Shockwaves: Let's talk a bit about your new CD Masterpeace...this is the first Metal Church album in about six years, and actually your first album with the band since The Dark in 1987...it's been a while! How did the band come to reform with all the original members?

David Wayne: That's a good question...and a good story. What happened was, Metal Church's old manager, Kenny Laguna, who also manages Joan Jett, released a recording from Japan without the band's consent or foreknowledge. I don't know all the ins and outs, I wasn't around then, it was with Mike Howe. But, he claims he had the permission to release it, be that as it may, it's a really crappy live record and the band tried to shut it down, but the tapes were in the hands of Kenny Laguna - and he's somewhat of a shark. Anyway, Kenny got all this money from SPV (Europe) and laid out this crappy live album. Also during that time, Craig had come across these old Metal Church tapes, stored in these humidified storage rooms of this old studio we recorded in. The guy at the studio said he was gonna trash the tapes if we didn't pick 'em up. So Craig grabbed the tapes and got a hold of Kurdt (Vanderhoof). Apparently SPV was really ticked about the live record, so we tried to salvage these recordings with a process of baking the tape, which would give us one good recording out of it. Believe it or not, they baked the tapes in a Pizza Hut oven! And we ran it onto new tape and mixed it down. That is what gave Metal Church the idea to reform the original band. I only lived 5 minutes away from Craig, so we ended up all getting together and started writing together again. It's funny, because it all came together from a need that SPV wanted to salvage this shitty live record that Kenny Laguna gave 'em.

SW: That's pretty messed up. But I guess it all happened for a good reason - that being the fact that Metal Church reformed out of this!

David: There was a silver lining to that dark cloud in that we all got back together and wrote and recorded Masterpeace.

SW: So what were on the old tapes that were salvaged?

David: They were live recordings from Minnesota, New York, Texas...we don't really know where they're all from.

SW: So, the songs on Masterpeace are are all new songs that were written and recorded when the band got back together.

David: Correct.

SW: How was the vibe writing and recording with the guys, seeing that you haven't been with the band in over a decade?

David: I had some doubts in my mind. It's been 12 years since Kurdt and I wrote The Dark together. So in my mind I'm thinking 'how is this gonna jibe, is he gonna have a lot of attitude that I'm gonna have to deal with?'. But he and I both went into it for the FUN of it. And that's how the music wrote itself. We've always done the music first, and then I would just let the music tell me what I wanted to say.

Click Here For David Wayne of METAL CHURCH Page 2