% behind mine
and Paul's vision for the band and what we want to do. This is
what we've been doing for the past 3 1/2 years and they are spending a
great deal of money on a tour that technically isn't their territory.
But this had to be done. So said Classic Rock magazine, who said
that the band had to get out this year and we had to play and prove
ourselves on stage. Ryan and Sara said "It's done".
I asked once and it was done, and that's the way it should be.
They are 100% supportive and that's why they get all the cool Eden's
Curse stuff. All the cool stuff we've been working on, they've got
exclusives to. Sara will sit there and say ... "$20 bill, $20
bill, 50 bucks" ... and that's the way it works.
You have to be able to make money and you have to be able to pay the
bills. They have to be able to pay their bills and I have to be
able to pay mine. The label has to make money. Labels these
days, a lot of them don't make money and a lot of them pretend to be
record executives. They pretend to be record labels. Put
your money where your mouth is and if you want Rock n' Roll to continue
then you put a band out on tour and you let them play for the fans.
If this tour goes the way that is went last night, we'll have these
people every single night.
It's not over, we're going to come back and we're going to do it again.
Absolutely.
 |
MM
- What's
the setlist going to be like for this tour, a mixture of
material from both the albums?
Michael - It
is, we're not playing a lot of tunes that I'd like to play, I
like a lot of the lighter Eden's Curse stuff, 'After The Love
Has Gone', some of the lighter stuff. Steve Perry and Jeff
Scott Soto and those type of people were always favourites of
mine growing up as singers, and it's a little easier on me to be
able to sing those songs, but playing with Stratovarius and
Firewind, you gotta come out of the gate kicking ass. So
songs like 'Masquerade Ball' and 'Angels and Demons', which we
just did a video for with Pamela Moore, which is all over
YouTube getting thousands of hits (and
it's on our site too!). Those
songs are in the set and beyond that you know people are going
to have to come along to the shows and check them out.
We're playing some stuff from the first record and we're playing
some stuff from the second record and it's a heavier Eden's
Curse. But there is one slower song which we weren't going
to do but then we did it in rehearsals because a lot of |
| people
have asked us to play it. I think it should have
originally been the single off the record but people think ...
oh Pamela Moore, we can utilise this ... and so we did. If
it was up to me 'Angels and Demons' wouldn't have been the first
single we released from the record, or at least as the video.
It's not that I don't want to share a stage with Pamela Moore
because I do, maybe if we play other shows she might be invited
along. I love Pam to death and Paul loves her too.
She's great, but we'll see what happens and see what tunes end
up in the next tour. We have 30 minutes this time out
which isn't a lot of time, so we'll have to see what happens. |
MM
-
Have
you got any plans for the next tour?
Michael - We have a couple of things in the pipeline.
We
have a couple of things planned tentatively that we're still talking to
people about, festivals. There might be a couple of other things
going on but you don't know, it's all financial. There's a lot of
logistics to this and I'm never quite sure how any of this is going to
work to be honest. It's life, you get a set of cards that you're
dealt with and you see what you can do with them. As you can tell
by all the background noise, these people are crazy around here.
It's getting loud and insane in Eden's Curse, very loud and insane! (The
rest of the band are just around the corner having a wild old time while
we've got poor Michael trapped in a booth chatting to us. Look's
like the Eden's Curse party has started already tonight!).
MM -
What
progress have you made so far on the 3rd album?
Michael - The
3rd album is probably going to happen some time in 2010. We are
probably half way through writing it. I've always said the band
will not disappoint and I can promise you this band will not disappoint.
We have plans to try to up what we've done already, and that's going to
be pretty difficult to do. We came up several notches from the
first album and we're going to try and do it again. What we're
going to try and pull out of the hat this time I don't know but I can
promise that Metal Mayhem is totally behind us and as I said before,
Ryan is behind our complete vision and what we've got going, and AFM is
too. I wish AFM Records could have been along for this ride
because they're missing a hell of a party, but it is what it is and we
do the best that we can with what we got.
Every day is a different thing and there are people, like our tour
manager, who are eating before I do! (At
that moment Michael has spied out the corner of his eye the band's tour
manager walking past with a plate full of food. Not only is he
missing out on the party chatting to us, but now he's missing out on the
food too!).
Did you see that?!? Bastard! You see that's what I get when
I talk to press people. I talk to press people and they get the
food. Hot food at that!
MM
- Just as Michael's about to grab a plate of food before it all
goes he gets a shout to say he's needed for his sound-check. How's
that for bad timing? Food-less he has to say his goodbyes to us
and head off to the stage to do what needs to be done while the rest
scoff all the food and carry on partying. Ah well no one ever said
being the singer in a rock n' roll band was going to be easy!
We'd
like to thank Michael for taking the time out to chat with us this
afternoon and look forward to seeing more of him and the band later
tonight when they play the infamous Rescue Rooms. Check back for a
post-show interview with the band coming soon! |