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Reign Of Fury

Occasionally enraged British new coming thrashers REIGN OF FURY are taking great steps to establish themselves in the Thrash Metal map. Having released in 2012 their debut album "World Detonation", have clearly set the mark for the onslaught that will follow their music. As we in Metal Temple find great interest in all things exploding and detonating we sent Steinmetal on a mission to find and get REIGN OF FURY (he actually took that to heart and got em all plus their manager) to the Metal Temple's inner chambers because we needed to know more about them, their debut album and any future plans including rage, pain and the reign of fury.

By Lior "Steinmetal" Stein

• February 2, 2013

Hello there mates, how have you been? It is great to have you for this interview for Metal Temple. Before heading to your newly debut album, "World Detonation", let's talk a bit about the band. What can you tell about your history? Some key points that led you to where you are now.

Ed Fury: REIGN OF FURY is a very delicate blend of the music we all grew up listening to and played. Thrash and death metal and undertones of punk. The sound naturally has a punk feel through magics drumming. He used to be in a punk band for years.

HME: ROF is the melting pot of all of our influences and what we love to listen to and play, the reason the band got together was that we all loved the same kind of stuff.

As band that comes from the nation that brought Metal to the world, do you feel that you have been following the old local pioneers with that amazing British sense, especially of your Heavy and Thrash Metal scene, through your music?

HME : I feel heavy metal is part of our British musical heritage as we produced so many good bands so hopefully we are continuing the tradition of this with Reign of Fury , we have elements of the American bay area thrash scene in our sound which is obviously a big influence as well along with punk and other heavier sub genres of metal.

Now there "World Detonation", another amazing old school answer to all the modern stuff that has been infesting the worldwide Metal scene for almost two decades. How do you feel about it?

HME: It sticks two fingers up to the trends and gets back to the music as the main draw , we are ugly cunts and never going to be poster boys so our music must be good ! I'm not going to slag off other bands as some are great and some not so great but i don't get that excited about many bands these days and metal seems to be an overused term for anything with guitars, drums, tattoos and a long fringe . Lazy journalism? or just plain shit ? The last 20 years is a long period to write off completely and there has been some great metal in this time, but there's so many sub genres i get confused , I guess the metal we like had it's day in a simpler time when there was less choice ? I guess I try not to analyze it too much.

Bison: I agree not many bands these days grab my attention, too many bands trying to sound the same for my liking. That being said there are some great bands out there, I do spend quite a bit of time trawling the underground for gems.

Do you think that with "World Detonation" you have reached your peak abilities as musicians for a starting position?

HME: No way, this is just the beginning !

Bison: I see world detonation as more of a starting point too, it's from here that we will push ourselves. It's when musicians become comfortable that their music suffers becoming bland and uninspired.

Ed Fury: Absolutely not. We are all constantly pushing ourselves to improve and take things to another level. World det was written over a period of time and listening back I can hear how we all growing as musicians as the album goes on.

I have to ask this but why the growl additions? Though I didn't have any problems with it, I wonder how this line came to be in the first place, was it spicing things up? Brutalizing a bit or something just for fun?

HME: you will have to ask Bison on the growls but on that point I think we record what we feel is right for each track nothing is "Out of Bounds" if we want to do a punk / death / classic metal song we will. We play and record what we want to. We make music for ourselves if others like it then that's great.

Bison: I don't ever want to put boundaries on anything we do, so if it sounds right in my head I will try it. I listen to so many different genres of music and like to draw influence from everything. I think this is where a lot of modern bands fall down too, the unwillingness to try something different just in case people won't like it is in my opinion weak.

What is the conceptual basis around "World Detonation"? Did you wish to present another angle of the well-known theme of the world coming to an end as most Thrash bands out there or was it more than that?

Bison: from a lyrical point of view the imagery conjured up all manner of tales about death and destruction, so the connection between songs is quite tenuous. There is a running theme but it's not what I would call a concept album as such.

As an old school fan, the production was sweet and neat. Who produced the album? How do you feel about the production engineering done on the album? Do you intend to keep that sound pattern for your upcoming material as well?

HME: I'm sure the others will give details on the recording RoF record all their own stuff with help from a bunch of friends names to mention are Nicolas Decleve / Dave Cleaves / Jon Priestley.

I don't know if it was recent or not but you shot two videos of the songs "World Detonation" and the album's spiking catchy hit, "Born To Die". Both excellent songs nonetheless. Do you think that these two songs present the album right? What was the decision behind the choices?

Sarge: (Manager & Video Producer) I should probably jump in here as I shot the videos for the boys. We all felt that we could have picked any track from the album and it would have represented it well, but these two tracks in video form show two very different sides to the band. With "World Detonation" you have an epic title track which fits with the end of the world feel of the album, and the brutal context of the video has a similar aesthetic to the artwork. With "Born to Die" I wanted to show the guys more intimately, and if there's one thing that hits you when you meet these fellas it's the banter, the cutting humor, and the passion they have for the tunes. As Magic is a military buff, the script kind of wrote itself from there.

What will be next for REIGN OF FURY? How about approaching the big labels with your material?

HME: Really don't know what's next apart from writing new material and loads more videos !! It's all happening quite quickly so labels will catch up with us eventually but approaching labels is a tricky business. Will probably wait for them to check us out first. But who knows what's around the corner ?

Ed Fury: 2013 is going to be a very busy but exciting time in the ROF camp. We are filming two new vids with Sarge (Andy Pilkington) Pilko again taken from "World Detonation" and we start our tour in march which will be taking us to Belgium among other places. Also album 2 is being demoed and we aim for a midyear release all being well but you never can tell with this band.

Have you started working on your next album?

HME: Yes demoing is just starting to progress and sounding great but will be some time until we are back in the studio.

Can you describe your perceptions towards the current worldwide Metal scene? To where do you think that Metal is heading?

HME: I honestly don't care , I love my music and I love my metal mates . Metal fans do tend to have a bond towards each other and it's usually all good fun, but "scenes" become rotten , elitist and backstabbing even when they were started for the right reasons. So i stay out of it. If it wasn't for the people the scene would be great just the music and no bitching haha Bison: it's a great scene to be a part of that in most respects is heading in a very positive direction and I hope we can keep contributing something meaningful to the scene.

Guys I wish to thank you for this interview. "World Detonation" detonated my mind right after the first listen, a party time to any Metalhead out there.

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