Philip A. Wickstrand is a contributing freelance writer for Metal Psalter Webzine. He caught up with Woods of Ypres vocalist/guitarist David Gold, at Plan B in Portland, OR on June 28th, 2010.

While many people may have difficulty pronouncing a name like WOODS OF YPRES (e-prey), what is not difficult is the understanding that these fine Canadians make some damned good Metal. Incorporating everything from Black Metal to Doom to Prog Rock, WOODS OF YPRES have forged for themselves a sound that is uncommon in a scene choked with bands trying to be the next big thing by playing paint by numbers garbage. While it may not be to everyone's taste, no one can argue their credibility when it comes to them playing the music that comes from their hearts.

Phil: First of all, how has the tour been so far?

David: Oh, man, excellent. Today is day eleven, I think. We left on Friday, June 18th and we toured all over western Canada, not one bad show - every show was really well attended and then we played two new places we'd never been before - Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which was awesome and then Prince George, which is in northern British Columbia, which was totally awesome. That's a new Metal town on our map that I think any time we'd ever tour western Canada, we're going to go back there.

Phil: Yeah, I don't think they get a lot over there. I was doing an interview with either SOILWORK or DARKANE, I can't remember which, but they were on tour together and they said that Prince George was awesome.

David: Really?

Phil: They said that they played a skating rink or something.

David: (laughs) Cool. We came into town - it's like it's a really cool northern community type vibe and everybody was super friendly, everybody looked pretty hardcore, but everybody was just out to party and no one gave us any grief. We played the show, it was tons of action in the pit and then we went to a really cool Metal party afterwards, so yeah, pretty good.

Phil: Why'd you decide not to play Seattle on this tour?

David: We contacted as many contacts as we could find and the show just never happened. A lot of email went back and forth and for awhile it looked like someone was going to take it up and it just never happened. That's how it goes sometimes, you know. This is our first time touring through the States, whereas Canada we've done three times over, so I guess that's to be expected the way that we operate where there's some markets where we're really well known, but we recognize that there's some where we're not at all, so it's brand new for us. But next time we do this, sure man, I'd love to play a Seattle date - I would have loved to have played last night, but we ran out of time and we're here instead.

Phil: Tell us a bit about "The Green Album".

David: I first started writing "The Green Album" when I had a year kind of sabbatical from my regular life, spent it in Seoul, South Korea where I taught English and I was a corporate trainer.

Phil: My sisters are doing that.

David: Oh, it's awesome, man - if anybody has enough interest and enough bravery to go do it, man, it is a life changing, mind opening thing. My experience was really good in Korea. That year I also drummed for a Korean Death Metal band called NECRAMYTH who had been around in that scene for about ten years and like a lot of scenes, they have a Death Metal drummer who two other bands share, so when I kinda got there, I was looking for an outlet and these guys came into contact with me and said "If you want to do this, we'll kick the other guy out and you can play with us for a year." So my year spent in Korea, we basically would rehearse two or three times a week, we'd play a show once a week, we recorded an album and that was a really busy but awesome twelve months and then in my downtime then, I started writing riffs again, not really sure what they were going to turn into or whether they were even going to be WOODS OF YPRES or not, but at the end of the day, I'd sit down with a guitar and I'd start putting things together. At the time I decided I was going to do an album called "The Green Album" and upon returning to Canada, I enlisted Evan Madden, who is a drummer from the Philadelphia area; he plays in a band called THE GREEN EVENING REQUIEM and also drums for a band called WOE. I emailed him from Korea and said "When I come back to Canada, I want to put the WOODS band together, I want to tour, I want to do a new record" and he basically said "I'm in a hundred percent, thanks for emailing me - don't email anybody else, let's do this." And that was perfect because at the time I really needed someone in my corner to kind of come in and say that "Yeah, this is important; I like what you're doing, let's do this", so someone who supported the vision. So then last year, we toured eastern Canada in May, we came home, we had another guy who was going to do bass on the album, came home from the tour and quit two weeks before we were about to start recording. At that time we enlisted Shane Madden who is Evan's younger brother, who also plays in WOE and THE GREEN EVENING REQUIEM. I asked him, "Hey man, I know it's short notice, but we're starting to record 'The Green Album' in two weeks, if you're interested, man, it's all yours". So I sent him the songs that night, he got working on it right away, we flew him up, he recorded it, I did all my guitar, all my vocals in a few weeks and as soon as it was done, we toured western Canada. By the time we came back from western Canada at the end of August, we did a little bit of mixing and "The Green Album" came out in November last year. It's my most Doom oriented album, heaviest album that way emotionally, it's our least Black Metal album, but it was the only album that we could have written at that time and in that mindset. So it's interesting because the reviews are really mixed, I'll hear from somebody who absolutely thinks it's the worst thing ever and I'll hear from somebody who thinks it's their favorite album of all time, so it's nines and tens out of ten or it's zeroes and ones out of ten for people. But to me, it was the most honest thing for us to do and really, it was the only album that we could possibly do - we needed to do that album to get onto whatever's next, you know - it was something we had to get out of our system.

