Jack MacMichael & Danny Foster

Eliminator

When thinking about the end, there are those that contemplate in such an Earthly manner on what will eventually happen that would succumb us all to utter destruction, and what not. Nonetheless, to have a view from the end of a celestial entity, now that is far beyond, hard to reach, even to consider such thoughts and generate them into a form of concept, needless to say a song. The British Heavy Metal band, Elimintaor, have been under different terms this time around with their new album "Ancient Light". With lots of time to perfect efforts, and be better in every scale, so was the story. Steinmetal took on vocalist Danny Forester and guitarist Jack MacMichael on a ride through the album's journey to comprehend what was, and what will be

By Lior "Steinmetal" Stein

• February 19, 2022

Eliminator's Jack MacMichael: "The emails

Hello gents, it is awesome to have you for this conversation for Metal Temple online Magazine, how have you guys been doing?

D: Normal, whatever that means these days

J: Also, normal - as normal as things can get. There's been a few gigs though, so that's been good. I managed to see Saxon this month, which was amazing. The first 'big' show for a long time.

Well, it appears that the prayers of many were answered in the UK, as the government is lifting the Covid-19 restrictions once again. I just hope that it won't end up being a fatal decision. In how you see it, is this the beginning of the end of this pandemic, or maybe just this wave?

D: I think these questions are best left to the experts, honestly! Only time will tell

J: Agreed, we're not epidemiologists, so we can't answer that. Although, based on this government's track record though of handling the pandemic fucking terribly, I wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be a disaster.

Like many artists out there, worldwide, you were caught up, not being able to perform live, and continue to support your recorded material, or simply have a good time. How did it feel to be absent from your fanbase, performing with brother bands and just release yourself from the chains of everyday life? Would you say that this lack of live appearance did a number on the band's chemistry?

D: It certainly changed the dynamic of writing music. We were very much a "practice room band", coming up with riffs and ideas independently then working them out as a group in the practice room. Ancient Light was written almost entirely remotely, and I think it put some strain on the dynamics. But in the end, we got through it and made the album!

Being unable to play shows was tough, and we're still suffering from that now. I think we certainly felt a little rusty during the first show back after restrictions were lifted.

Perhaps there has been one thing positive about the pandemic, and that is time. Now, it could be taken, or twisted, into two directions. One, what can be achieved as a single musician without the band mates involved. Second, more time to write material, and the internet connection is enabled in order to do these sessions remotely. How were you able to exploit both mentioned factors? Would you say that positivity led you to reach your goal, which was a new record?

D: To answer the first question, I don't think the amount of material that was written by a single musician really changed given the circumstances. It was broadly the same procedure as before- write something, be it a single riff, an idea or even a whole song, present it to the band and then make changes together. It's just those changes were done remotely.

We "exploited" the situation simply by keeping on top of writing remotely. In some sense, writing remotely encouraged logging all changes to a song in the form of demo after demo, each of which were free for the other members to listen to, comment on and make changes of their own. This is the way we practically made up for the lack of in-person interaction.

I can understand that there was probably frustration throughout the record making's lifecycle, and yes I know how important it is for a band to sit together and write. Furthermore, recording together is also an important stage of an album. Even though each musician did it from home, how did you motivate yourself to go on with it, and not wait for all this turn of events to end?

D: I think different band members approached these frustrations differently. For me, I found motivation in the sense that the album took up a significant portion of my personal time- which is a good thing. I had a project to focus on through the worst of the pandemic, and the constant creation of new demos kept me excited to work towards the final product.

Whether positivity or not, you harnessed everything you had and made your sophomore album, titled, "Ancient Light", a reality. Let's talk about the concept, because it appears that you guys love a good story, and how to create it. From what I read, "Ancient Light" is like a second episode to the debut, "Last Horizon", is that correct? If so, where are we at the beginning of "Ancient Light", where did we stop?

D: Last Horizon and Ancient Light are not connected. They tell separate stories!

You talk about recurring visions and characters, who are they exactly? Are these visions being past events, coming alive for a short period throughout the record? Stepping out of the story, what do these events symbolize in real life, if these actually have a presentation in our reality?

D: The characters mostly surround a main entity (whose dedicated track is "Foreverless"). This entity is the embodiment of the end of time and the force that drives the universe to wither and die. Most of the songs focus on this entity, or other entities that represent other aspects of reality as they interact with the end of time and lose their spheres of influence.

The ideas in the album are loosely based on physical concepts – namely, entropy, but a handful of other more specific ideas perhaps too lame to address in a heavy metal interview…!

What can you tell about the artwork? This splicing current of fire, piercing its way through rock, as if wishing to break a certain lock, wanting to spread about. Maybe I am seeing it backwards. Please indulge me with your version of what is it all about

D: The artwork is a representation of the entity mentioned in "Foreverless". I suppose it represents the destruction of reality, with a gateway seen as the beginning of a new reality. I don't know, I think it's open to interpretation, but that's how I see it

Listening to "Ancient Light", it made me think of the giant steps that NWOBHM made throughout the years, yet it was you guys, along with Seven Sisters and Primitai, that took the old movement and breathed life to it with freshness. The constructiveness, creativity and craftiness of your material is proof of how British Metal evolved to become once again a hooking monstrosity. I guess that this is sweeter fruit generated by being locked down for that long? How do you find this musical progress while this record was being made?

