Empires Of Eden
I'm Trying To Think About The Listener

27.05.2011

The story of Empire Of Eden, a power metal project created by Stu Marshall, ex-guitarist of cult Australian power metallers Dungeon, is a good way to show everybody that persistence and strive for perfection combined with talent cannot but make your dreams come true. I am convinced that a few years back even the musician himself would not believe he would be working with the present day’s best singers. However, Empires Of Eden’s sophomore effort “Reborn In Fire” features Zak Stevens (Circle II Circle), Sean Peck (Cage), Mike Vescera (Loudness, Yngwie Malmsteen) and Steve Grimmett (Grim Reaper)! Hard to believe, indeed. And the album itself proves worthy of the names that you can find in the credits.
Our communication with Stu turned out easy and relaxed – the guitarist is a very nice and talkative person, whose voice displays confidence in his own capabilities, but not a shade of conceit. Read on to learn the story of Stu Marshall’s remarkable career.

Please tell us about your most recent activities: do you work on some new material, do you write any songs?

From December right till now I’ve been absolutely busy. I’ve started writing material for the next Empires of Eden album and started putting some new guests together for that. I’m producing an album by one of metal’s most incredible vocalists – sadly I can’t say who that is at the moment (laughs) because we are about to put some press releases out and definitely you guys will know first who that’s gonna be. I’m in the middle of writing material with that person and I’ll be mixing and mastering the album (as we got to know later it was Ronny Munroe, ex singer of Metal Church – ed.). And I just completed a couple of clinic dates recently for a new guitar company that I’m working with. Pretty much from December until now I’ve been very busy but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

You mentioned clinic dates but what about your own band?

Hmmm… No. Basically Empires Of Eden itself is mostly a studio project, and PainDivision – the other band I’m in, it’s a thrash metal band – we’re starting to record a new album, the third album, now. I haven’t done any gigs, I’ve been locked in the studio pretty much for the last two months, but we’re talking with a couple of promoters in Europe, and it would be amazing to do Empires Of Eden over there. It will be great, because we’ve got guys like Zak Stevens, Mike Vescera, Steve Grimmett, all these great vocalists, and they all wanna do this.

You mentioned a lot of great singers who you worked on the second album “Reborn In Fire”. How did you get to know all these brilliant singers? Was it difficult to get such people for the album or did they agree immediately?

It’s interesting you asked that because I was talking with Zak Stevens about it, it’s a question I get asked a lot, and he responded to me, “You just asked”. The way which I got in contact with these guys was that I took it fairly seriously, I made sure that I had material ready for them before I got in contact with them. For each singer for Empires Of Eden I spent time writing material specifically for them. As for Zak, I’ve been a massive Savatage fan for years, so I really wanted to tune in to his vibe and his vocal range. The same thing for Mike Vescera - I love the Loudness stuff that he did, I love the Malmsteen stuff that he did. I spent time before I contacted all these guys composing the material. Through management I approached them and said, “Would you like to be a part of this project?” You know, they get approached by a lot of people, but I’ve been lucky enough to become friends with a couple of the guys when doing various projects and talking with them afterwards. They get approached all the time, but I guess they need to connect with music that definitely resonates with them as musicians.

All the singers did a great job for this album but how did you decide which singer will sing which song?

For me the process was very easy – I immediately chose the people that I loved as vocalists. Some of these guys may seem like unusual choices, some people said that to me, but for me, I’ve been a big Savatage fan, I’ve been a Malmsteen fan, I’ve been a fan of Steve Grimmett for years. The idea came about when the very first Empires Of Eden album was completed – I did it with Australian singers and we had such a good time, all the clichés do apply: we had a great time - and I thought, “How amazing would it be to write music for people I’ve admired for years and work with these people on a very open level, let the singers do the best that they do, which is writing their own lyrics and melodies, telling their own story and doing that type of thing as opposed to being dictated. In many other projects the guy that’s paying the bills usually says, “Right, I want you to do it this way”, but this was very different. That was where a lot of the mystery was, it was a bit scary (laughs), but it turned out to such a collective product. “Reborn In Fire”, when you hear it, is a true collaboration, it’s a very honest and open grouping of people getting together just to have some fun.

