CELLADOR - Heartland Heavies Page 2
by Martin Popoff

What are Bill's qualities as a player compared to yours?

"Bill has a different style of lead playing," begins Chris. "He's more straightforwardly picking and shredding. He's a very precise player and very fast; that's why we want him in the band. His lead style reminds me a lot of the guys from Angra or John Petrucci. Whereas my lead playing is more pentatonic. I mean, I still speed pick. I'm very influenced by players like Yngwie; I do a lot of that, but I think I use a lot more pentatonic and bluesy type stuff than Bill does."

As one bounces through the album, one realizes that it's full-on all the time. This is, as Chris relates, by design. "It's always really hard for me, as a writer and a player, to pick out my favorite songs. Because, I mean, especially for this record, we wanted all the songs to kind to stick out as really catchy, memorable, easy to listen to tracks. We didn't have any slower epics or any ballads or anything really big. We wanted every song to be really catchy, and to be able to be absorbed pretty easily."

It all seems to be coming together for Cellador at the right time. After all - and out of nowhere - a similar band, Dragonforce, is packing venues all over America, much to everyone's surprise. "It's kind of an optimistic feeling," muses Chris, "seeing their success in the USA, seeing that bands of that style, the melodic style, are becoming more of interest here in the USA. Which obviously is good for us. So yeah, I would say it's really a positive thing to see their success."

I asked Chris how players so young seem to be able to get so good and fluent and technically capable so fast these days. "You know, my theory is probably just because it's based on what they play. You had guys in the '80s, the early '80s, who are learning from guys in the '70s, who were learning from guys in the '60s. So I think everybody, in any type of thing, not even just in music, but everybody wants to reach a new level, reach new heights. So I think that gradually with time, each player is playing to these newer musicians from the past. Like for example myself, I was inspired by a lot of bands from the '90s, because I started playing guitar in the mid-'90s. So I'm playing to these bands from the '90s, who themselves were probably inspired by a lot of bands from the '80s, who were inspired by bands from the '70s. So I think with each step, everybody wants to surpass or reach new levels. And so they are practicing to these players who are incrementally on that level of ability, reaching beyond what came just previous."

CELLADOR - Heartland Heavies Page 3