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The Meaning Of Metal With DERRICK BRUMLEY From CONQUEST · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  My name is Derek with the band Conquest. Uh looking forward to doing the
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  Center of View with you guys. And I got the record just came out.
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  It's called Paradox Dark Star Records, and uh looking forward to doing this
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  interview. Which are my friend, be beautiful Derek, thanks for joining us
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  today. Brother again, my pleasure, definitely my pleasure or so as you
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  say. Conquest released your latest album, Paradox back on April the nine to
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  eighth, by it, so it was being about a month to the Holf
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  Day. How's the initial reaction being so far really good? I mean,
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  you know, we've pretty blussed on how much attention it's getting these days with
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  and that's awesome. You know, when you're when you're a musician and you're
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  an artist at it, you you hope for the best, you know,
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  prepare for a disaster and everything else. He's grivy after that. That's right,
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  That's exactly right. Expect the worst and keep pushing for the best,
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  you know. Yeah, So tell us a bit more about the album from
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  a musical point of view, might and what have you have gone forward with
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  it? So the record Paradox is as well sixteen songs. One is a
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  cover of the Man on the Silver Mountain. That's an old Rainbow song.
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  I don't know if you guys are familiar with that that well, yeah,
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  so Dio and Richie Blackmore was like early on a big inspiration for me.
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  So I was really into that old priest and stuff like that. So that's
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  how that song found its way on the record. Just something I always wanted
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  to record, and that kind of spawned the whole thing, and then the
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  other tracks. We had a bunch of tunes written for the record, but
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  then COVID hit start, you know, fired Up, and everything was like
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  that. And then the original drummer had left the band for a little bit
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  because of his uh, he had major personal issues he had to go deal
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  with. So that he's been out of the band now tens out of the
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  band, and Lee came in and filled in for the last two years,
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  filled and I shouldn't say became the member of the band and just killed it
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  on the drums, you know. Man brought this thunder to the songs.
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  So we put all these songs together and ended up with sixteen tracks. Have
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  to write with Lee, and we have just piled and piled the next one,
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  next one, you know, and really cool and it's really a diverse
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  record. Have you have you checked it out? Yeah? I had listened
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  to Chabet Haffan while I was doing the album during the questions, I might
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  I like it very old school, very old school, with a little touch
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  of new stuff here and there, and and I try to keep the production
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  raw. I don't like overproduced stuff, so we kept it raw at old
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  school. Like you said, old school. So oh, now just say
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  someone hasn't heard of the band much before you've released this thingles walking Dead and
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  Writings on the Wall, So I think you could sonny representation of what you
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  expect overall. Yeah, there's gonna be some more things coming out. I
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  know, Uh Love Love Amplified is gonna come out a little while as a
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  single. World of Hate is probably gonna show up. There's a lot of
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  diversity on the record, so we like, you get it all out.
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  And I think that people who like heavy metal for real, you know,
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  I mean who listen to anything from Iron Maiden to to Uh Priest and and
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  you know it's just the traditional metal stuff deo and that kind of stuff,
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  I think they'll appreciate the record. So well's just expand on that a little
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  bit more mite. So I just say there's people out there who have never
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  heard of Conquest before, Like, here's the songs from your whole catalog.
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  Give me three songs that people could listen to as an introduction to the band.
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  So off the Paradox record, I'd probably say I would send them Babylon
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  America. I'd probably send them Valley of the Damned, because we are we
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  like to thrash, we like to go fast too, not just the mid
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  temple stuff. But then yeah, you know Writing on the Wall or are
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  are are Walking Dead? Save Me? You know the those songs live,
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  they're still slamming in a little different way, you know how that goes.
