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Mark Zonder
(August 2005 Issue)
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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