Detritus
Mini-Issue #353.5 - March 3, 2006
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Detritus/

To subscribe to the e-mail version do one of the following:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Detritus/
Detritus-subscribe@yahoogroups.com (send a blank e-mail here)

To unsubscribe from the e-mail version:
Detritus-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com (send a blank e-mail here)

To contact us:
Detritus-owner@yahoogroups.com

*
*** CAST OF CHARACTERS ***
*
Patrick Brower, Editor
patrickbrower@...

Sean P. Gahgan, Editor
lof@...

Tim Wadzinski, Owner
tsw512@...

Steve Shumake, Co-owner
vongoober@...
http://www.vongoober.com/

*
*** LET IT BE KNOWN ***
*
-Happy Friday! Let's all celebrate by reading Neal's cool interview
with powerhouse vocalist James Rivera (Helstar, Vicious Rumors, ex-
Seven Witches, etc.). - Tim

*
*** SPECIAL REPORT ***
*
by Neal Woodall (MysticX9@...)

-Interview w/ James Rivera
February 27, 2006

Fans of traditional American power metal should be quite familiar with
the name James Rivera; from his groundbreaking work in Helstar to
involvement in numerous well-known projects, James' vocal style is
synonymous with power, class and distinction. Currently recording new
material with Vicious Rumors, it has just been revealed that James
will reunite with the legendary REMNANTS OF WAR-era Helstar lineup --
Larry Barragan (guitar), Robert Trevino (guitar), Jerry Abarca (bass)
and Russell DeLeon (drums) -- for a performance at the 4th Annual
Robb's MetalWorks Showcase in San Antonio on June 10. I spoke with
James just days before the announcement about the state of Helstar,
Vicious Rumors and his many other musical relationships...

DETRITUS: James, how's it going?

JAMES RIVERA: Good, good, how are you doing?

D: All right. We finally got this together!

JR: Yeah, yeah I know -- it's been kind of hard because I've been out
in California working with VR and when they started scheduling these
interviews I was right in the middle of a move and then I had to come
out here...

D: So you've got a lot going on?

JR: Yeah I do!

D: Well, I want to ask you about Vicious Rumors but I'm going to try
to keep this organized so let me start with Helstar. To let you know
how far back I go with Helstar, I saw you opening up for W.A.S.P. in
1984 on Christmas Eve -- do you remember that?

JR: Oh wow, yeah I do remember that! (laughs)

D: I used to listen to them play you on the "Random Sampler" on KPFT
[Houston Public Radio]. Remember Mitch, Doug and Mike?

JR: Oh, yeah, OK. Where are you living now?

D: I'm in Georgia now, Macon.

JR: Georgia, that's cool!

D: Well, tell me what the current status of Helstar is. Are you on
hiatus or still active?

JR: Well actually there is some big news that's going to hit on
Wednesday so I'm going to leave it at that! (laughs)

D: What are we watching for the announcement, MySpace or your Web
site?

JR: You can do that, or you can probably just wake up that morning and
see it on CNN, it's going to be that big! (laughs)

D: Well I'm looking forward to that one!

JR: It's going to be something very special...

D: What's your favorite Helstar lineup?

JR: That's a hard one but I'd have to say, especially even more so
right now and this might even give you more of a hint, I would say the
REMNANTS lineup.

D: Ohhh, yeah -- you've always had a good ear for guitarists and there
were some great ones on there. Do you keep up with those guys, like
Larry Barragan?

JR: Oh yes, most definitely, we talk every day.

D: You even keep up with the guys who played on the first album
[1984's BURNING STAR], like Tom Rogers?

JR: Ahh, none of those people, those guys fell off the face of the
earth! (laughs) No idea what happened to them...

D: That was awhile back.

JR: Yeah, and I think that unfortunately with that lineup...
(hesitates) It seems to me that -- and it is kind of odd -- I would
say that split unfortunately was left at a bitter note and always has
remained as a bitter note. So it's kind of, with those guys, I
wouldn't -- not that I wouldn't care to see them -- but I could do
without ever seeing them again. Nothing really against them but
they've been out of my life for so long that it's hard to remember
what they even look like! (laughs) But I just know that, through the
grapevine, that the vibe from them was very bitter towards anything we
did later on in life, forever and ever and ever, so finally it's like
20 years later you're like "All right, grow up you know. So what? My
bicycle was faster than yours, I'm sorry! Are you still going to hate
me in sixth grade?" (laughs)

D: I noticed you had Eternity Black on the links page on your Web
site. Are you involved with them at all, seeing as they have three of
the guys who used to be in Helstar with them?