There is one more person which is more obscure but he also did such a great job on this album – we’re talking about Louie Gorgievsky. Can you say a couple of words about him: how did you get to know him and why did you decide to work with him?

Louie’s been a friend of mine for years. I used to play in a band called Dungeon and Louie was and still is a vocalist in the band called Crimson Fire from Australia and these guys are incredible. We did some tours together and I got to know Louie. We just hit it off years and years ago. When the initial idea of Empires Of Eden came around I needed a vocalist that could do the things that I heard in my head, that kind of high-screaming metal and Louie was that guy. Louie’s really become the right hand of Empires of Eden, he’s been involved in every step of the way and we forged a really strong friendship out of it as well. This guy is an absolute world class talent. I urge everybody to track down to Crimson Fire and check out Louie because he is one of the great vocalists of our time.

The album “Reborn In Fire” was recorded in different studios all over the world. Was it hard to bring it all together?

I think we did it in like nine studios – the vocals were tracked all over the world. We had studios in Tokyo and Nagoya in Japan, we had the UK, we had studios all over the States. The important thing was making sure that the singers used really top-end gear. All the guitars were tracked here in Sydney, Australia, in my studio – I have a commercial studio here. By the time we got down to vocals, all the music was composed, and that made it a lot easier. But for the vocals it was very important to make sure the right standard. I think we did OK.

Can you say a few words about the album title “Reborn In Fire” – is it just a cool sounding name which fits heavy metal music nicely or did you mean something specific?

The title came to me when I was driving home from work one day. Something happens to me when I drive, I tune in to a different part of my brain – it’s usually where I write a lot of material and get a lot of concepts. There’s nothing specific as far as a great story that I could tell you, it’s just I really felt this album had a lot of power and was very strong and it needed a very strong title. I can actually tell you you’re the first people to hear this – the original title for the album was “Silence Obscura”. I sat with that for a while it just didn’t sit right. The funny thing with Empires Of Eden is that it’s a very organic process if I can explain that. Things have to feel right, you know, they have to sit perfectly. And usually that comes with very little effort, you just tune in to it, and it becomes real before you know it. “Reborn In Fire” was very much the feel for this, this album is a statement of artistic purity.

What can you say about the lyrics on this album? The CD booklet doesn’t include any lyrics and it’s impossible to find them on the Internet…

We’re going to be fixing that really soon on the new website that’s about to launch, we’ll have all the lyrics there. The lyrical content is something I can take no credit for at all, because because the lyrics were written by all the vocalists and that’s part of enjoyment for me as well, because I can still listen to the album as a fan. Everybody surprised me with where they were coming from, that was just a great feeling. We’ll have the lyrics up there, too, and hopefully the new album will have them in the booklet as well.

“Reborn In Fire” had a lot of positive responses, but what can you say about sales of this album?

Well, that’s a good question. We’ve had some label issues, actually we’re now luckily out of that deal with our European label and we’re looking for new labels. We had some really nice and positive reviews but there are still people in the States that can’t get in the hands on this CD at all. We’re actively looking for a company to actually release this thing properly. Essentially it hasn’t been released in the States. I don’t think it’s been released in Russia at all, we don’t have a label there. As far as the Internet sales, it’s a great – we charted in Japan on iTunes, I think we also charted in the UK on iTunes for a couple of weeks. Digital sales are going really well, but I wanna get a physical copy out to people, we wanna send posters to people and interact with people as much as we can. I guarantee the future’s gonna be a lot better with a new company and a new arrangement.

On the thank-you list in the CD booklet you mention Carlos Zema, and you say you’ll be working with him very soon. Do you have another project with him in the works?

