Savage Messiah are at the forefront of the British Metal scene, and with their new album Demons set to be released in the next few months, one can expect the anticipation to notch up several degrees. I had the pleasure of speaking with frontman Dave about the album and the band’s career:
- What inspired the name of the band and what are your influences?
“I was up late at night in my parents house a long time ago flicking through the channels on Sky, and I came across this movie called ‘Savage Messiah’ and I thought it was a cool name that chimed with what our influences were, you know Judas Priest, Metallica, that sort of thing. I thought it definitely wouldn’t look out of place on the roster of band names next to theirs.”
- What’s your process for songwriting?
“It’s changed a lot over time. Before we wanted to be like our influences, so we used to copy their patterns, and then gradually over time that changed. Now we’ve got a method, we usually get a collection of ideas and then enter the studio, and record what we’ve got down.”
- There’s been a bit of a change over the career of the band in terms of the style of the albums, has that been deliberate?
“With Hands of Fate, the album with the greatest change in style, we had left earache records, we had no record label, and we were effectively starting again. We realised that because of the industry attitude toward us-that we were looked down upon, seen as a bit of a cliché and not taken seriously- we were facing an uphill battle. We decided to change things up. It worked, the songs that we wrote were well received and we recorded things and we got a record deal. Essentially it was a case of needing to progress to stay alive and thriving.”
- What influences were present during the writing and recording of the new album, and how has the band managed to survive, where other similar bands have failed?
“With this new album we kind of surprised our record label, because usually a band doesn’t enter the studio eight or nine months after just having had a record out, but we were pumped. We had a new agent, we’d done headline tours of the UK and Japan, and we felt confident. We were a lot more creative this time, and I think that rubbed off on the songs. My favourite song is ‘Under No Illusions,’ which is basically about understanding the bullshit in the music industry and cutting through it. “
“As to how we’ve survived for this long, I think a lot of it has to do with pure stupidity, and just dogged determination. We figured out where we wanted to be and we made sure we did everything we could to get there. We’ve dodged a few bullets in our time, and just kept going. You never know what might happen so you’ve just got keep going.”