Interviews / Articles / Rumour & Gossip

Q) Well done on getting the album released! Are you pleased that it is now out especially as some of these songs have been ‘out there’ a while?

A) Definitely, some of the songs have been around in one form or another for sometime now. That isn’t to say they took a long time to record, they didn’t, the whole album in actual time only took about 10 weeks, but we did some 30 or so songs and picked the ones we wanted to use. The other tracks will probably end up on the next release. We basically wanted to get the older material out first before releasing the newer stuff. Mark and I write and record most weekends just to please ourselves, so yeah it is nice to finally get some material out their and show what we’ve been up to.

Q) Before getting into the details of the tracks, Do you, Mark & Matt all have similar musical influences? Who do you feel are the major influences for Enzign ? I know that we’ve talked about some of the tracks having a It Bites /Francis Dunnary feel?

A) We most defiantly do not have the same influences, I’m from a classic rock background, the usual: - Whitesnake, Purple, Rainbow, Lizzy and heavier stuff like Queensryche, Metallica and Megadeth etc., I’m also into acoustic stuff like the Eagles where as Mark is more into the alternative scene (Killing Joke, Gary Numan, The Cult etc.,). But somehow we meet in the middle and it works great because we both bring very different ideas to the table. Yes we both like ‘It Bites’ but I never really thought it came out in our music, other people heard that, maybe its the way we do the backing vocals and arranging, the British thing, but what the hell I have no problem being compared to a great band, I find it a compliment.

Q) How do you & Mark go about writing the tracks? Do you both come up with the ideas?

A) Yes we both come in with ideas, sometimes I’ll have a complete song (music, lyrics etc) and Mark will stamp his identity on it, change the lyric etc. Sometimes Mark will have a song and I’ll write the music to it, arrange it, and change the tempo. We try to write about subjects that we can relate to.

Q) Did you have many tracks to choose from for the final listing? Any ideas on what may happen to the ones that ‘got away’?

A) As I said before we have some 30 or so tracks written and recorded in various states of completion. We even have deferent versions of the same song, alternative arrangements, different lyric etc. Hopefully some of them will end up on the next release in 2004.

Q) Ok onto the tracks... tell us about them? ... When were they written? ... What was the spark that generated the idea? ... Which songs were hard work to deliver? ... Which songs just came in moments of inspiration?

1) Cast The First Stone ... an over 8 minute epic start to the album.

This track was written to be an album opener. The soft acoustic intro leading into the big staccato Zeppelin type riff. It goes through quite a few mood changes, which echoes the subject matter of the song which is divorce and break-up. Its message is quite simple; - ‘I’m far from perfect, but I’ve got dignity and wont start the mud slinging, you’ll have to do that.’ This song was quite easy to write, it all fell into place and seemed to stand the 8-minute epic treatment.

2) 6th Sense...

This track I think shows our darker influences. I had the riff and arrangement complete, with some lyrics, but Mark though they were crap. He’d just seen the film ‘The 6th Sense’ and literally in 5 minutes had the lyric and the melody. It was a one take vocal; bit weird really the track seemed to write itself. The guitar solo was interesting in the fact that I didn’t know what to play. Mark said just make noises with the whammy and that’s what I did, again one take and it worked really well, it has that spooky sound that fits the song.

3) Midnight...

This was a song we wrote a few years ago ‘Midnight’ was an idea Mark brought in after waking up one morning and switching on the TV to none stop news of Diana’s accident in Paris. We worked on the track and gave a not so rock-’n’-roll subject a very epic sound. It originally had a 2-minute acoustic intro, which we cut off because it detracted from the impact of the opening riff. Not the lyrical thing many people would touch, but we don’t care we just write what we feel and try not to be judgmental, just observational.

4) I Had To Fall...

A simple song with a simple message, the love thing ‘you want it all and I had to fall. A song I had written in my ‘Kage’ days, I played it to Mark and he really liked it, so we ended up recording it.