J: I suppose we did have more time to focus on the album whilst we couldn't leave our houses which meant we paid closer attention to details in the songs. Everything felt like it was under close scrutiny.

Regarding the process, I absolutely hated it. The emails, Zoom calls and constant incremental adjustments to songs made it feel like a second job rather than something fun. I would have much rather been doing it in a practice room.

I found fine lines between your songwriting to both mid 80s and 00s Iron Maiden eras in terms of the laying down of melodies, finding those rich lead guitar hooks, along with diverse song structures that are far from the known Pop formula. What can you tell about your approach towards the songs on this record? What were your main focuses musically as these songs were written?

D: I wanted to focus on power and intensity, and figuring out how to escalate both of those things in different ways. I also wanted to keep melody at the forefront of the sound to keep listeners engaged whilst the songs progress, maybe sometimes in questionable ways.

J: You would not be the first person to say we sound like Iron Maiden. In fact, I don't think I've seen a review where they haven't said 'it sounds like Iron Maiden'. It undoubtedly does sound like Maiden at points and any heavy metal band, particularly those playing a melodic classic style, who say that they're not influenced by Maiden are either deluded or lying. We have never actively made a decision to emulate Maiden's sound, but the influence will seep through as every member is very into Maiden.

Placing the focus on the guitar work, that is pure class, no less. Sure, that the guitar work is driven from the older stuff that has been dominant in your scene 40 years ago, but the energies and attention to every bit, these are the differences. Jack, what can you tell about your joint work with your twin guitar axeman? I can assume long Skype / Zoom sessions working on these riffs?

J: I didn't really do much remote writing, as I said earlier, it is not for me. I can't work creatively like that. There's quite a lot of pre-pandemic riffs and ideas on this record that I'd worked with Matt on in '19 and early '20.

Ideas between me and Matt during the pandemic largely took the form of WhatsApp voice notes, too which we'd reply to one another with 'nah, it's shit', or 'yeah we'll have that bit'. I preferred doing that to sitting in front of a screen with a guitar in my lap when we can't even play simultaneously because of the delay.

The only positive for writing material in this way for me was composing the solos against decent quality demos. Naturally, there was a lot more effort going into our demos, so I had something really solid to sit down with and spend an hour or two coming up with solos. I didn't mind that, but writing solos is more of a solitary activity than writing a tune in my mind.

Danny, not that you haven't done that earlier, but "Ancient Light" feels as if you let out all of your anger, sorrow, and frustration of this whole damned period of time. Like a monster trying to break free, your vocal cords cried out with such ferocity, and man, I believed your words. While coming up with the vocal melodies, and the recording experience, what did you actually feel? Did you need a good solid breather right after everything?

D: Well I just tried to channel intensity the best I could. I often opted for half time segments with fairly simple chord progressions and driving riffs to have a nice open space for sections I could inject a lot of emotions. The concept of the album itself isn't particularly emotional to me personally, but I tried to create sections that feel epic using emotional melodies and lyrics.

You were able to catch my soul while "Silent Storm" was playing, because it wanted out, and that song allowed it. Other than being good for sing-along, it showed more than being a hook, yet gradually developed into a melodic storm and memorable riffs, like a rough diamond that should manifest into purity. How did this phenomenon happen?

D: Honestly, Silent Stone was a bit of an outlier. Matt wrote the whole thing in less than a day, and the vocal melody just fell out of the song the moment I heard it. I don't know what happened there, it almost felt like the song wrote itself! That certainly wasn't the case for the rest of the album…

Sure, there were additional tracks that showed musical prowess, yet my second choice is "Foreverless". First, the title, quite astonishing, I would love to hear about it please. Second, the song isn't that catchy due to its lyrics but soothing to the ear due to its lead guitar work. Furthermore, it was like listening to a tune that Iron Maiden missed decades ago, and you nailed them to it. What can you tell about the creative process of this song?

D: Jamie (bass) was the mastermind behind the name "Foreveless". I think it's intended to describe the concept of that character, which is eternal but contradictorily finite as reality is reborn. The concept got away from us in a lot of ways and I'm not sure we all even have the same interpretation of the story, in all honesty.

I saw that you had shows in October, did I read that right? Won't there be anything after that? What about the Summer festivals?

J: Our shows were in October 2021. We did a small UK tour with Seven Sisters and Toledo Steel. At least one person in every band ended up with covid which resulted in us having to cancel the Manchester show, which was set to be extremely well attended. So, in hindsight it's a good job it was cancelled as a lot of people would have been infected!

As far as summer festivals go, we've got nothing booked. Hopefully that will change, but we've got complications with covid and brexit to contend with now if we want to play on the continent; this doesn't make things easy.

Gents, thanks again for your time and of course the efforts made for this interview. Be safe, stay healthy and Metal of course. All the best

D: Thanks for your time!

J: Nice one, cheers!