Preyer
Scene Didn’t Change That Much

11.10.2010

To say that Wales left a profound mark on the history of rock music would be an overstatement, but this country did not stay away either from the fever that struck the mankind after The Beatles brought rock music to every home. Wales is known across the music world for its contemporary acts such as Manic Street Preachers and Bullet For My Valentine, but it also has enough to offer when it comes to traditional metal. First of all, let’s not forget that it was a Welsh school where a guy called Ian Kilmoster got the nickname Lemmy, and during the NWOBHM heyday this country delivered to the world such cult bands as Persian Risk and Samurai. In the second half of the 1980s yet another great band emerged from Wales. Preyer never reached stardom, but it did play great material in the classic heavy metal vain. After 15 years of staying away from the music industry Preyer reunited in 2005, and we spoke to guitarist Craig Thomas to find out what has become out of it…

What is the recent news from the band?

At the moment we’re just working on some new tracks. We’ve gone through two or three years just researching the sound, I’ve gone through Engl amps, we’ve gone through loads and loads of various preamps, all the preamps on the market, for drop-dead sound. Basically we settled on P6505 and P6505+ heads.

Last year you parted ways with drummer Phil John due to him being busy with other work. Can you explain what happened?

I don’t think things were happening quick enough for Phil. But I do understand Phil, I said to him it was gonna take time to get all the equipment and research the equipment to get the best sound. But I just don’t think things were really happening quick enough for Phil, so he got another project on the side, and so on. Basically Lyndon Morgan, the old drummer, is gonna play drums on the new tracks

How did you get to know Lyndon? Has he already brought something new to the band?

Lyndon used to be the drum roadie for Phil years ago, and basically he knows all the old Preyer tracks. He’s very good on double bass, he’s good full stop actually. It was an easy fit – to find somebody for that slot that used to be filled by Phil.

Your website has a “white spot”, so to say. What happened to the band from 2006 to 2009? And what are the current news from the band? Do you work on new stuff?

We got back together in 2005-2006, for two or three years we went to some rehearsals together, rehearsing and writing new stuff, that’s what we’re doing at the moment.

Craig, please tell us about yourself – when and why did you decide to be a guitar player.

Ahh… I started playing the piano at an early age, my mother was a piano teacher, and then I moved on to cello, but I always wanted to play the guitar from the age of 13 or 14. I’m self-taught, I did have piano lessons, but on the guitar I’m self-taught.

Have you ever considered using cello or piano in Preyer?

No, I’m not keen on keys! (laughs) Keyboards are really good in the Children Of Bodom stuff, but I try to put the keyboard sound at the back of my mind and listen to the guitar all the time!

Do you remember how you formed Preyer? How did you get to know the other members?

Pete (McIntosh, vocals) and Phil (Scourfield, bass) were playing together for a couple of years in different bands, and I just went to an audition. It was the three of us initially, we had never a drummer kicking around at that time. I said I knew a good drummer, so Phil came along, because Phil is actually my cousin. We took Phil and we formed as a four-piece. Then 18 months later Jimmy (Rees, guitar) joined the band.

Why did you choose such a name for the band? Why spell “Preyer” with “e” instead of “a”?

“Prayer” is something you say when you address to God, and “preyer” is the bird of prey, a falcon. I’ve been a falconer for 25 years, so the name came from that.

Judging by your first demo (“On The Prowl”, 1985), Preyer soon became one of the heaviest bands in Wales. What kind of responses did you have from fans, press and club owners in your early days?

We definitely had a great response in the early days. We always intended to go to a five-piece, because you can do so much more with two guitars than you can do with one guitar.

I heard that Preyer played often in two venues - Tonypandy Naval Club and Llanharan Rugby Club…

Yeah, we used to play at Llanharan Rugby Club and Tonypandy Naval Club, we played in Bogiez in Cardiff, New Market Tavern in Cardiff… lots of places.

Please, tell me about your early shows – what songs did you play at that time?

When we didn’t have the album, we still did mainly our own tracks. We might check one or two cover versions in, I think over the years we played something like “Living After Midnight” by Judas Priest, “The Ripper” by Judas Priest, “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne and “Two Minutes To Midnight” by Iron Maiden. That must have been all the covers we ever did.

What you can say about the Welsh metal scene of the early 80’s? Did you have some relationship with such bands like Tok-io Rose and Persian Risk?

From Persian Risk, I knew Nick Hughes, the bass player, and Phil Campbell well. We used to hang about together, Phil, Nick and myself, and even when Phil left Persian Risk and joined Motorhead, we still hanged about together for years. Then I knew Carl Sentence from Persian Risk, but for 20 years I’ve lived across the world from him. Apart from that and Tok-io Rose, I had good relationship with guys from Samurai.

Tok-io Rose featured guitar player Rob Skrines. Is he a brother of your producer Mal Skrines?

