Winds of Plague – Johnny Plague and Kristen Randall
Posted on November 28, 2009 at 1:38 pm by Rob
This has taken some time to get out, but better late then never right? I sat down with Johnny Plague (vocals) and Kristen Randall (keyboards) from this summer at the Summer Slaughter tour stop in Toronto. We talked about the most recent release “The Great Stone War” and even asked Johnny some of the sleezy questions that Kristen normally gets asked as well! Since the time of the interview Kristen has left the band. Winds of Plague is continuing to move forward with Alana Potocnik on keyboards now.
WayTooLoud!: You have brought Daniel Castleman back to produce The Great Stone War. What does he bring to the recording process?
Johnny Plague: He is really good at brining out creative elements that we didn’t think of. He really pushes us to our best performances and to be creative! He is a good friend of ours so it is really relaxed and we don’t really feel any pressure!
Kristen Randall: Yeah, he explained it really well. (Laughs!)
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WTL!: The Great Stone War is a concept album. What is the story behind it?
Johnny: It is about the end of the world. Most theories are about nuclear war and what not! My kind of twist on it is a final war not with technology but with stone. It happens by the digression of civilization and the different steps it takes to get to that point!
WTL!: Was writing a concept album something you planned to do from the beginning or did it come out over the writing process?
Johnny: I definitely planned on doing it. I went back and forth a couple times on weather or not I was going to do it or not because it is a lot more difficult to do!
WTL!: How did the idea of the art come?
Johnny: I just wanted to portray a really epic battle between good and evil! I went back and forth a couple of times with the artist Par Olofsson on some ideas and that is kind of what came out!
WTL!: What else has he done? I’ve heard the name before!
Johnny: He did our last album. He did the new Faceless. He’s done a few bands on Sumerian. Discreet I think he did as well.
WTL!: There have been a couple of line up changes since Decimate the Weak, What has led to so many line-up changes?
Johnny: Shitty people really! At least for our drummer anyways. We had to replace our drummer because we caught him stealing! My brother played keyboards until he moved to Japan at which point we brought Kristen in. And besides that it has been pretty solid for a couple years!
WTL!: How did you get hooked up with Kristen, and what would you say she brings to the band?
Johnny: She was in Abigail Williams and we wanted to steal her and we did! (Laughs!)
Kristen: True story!
WTL!: Was there something about her that made you want her in the band?
Johnny: She was new to them and we had heard through the grapevine that she wasn’t too happy and we really needed a keyboard player!
Kristen: Initially it was just me filling in for a tour because I didn’t have anything else going on. It just ended up that I got along with them better and it was just more enjoyable all together so I stuck around!
WTL!: There are elements of a lot of different areas of metal in your songs. Does that make the song writing process more enjoyable for you since you aren’t stuck within one specific genre?
Johnny: Yeah definitely, if we get a stupid ridiculous idea we can do it! Since we started this band we have always pushed boundaries a little bit I guess you could say! We are not afraid to push boundaries while a lot of other bands have pigeon holed themselves in one genre and feel that if they go outside of it they’ll upset their fans. We don’t really care about that though!
Kristen: It builds a bigger fan base too. People who listen to hardcore will listen to us! People who like straight up death metal will listen to us! It expands that but at the same time people who are like die hard death metal or what not will hate us because we are so eclectic. It’s a give and take!
WTL!: You have mentioned that Blind Guardian and Dimmu Borgir as influences. What is it that he loves about those bands?
Johnny: Dimmu Borgir I feel like they do the whole epic metal, evil sound so well. Both bands write great concept albums. I have always been a fan of concept albums. When I think of the ideal representation of concept albums these bands come to mind. The new Dimmu Borgir I thought was done extremely well with the story of the priests and all that!
WTL!: Do you have any other influences that lead you to start playing?
Johnny: Everything across the board from Hatebreed who we have been on tour with. We just recently played with Behemoth and that just change my whole prespective about how bands should look on stage! Not so much the corpse paint or stuff like that. Just the way they present their set! I have never seen a band do it like that, it was awesome!
