The new school of thrash announced its presence in 2007, and one of the first new bands to come out of this resurgence was Warbringer out of Ventura, Calif. Their take on the revival is all metal, with a trademark of blistering (sorry) speed. They’ve made their mark on more than a few thrash compilations and on the scene in general with their demo EP, One By One The Wicked Fall. The band has since run out of physical copies of the disc and, in a bold move, made the whole album available for free download. On February 5, they will release their debut LP entitled War Without End on Century Media Records. Warbringer just began a tour to back the album in a kick-ass union of old school and new, featuring Exodus, Arsis and Goatwhore. Blistering got a chance to talk with drummer Ryan Bates just before show number four.
Blistering.com: What are you doing right now?
Ryan Bates: Right now we’re at the Lauchpad in Albuquerque and we’re just kind of unloading all of our stuff. Getting ready to haul all of our stuff onstage right now.
Blistering.com: Let’s start out first talking about the album. I understand that there are several songs that appeared on your debut EP that have been reworked for War Without End, is that right?
Bates: Yep, that’s correct.
Blistering.com: What was that process like, taking songs you had already laid down and either re-recording them or remastering them?
Bates: We totally re-recorded them from scratch. Some of the songs like “Total War” we played a little bit faster, and actually one of the songs, “Hell on Earth,” we played a lot faster for the album. When we did the EP, we just had two days to do it. We didn’t really have much time to make it how we really wanted it to be, so we just figured we’d re-record our favorite songs for the album.
Blistering.com: How did you decide to rework those songs rather than writing all new material?
Bates: We listened to the EP a few months after we did it, and we liked it and shit, but we could hear all these fuckups on it. We didn’t want those to be the final representations of the songs, so we figured we’d rework them a little bit. We added a few new things to them, new parts and little surprises and shit. I think they’re a lot better now.
Blistering.com: Yeah, agreed. And for me, faster equals better, almost always.
Bates: Yeah, for sure [laughs].
Blistering.com: Was that hard as a drummer, speeding things up like that, or was that something you enjoyed the challenge of?
Bates: No, because when we play live, I usually play a lot faster than the recordings anyway. So I tried to keep that live vibe going when we recorded.
Blistering.com: I’ve noticed a theme in the record, and that is a theme of war. Why did you choose “Warbringer” to be the band name, and how did you decide to write songs about war?
Bates: Well, the original band name was Onslaught, and we found out that name was already taken. Actually I wasn’t in the band at the time, but I was there when they were talking about a new band name and they just mentioned Warbringer, and we all thought it sounded cool. And, you know, the songs we were writing were about war-related shit anyway, so we thought Warbringer would be a good band name, for however long we wanted.
Blistering.com: Which metal drummers do you look up to the most?
Bates: Oh, shit, um… people like Dave Lombardo, all the Death drummers like Gene Hoglan and Ken Owen from Carcass is a pretty big influence. Just, you know, all the greats, really.
Blistering.com: Do you think your appearances on compilations like Speed Kills…Again and Metal for the Masses has helped the band gain notoriety, or has MySpace helped more?
Bates: They definitely helped get our name out there a little bit because, you know, Metal for the Masses is a really mainstream kind of sampler CD. You can get it at, like, Hot Topic in the mall, I think. That’s helped us get our name out there a little bit. The Speed Kills is a little more underground because it is on Heavy Artillery, which is a new label. And we’re going on this new one called Thrashing Like A Maniac, which I think is already out, but it’s got tracks from Municipal Waste and Evile and Merciless Death and some new up-and-coming thrash bands. So we’re pretty proud to be on some of those.
Blistering.com: You have a pretty big MySpace following. Which has helped get your name out there more?
Bates: MySpace is definitely a huge part of the music industry nowadays. Any band that’s anybody has a MySpace page these days, so that definitely – you have to have one of those if you want to get any kind of recognition these days. You just have to have a wide variety of exposure in different kinds of media, so it all kind of works together, I think.
Blistering.com: You said you joined the band after it formed. How did you come about joining the band?
Bates: Me and Adam, the guitar player and John, the singer had a band called Zombie about three years ago with a couple other guys, and Warbringer was going on at the same time. Adam was playing drums in Warbringer at the time. Zombie kind of split up and so I was looking for something to do. Adam ended up leaving the band for a while so I joined on drums and he ended up falling back into the band, except on guitar the second time around, so that’s the story of that.