JR: Well no, I'm not involved with them. I mean I'm not in that band,
but like I say, we do hang out quite a bit so... (laughs) I'm giving
you more and more hints! We get together on the weekends and barbecue,
among other things...

D: Now does that include Andre [Corbin, guitarist on 1988's A DISTANT
THUNDER and 1989's NOSFERATU], too?

JR: No, he's out of the picture. I know where he's at -- he's in
Florida but he's not playing either.

D: Helstar has a new DVD out, actually from 2001's Bang Your Head!!!
festival, called BURNING ALIVE. How did you think that came out?

JR: Ahh, it came out good considering there were no overdubs, no
nothing.

D: Yeah, I thought the performance was great...

JR: Yeah, and that's a real, live raw performance, no going back to
the studio to fix things up like everybody else does.

D: Outdoor vs. indoor, do you have a preference?

JR: I prefer outdoor much better.

D: Is the metal scene in Europe, particularly Germany, better than the
US?

JR: Of course, it's a lot better!

D: I would think so... (laughs)

JR: It's better in Europe in general, not just Germany. I don't know
why but for some weird reason Germany is the main focus for Europe
when it comes to metal, probably because all the labels that have
created the bands over there to make them big are based in Germany, so
everybody kind of targets Germany as the main place but really, in
general, it's just all of Europe. I think Greece is even more intense
than Germany, and Holland has always been big in metal, so really all
over Europe.

D: Let's move on to Distant Thunder. What's the status of that band?

JR: Well, that band just sort of became the revised Helstar that went
on tour, like, two years ago, and kind of, you know, re-brought the
name back again. It was supposed to be its own entity but the problem
was that it was so similar to Helstar, when we got invited to go play
Europe, people just... (pauses) It made more sense to me moneywise as
they threw an extra zero at the end if I went under the name Helstar.
(laughs) We knew we were going to play Helstar songs anyway. But what
ended up happening is the whole tour ended up turning into a Helstar
tour featuring Distant Thunder songs, because primarily this one guy
at the Keep It True festival wanted us to headline it that way,
otherwise we would have been somewhere else on the slot...

D: So you're probably not going to do anything with Distant Thunder...

JR: No, not for awhile, I mean it just doesn't make sense because like
I said when this news comes out Wednesday it wouldn't make sense at
all. What I was doing, in a very very clever way, was delivering a new
studio Helstar record, which people had been asking for for a long
time. Of course it had to be the right time and the right material,
too, and once I started working with primarily the lineup that you see
on the DVD, the one guitar player in particular [Eric Halpern] -- I
got him the gig in Destiny's End, I got him the gig in the Helstar
reunions -- and so from that point on I guess that blood started
running through his veins for writing. So while I was in Florida busy
with Seven Witches, he just started delivering that kind of material,
and he pretty much came up with a whole album worth of material and we
went ahead and wrote it. I knew that fans had been asking "When are
you going to do another Helstar record?" and I said "Well, in my eyes
to be completely honest, in order to do a real studio Helstar record
again, I think that I should really do it with Larry..."

D: Yeah, Larry's great.

JR: It would mean a lot because that was the nucleus of Helstar, let's
face it.

D: Yeah, great chemistry.

JR: So what I did was, I knew that fans wanted something so bad along
those lines I just said "Here's your Helstar record under the name of
the fourth album, how about that?" (laughs)

D: Now some of the other projects you've been involved in like
Destiny's End -- that's completely disbanded?

JR: Oh, yeah.

D: You have no involvement in Seven Witches anymore, right?

JR: No, not at all. Did two great records with the guy and did a
couple of great tours and you know what, I'll leave it at that.

D: How about some of the tribute bands like Metal Gods?

JR: Ahh yeah, there is one that is pretty active, as a matter of fact
we have a show in Vegas on my way home after this tour.

D: Oh man, I was just out in Vegas -- wish I could be there to see
that show!

JR: Yeah, the tribute band is called Sabbath Judas Sabbath.

