melodylane

MELODY LANE: First of all, also if it can sound a bit expected…Can you tell us where does the name IRON KINGDOMcome from?  
CHRIS OSTERMAN: Well, we wanted something that felt and sounded familiar, and drew your mind to Classic Metal sounds.  I think that is relatively clear when you hear the name, but more so we found the meaning behind it, if you think of Iron Maiden, you’ve got Eddie, Heavy Metal’s mascot, if you look at Dio you’ve got Heavy Metal’s hand symbol, and we figured well.. Hell, let’s be Heavy Metal’s realm!  Haha It’s not quite so simple like that, but Iron Kingdom, is a realm if you will, for all Metalheads, doesn’t matter your age, race, gender, whatever, if you’re into metal this realm is yours.  At least that’s what the name means to us!  

MELODY LANE: The line-up of the band is confirmed, is it the same from the beginning of the band…or have you had changes in the last years? Can you tell us anything about the roots of IRON KINGDOM? And where the band was born?
CHRIS OSTERMAN: Leighton and myself (Chris) have been in the group since the beginning back in 2011, but sadly none of the other members lasted as long.  We had a couple guitar players come and go, but Megan has been with us since 2018, and that’s been going great.  We also went through a surprising number of drummers over the years but finally settled on Max Friesen in 2020, which I think has felt really good, and it seems he’s enjoying his time with us, so we’re hoping the search is over.  Haha!

MELODY LANE: Can you list us 5 songs, from IRON KINGDOM ‘s discography (including new material), that can define the sound of the band … 5 songs that can help our readers to know IRON KINGDOM at the best.
CHRIS OSTERMAN: Hmmm.. well we never really write any two songs the same but if I were to recommend some tunes I’d say listen to ‘Road Warriors’ from ‘On The Hunt’ album, along with ‘In The Grip Of Nightmares’ from the newest album, ‘White Wolf’ for sure, ‘At Home In The Dark’ from ‘Gates Of Eternity’, and ‘Queen Of The Crystal Throne’ also off the new album!  We have lots of songs though, there’s epic 15-minute tracks, there cool speedy tracks and mid-tempo rockers, we have a fair variety of tunes I’d say.

MELODY LANE: Tell us something about the creative process of your music. Is there a main composer or we can talk about a team work? The songs come from ideas of a single member and then the band works on these ideas in the studio jamming together, or your songs are written in the studio and all the members compose together?
CHRIS OSTERMAN:We usually work off of a guitar riff and we jam it out as a group, we take ideas that we thought sounded cool and we keep working them out.  The second that we hit a block in creativity we simply move on to the next tune, and work on that one for a bit.  Lyrics usually come second but not always, sometimes the lyrics will inspire the instrumentation, but ya we’re pretty flexible when we write, no one particular person writes everything, some people contribute more at times and then it goes the other way for a bit.  We prefer working together and enjoying the process.

MELODY LANE:  Can you tell us something about contents and messages of your new album ? …Can you tell us anything about the whole concept of The Blood of Creation? And please tell us where does this title come from?  
CHRIS OSTERMAN:Well ‘The Blood Of Creation’ is referring to one of the oldest if not the oldest story known to mankind, the Ancient Sumerian Creation story of Tiamat and Marduk.  ‘The Blood Of Creation’ as a title refers to the Blood of the Demon’s that is used to create mankind.  It’s a very grand and complex story but it’s really interesting and we thought it sounded really cool so we gave it a shot.  The album has a lot of stories about pain and struggle, it’s quite dark really, but we were going through the pandemic when we were writing the album and it was hard not to feel a little drawn to darker topics, songs like Witching Hour speak of demonic possession, or Hunter and Prey of war, Sheathe The Sword of the ultimate sacrifice.   We wanted people to feel something, and I think we may have succeeded, at least a little bit.

MELODY LANE:  …After time, are you totally satisfied with your choices about sound and the writing of your previous records ? If you could… would you change anything? Talking about the new album, what did you focus on to make the sound better and perfectly consistent with the musical ideas you had in mind?
CHRIS OSTERMAN:Yes, I think I could take just about any Iron Kingdom album and change this or that, absolutely.  I once heard Steve Harris of Iron Maiden mention that if you were ever satisfied with your art then you might as well stop making it, because you’ve got nothing more to say.  I think that statement rings true for myself as well, I’m always striving for something bigger and better and in one way or the other I feel we keep going in that direction, something has a little better production, or the song structure has more flow or whatever it is, we’re always working on it differently and I don’t think we’ll ever find perfection.For ‘The Blood Of Creation’ we spent a lot of time on writing, and we kept making demos and listening back and re-working things, I think that really helped the end product, but we also spent a lot of time in the studio too, making sure we had complimentary sounds from the guitars and bass and the drums rang out nicely etc.. we didn’t really cut any corners and I think it shows, but we can still do better and that’s pretty cool to think about.