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  But the new record is being received. What the shows that we've played with
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  all the new tunes, it's gone over real well. Even Celtic Myss is
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  another one, totally different vibe, man. I mean just I don't like
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  to make a ditto. I don't want every song on the record to be
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  the same. And UH been writing for many years, right, so putting
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  it together from the Devil's Creed opening, that's really traditional to me, power
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  metal and Lee Kills on that song, the drum fills in that song are
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  astronomical, you know. So that's that's how I view it. And then
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  we moved to the next track down the line. But if I had to
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  pick those three, that's probably what i'd pick. Now, I'm not sure
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  if I understood the press release, probably might But the impression I got from
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  reading it was that you write and recorded a lot of it in the studio
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  at the same time. Is that right? So yeah, so I own
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  my own studio, So the guys would we come over, you know,
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  through a whole weekend and we just get together and write and play hooks and
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  get it going and then track a little bit of it and get it figured
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  out. Usually I write on the lyrics, so then I work on melodies
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  and all that. It was a lot kind of more organic that way.
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  Not all the songs were done that way, but there was a fair portion
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  of them was done that way. And it was really organic and and allow
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  Lee just to you know, to meet drummers. Sometimes can overthink music,
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  yeah, and this time with Lee doing it, it was just it was
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  just powerful and aggressive without too much thought put into it. And sometimes I
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  think that's the best music out there. And so you make a good point
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  the like, if you're doing it that way, like everything could be sort
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  of rule when you come back to it, Like if you sort of sit
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  on it and digest, you know, and play around with a little bit,
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  you put those polishes on it, you know, and it sort of
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  becomes a structured song. But if you just chamming it out and putting it
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  down there, you get the real feel of it. Well, totally.
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  Man, It's one of those things that you know, not all songs,
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  but some songs are contrived, you know, and put together. You know,
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  Okay, here's this part, let's mesh it with this part, let's
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  put this push this together. But then there's some stuff that's just straight out
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  hard rock heavy metal where you just get in a room and jamming out.
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  And so there's a lot of both of these. What makes the record cool
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  to me is both of these elements are on this record, and that's not
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  always easy to do and still make it sound like they belong with each other.
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  Yeah, Now, looking through the track list, in my there's a
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  nice song on they called Paradox, which means the album title must have a
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  bit more of a special meaning to you. Well, it's about the concept
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  of the music. Everything has a parallel to it, and a lot of
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  the music it represents, you know, kind of what's going on in the
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  world, what's going on in America, what's going on. But they're also
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  there's just good old, straight up hard rock songs like Love Amplified. That's
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  about falling in love with the song with the guitar. You know, when
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  I was like thirteen years old, I started playing the guitar and that became
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  everything, right, So kind of fell in love with with the guitar.
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  So love is amplified, right, Yeah, you've made quite a de sign
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  that the album had many obstacles, like what were they and how did you
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  get around them? So, like I said to him, who was the
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  drummer of the band for many years, had to leave the band due to
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  personal issue situations. So that kind of kind of came out of nowhere far
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  somewhat, And so we were in the middle of making the record and all
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  of a sudden we hit the brakes and then Lee came back in. And
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  Lee, I've known Lee for a long time, and he fit in like
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  a glove man. He stepped in and just bam pounded them drums out.
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  So that was an obstacle that I wasn't quite sure how that was going to
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  go. Because you're in the middle of doing something, you got one feel
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  going on, and all of a sudden, you know, erase, start
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  over, you know, try this with this, you know, and it
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  turned off phenomenal and and and the same thing with Rob. You know,
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  Rob's a great bass player, but he lives a little further away from us,
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  so it takes him a little bit more for him to get here to
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  do it. So a lot of that was done over the telephone. You
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  know, hey man, check this ook out, you know, get this
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  blah blah blah blah. So then when he got here, we work real
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  well together everybody. We don't try to be oh my way or the highway.
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  Thing we want with each other so that we can make it about the
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  whole band. And the music comes on, it's the whole band. How
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  we touched on this before my head. But you can definitely hear any music
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  that you've got a lot of that old school thrash roots to you. So
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  as a band, like, how difficult is it playing all the music like
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  that that everybody knows and loves, but putting your own spit on it to
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  make it I sound like yours and be sound a bit more muddern than fresh,
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  right, which is a you know, as you guys know, man,
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  as it's it's not the easiest thing in the world to do anymore,
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  especially everything's been done. I mean, when you go get the brand new
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  Testament record. As much as I'm a Testament fan, you know you're waiting
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  for that spark because you've heard I mean, what else can they do?
