This interview was conducted over the phone by Philip A. Wickstrand with guitarist Scott Waldrop on April 23, 2011.

Back in the mid-nineties, in those dark days when metal wasn't "cool" in the eyes of the mainstream, TWISTED TOWER DIRE formed with the intention of keeping the flame alive and fighting the good fight against a music industry that had abandoned the genre they loved. Fast forward to 2011 and metal is "cool" again in the industry, simply meaning that the major labels think they can make a buck off of it and TWISTED TOWER DIRE still have the same passion for the same reason - they love metal, plain and simple. Their new album, Make It Dark, was released this May on Cruz Del Sur.

Phil: First of all, tell us a bit about the new album, Make It Dark.

Scott: We started writing it right on the heels of our previous album, Netherworlds in 2007, so we've been working on it for a long time with the songs. We started recording it about a year and a half ago - we recorded it ourselves in our drummer Mark's basement, the guitars, did the drums and stuff and the bass and we then took it over to our friend Johnny Wooten, who is in WIDOW; he's a audio engineer/producer, did the vocals in his house and then we took the whole thing to Chris Salamone, WHILE HEAVEN WEPT producer, and he is the guy with the talent to mix our self-made album and I think he did a hell of a job. I'm very pleased with the results.

Phil: I listened to the album and I'm actually surprised that it was recorded in a basement - it's sounds really, really strong. What kind of techniques did you use while recording?

Scott: Me and Dave, the guitar player, are fairly anal retentive about our guitar tones, so he's got a modified Voodoo Marshall and I've got a vintage modern with various pedals that I use and took our time getting the tone and just did our best to mic everything correctly and we got direct feeds so that we could use guitar tones through it. Our drummer Mark has been non-professionally dabbling in audio engineering for years now and we kind of felt comfortable at this point taking on the project ourselves, mainly out of money because we had gotten out of our contract with Remedy and really had nothing going for us, so we kind of had to do it all ourselves because the band had been dormant for so long. So did that and really what made magic happen was Chris Salamone. The guy is just an incredibly talented audiophile. You go to his studio and it's like a mad scientist's lab there and… pretty much just gave him the files and let him have at all the editing for a couple months. Then all of us drove up to his house in Virginia and just had some marathon, like thirty hour sessions 'cause we had to do it that way. Which I'm really amazed that it came out sounding as good as it did because probably during the end of these sessions we were whacked out of our brains on sleep deprivation, but that's how we did it.

Phil: You mentioned that you started writing the album a long time ago - what was the song writing process like?

Scott: I would get various ideas in my head when I was feeling creative in the shower [laughs] or on road trips or something, jot my ideas down. Pretty much this time around… I mean, this is the first album where I wrote all the music and the lyrics because Tony wasn't in the picture, our previous singer, and a lot of it I literally wrote on an acoustic guitar the same way I'd imagine a folk singer to write songs, so we had the bare bones minimum, like singer/songwriter sort of idea of a song and I'd take it to the band… I'd demo it on my home computer and then Dave and I, the other guitar player, would sit down and literally turn it into a Metal song and we'd kind of sift through the parts of everything as a band and that's what we got.

Phil: What would you say are your favorite songs off the album?

Scott: Me? Probably my favorite two are Snow Leopard and The Stone. Snow Leopard because I think that was kind of a dividing point between our style; it was kind of one of those "Aha!" moments as a band, like "We want to sound like this. This is creative, this is interesting and it sounds like no one else - it sounds like us." That also with The Stone, but I think The Stone really started to be one of the songs where we realized our new guitar style… not just guitar, but probably all the instruments; everyone - the singer, the bass, everything, kind of really realized that this is kind of where our sound is going and what we're capable of.

Phil: What would you say are the strongest points of the album overall?

Scott: I think that this is probably the most well thought out, song writing-wise, of any of our albums. I think… probably the most sophisticated, I think the most creative, as well. But that coupled with Chris's audio engineering style really brought all these ideas to life and I'm really happy with the production. I think for the first time ever we have an album that sounds like us and it's well produced because probably, inarguably, the best production we've ever had was Crest of the Martyrs which we did with Pete Sielck over in Germany, the guy from IRON SAVIOUR, but it sounded like a German Power Metal band.

