NOTE: Bill Murphy interviewed Fates Warning vocalist Ray Alder in July of this year.
Ray: Hello?
Bill: Is this Ray?
Ray: Hey, how you doin’, man?
Bill: Hey, this is Bill Murphy calling.
Ray: Ah, what’s going on?
Bill: Just wanted to do some chatting with you about your career and upcoming gig at ProgPower.
Ray: My career?
Bill: [laughs] It’s a long and famous one, yes.
Ray: Sounds so official, damn.
Bill: First of all, what’s the latest with FATES WARNING? I know you guys are playing ProgPower and I hear from Glenn Harveston it’s the only gig you’re playing this year. But what’s going on with the band? Are you guys going to do anything more?
Ray: Yeah, well right now we’re in the middle of writing another record, which has been a loooong time coming, obviously.
Bill: [laughs] Yeah.
Ray: [laughs] But the things that we do in our off time, our little other projects, other bands and things. They tend to [Read more →]
Christian: No. Actually, we made sure, when we put this thing together, that everybody understood that this wasn’t a project band. We do have some relatively heavy hitters in the band; Steve DiGiorgio and John Allen, a breadth of experience, touring all over the world… Steve’s kind of a legend. In fact, on the album cover, I make sure that everybody is included in the songwriting credits, because I didn’t want it to feel like Marc and are the songwriters and everybody else were just our 
Ralf: That’s the good thing about it; we don’t have any pressure because now with Magnus Karlsson, we have a very good composer in the band. And if we do songs… as I said before we have this certain filter, which helps us a lot to decide what we’re gonna do on the album, and decide which songs gonna make it to the album. We write more songs than we have on the album. And this time also we have more songs on the album than we intended to bring on the album. We had so much good stuff, it was pretty hard to leave anything out. So there’s no pressure at all. It’s the other feeling, where we have too much songs at the end which we don’t just want to keep on the disc, we wanna release for the fans. Nowadays, bands bring out 
Pontus: Well, for one, the first time around, most of us in the band didn’t really have a set idea on how we wanted to sound individually and as a band. I mean, it was a bit of a gamble to incorporate a cello with distorted guitars and everything. We wanted, I mean, for the first album, we wanted cello to be an instrument that could be heard, but that can sometimes be hard to make a reality, depending on how you write the songs and all that. And that was a big difference until, with the new album, since we wrote most of the songs thinking of all these things specifically. And also, 
Sean: Our music is somewhere between Heavy Metal and Power Metal. We’ve kind of adopted the Power Metal moniker as we’ve gone along, just because the speed and intensity has increased as we’ve continued to write. But basically, we grew up during the Heavy Metal heyday of JUDAS PRIEST, IRON MAIDEN, OZZY, SCORPIONS, TESTAMENT, early CRIMSON GLORY, SAVATAGE, bands like WASP and even DOKKEN, with the Hard Rock stuff, and KING DIAMOND and METAL CHURCH. Just took all those influences and formed an amalgamation; just taking what I think are the best parts of all that stuff and 
Pär: Yeah that’s pretty good. It’s a small, small city. People are traveling from more than ten countries to see us, so. It will be an international event, our SABATON Ten Year Anniversary Party!
Bill: First of all, I just want to express my sadness at the passing of Midnight. That was a shock for all of us out here. You might have seen 
Although 
Thankfully, Greg Hasbrouck (aka "General Zod" on Ultimate Metal) was able to step in and conduct the vast majority (10!) of the interviews for ProgPower USA X. Greg did a tremendous job, and I am in his debt.
In addition, the interview with Mindflow was conducted by Brazil native and long-time fan Milton Mendonca (aka "AngraRULES" on Ultimate Metal).