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  But yet it's great music. You know, it's great music. And that's
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  why I tell everybody in today's world, if you're over twenty five and you're
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  listening to music, listen to it two or three times before you form an
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  opinion because you've heard everything already, so nothing's going to shock you, you
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  know what I mean. So enjoy the music for music. Don't try to
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  always look for the new, greatest, latest thing. So that being said,
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  we just tried to keep it real, keep the music aggressive. Like
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  you said, in the old days, we were more of a thrash band
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  when you rewind. But as you get older too, man, I don't
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  want everything to go ninety miles an hour. I like stuff that drives too.
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  Has that slow movement. So I'm cool with all of it. And
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  the band is too, you know. So Mike's leads are just you know,
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  on the record take It, Take Us song like in the Heavens.
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  I don't know if you check that track out or not, but it's so
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  different than anything else on that record. And one day he came to me
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  and started picking this piece out. I'm like, that's cool, man,
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  I don't know what we'll do with it, but it's cool. And then
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  the one other time he came in strumming his piece and I go, hey,
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  play out of the part you had that one time, and he did
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  next thing, you know, you know, hit the record button. We
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  mesh it together. Hey, man, don't play the lead on your electric,
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  go pick up that acoustic over there and play the lead on that.
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  Just something way off the beaten path. So that's how we do it.
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  Yeah. Actually, I don't think I've ever asked anyone this before, but
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  you just brought it to my mind. Like a lot of musicians will talk
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  about that. They'll talk about a riff that someone had ages to guy and
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  then you break it into a song. But you guys have got that much
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  music in your head. How the fuck do you remember a riff someone played
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  ten years ago to put in another song. It's amazing, but you do
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  speaking of that, so you take love amplified. Mike brought that little diddli
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  the front piece that's kind of like a van Halen thing or whatever, and
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  then I wrote some hooks for it for the verses and all that, and
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  then we were like, huh, we need a bridge and a break.
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  Well, hey remember that one song, so we wouldn't grab that out of
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  there, you know what I mean. It's just the way it is,
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  and you feel it and you know it fits and you start playing it.
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  It's cool. Yeah. So right, wait, you've got to show you
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  coming up with Banning Witches on July the twelfth as well. Might tell us
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  more about that. So Bertie Worch, are you familiar with with the girls?
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  Yeah, I've interviewed that before. Lovely great band is lovely people.
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  Yeah, looking forward to playing with them. So just one of those situations
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  where the promoter in town on the other side, I mean, that's a
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  good distance away from us, but the room that they're playing is a good
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  draw for us. We draw real well there. So promoter calling today,
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  you want to be on the show, and we said share, let's do
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  it. We're getting ready to work on stuff for one more video and then
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  we'll be uh working on playing out in the fall. We've got a bunch
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  of stuff gonna happen in the fall. Hasn't been released yet, but it's
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  happening, so looking forward to that, right all right, Derek, Well
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  thanks for you, Tom might be the pleasure to making with you today.
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  The new album from Honk Quest, Paradox, is out now. And do
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  you feel like you' music hot, fast, loud in old school? Give
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  it a crack. Yeah, It's available everywhere on all forms of media.
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  You can buy it on vinyl, CD, all your download sites, wherever
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  you want. The band obviously appreciates the CD sales and vinyl sales. So
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  and to me, I'm old school. I like tearing stuff off and looking
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  at it, you know, and reading what's what it says? You know.
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  So I've only got a CD fire in my car. I don't even
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  worry about streaming shit through it. If I've got to release some music in
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  the car, bang in goes to CD. You know what people call us
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  old school or whatever you want to say to me, that's how music is
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  supposed to be done in that car jamming on ten. You know what I
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  mean, brother, go I'm on the other side there. Awesome man,
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  Well, I sure do appreciate you man. And again the record Paradox check
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  it out Conquestmedal dot com and uh, we were really appreciate you spreading the
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  word for us.