FOZZY Guitarist Discusses Upcoming Album

Australia's PyroMusic.net recently conducted an interview with STUCK MOJO/FOZZY guitarist/vocalist Rich Ward. An excerpt from chat follows below.

PyroMusic.net: Hey, Rich, what are you up to at the moment?

Rich Ward: I've just finished writing and demoing out the new FOZZY record, a little side band that I've had for a few years that I do with a professional wrestler guy who works for the WWE, Chris Jericho.

PyroMusic.net: A good band as well.

Rich Ward: Oh yeah? Cool. The record is really cool, man, it's one of the best records I've ever written and I'm really fired up about it. So, in any case, I came off tour in late November with STUCK MOJO in Europe and ever since then I've been working on this record and just finally finished, putting the final touches on it. (Chris) Jericho wrote all the lyrics and it was nice because I had the lyric sheets to work off to start with, because unless I have something really that I want to talk about, something that's either impacting my life or experiences that I've gone through or just topics of interest. Sometimes lyrics are difficult for me, it's like, what do you want to write about? When I'm writing, usually it's about heartache or I hate the president, or something, and it's like, I don't want to write another song about how the president's stupid, just like, good grief. There's so much territory, there's so many paths that are so worn down, you just want to find something fresh to write about. And Jericho's got a really cool mind, and he likes lots of kind of fantasy stuff, he reads a lot of fiction books, so it's really cool to get his lyric sheets. And of course I have to do some arrangement stuff sometimes to make his prose fit into the song structure, but it's been fun. I love writing and recording, it's one of my favourite things to do. And then today I have a keyboard session to work on some big, nasty Hammond B3 Organ stuff on some of the material, some of it has kind of a classic, DEEP PURPLE on steroids kind of feel. There's going to be a couple of songs that are going to have a bit of that. And then I start tracking guitars tomorrow, so fun, fun.

PyroMusic: How is the new FOZZY material shaping up compared to previous releases?

Rich Ward: It's just as heavy, it's probably... well, actually there are moments on the record that are really, really heavy and then there's a couple of moments on the record that are a little more like... did you have the first FOZZY record, the self-titled one that had all the covers on it?

PyroMusic: Yep, I did.

Rich Ward: We did a cover of "Eat The Rich", which is one of our favourites. It's one of my favorite FOZZY songs, I really like that. There's a couple of rock songs on the new FOZZY album that are similar to that, real kind of AC/DC, barnburner rock 'n' roll songs. So there's a couple of those, and the rest of the album is you know, something you would probably find familiar to stuff we've written in the past. Then there's actually a 14-minute kind of prog epic jam! (laughs) The record's crazy. It's a bizarre record, because it is a culmination of all the things that we've done over the years for FOZZY and also MOJO, 'cause it's obviously the same cast of characters and it's a really good record. I really think "All That Remains" is a good album, but I actually... and all people say this, "Oh, this is our best record" but there is no doubt! I was laughing with Jericho on the phone last night about how good the record is and we're really... it's just in its demo forms right now, but just listening to the demos, it's pretty funny that we have pretty high confidence in the record. So, it's always fun when the record sounds good in demo forms. 'Cause, you know, if you're doing demos, and you're like, well just imagine if it sounded bigger in the studio. If you don't have to paint the big picture, just the pencil sketchings are good, then you know you've got something good coming. So yeah, I'm happy about it.

Read the entire interview at PyroMusic.net.

FOZZY's new album, "Chasing The Grail", is due in North America in the early summer.