D: Oh cool!

JR: Yeah, it's basically the music of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.

D: Now to Vicious Rumors, another one of my favorites -- how did you
get involved with them?

JR: Ahh, well what it was... (pauses) We were really trying to plan
some shows in the Houston area with Helstar, Agent Steel and we
thought about Vicious Rumors. So Geoff [Thorpe, Vicious Rumors
guitarist] was very interested in it, but at that time I think there
were a lot of loose screws going on with the band, just not really
knowing what was happening. Then it finally did come into the
situation where the singer left, but since we had been talking so much
-- we'd been really cool friends every time we would see each other --
he just called me up and said "Man dude, I just came up with a really
great idea." (laughs) I said, "Yeah, what's that?" and he said "Well,
if we can't do these shows, what would you think about James Rivera
singing for Vicious Rumors?" and I was like, "Wow!" So that's kind of
how it all happened.

D: Were you familiar with the guys back in the Carl Albert days?

JR: Yeah, I've known him [Geoff] for a long time, every time we're
featured at festivals we hang out and stuff and I was familiar with
some of their stuff from way back in the day, but I had really never
met them all before at all, least not as far as these original guys
coming back.

D: Are you doing any writing with them?

JR: Oh yeah, that's what we're doing right now.

D: How does Brad Gillis sound in the band?

JR: Ah, you know, really good. He's yet to really come to the table at
the speed where we are but that's because he's been really busy. As a
matter of fact this Wednesday he's coming out -- I'm staying at
Geoff's house -- and he's coming out Wednesday afternoon and then
we're all going to rehearsal together. Now I came out here in November
when I first got the gig -- they flew me out for two weeks and we did
a two song demo of new material already -- and we did it at Brad's
house.

D: What does it compare to, as far as their earlier albums?

JR: It's very classic VR, but it's the darkest and heaviest they've
ever sounded.

D: When do you think that will be out?

JR: Ahh, we already know it's not going to be out until September, it
will be a fall release, but we're going to do it right and get it all
geared up. And besides you know I have the Killing Machine project
[with David Ellefson and Jon Dette]...

D: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that too...

JR: Yeah, that comes out in March, so I think with that coming out in
March that's probably even a smarter thing to do than having a little
too much James Rivera in peoples' faces. (laughs)

D: How do you find time to devote to all these different projects?
(laughs)

JR: Ahh, trust me man, people think that it's so time consuming but it
really isn't -- I mean, I still have my day job in between all this.
It's not a big deal. That's the thing with these projects, each one of
these things consumes a month of your time, maybe another three weeks
of touring, and when you think about it that's only two months of your
life, then that issue, that album, that moment of your life is done,
and it's time for you to do another one or move on to something else.
It's not like the old days when you got involved with a band, it took
up eight months of your life, then you would never be able to do the
two bands anymore. Why do you think there are so many people doing
more than one band nowadays? Because it's not how it used to be,
where, when you were in Maiden, when you were in Priest that was it
because you did one album every year and then you toured for the rest
of the year. (laughs) Here it's totally different. You do an album
that takes about a month in the studio then -- and remember back in
the day when metal was in its heyday -- the day the band stepped out
of the studio the tour bus pulled up (laughs), know what I mean? There
was no "Wow, we just did a record man, well hopefully we'll get a
tour." Yeah, the last day of mixing and it's "OK the bus is out there
guys, let's go." (laughs) No time to even kiss your wife goodbye or
anything like that. Nowadays you do the record and then you go home
and twiddle your thumbs for about two or three months until the
release date and then hopefully if the reviews are good... (pauses)
It's now a chain of command of a bunch of shit, now the chain of
command says "Let's just hope that the reviews are good, and then once
the reviews are good let's just hope that a booking agent is
interested, then once he's interested let's just hope people want to
buy the show." (laughs) All these things in line before you go "Hey,
we are going on tour!" So it's not that much of a time consuming thing
because when you finally do get the tour it's not going to last more
than two to three weeks anyway.

D: So Vicious Rumors is your priority for the next little bit?

JR: Yeah, exactly. Well, the Killing Machine record will be out and I
think they want to try and do some dates with that but we'll see what
that turns into once it hits. Well, the reviews have already been
hitting, the promos have been sent out and the reviews are flying
already -- they've all been 10 out of 10's or 11 out of 11's so
they've been killer reviews.