MELODY LANE:  So apart from the covid/pandemic situation…will you tour in the next future? Have you already a touring schedule? Any chance for us to see  IRON KINGDOM playing live here in Italy/Europe in the next months/year?  
CHRIS OSTERMAN:Yeah, we’ve slowly gotten back to gigs and tours, we actually did tour through Western Canada this July of 2022, it went fantastic, and we’re definitely excited to get back to Europe and the USA, or Brazil even, but it’s all about the right opportunities.  Many of the venues have been so booked up from the extra demand of everyone trying to re-book their cancelled tours, so it was too challenging in 2022.  We’re hoping to see 2023 more filled with tours especially with the new album coming out this winter!  For now, we just  have our album release party in Vancouver, Canada on November 4th at the Wise Hall and we’re very excited for it!!

MELODY LANE: Could you tell us two bands, from the actual international scene, you’d like IRON KINGDOM to tour with?... Two bands that would represent a perfect line-up for IRON KINGDOM to play with. And why these bands?
CHRIS OSTERMAN:I think it’d be great to tour with Enforcer or Evil Invaders, they’re two great new(ish) bands from Europe that have really built a strong following, they’re great bands that could push us to the next level, and I think we’d both brings some super energetic stage shows that would get the crowd going crazy the whole time!

MELODY LANE: We know that ‘to define is to limit’… but how do you define  IRON KINGDOM sound? Are you a NWOBHM metal band…a Progressive Power metal band… A  Classic Heavy/Hard Rock band…Or…?
CHRIS OSTERMAN:I’d say that we’re all of those things really, we take elements from progressive, thrash, power metal, classic rock all of it and we turn it into what we are, its super fun and I think it keeps our ideas relatively fresh each time we write, because we pull from a relatively wide range of ideas.  If we had to generalize our sound I might suggest Early Power Metal, something like Helloween around the Keeper Of The Seven Keys, there’s plenty of different elements across the sound but ultimately its exciting and explorative.

MELODY LANE: Which musicians are/have been your main musical inspirations? And which are your favorite bands nowadays?
CHRIS OSTERMAN: Dio has always been a huge inspiration, same as Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Helloween, Blind Guardian, The Scorpions… man the list goes on and on, there’s so many killer bands that inspired us to do what we do.  As for more recent acts, there’s some great bands around these days too, bands I mentioned earlier like Enforcer and Evil Invaders but also, Skull Fist, Striker, Stallion the whole NWOTHM has a ton of fantastic new artists and its pretty cool checking out everyone’s take on classic Heavy Metal.

MELODY LANE: As a musician, what has been your biggest achievement to date and what do you want to achieve in the near future? 
CHRIS OSTERMAN:I’m not sure if it’s the biggest achievement, but I found out that the other day our latest single ‘Queen Of The Crystal Throne’ played briefly on Hockey Night In Canada, during the NHL game that happened, it’s not really an achievement I ever expected to happen, but it’s pretty cool that it did! Honestly,for the future as far as achievements go, just having our music make a difference in people’s lives, that’s the biggest reward for a musician, Hopefully we’ll get to new audiences in new places and create new memories for people around the world!  That’s all we can ask for!

MELODY LANE: Until today...What was the most important concert for  IRON KINGDOM career? And why?
CHRIS OSTERMAN:Probably our performance at Keep It True XVII in Germany, we played in front of 2500 die-hard metalheads, and it was breathtaking.  Since then we’ve had more distribution, and more of a following in Europe.  It was a big step for the band, and I hope we get to see some more oppourtunites like it as we keep marching forward!

MELODY LANE: In the end…A message from you to all MELODY LANE readers.
CHRIS OSTERMAN:Well first off, thanks so much for taking the time to interview us, your support means the world!  For the readers, we just want to say thanks for following along and we hope you’ll take a moment to check out our latest tunes, you can find us on iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram or follow us on our official website: www.iron-kingdom.com and feel free to reach out to us !  And as always.. Keep It Steel!!

WEB: https://www.facebook.com/ironkingdom

ARTICLE BY: MIKE MATTY