That’s right, it’s his brother. I know Rob well.

Your demo “On The Prowl” contains the song “No Mercy For The Wicked”. Why didn’t you include this song in your LP “Terminator”? Don’t you plan to re-record this song for a new release?

I don’t know, it just didn’t make the cut. A lot of people, e.g. the guys from Metal Forces loved it, but it just didn’t make the time mark. Maybe we will revamp it and bring it back to life one day.

What you can say about Mal Skrines’s contribution on your demo?

He’s a good producer, and he knows his job, but the guitar sound wasn’t the best on the first demo. The production in general was good, but the guitar sound was very dry. Anyway, it was our first demo. When it came to the second and third demos, the guitar sounded like they should, but on the first demo it was just testing. Hey, it was just our starting point, yeah?

Listening to your material, I can admit that you always sounded more similar to Accept than to NWOBHM bands. What were your main influences at that time?

I would say Judas Priest is a big influence on us, and Accept was a big influence back in the day, too.

How many copies of “On The Prowl” demo did you sell? Did you send this demo to record labels or magazines?

Yeah, we sent the stuff to all record labels, and that’s what basically got us the deal with Ebony. I knew a few of the companies were interested in us because of that demo.

In 1985 second guitarist James Rees joined the band. How did you get to know him?

I’d seen him play before. James was playing in a local band called Mammath. James is a great guitar player at the end of the day, but at that point Mammath were going down the tubes. I thing Avenger had approached him as well, but he decided not to go for it with Avenger, and joined Preyer.

Didn’t you feel some jealousy about him? You were the only guitarist in the band before that…

Yeah, but with two guitars you can play much more. We’ve never had arguments over the years – if James wants to take the solos, he can take them. It didn’t really bother me to the day. We’d play harmonies, and I’d do the odd solo or do some fills. At the end of the day, it has always worked out well.

The second demo “Fear The Dark” (1985) also contains one track which is available only on this recording – “The Preyer”. And again – why didn’t you include this track in “Terminator”? I think this song is a very good anthem for the band.

(laughs) I don’t know, it didn’t seem to make the cut either. At that time we were with so many songs on our hands, we could choose from. Once again, you were limited to 45 or 50 minutes at the time, and all of our tracks are 4.5 or 5 minutes, so we could only include eight tracks in the album. It would have been nice to put in the other two as well and end up with ten songs. But most of the album at that time were with eight or nine tracks.

What are your best memories about your performance for BBC TV show “Juice”? Didn’t you feel that now you’re stars after this show?

Yeah, we felt really good. It’s a shame we didn’t go that one step further. We had some great times in the day.

I heard that the band was robbed right before this show. Tell me this story, please!

Yeah, somebody broke into our rehearsal pace and nicked all the Ampegs, I mean, bass cabinets and amps - they were just all gone. I had to get a loan to get the Ampegs so we could play. I think we borrowed equipment for the next show, but within a week we got new equipment.

After “Fear the Dark” you signed with Ebony Records. Why did you choose this label? I know that French label Black Dragon also wanted to sign you.

We just chose Ebony at that time because they were an out-and-out metal label, they had all the equipment there, up-to-date mixing desks and stuff. We did go after the technology because we wanted to produce some good stuff. But at the end of the day, if you listen to a lot of Ebony stuff, they’re always underproduced or self-produced.

Please, tell me about the recording session for “Terminator” LP. What you can say about producer Daryl Johnston? Can you compare Daryl and Mal?

No, you can’t compare Daryl and Mal. Mal would listen to you and pay attention to your wishes. We wanted Mal to do the mixing of the album, but it was not in our hands. And Daryl had all the equipment there, he would just record us and throw all tracks together in the mix. The album would have turned out much better if Mal had mixed it.

Why did you decide to call the LP “Terminator”? I guess you were a huge fan of this movie.

I don’t know why we called it “Terminator”, it just came into our heads once the artwork had been done for it. We had artwork for the second album as well, but we got off of the contract with Ebony Records, thank God, because we didn’t want to waste any more tracks on Ebony. Anyway, the artwork was done for the second album as well, and it was going to be called “Beast In The City”.

Do you still like the cover artwork of “Terminator”?

(sighs) I’ve never really liked this artwork, but there’s a lot of people out there in the metal scene that revel it like a cult artwork. They think it’s a great piece of art. Maybe it’s not brilliant compared to others, but at the end of the day, a lot of people regard it as cult.

You had very nice responses from Kerrang and Metal Forces magazines, but why did you part ways with Ebony after “Terminator”?

We dropped them because we decided that we didn’t wanna waste any money on any more tracks for Ebony. We were very disappointed with the production of the first album. We signed a contract with them for a maximum of ten albums over five years, and they could have pushed us to do them, but we got out of it on a technically, on a date issue. We hadn’t re-signed the contract by a certain date, and we backed it with the post code. In other words, we did send them the contract in the letter, but the post stamp on the letter was after the required date, so we got out on the contract on a technicality.

