By Martin Popoff
"I'm still in Pittsburgh," he states. "I built my studio the beginning of last year so I'm busting my can here in this place. I'm doing pre-production and demo work for other people. I've got one pop singer and one r+b singer and I write all their material. And I've got the new solo album, writing everything here. And I'm producing some other bands in a big studio. That's pretty much what's going on. This will be my full-time job. As I'm getting older, you kind of have to take a look at the future and figure out what you want to do, and over the next couple of years I want to cut down my travel time, cut down on some of the touring, and if I'm going to tour, be very choice-ful about it. The level that we've been on is very fair. I've been very pleased with it, although I've never really reached the big, big time, you know? With the next solo album, it's going to be along the same vein as the first one. I'm going to try do my best to keep it there because obviously with the new album, Silent Force, that's much more aggressive. It's more of the aggressive, kind of in-your-face, heavy metal, headbanging kind of stuff. And that's where I'm going to make the separation. I want Silent Force to be the aggressive angle in my career and then with the solo stuff, I want to do more of the melodic, progressive hard rock."
So no relocation to Europe any time soon? "No, America is my home, period. I enjoy being there, certain countries; I lived in Denmark for awhile, and Germany, you know, it's great to be there. But whenever I've spent two or three or four months away, especially four months, it's all I can do to stand it, to wait to get on an airplane. I have a family, no children yet, but my wife and I, we have a home here in Pittsburgh and my family lives within two and half hours of the city. So we try to stay very close, as close as possible, and as age kind of creeps up on you, you have to start thinking about things as far as family and future and with your parents getting older. I don't want to be stuck in the middle of Europe somewhere and I can't get home. When I was actually in the recording studio doing the vocals for this album, I had an uncle pass away. And it was absolutely just torturous being away. And it's not because we were very close, but it's because I couldn't be there for my family when they needed me the most. And that's the part that bothered me the most. So that's probably why I would never live in Europe or move that far away from my family. It would be different if I was single and didn't have much family at all, yeah, probably. But this is my home. And especially after everything that happened in September, it just makes you even more proud and more strong towards what I believe in, and what this country is all about."
SILENT FORCE - Send For The Priest... Page 5