There are just so many people on the album to highlight. In fact, for the next album we’re gonna be doing a two hour DVD. I’m working with a producer at the moment and we’re really gonna highlight the talents. Apart from the fact that Carlos is an incredible vocalist and an absolute professional to deal with, he is such a great songwriter. I wrote a song for him for the album, he sent it back, and we both agreed it wasn’t as good as it could be. He sent me one of his songs, which is the song “Rising” off the album. It is his song – I just produced it and arranged it a little bit. We’re gonna be doing a solo album for him as soon as he can get some tunes together and as soon as I can get some availability, we really work well together. It’s been a great experience.

Let’s speak about your past career, if you don’t mind. How did you decide to be a guitar player and who was your main influence at that time?

Oh, for me it goes back to Kiss. Kiss was my main influence when I was a kid, it’s the band that made me want to do it. Then I got into people like Yngwie Malmsteen, Ritchie Blackmore, Scorpions… I’m a massive Scorpions fan, a massive Judas Priest fan. I got into metal at a young age and just never stopped, man! I went to bed with a guitar at night (everybody laughs) and had the dream to be able to go on tour and to do that sort of stuff. I was very lucky in 2002 – I joined a band called Dungeon, and Dungeon released a couple of albums overseas. We did some tours, we were lucky to be picked up by Megadeth to tour Australia, and Dave Mustaine walked into our dressing room and offered us a tour over in Europe back in 2005. That was incredible to hang out with Dave and get to know him, he looked after us very well. There was stuff in the media made up about him, but I can guarantee that he definitely cares about the bands he takes on the road. We did Japan a few times, we released the “Live In Japan” DVD and things like that. At the end of that tour - we finished off in Japan - and it was a good time for me to finish up with that situation and move on. I’m playing guitar for 20 years now, I love it.

There are many talented and skilled guitar players around nowadays. In your opinion, what separates you from the rest of the guys? What makes you stand out of the line of cool guitar players?

I think I’ve developed my own thing, I’ve developed my own feel and sound by still channeling the other influences. When I play I spend a long time with all the technical stuff so I got all the fast sweep picking down and all that sort of thing. Being a musician alone separates us from each other, we’re all different. I think the thing is that I tend to tune in to my voice as much as I can, I think melodically before I think of scales and shredding, I’m trying to think about the listener. I think about construction of a solo, more then I think about shining off.

I have to let the listener to decide what separates me because at the end of a day they are really the ones that are liking it or not liking it. I’m still evolving, I’m still learning all the time. I also work for a guitar magazine, and a couple of years ago I got to interview George Lynch. There I was, sitting down telling George that I’m a very big fan, and I also asked him, “What kind of advice can you give to young players?” He said, “Put the guitar down, go and live your life. Have a healthy life, have good relationships, have experiences and then come back to your guitar and express it”. It’s those kinds of things that we forget sometimes as guitar players, we spend so much time pouring over scales (laughs), while really interacting with other people, playing and jamming is so important. But I think I should let the listeners decide whether it’s a pleasing sound or not.

Speaking about Dungeon, what are your best memories about that period of your life and why did you eventually leave the band?

Dungeon was amazing for me. The best memories are that we could fill three hours of talking. I remember joining the band and actually getting into Dungeon - this was incredible for me. I’d been doing many gigs before but nothing as high-profile. My first gig was in front of a couple of thousand people here, that was amazing, but really the Megadeth tour was the pinnacle for us and what we were doing. We wrote a really successful album called “One Step Beyond” (2004) that did really well in the States, and we toured on that with Megadeth. We played in Romania, we played in some really unusual places – unusual for us, we’re coming from the bottom of the world.

Not so many bands play in Romania anyway. Even for us in Russia Romania is unusual.

Yeah, cool. And Russia is definitely on the list for me. (laughs) So visiting these places, you know… I’m a traveler, I’m ready to go. I love diving into cultures and everywhere I go I’m trying to speak a little bit of the language. But why it ended for me… Look, in a lot of bands there’s a lot of tension sometimes, and we had some tension on the road. I think at that stage the music that Dungeon was sort of moving towards just wasn’t working for me. I’m as much to blame as anybody else in that situation. When I left that band I formed PainDivision which initially started out like a W.A.S.P. or Motorhead thing, so I was into something totally different. But I’ve got fond memories, and I’m still friends with the guys. We talk every few months, it’s all good.

