Hell is about to freeze over in April, when, finally, after a 26-year-wait, the new album from progressive-power legends Crimson Glory will be released by BraveWords Records. The expectation has been sky-high, but the good news is that the band has really answered the call and have created a spectacular album, which will soon be reviewed here, in Velvet Thunder. We took the opportunity to talk with band founder and rhythm guitarist Ben Jackson about Chasing The Hydra and what does it feel being back in business.
Thank you for calling, Ben. First, it’s great to talk to you on such a great occasion. In addition, tell me: why did Crimson Glory go into hibernation once again in 2013, after more than seven years with Todd La Torre?
-Well, you know, at the time Jon Drenning was going through some personal things, and he pulled away from us. He just wanted to, you know, put the band on hold again. Todd was disappointed in that, so he got the offer to join Queensrÿche at the same time, and he took the offer. The rest of us were a little unsure of what we should do at that moment, you know, with the absence of both Todd and Jon. Soon we all got very busy on some solo projects for a few years and put our passions into that. But a few years ago Jeff, Dana, and I really got the interest again to bring the band back. We just couldn’t let it rest any longer.
The band was reformed, as you mentioned, in 2023, but this time without Jon Drenning. Can you put some more light as to why you made this decision? Was it mutual to part ways?
– You know, Jon pulled out of the band in 2012 because he had some things going on in his life that were pressing or more important to him, so he took himself out of the equation, out of the picture. It’s not the first time – we’ve had a few other starts and stops in our career that were due to Jon. He’d be very into things that were going on for a few years and then maybe, you know, disappear. We all have our problems in life, we’re all humans. But the rest of us don’t pull the plug on the band every time a little something is going on in our lives. I mean, it’s a career. We want to keep the band going.
So, as you know, Jon just became a liability to us, because every time we get on a good little run he pulls the plug for a good eight or so years, ten years, and then he wants to do it again. I’m not here to cast any dark shadows on Jon right now, but it just couldn’t go on. If we brought him back now, it would just happen again – we’d be disappointed again. None of us see that he wants to come back to it anyway; he’s pulled himself away from the music scene. It is a mutual decision – we equally don’t want him back at this point. It just never lasts. There’s no staying power with Jon. His contributions to the band in the early days are recognized, we appreciate them, and I think he had marvelous contributions to the band. But as the future goes forward, there really isn’t any place for Jon in the band again.
How did you cross paths with Travis Wills? Did someone recommend him?
-Um, you know, Jeff Lords knew Travis Wills through Facebook. They were friends and had corresponded a little bit. Jeff knew that Travis had a band over there in Texas. As we were looking at a few other singers for this resurgence of Crimson Glory, his name came up. We ended up talking to him more, and he gave us some samples of what he could do. We really liked it, so we decided to choose Travis. He seemed like the perfect fit for us.
Indeed, he does. Yeah, and tell us something about your new guitar partner, Mark Borgmeier. We know you’ve worked together in your solo band – did he fit easily within the Crimson Glory mind frame?
-Yeah, definitely. He knows Crimson Glory inside and out, you know, he’s a guitarist that’s played similar music styles. He had a band called Steel Angel years ago that was similar to Crimson; they had a record out, and he’s done, you know, years of work with me and my solo band, so we work very well together. He’s friends with everybody in Crimson Glory: Jeff, Dana, he’s friends with Jon, Randy, friends with me, you know. And even Jon said, when we announced the band was coming back with Mark, he said, “Oh, Mark’s a friend of mine; I think he’s the perfect guy to take my place.”
That’s nice, too. That’s a nice detail to hear. Jumping into the new album topic, first thing I want to tell you is, from my personal perspective as a very big fan, I want to thank you for exceeding all of my expectations. I want to start with that.
-You’re welcome. I’m so glad you feel that way.
So, Chasing The Hydra is the new album which we’ve been waiting for more than 26 years. It’s finally coming out next month. How do you find the initial reaction of the press over the advance promos distributed?