D: What label is that coming out on?

JR: It's on Mausoleum in Europe and I believe it's going to be on The
End Records here in America.

D: Good, yeah, that will be good for availability. It was hard to find
the Distant Thunder album...

JR: Yeah, The End was one of the few that had it.

D: I wanted to ask you about ProgPower in Atlanta -- we have a
festival, I don't know if you are familiar with it...

JR: Oh, yeah, yeah. I did the first one for them and it's funny
because, now that he's [organizer Glenn Harveston] done it, he's had
several other bands like the guitar player that's on the Helstar DVD
[Joel Gregoire], his little band got to go do ProgPower last year,
then the guy who wrote most of the Distant Thunder stuff [Eric
Halpern] got the gig in Leatherwolf and they are getting to play this
year, and I write him [Harveston] every year just to say "Hi and I'd
love to be involved" -- I never hear nothing back from the guy. So I
wrote him back this year and said "Hey Glenn, as every year I give you
my traditional 'Hi, how are you doing?' -- I have a million projects
going on and I guess you are probably filled already," (laughs) and I
said "Isn't it ironic how all kinds of former members get to play this
thing every year and not me?" (laughs)

D: Yeah, another one is Mike LePond from Symphony X...

JR: Yeah, if you know the guy give him a pat on the back and go "Dude,
James Rivera, come on, that's one of the metal legends in power
metal." (laughs) Well you know what, his head is going to rear when
the news comes out on Wednesday, like everybody's head is gonna rear.

D: I can't wait, I'm really looking forward to it.

JR: I wouldn't doubt that maybe next year finally something could
happen for us. He'd be a fool not to want that.

D: I think it's a good possibility. You'd be a perfect match.

JR: Yeah!

D: Well let's see, any new bands or musicians impressing you these
days?

JR: You know man, that's such a hard subject for me. I know that it's
usually on everybody's interview list because they want to pick your
brain, they want to know what you're about, and you can't help it. But
when it comes down to it man, I just love all kinds of music, if I say
primarily when it comes to listening to metal today -- besides
listening to Vicious Rumors over and over again because I have to
learn the material (laughs) -- I'd say I'm more of a listener of the
Swedish movement, the bands from Finland and black metal. Not really
black metal because it's gone so mainstream they don't use the term
black metal anymore, but I'm more into those kinds of bands...

D: Like Evergrey, Children Of Bodom?

JR: Yeah, Evergrey, Dimmu Borgir, those kinds of things.

D: I know I touched on it earlier but where is the best place to keep
up with Helstar information? I know Vicious Rumors has their own Web
site and there's JamesRivera.net...

JR: Yeah, and that's completely official now, all the pages are done.
For the longest time it said "This is a living site and it's under
construction" but it's completely done now, so you can go to that for
everything. Also Helstar MySpace will keep you very updated and
Vicious Rumors has a MySpace...

D: Killing Machine, is there one for that?

JR: That one's coming up, yeah. Then of course, when this stuff hits
Wednesday there will be another. But the James Rivera site, that was
one of my main priorities to get that up and going because that just
tells everybody a little of everything that's happening. I don't have
to worry about "When is the tribute band playing again?" It will have
all that stuff going in it.

D: All right James, anything else you want to add?

JR: Ahh, well, thanks for the interview, I appreciate people who have
been following me for years, I hope they continue to and thanks for
your support as well! Keep your ears open and the world's going to
rattle! (laughs)

D: Definitely, I look forward to Wednesday and seeing you live
hopefully sometime soon!

-Thanks to James Rivera, Mika Botfeldt and Tom Mathers for the
interview.

Relevant links:

Larry Barragan
http://www.myspace.com/lbarragan

Eternity Black
http://www.myspace.com/eternityblack

Helstar
http://www.helstar.com/
http://www.myspace.com/helstar

James Rivera
http://www.jamesrivera.net/

Robb's MetalWorks Showcase
http://texasmetalunderground.com//RMW06/RMW_pr06.htm

Robert Trevino
http://www.myspace.com/rt67

Vicious Rumors
http://www.viciousrumors.com/
http://www.myspace.com/viciousrumors

*
*** OUT ***
*