Do you remember the track “Traumatized” from the album “A Rise To Power” (2002)? Such a thrashy song with screaming vocals is very unusual for Dungeon. Who came up with it?

That’s a good example, I’m glad you brought that up. I had nothing to do with writing that. When I joined Dungeon, “A Rise To Power” had been recorded pretty much, the guys had finished it off and I just did some solos. Within a month of me joining the album was complete. This song was written partly by the drummer Steve Moore and by Tim, the singer. There was a lot of fun to play live. I remember Dungeon supported Mayhem...

(surprised) Mayhem???

Yeah, it’s a funny story! I’ve still got a video somewhere. Dungeon supported Mayhem in Sydney, and luckily for us, death metal people still liked Dungeon because it was heavy, it wasn’t pussy metal. But we were really scared to support Mayhem because of the reputation. (everybody laughs) So we did “Traumatized” and I think that really won the crowd over that night. But also we had Hellhammer, the drummer from Mayhem, coming to our dressing room and saying some compliments - and we were freaking out because of his reputation. That was a good experience for us. I think that was a start of Dungeon becoming a lot heavier.

In the year 2007 you released a solo album called “Altered States”. Unfortunately we haven’t heard it yet, so can you describe the music on that album?

It’s a very diverse range of music. I’m not entirely sure if it will get ever re-released, it will probably end up in the underground somewhere. (laughs) It’s kind of the start of me becoming a producer, I guess. That was really the first time when I had my hands on mixing. There are a lot of mistakes on that album but there are performances on it that I’m really happy with. Sadly, I lost all of the original tracks, they’re gone forever. (laughs) I learned a heavy lesson there. “Altered States” is a mix – there’s some bluesy stuff on there, there’s some shredding metal on there… We were about to go to Japan and I thought it would be a good idea to do a solo album for the guitar company that I was working with at that time. It’s unusual that you guys raised it, because no one has ever asked me about it. (laughs)

How did you come up with the idea to start Empires Of Eden?

In 2008 PainDivision had some time off. I’d written all this material when I was in Dungeon, but it never made the albums and I just really wanted to get that material out, so the idea was really to do that. I just thought, “What a great concept it would be to have people being artistic instead of being dictated to”, that was entire promise of what this whole thing’s about. I contacted some good friends and they were happy to get on board and assist and make it happen. The concept came to me around December 15, 2009, and the first album was completely mixed and mastered by March the next year, so that were really three or four months. And that’s how it all came about – it was a very easy process, and it has continued to be easy, that’s where it’s at, it’s gotta be fun.

You mentioned that you want to remix and remaster Empires Of Eden’s first album, “Songs Of War And Vengeance” (2009). Are you dissatisfied with the sound of this album?

I am now, because the first album was an experiment. Me and my business partner Dan Quinlan, he is also the mixer and engineer, wanted to do punchy, dry and powerful album. We really liked the Megadeth sound, we really tried to go for that kind of thing. I think it was probably the wrong move because this kind of music does require a very thick lush rich sound, the European power metal sound. In hindsight, when we look back we see things that we could fix. Having said that, the reviews were really kind for it, so we’re probably being a bit picky, some people really like that album. We’ll always have that album in that format, anybody who wants to get it, I think it’s available now on iTunes, and it does quite well. But I am gonna be remixing and remastering the entire thing this year and it will be fully re-released. I’ve got some bonus tracks as well that we might throw in on that, we’ll just see what the next label deal offers and we might have something out.

You played all the guitar solos on “Reborn In Fire” but on the “Songs Of War And Vengeance” you invited a couple of extra guitarists – e.g. Lord Tim, Akira Takada. So why did you decide to have these people on the album as well?

I gotta say I had some guests on “Reborn In Fire” as well. But you’re right – on the first album I had more guests. My ego is not big enough to just have me only and some friends of mine are incredible guitar players. They offer different textures, different colors, different flavors as guitarists and it was great to have them on there. One of the other guitar players, a guy called Mark Furtner, also plays in Lord. I think we had like nine guest appearances, but they’re only short appearances, 10-second solos here and there, but they are just good friends. It’s great to have people involved that are phenomenally talented, it was just great to have them a part of it. And it makes the end product all the more rich.