5) Dangerous In Daylight...

With this we couldn’t decide whether to do it as a full-on rocker or an all out acoustic track, we ended up doing both with it. I’m very proud of the way this came out, there are no keyboards whatever on the entire record, yet even when I listen to this it does sound like there are keys in there. It’s just clever tracking of backing vocals and harmony guitars. The way Mark sang the intro reminded me of George Michael’s ‘Jesus to a Child’ very breathy and emotional.

6) Close The Door...

A powerful track with a good chorus hook. This song's about moving on and leaving the past behind, closing the door.

7) Holding A Gun...

This is a re-work of a track I wrote with the bass player (Colin Duffy) of Kage who’s now sadly deceased. It shows another side of my influences, the Kiss, Guns ‘n’ Roses thing. Mark took the lyric and based it around the ‘gun culture’, which seems to have reared its ugly head over the past few years.

8) Keepers Of The Kingdom...

With ‘Keepers of the Kingdom’, we wanted the intro lyric to have the feel of some wise ancient text so the rest of the lyric could show how far we have strayed from that idea that an intelligent species would not destroy the only home they had. We may now be just starting to see the first signs of the damage we’ve done over the last 200 years. Musically I think the track has some quite hard rock guitar riffs, which are balanced with very commercial backing vocals and a really interesting guitar solo. One of our favorites anyway. It was actually one of the first songs Mark and I wrote together.

9) Lazarus...

This is a track that is very personal to me. I saw both my father and brother die in the same year.  I remember thinking where do we do go after this, is this all there is? Lazarus (in case you don’t know) was the guy in the Bible who came back from the dead. ‘The song is basically asking the one big question ‘is there life after death?

10) The One...

‘The One’ started life on one of those nights when you exchange strange stories with friends. What we discussed that night formed the basis of the songs early narrative. So it is based around a true story. We actually finished an early version of the song (stranger than fiction) but as the album took shape we felt that we could do more with it and eventually totally re-recorded it, with a new chorus and middle section.

11) Endless Seas...

This track was written to end the album; we had a lot of heavy stuff, but not too much on the lighter side. I sat down with an acoustic and came up with the intro piece and the chorus lyric. Mark had the intro lyric already from a song we did a while back. Again the song came together very easily when we started recording it, very much a joint effort. I think it shows our Marrillion/Whitesnake influences, the classic rock thing.

Q) If you had the chance to go back and do anything differently with this album what would you change (if anything)?

A) You can always be wise after the event. But considering we wrote, engineered, produced and recorded it, we only have ourselves to blame. I personally think it came out very well for a first effort. I’m very proud of it. It’s all a learning curve, you can only get better. We’ve tried to show a broad song writing ability, which some people don’t seem to understand. They either want the more classic rock approach i.e. Cast . . . , Dangerous . . . , Endless Seas or just the heavier stuff. In the end you can only please yourself and hope people understand what you’re trying to do. We don’t want to sound one-dimensional, we like all kinds of rock/music not just AOR.

Q) So what are you up to now? Busy on the next Gary Hughes / Ten projects? And are you lining up songs for the next Enzign album? Is the deal with Z Records just for one Enzign album or for multiple efforts?

A) I’ve just finished the guitars on the ‘Once and Future King’ project and I’m about to start the guitars for the next Ten album. Then an acoustic album of classic Ten tracks we’ll be working on. Mark and I write and record most weekends so we’ve go a lot of material to choose from for the next Enzign release, hopefully next year sometime and yes it will be with Z Records.

Q) And are we going to see you out on the road this year? Either with Ten or Enzign ?

A) I’m hoping to do some gigs this year with Enzign, Mark Alger at Z is keen for us to play, so when the opportunity arises we’ll be out there. Ten will also hopefully be gigging this year in support of the next release, which by the way even in its rough pre-production state sounds absolutely killer.