Phil: What was the time in the studio like?

David: This was the best studio experience so far in terms of… we recorded it locally at the one and only good studio which is in northern Ontario and it allowed us to bring the guys up there and work on it basically five days a week for about five weeks or so. Bringing the other guys up, it was a good, relaxed environment for us to work in; not a lot of travel and it was economical for us to do it that way versus doing it in Toronto or something else. It was good. I mean, we went in there really well prepared based on the fact that we went into it just obsessively, you know, just that we were all obsessed about outing as much time into it, to be as well prepared as possible and as long as you do that, you go in, you give it you’re all, you can't really regret anything, you can't really be mad at yourself in the end of the day if you really feel you did all you can do. And that's how we feel about it - in the end, it came out and like I said to Evan, our drummer, I said to him "I think 'The Green Album' turned out really well" and then I say, "But based on the circumstances that we made it, to me, it's amazing the way it came out" because we had a lot of challenges and time constraints, budget restraints, all that kind of stuff, but we were able to go in there and bang it out. And the engineer was impressed by the speed and accuracy of which we could go in there and just do stuff on first and second takes and do a really fresh, unique sounding record.

Phil: What are your plans for future releases thus far?

David: I can't really say what we're going to do right now because for the first time in the band's career I don't know. Usually I have a pretty clear idea of what we're going to do next and right now I have a lot of ideas in my head about what I want us to do, but we also want to take things to a new level in the next step. And by that I mean we've been doing this independently for eight years now, since 2002 and we've always been able to… with every release and every year, we make it a little bit bigger, we climb a little bit and we do a little bit better every year. But we're at a point now where we want to do more than that and it's been a really kind of slow climb with all kinds of stuff, mostly just because of the climate in the industry right now, doing things independently… it's really tough just because…. We have distribution in Canada and the States and that used to work out a whole lot better for us than it does now, whereas even in the last year, people are buying half as much as they did last year. That's a big jump to see. So it blows my mind when we we're going to sell out of the first thousand copies of "The Green Album" on this tour, which is cool, but it should be two thousand, though. You know? When you look at online, how many times it's torrented or if you go on Last FM and see how many people are listening to it - it's like we have twenty listeners for every one person who bought the album. (laughs) And I don't mind that one bit if we can cover our costs and stuff, but any guy in the band will admit, or anybody else doing this, Metal or music on our level, will admit that we love what we're doing, but it is a hustle just to get everything paid for. I'd have no problem with it at all if we could do that easily, but it is a challenge and I don't think that a lot of people kinda realize that. And it's easy to get that album, but I'd appreciate if you listen to it, if you like it, that kind of thing - buy a copy, buy a T-shirt, whatever. Keep us in business, you know?

Phil: Speaking of downloading, what is your take on legal downloading?

David: Legal downloading?

Phil: Like iTunes and such.

Woods of Ypres' David Gold

Interviewer: Philip A. Wickstrand

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Formed 2002
Saulte St. Marie, Ontario  CANADA
Label: Practical Art Records
Genre: Melodic Black Metal

CURRENT LINE-UP:

David Gold:  Vocals, Guitar,
                      Piano & Drums
Shane Madden:  Bass & Vocals
Evan Madden:  Drums
Joel Violette:  Guitars

DISCOGRAPHY:

Against the Seasons: Cold Winter
     Songs from the Dead Summer
     Heat EP (2002)
Pursuit of the Sun & Allure of the
     Earth (2004)
Woods III: The Deepest Roots 
     and Darkest Blues (2007)
Independent Nature 2002-2007
     Best of/Compilation (2009)
Woods IV: The Green Album (2009)

PHOTOS BY PHIL A. WICKSTRAND

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

(Click on Photo to Enlarge)

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July 12, 2010