I think it was pure madness that no one released your demo “Raizin Hell” – it’s absolutely fantastic recording! Why did this happen?

I don’t know why nobody picked it up, why another company didn’t take it up to release it and sign us. Honestly I have no idea. “Raizin Hell” was a good demo.

By the way, UK bands always were the best since the 70’s to the middle 80’s. And later it seems that the UK lost its leadership in the metal community. How do you think - why did this happen?

Yeah, I agree with you. If you listen to bands like Metallica and Megadeth, their influence is not American, it’s European, British influence. And if you listen to new bands now – metalcore bands or whatever you wanna call them, like Bullet For My Valentine, which are a great band – I don’t think the metal scene hasn’t changed that much. If you listen to Megadeth now and what they were like in the 1980s, it doesn’t change that much. You’re just downtuning from standard E flat tuning to B standard tuning or C standard like Slipknot, it’s just to make it heavier, I suppose.

What was the main reason of the band’s break-up? Were you disappointed with lack of success?

The main thing was the rate of success – we just couldn’t pay bills on ego trips, if you understand what I’m saying. We all basically drifted away from the scene. I moved from Wales about 20 years ago, and then come 2005, I get a phone call, there’s a lot of interest out there to re-release the album from four different companies! I think Mausoleum were interested, there was about four different companies altogether. We went and got it remastered down in London, myself and the bass player brought those tracks to London, got it remastered, did all mastering using the software, and then we sent them out to Marquee Records, and they mastered it again in Stone Studio in Brazil. Now it’s a far better mastering than it was on the original, I think. There are still certain things in the original mix, certain instruments are slightly lower or higher than they should have been, but you couldn’t get around that mix, full-stop. You could slightly bring them up in the mix, but you could never fix them fully.

I think great music is always great music, and it doesn’t really matter that much how it is mixed…

Yeah, I suppose, but when I listen to certain songs I go, “Oh, the guitar is a little bit low in there”, and you cannot fix it, because the mess they did in the original mix is big enough.

What did you do after the band’s break-up? Did you play music?

No, I hadn’t played for years, I think until about 2005 when we decided to come back. I’d moved away from the music industry, I was into working for the food industry.

Do you remember your first show after the reunion? What did you feel coming on stage once again?

We haven’t actually done any live shows at the moment. After 2006 we spent two or three years just researching amps, buying equipment, and going through it all. We haven’t performed one live show yet, and we don’t intend to, because we have picked four or five of the old numbers to play, and we wanna come up with new stuff. When we go up, we wanna play all the new numbers.  

But aren’t you eager to play live again after all these years?

Oh yes, definitely, I think we all want to play again. But first we have to sit down in James’ studio and write new numbers so that we could start off with them. That’s what we’re in the middle of doing now. I’ve spent a lot time researching equipment, and a lot of money (laughs), it’s not that we’re endorsed by thousands of companies, we gotta put all the equipment together again, which costs a thing. I did have an endorsement deal with national Engl going, I did use a Powerball for a while, I got it from the guy who distributes Engl in the UK, he lives in Birmingham, but I was not happy with Powerball at all. For the last three or four years we were just researching the equipment, and I finalized that only six or eight months ago. We’ve had some rehearsals, we’re trying to get back on track and write the new stuff. What we intend to do is to put a lot of the new stuff out and not just do the old tunes. We’re not going to do the whole of the album, we’ll pick up maybe five or six tracks, and maybe they’re not necessarily going to be off the album, maybe apart from “Shout It Out” and “Leather And Chains” we will do “Raizin Hell” and “Taste Of Sin”, we’ll see.

In the “Terminator” booklet you mention Bart Gabriel. Is it the Bart from Poland – the owner of Hard Rocker agency?

Yeah, Bard did a bit of work with us for some time. He wrote the press release for the album and the forward for the reissue of the album.

Please tell me a little about your private life – do you have a day-job, wife and children? Do you have any hobby beside music?

I have a wife, I have one daughter, who is 12 years old, and I have numerous dogs. As to hobbies – I hunt hawks, I shoot, I fish, so I’m a bit like James Hatfield (laughs) – I like fishing and shooting.

Thank you for this interview! What you can say to your Russian fans?

Just keep the faith, and we’ll be back with the new tracks as soon as we can. Hopefully we’ll be on the way to doing the belated second album after many-many years, and I’m sure it’s going to be far better than the first album, although all the people like the first album. But it’s been a long time ago, and now we’ve updated the sound so expect some changes. Just keep the faith is all I can say.

Preyer on the Internet: http://www.preyer.co.uk

Konstantin “Hirax” Chilikin
July 11, 2010
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