You have another band, PainDivision, and you mentioned that you’re working on the third album. When should we expect this album? What can you say about the music of this band?

Well, the next album should be finished by the end of March. We have an incredible drummer on the album – a guy called Robin Stone, he is a kind of mix between Mike Portnoy and Dave Lombardo. It’s extreme thrash metal with shredding. (laughs) It’s the band I have with the gentleman I mentioned before, Dan Quinlan, he is the vocalist on it. We’ve been doing this for years and it’s been quite popular here in Australia – we’ve supported Helloween, Sebastian Bach, Black Label Society, Armored Saint, Death Angel… We’ve done quite a few shows as a touring act. Musically it’s very aggressive, it’s very different to Empire Of Eden, they’re not even in the same ball park. The album is called “Return To Chaos” and we’re really excited about it, it a very different musical expression.

You mentioned that you’re working on a new website. Any news about that?

We were hopping to launch it in January, it’s located at Empiresofeden.com, but if you go there now, you’ll just see the front page. I’m trying to set up this situation where it’s completely interactive to people. We’ve got an iPhone application, we’ve got it for Android as well. I just try to keep it interactive, giving posts and giveaways, really staying in touch with people that like the music – like you and I, we hooked up on Facebook. Anybody reading this just put my name on the Facebook, and if you send me a note “thank you for the interview”, I’ll add you. We try to stay as available to people as possible, because that’s what this community of metal is about – it’s about interacting with each other and sharing it all around. This new website looks beautiful, it’s amazing, and I’m just dying to get it ready to roll.

Is it hard to be a successful metal musician if you live in Australia?

I think it’s hard anywhere. A lot of the guys that I talk to, they are celebrities, and they tell me the truth about the scene. In Australia it’s not easy either, though the Internet has made it easier. I played on some Japanese metal albums as a guest, I did session work here, so I make a comfortable living. But it makes it hard for touring, and I’d love to be on the road all the time. At the same time, the conditions of living in Australia are extremely good. After I’ve toured and seen the world, after I’ve seen a lot of Europe, the United States, Japan and even some Indonesian places, I can say  that Australia is the place for me, it’s a place to live in, it’s a really good situation. Yeah, I like it but it’s hard anywhere at the moment. The scene is changing, it’s totally changing.

Speaking about changes – there were a lot of good bands in Australia in the middle of the 1990s – Pegazus, Black Steel, Dungeon – which were quite well known in Europe and in other parts of the world. Even in Russia you could easily get their albums, they were released domestically. But what can you say about the present-day metal scene?  

A lot of these bands are still going, like Pegazus is still happening. I think it’s hard on the scene at the moment with people and crowds but we have some incredible bands here. I have already mentioned Crimson Fire, there is also a young band here called Darker Half. Anybody who likes Dungeon, anybody who likes aggressive power metal - look these guys up, they’re recording an album! I’ve got their vocalist on the next album and he is incredible. We’re lucky that there are good bands here, it’s just that the venues are starting to close and it’s making it harder to play live. But there are still some incredible talented guys. Vanishing Point are still going, obviously Lord are happening. There is quite a list of good Australian heavy metal talent.

Well, Stu we have run out of questions. Probably you would like to say a couple of words your Russian audience…

Thank you to every single person, if you like what we do – reach out and tell us. My Russian is terrible, so when people say “My English is bad”, believe me – it’s better than my Russian. (everybody laughs) Send us some messages and you might be surprised – I’ll send you some posters and stuff. We love to have fans overseas, it definitely keeps a fire burning for us. If you cannot get the albums I can service you directly, I’ve got the stock here, I can hook people up. I love what I do with Empires Of Eden and it means even more that people actually like it. That’s fantastic for me.

Empires Of Eden on the Internet: http://www.empiresofeden.com/

Konstantin “Hirax” Chilikin, Roman Patrashov
February 12, 2011
(c) HeadBanger.ru