With the first demo being recorded in 2005, The Wizar’d is a rather new band, isn’t it? So just in case some of our readers haven’t heard of you yet, please give a brief introduction of yourself and your bandmates and let us know a little bit about the different bandmembers’ musical backgrounds.

Ol' Rusty: The Wizar’d is indeed a relatively new band, the band was formed in 2004 by me (Ol’ Rusty Vintage Wizard Master on guitar and vocals) with the intention of playing simple but really heavy doom metal, influenced by the greats which don’t really need to be named (but fuck it, I will anyway: Vitus, Sabbath, Witchfinder, Pagan Altar, Death SS, Manilla Road etc), some old horror movies and stories, as well as vast consumption of alcohol on cold nights (the band was formed in winter ha ha)

I messed around with some ideas and made some very rough recordings (although I don’t plan on ever making any of the demos made at that time available because the quality is slightly…questionable) and soon bass player/mysterious and illusive maniac; Blackie The Crimson Heretic of a Thousand Eyes and one of our comrades Pirate of Days on the skins were recruited.

Blackie’s interests are mainly to do with traditional heavy metal, and his life of crime.

Pirate of Days pretty much just came along for the ride, so it was no surprise that he ended up leaving the band in 2006 to pursue other things.

After Pirate left I wrote some more stuff and a fellow named Cameron the Barbarian stepped in on drums, although the line up of Me/Cam/Blackie only lasted for about three weeks as The Barbarian was a very busy man and didn’t really have time for The Wizar’d. We did however manage to record our Sabbath/Maiden worship track, which may well surface in the not too distant future.

Soon the Iron Tyrant joined. I had been in contact with Mr Tyrant for a while as he was interested in my other band called Space Raven when we first started in 2005. We set about recording the rest of the 7”. Time passed and I wrote our full length album which was recorded towards the end of 2006 (it’s still waiting to be released though)

In late 2006 we recruited the help of Sir Nunn Piss on guitars to help fill out our live sound. Little is known about Nunn Piss.

When and why did you guys join forces as The Wizar’d? Did you just come together to play some cool sound or is there also any special philosophy or deeper meaning behind the existence of band?

Ol' Rusty: Basically the band was me longing to write doom metal that I would enjoy listening to (although I don’t think anyone in their right mind would enjoy what I came up with when we first started) Our only philosophy is to stick to our guns and play the heaviest music we can.

How would you describe the music of The Wizar’d to someone who’s never heard you guys playing a single note before?

Ol' Rusty: A huge monolith made out of lead falling down some stairs and landing on a pile of Saint Vitus, Black Sabbath, Pagan Altar, and Thin Lizzy lps.

What does the monicker The Wizar’d mean? Is there any special reason why you’ve included that strange apostrophe?

Ol' Rusty: One day Blackie came to me and told me that he had beaten the hell out of a group of Satanists who had robbed an occult library. After he was finished kicking the shit out of them, he stole a book they were carrying which referred to something called a Wizar’d. I like it. Although these days he constantly tells me to remove it from the name as he claims to be haunted by an evil spirit for miss using it’s name.

The last two releases of The Wizar’d were a 7” EP called “Smouldering Sinners” and a Livetape called “Killing Ourselves To Live”. So let’s talk about those two records a little... if you listen to ‘em now, how satisfied are you with the final result? Is there anything you would have changed with hindsight, either on the 7” or on the tape?

Ol' Rusty: Half of the 7” was recorded at the same time as our previous EP ‘Follow the Wizard’ (late 2005) the other half was recorded in mid 2006, so I had a long time to listen to them before it actually came out. I do this with everything we do, I obsess and worry about every little bit of the music, and usually by the time it’s out I’m either so sick of the songs I can hardly stand to listen to it, or I’ve picked out many things that in my mind should have been better or different. I am proud of the 7” of course, I do like the songs a lot, but there are points about the production etc I might have done differently, although then I’d probably still think the same thing. As far as the actual product, I think it looks very nice indeed, and the vinyl sounds great. I’m very pleased with the job Rusty Axe did.

Killing Ourselves to LIVE! Is a relatively low key release, done by a local label and Limited to small amount of copies (although we haven’t sold out yet). We did this for a couple of reasons one was that it would give people a taste of how we sound live, as it’s pretty different to our studio efforts and also because at the time it seemed like it may be quite a long time between releases for us. The tape is pretty much intended for people who are already fans of the band, which is why it was released to such a limited number (3 editions of 33 copies).

How has the feedback by fans and media turned out so far? Did you get a lot of hail and praise or have there also been certain critics who trashed your music in their reviews?

