BLAZE - Metal Flows Toward The Path Of Least Resistance Page 3
By Martin Popoff

And just briefly, what are the backgrounds of the Blaze guys?

"Well, when I was looking to put a band together, I wanted to work with people that loved the music. That had to be the main thing for me. I'm in it because I love the music. I've always played metal and I had a really strong idea of the thing I wanted to do. And I wanted to get together with guys that I could get along with, and get along with musically, really. People that wanted to go in the same direction as me. That's the kind of thing I was looking for, people with that kind of energy. I didn't really want to use people that were cynical about the business or had a couple of albums or anything like that. I wanted people that just want to live on a tour bus, play as much as you can, go into the studio as an excuse for the next tour. And those are the guys I found, really. Great musicians, but none of them really had the opportunity to record an album or have a major release. So it was great."

How about a bit of contrast of the two Blaze studio albums? What are different about them, what are the approaches, what are perhaps the production differences?

"The first album, we wanted to make sure we had the recording all worked out. I didn't want to spend too long in the studio; I wanted to keep that down. We wanted enough time to do a good job but not enough time to go up our own ass. So we did that, and we had a bit more time with getting the band together, a bit more time writing songs, everything. There were a few ideas that were hanging around for a while, with the first album. Silicon Messiah... there was quite a lot of writing time - about six months, I suppose, in the writing - and we were really happy with the result. And then Tenth Dimension, we recorded it a lot more quickly because we just didn't have the time because of tour commitments and everything like that. But we had more time in the studio. And I think that's a much, much bigger production. We kept the first album, Silicon Messiah, very straight-forward and as simple as we could, and then on the Tenth Dimension, it's a whole concept album. It tells a story; I wrote a short story and based all the lyrics around a short story. It tells the story of the scientist who makes a discovery and basically the government wants to steal that and use it as a weapon of mass destruction, and he wants to use it for the benefit of mankind. So it tells that story, and the production on that is a lot bigger; there are a couple of big epic songs on there. And that brings us up to the live album. And the live album, really, we've learned so much making As Live As It Gets, that we're really going to change our approach next time we go in the studio."

BLAZE - Metal Flows Toward The Path Of Least Resistance Page 4