We continue our series These We Have Loved, where we look back at some of our writers’ favourite albums of 2022 with some of the musicians behind them, with a chat with Teramaze leading light Dean Wells about the band’s splendid album Flight Of The Wounded.
Congratulations on Flight of The Wounded – it’s a really great album. It’s also your fifth full-length since 2019 – how do you manage to keep up such a punishing workrate? “Thanks mate, to be honest I’ve always written a lot of music and fairly fast; not everything I write is any good, I just learnt years ago by working with some top producers to trim the fat quickly and edit out things that I don’t think make a song better, I think you have to be willing to delete everything to find something really good that sticks. I’m not that precious about the writing because I have the belief in myself that I can write something better tomorrow or the next day, I’m still working on it daily and its the challenge that I’m addicted to”.
Can you give those of our listeners without much grounding in the sound of the band a bit of a background to? And would long time fans of the band who perhaps haven’t caught up with the record yet be surprised by the new album? “FOTW comes from a difference place compared to the last few albums being written in lockdown insanity, so yeah Flight is an overcoming of something that, even though you maybe struggling and the world is upside down you can manage to stay focused and find the hope in things”.
And can you tell us a little about the personnel on this album? “Well the band has not changed over the last four or five albums so its still Myself, Andrew (Cameron, bass), (guitarist) Chris (Zoupa) and Nick (Ross, drums) and I mixed and produced this one but mastering was with Tony “Jack the bear” in Melbourne; We felt like we wanted some fresh ears and Tony was great to bring into the final mastering stages. He helped make the album really shine sonically and on a personal level it was great for me to connect again with other professionals after being isolated for a few years”.
Do you have any plans to tour behind the record both home and overseas? Touring, though getting back to normal, seems to be a delicately-balanced process at the moment, especially with the sheer number of bands wanting to get back out on the road! “Yes, we are in talks with heading back to Europe sometime soon and then hopefully work towards USA and any other countries who wanna see us, we cant wait to actually start playing more to be honest”.
Can you give us a brief insight into the album? “Flight… over all as an album touches on a lot of struggle and adversity and finding that extra strength and determination to not give in even if your whole family turns on you; if you believe in something strongly enough, then stand your ground”.
How do you think 2022 has been overall for our kind of music? Outside of Teramaze, who else have you been listening to this year? “I think things are looking great musically – a lot of bands starting to bring out some great music, I liked the new Lamb of God , I like the new Slipknot but haven’t really given it a good listen yet. I see bands like Soilwork and Queensrÿche have new albums – I’ve heard a little and they sound great – things are looking good in heavy music I think…”
Any chance of another full length next year? “The next album has been written (laughs), all I can say at this point is that it’s Teramaze and everything we do on steroids and will be the largest undertaking of music we have ever tackled, you’ll have to wait and see; the only hint I will give is, the story continues…”
Anything else you’d like to tell the readers of Sentinel Daily about the album? Or the band in general? “Just wanna give a shout out to Sentinel Daily for the support you show us and other Australian bands! You guys are one of a few great pages still flying the flag for hard music, so thank you! And to the listeners, check out our latest album Flight of the Wounded if you dig progressive metal with a lot of melody…”
Thanks for the kind words!
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