Ol' Rusty: So far the feedback has been pretty positive, all the reviews for zines etc have been really fuckin good which is nice. It’s kind of strange though, as a general rule people seem to either really like us or thoroughly despise us ha ha. Another note worthy fact is that locally pretty much no one is interested in or understands what we are trying to do. I can count the amount of 7”s I sold locally on my left hand (although it did pretty well on the mainland and overseas)

One thing that I absolutely love about “Smouldering Sinners”, apart from the fantastic music, is the killer cover artwork!! The single does indeed look absolutely beautiful!! Who has drawn that artwork, how did you manage him to work for The Wizar’d and what do you personally think about his work?

Ol' Rusty: The cover art does indeed kick some serious arse. It was done by my brother, who pretty much agreed to do the album art straight off the bat. I think his work is fucking insane. The attention to detail and concepts he comes up with are just awesome. In my opinion he’s one of the best album artists around today, and we are very lucky to have him doing our art.

On “Killing Ourselves To Live” you’ve not only played original songs, but also a cover of Manowar’s “Metal Warriors”!! Is that song a common part of your live sets? And is it the only cover tune that The Wizar’d plays on stage, or do you perform other Heavy Meal classics as well?

Ol' Rusty: Ha ha thus far we’ve only played three gigs so it’s hard to say what’s common right now. We played Metal Warriors at two of the three, because the lyrics usually suit who we are playing to so well… I really enjoy playing it, it’s a fuckin classic song, full of power and true heavy metal spirit.

As far as other covers go, we do the classic Witchfinder General tune Free Country as well as a Ramones number.

In the future I’d like to cover a Manilla Road song, maybe something from Crystal Logic as that album has been a pretty massive influence on my writing.

And what’s the live situation for The Wizar’d alike in general? As I don’t know a lot other classic Metal bands from Tazmania (well, now that I think about it, The Wizar’d is the only band from that area I’ve ever heard of), I wonder if it’s easy for you to find gigs and attract a lot of fans?

Ol' Rusty: The live situation for The Wizar’d is relatively new, as we only started doing shows this year. The situation is fairly dire for us really because the only other band that I’m not involved with in Tassie playing classic metal on the live front is Taberah, who are a bunch of younger blokes playing cool power/heavy type stuff. This makes it very hard for us to play live around here, as none of us want to share the stage bands we don’t enjoy (we did this once, with hilarious results), and playing on the mainland (something we plan to do next year) is costly as there is a fuckin great sea in-between us ha ha.

If we played a show by ourselves locally the turn out would probably be so small it just wouldn’t be worth doing.

It’s pretty hard to find anyone who is genuinely interested in Tasmania, but there seem to be much more people who swing that way on the mainland

With what other bands have you sharedthe stage so far? Are any of them worth mentioning? Our first gig earlier this year was with Shackles (awesome death/thrash from Sydney) and Taberah (local maniacs).

Ol' Rusty: After that we played with Sodom when they came to Australia, it was a fucking weird feeling supporting them as I’ve been into them since I was quite young, it just seemed kind of surreal especially since it was only our second show ha ha. All in all it was a fun gig, but I could tell very few of the people there were really into us or even understood what the hell we were doing, in fact I later discovered various members of the audience were making fun of us behind our backs even though we would have been more than happy to have the insults said to our faces.

Our most recent gig was an all ages show with Taberah and a somewhat awful band not worth mentioning. The venue was PACKED full of hilariously dressed goths and emos which made me laugh and be filled with hateful rage at the same time. This show was recorded and used on our live tape, you can hear my various rants based on the majority of the audience.

And if you look on the current Doom Metal movement not only in your neighbouthood, but in general, which other bands are the best and most promising newcomers for you? Which other new bands should our readers definitly give a try?

Ol' Rusty: Ha ha, there is no doom metal movement around here in Australia. In Tasmania there is absolutely nothing that even resembles anything close to a doom scene, it’s us and them as far as I’m concerned.

There are a lot of great doom bands around these days though, a newish band everyone should listen to is The Lamp of Thoth, fucking stellar stuff there. Atlantean Kodex are another fucking brilliant new doomy (although I guess they are more just epic metal) band, can’t get enough of their stuff.

What’s next on your agenda? What plans does The Wizar’d have for the future?

Ol' Rusty: Currently it looks like the next release from us will be an EP titled Sebado Negro. It will feature a track recorded with the short lived 2006 line up, a new track, a cover and a couple of currently undecided bonus tracks. We have also completed a full length album titled Infernal Wizardry, hopefully that will be out before the year is through.

What’s the best way to stay tuned about any news in the The Wizar’d camp?

Ol' Rusty: As much as I hate to say it, probably myspace ha ha. Although there will of course be updates in the usual taverns of ill repute which most of our fan base seem to frequent.

Thanks for the interview, Will!! Keep up the great work with The Wizar’d!! If there’s anything left you’d still like to mention, feel free to do so now!!

Ol' Rusty: Thanks for the interview and support Tobi, and thanks to anyone who has bought our records.
 

Fragen: September 2007 by Tobi
Antworten: September 2007 by Ol' Rusty