Phil: What are your touring plans so far for this album?

Scott: Ah, that is a good question! We have no idea - we're going to sit back and let this album stew in its own cauldron and see what comes out of it. Basically see how successful it is and where it's successful and if we get any offers to tour, particularly in Europe because that's probably where our biggest fanbase is. It's already coming upon summertime here, so it's kind of unrealistic to do anything this summer. Maybe fall in Europe. We're going to sit back and see how it does and where it does well, hopefully it does well, and take it from there. We're definitely going to do something; the band's been dormant for so long and we've just finally got a good album on our hands and stuff. It kind of still remains to be seen - we're just going  to sit back and watch right now, but there's going to be some tour. But we're not sure where yet and we're not sure how long and if we get an offer, we're hoping we do, to go, particularly over to Europe again, that would be great. And if we don't get the offer then we'll start being proactive about getting something together. But right now we are pretty much just sitting back and weighing our options if they come along; the album's not even out yet in America, so we'll see.

Phil: You guys did a FIST cover a little while ago; tell us why you chose to cover Name, Rank and Serial Number.

Scott: Rich Walker who does Miskatonic was doing a series of seven inches dedicated to New Wave of British Heavy Metal stuff, so he's basically getting his friend's band and bands that he likes to cover New Wave of British Heavy Metal songs for the series and he said "You pick the song as long as it's an English New Wave of British Heavy Metal band and we're gonna put these seven inches out." A long time ago, Rich had sent me a whole bunch of compilation tapes of his favorite seven inches, back in the early nineties, literally they were on cassette, 'cause we were buddies and he wanted to show me his favorite songs from his seven inch collection and a lot of it I'd heard, so a lot of it I hadn't heard because the guy had this massive vinyl collection. So I heard that song, the FIST song, Name, Rank and Serial Number and every time the band was over at my house drinking, back when we had the party house, we put that song on. We loved it, we always wanted to cover it and Tony, Tony Taylor [former vocalist], never liked the song. He was the only guy in the band that didn't like the song and we wanted to cover it anyways, just kind of turn it into our own song for live purposes, like METALLICA style, the way they did things in Kill Em All, but we didn't have the unanimous decision as a band to do that but we always, always wanted to cover that song. So finally years later, Rich comes up at us and says "Choose a New Wave of British Heavy Metal song," we instantly went to that song because we had a new singer and that's how that turned out. I'm a huge fan of that band and always loved that song.

Phil: Yeah, that anthology collection is amazing.

Scott: Yeah. Oh man, I'd never heard half that stuff.

Phil: Okay, recommend a book for our readers and then tell why you recommend that particular work.

Scott: A book for the readers… wow. All right… that threw me for a loop. You know, I instantly want to say something like an HP Lovecraft story but that's completely predictable, so I'm going to literally walk into my house and look at my bookshelf. My living room is filled with books - half my living room is the bookshelf. All right, if I'm going to keep it real I am going to be very honest here and tell you… I'm looking at my bookshelf right now trying to see the actual title of this book, which I think is perhaps one of the most interesting books I ever read in my life… I believe it's called Discovering Your Spiritual Path and I'm 99.9% sure that is the correct title, but a lot of it's common sense but a lot of it also makes you… it deals with talking to people and being conscious about your interactions with them and in a nut shell, it talks about the laws of attraction and being a positive person and attracting positive people to you so that you have that influx of good energy coming to your life and the people you choose to keep around you determines your happiness and your success.

Twisted Tower Dire's Scott Waldrop

Interviewer: Philip A. Wickstrand

May 6, 2011

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TO THE TOP

(Click on Photo to Enlarge)

Formed: 1995
Chantilly, Virginia  USA
Label: Cruz Del Sur Music
Genre: Power Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

Jonny Aune:  Vocals
Jim Hunter:  Bass
Scott Waldrop:  Guitars
Dave Boyd:  Guitars
Marc Stauffer:  Drums

DISCOGRAPHY:

The Curse of Twisted Tower (1999)
The Isle of Hydra (2001)
Battle Hymns to the Pantheon
                               Compilation (2002)
The Secret Demos EP (2002)
Crest of the Martyrs (2003)
Netherworlds (2007)
Make It Dark (2011)