– We’re very happy that everybody’s been very positive and complimentary on the new album. People that are very familiar with the band’s history and know the band inside and out are saying this is just what they were hoping for. We know it’s not exactly like the first two albums – it’s a little bit of an evolution, a progression – but it does really hearken back to the style of the first two albums quite a bit in the writing sense, although it’s a bit more progressive and has a little more of a modern twist.
You’ve probably felt like this yourself as a fan of your favorite bands. I was scared to play it when I received the advance – I just waited maybe a few more minutes, a few more hours to pass before I pressed play. There was such a big, big sigh of relief when it was over that my expectations were fulfilled. So, I can honestly tell you that this new album is your best material since Transcendence. I also think it is your most progressive-sounding album, with US power metal not so obvious as in the first two albums. So did you consciously set on a more progressive path this time?
– I mean, yeah. Like I said, we’ve grown as musicians over the years, and we’ve learned to appreciate more modern and progressive things. Especially Jeff really likes to write in the progressive realm of things, and so does Dana. These guys really appreciate doing songs with different odd time signatures and just cool little trickery going on throughout the songs – little parts that lead into other little parts – and things to surprise the listener, you know, so it’s just not so predictable. It definitely sounds like the most progressive one.
How did the new songs come into flesh, and how long did it take to complete the album? Are there any songs which were composed, for example, during the period between 2005 and 2013?
-Everything’s brand new on the album. We spent the last three years composing, arranging, and putting these songs together. Nothing’s left over from the old times with Midnight or Todd or anything – it’s all fresh, brand new material.
When we announced the return of the band a couple years ago, with Travis as the new lead singer, we already had the first two songs written and recorded for the album: Triskaideka and Indelible Ashes. They were already written, recorded, mixed, and mastered before we even told the world we were back. After we announced that we were back and that this is our new singer, our new guitar player, we then proceeded to put together the rest of the material for the album. A lot of that music was written by Jeff Lords. He’s an amazing writer. He wrote a lot of the music on the early albums. He was always a big part of the writing magic back in the early days, and he still is. He’s really taken a big role in the writing on the new record. I contributed a couple of songs to the record, and Travis wrote a lot on the record as well.
The only two songs which make a slight nod, in my opinion, toward the early classics, with even some subtle melody lines, are the title track and Broken Together. This is how I see it. All the other songs sound really fresh and forge a new path for Crimson Glory, looking into the future and not rehashing past glories. Was it difficult to step out of the shadow of the first two classic albums, musically speaking?
-Um, no, not really. I mean, we just have new ideas now – we have fresh ideas and fresh direction. We know that we have a big past to live up to, but we’re not really afraid of that. We don’t feel intimidated by our own past. I mean, we feel the confidence to move forward and create really cool music. When you said the title track is a little like the old music, that’s one Jeff wrote the music for, and he even gave a little bit of a Red Sharks kind of a hint in the song where it kicks in. That song definitely reminds me of Transcendence.
The Broken Together song originally came together with a couple of riffs of mine that you hear right at the top of the song -very, very Crimson-sounding. That’s just when I write parts, they sound like Crimson Glory. I don’t write quite as much as Jeff, but when I do write something, it’s always good and it always sounds a lot like Crimson. When I showed the guys the riffs I had for Broken Together, right away they’re like, “Oh, that sounds really, very much like Crimson. Even when we were mixing the song, Jim Morris, our engineer, heard a couple of the parts in Broken Together and just goes, “Oh, the guitar sounds so much like Crimson.” So, you know, Jeff can write – and he does write – a lot like the old style, but he’s definitely one that’s very much pioneering toward a new, more modern sound and a more progressive thing.
I still, when I write, I’m kind of thinking about the Transcendence style and trying to create parts that really sound like that. So when we put everything together – the things we all want to do now – it’s got a bit of everything, from the old vibe to a more modern vibe too.
It gels together perfectly, it seems. Between your contributions and Jeff’s contributions, it’s a very homogenous album. It sounds like a completely new entity, but it can be compared, of course, to the old classics. It carries the spirit of Crimson Glory, but it forges a new direction and a new path. It’s really fresh, I really enjoyed it yet it requires repeated listens. It just shows something new with each new listen. I probably listened to the album more than maybe seven or eight times already, maybe more, and each time I find something else to enjoy. It’s really a rewarding experience.
