MANOWAR Guitarist Talks About Arm Injury, Upcoming Album

Sweden's Metalshrine recently conducted an interview with MANOWAR guitarist Karl Logan. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Metalshrine: So how far have you come with the full-length album? Is it done? Have you mixed it?

Karl: The album is almost done. When I got hurt we had to take a listen to it and I'm actually glad it happened that way, almost. We took the album and we thought it was strong, but we actually listened to it again and said "What if we did this here and and that there?" We changed some songs and made some longer and some shorter and we came up with this whole concept that's gonna be exploring the "Gods of war" and gods in general. Mythology, Nordic, Greek, Roman whatever, ant it's gonna be continuing through a series of albums and releases. This whole big concept. It actually turned into something more than it originally was.

Metalshrine: How do you guys work when you put together an album? Do you work seperately and then you bring stuff to each other?

Karl: Yeah, generally we work sepeartely, believe it or not, because everybody's got their studios, little studios how ever small they may be, and then we get an idea and Joey [DeMaio, bass] and I write the melodic parts and we might think a song is ninety percent finished when we bring it into the collective whole of the four of us. When Eric [Adams, vocals] and Scott [Columbus, drums] come in, they might here a song in a completely different manor and by the end of the day it might be only ten percent finished, because we make so much changes to it. Every song is different.

Metalshrine: What about your motorcycle accident? As I recall it was pretty bad.

Karl: Yes, a nerve injury in my left arm. It's the funny bone nerve and when you damage that, it controlls all of the nerves in your whole arm, so your whole arm goes weak. I couldn't move my fingers on the guitar neck. The only way to heal it, literally, is time and don't use it. So it took four to four and a half months for that and then to rehabilitate slowly and concentrate on basics and stuff. It's not like when you have a spinal accident or when you have to learn to walk, but just to get my fingers back in shape. Now it's a hundred percent and I actually think I'm playing better because I was forced to take time off and not play guitar for four months and just clear my head. I think I'm playing better than ever if you hear the new album and the sound on it. It speaks for itself. I got two new guitars made and we're gonna be selling them on our website. They're being made out in Las Vegas by Ed Roman, who's a famous guitar maker and manufacturer, handmade. So if you go on our website and you wanna buy them, they're not available yet, but when they are available, you can actually buy the exact copy I'm playing. So when you hear the sound, it's the biggest guitar sound we've had yet. They sound massive!

Metalshrine: You seem to have really dedicated fans. And you've always seemed to have a gigantic fanbase in Germany of all places. Do you have any idea why it is like that, because Germany is not a country I think of when I think about cool music? Sure, you have SCORPIONS and ACCEPT but besides that there's not that much coming out of Germany.

Karl: Maybe that's why! Maybe because when they hear something and they're hungry for it, they appreciate it. But it's not just Germany. Every country we go to, the fans are rabid. We played Istanbul, Turkey last year for the first time and we didn't know what to expect. And the fans were just as fucking crazy over there as they were anywhere. Our fans are the best in the world and I think the reason for it is because we honor our fans. We really respect them and we love our fans. We recognise that without our fans we are absolutely nothing. We'd be the best musicians playing in our own living rooms for ourselves, instead for our fans. Anything we do we do for our fans. We're giving away two custom made Harley choppers on this next tour and when we play the shows in Germany, any fan who comes from another country, just for making the effort and taking the time and the trip, we're actually gonna have them go to the merchandise truck, present their passport and get a free t-shirt. That's just something extra for the fans. Something we want to give and say thank you, because we feel bad about delaying the tour and the album and the bullshit that unfortunately takes place. And we always try to think of something new to honor our fans.

Read the entire interview at www.metalshrine.se.