Full Artist Update

Mark Zonder
Warlord Warning

After releasing seven albums with progressive rockers Fates Warning, drummer Mark Zonder is taking a step backwards, reuniting with guitarist Bill Tsamis to resurrect their early '80s metal trio, Warlord. Rising Out Of The Ashes is a fitting title for the CD that represents Warlord's return to rock after a seventeen-year dormancy.
Warlord recorded only one full-length album and several singles ("packaged seventy different ways by the label," Mark jokes), but sold well and cultivated an intense overseas fan base. Unfortunately, they could never find the right singer, so Zonder and Tsamis eventually went their separate ways. "It was really tough," Mark admits. "I always thought Warlord was the band that could have been big."
In 2001, Zonder played Warlord's music for his wife, who urged him to reconnect with Tsamis and explore the possibility of creating new Warlord music. This time out, Tsamis had the perfect front man in mind: his friend Joacim Cans, vocalist for Swedish metal band HammerFall. "Joacim is this total Warlord fanatic," Mark says. "It just took one email and he was totally into it."
Rising was recorded in two weeks at Zonder's home studio on Long Island. With the record receiving great reviews in Europe and "hour-long television specials in Greece devoted to the band," Warlord intend to capitalize on that popularity, headlining Germany's Wacken Open Air 2002, a three-day heavy metal festival that draws crowds of up to forty thousand. With Cans now handling vocals, Wacken will also mark the new Warlord's debut as a live band.
"I think that I adapt to and play for the music," Mark says of his approach to playing metal versus progressive rock. "I'm not a guy who says, This is my style, where me playing a jazz tune is going to sound just like me playing a metal tune. I love big choruses, I love kick and snare, and the thing I like about the Warlord stuff is the solidness of it. It's been great playing this kind of music again--to not have to count everything, and just rock out."

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