-That’s cool that you mentioned that. I feel it’s that kind of record, too. You might like it on the first listen, but after a few more listens it really starts to grow on you and get into your head—the melodies and the subject matters, and you really start catching onto all the cool little nuances and things that are there. It’s kind of a complex record, so it takes a little bit of attention. You’ve got to pay attention, follow along, and kind of let it build on you, definitely.
The production – I really find it absolutely stellar. Tell me who was responsible. You mentioned Jim Morris? And also, I heard Travis say the artwork for the new album is created by the same artist who did Strange And Beautiful. Can you elaborate more on that?
-Well, on the artwork we did use a guy named Justice Mitchell, who did the Strange And Beautiful painting. The new artwork was something that Justice did for us. Jeff reached out to him and asked him to do this idea he had with the seven-headed dragon concept. Justice put a lot of time and hours into this artwork. I don’t think it’s hand-painted with a brush. I think he used a computer to work it out and do what he did, but it’s definitely not an AI image. It’s something that a gifted artist spent many, many hours creating for us, and we really dig it, we like it. We’ve heard a few people say, “Hey, I’m disappointed – they would use AI for their album cover.” Well, it’s definitely not AI, so we’ll move past that.
We recorded all the basic parts on the new album, every instrument, here in Sarasota, Florida, where we live, at a place called Roseland Park Recording Studios with our engineer and good friend Lenny Long. Then Travis did all his vocals in his home studio in Dallas, Texas. He has his own home studio where he records other bands’ albums, and Travis is a very gifted engineer, so he did all his parts at home. When we got all the music recorded, we sent all the files up to Jim Morris at Morrisound. Jeff and I went up and sat with Jim on several sessions and did all the mixing for the full album there at Morrisound. You know, we would have kind of liked to record the whole album with Jim like we did in the past, but it just seemed more practical for us this time to do the basic tracks here where we live, then send them up for mixing.
But mixing it all at Morrisound made the difference, because Jim knows how the band is supposed to sound. He’s just a master at what he does, so Jim mixing the album made a huge difference for us.
Yeah, it sounds amazing
-Thank you very much. We had it mastered by Maor Appelbaum – he was the mastering engineer on the album.
The mastering and production work really do justice to these songs because they’re really complex – there is a lot of music in these songs. If there was anything wrong, even the slightest thing in the production, it would harm the whole impression. But I think you’ve really, really done justice to these songs.
-Thank you. We all worked very hard on every detail, from the players to the engineer, the mixer, the mastering guy. I mean, we all put a lot of careful effort into every little thing.
It has been worth the wait. Then, finally, there is a European tour planned for June through August. What can the fans expect from your show and the set list?
-They can expect a lot: many favorite classic songs from the first two albums, and a bunch of songs from the new album, maybe four or five songs from the new album.
That sounds great. I think these new songs deserve to be performed live.
-They sound really good live. We’ve been rehearsing them lately in our rehearsal place, and they really sound good – they’re fun to play live – and we can’t wait to get out there and play this new stuff for everyone. I know we’ve already played Triskaideka and Chasing The Hydra, but at the time we did those two songs the music hadn’t been released, the album was still in the early stages of being worked on, and we sort of felt like maybe we were playing those songs too soon because people hadn’t had a chance to really get to know them. This summer will be a different thing, because the record will have been out for a couple months before we get to Europe. And I think a lot of the people will have had a chance to maybe sit with it a few times, so I think the reception for the new music will be very good. I’m sure about that.
By the way, although I’m writing for the UK-based Velvet Thunder website, which this interview will be published in, I’m based in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a friend of mine is doing your show here in Sofia, and he’s also a radical fan of Crimson Glory like me. I’m looking forward to meeting you in person here in Sofia and, for the first time, in Bulgaria. You have a lot of fans here.
-Yes, we’re looking forward to our first time there. That’ll be great to meet you.
Thank you so much, Ben. It was a pleasure talking to you, and please, say hi to all the other guys, and congratulations and a big thank you to all of them too for what you’ve done.
-Okay, I definitely will!
Chasing The Hydra will be out on April 17th and can be ordered from HERE
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