Kristen: I think for me Rachmaninov is my favourite composer and listening to Mozart and Beetoven and very classical music all my life is what inspired me to play really epic sounding shit! To me Rachmaninov is really epic, it is brilliant! I listened to metal for a long time before I really joined the metal scene. I didn’t really see too many keyboards in metal growing up. It’s like classical music and it’s metal two things that I really love! I think the classical aspect really helped me come into metal like that!
WTL!: What was the motivation behind changing the band name to Winds of Plague from the former name Bleak December?
Johnny: We were about to sign with a smaller record label called Life Sentence Records and there was another band with the same name that had copyrighted the name. We were all like “shit we need a name” and that was about the same time that Unearth had come out with that Endless EP. We happened to be listening to it and thought “that’s a pretty cool lyric!”
WTL!: What is it like being on tour with Suffocation?
Kristen: It was awesome! They’re really cool dudes!
Johnny: It was one of the things going into the tour that we weren’t sure of! Those guys are such old school icons of death metal. It was really cool though. They were really good to us!
WTL!: There have been stories of bands resorting to eating peanut butter and beef jerky for dinner on tour. Have food choices ever become slim for you on tour?
Johnny: Yeah I had beef jerky for dinner last night actually! (Laughs)
Kristen: I think a staple of mine when we were in the van a lot was a cup of noodles! It’s under a buck and it fills you up! Pure nastiness in a package!
WTL!: Like a cup of noodles raw without any water?
Kristen: No like going to the gas station and filling it with hot water from the coffee machine!
Johnny: I like it without water though!
Kristen: It tastes like a potato chip or something like that.
WTL!: Who would you tour with if you had no rules?
Kristen: The Beatles! I know it’s not metal but just to see what that time was like for them. All their fans running around going crazy, pounding their car and shit! Just to witness it, not even to play a show.
Johnny: Lynard Skynard!
WTL!: I can almost swear on every Lamb of God album I can hear some Skynard on there!
Johnny: They almost have that kind of Southern influence on there for sure! Same vibe, different genre.
WTL!: Who would you like to tour with who’s both feasible, but not obvious?
Kristen: Ozzy!
WTL!: Have you ever lied about your band name and what it means?
Johnny: Nope! The name is self explanatory and we’re pretty open about who we are and where the name came from.
Kristen: We did say we were Paramore once. We were in Wal-Mart and said the female is in the van!
Johnny: One time we convinced an old lady that we were a baseball team! (Laughs) We get asked if we’re tattoo artists or if we do motocross!
WTL!: We have some questions that we sometimes do at the end as a joke to some of the questions that Revolver asks some of the “Hottest Chicks in Metal”. Instead of asking a girl those questions we ask those same stupid questions to a dude.
Kristen: Yeah! I’m all for that!
WTL!: Is playing live a sexual turn on for you?
Johnny: Yes!
Kristen: He plays with a boner every day!
Johnny: You know it’s just those vibrations and letting my hair down and whipping it around. Soaking myself in water! It’s pretty awesome! Being in the same clothes that I’ve been in for the past month, smell like sex! (Laughs!)
WTL!: What do you do if someone asks you to take your shirt off?
Johnny: I take it off right away! I’d probably take it off before they ask me!
WTL!: You had it off on stage tonight!
Johnny: Yeah it was hot up there, hot and nasty!
WTL!: What’s a big turn off for you?
Johnny: When a girl has all her teeth! (Laughs!) When the butt isn’t bursting out of the pants, gotta have the ba donk a donk. Flat butts don’t do it for me!
WTL!: What heavy songs get you in the mood?
Johnny: “Kiss From A Rose”, that’s about it! (Laughs!)
WTL!: Who’s the hottest dude in heavy music?
Johnny: I don’t know if you’ve taken a look at our bass player (Andrew Glover) or not but he’s quite the looker!
WTL!: Is there something you hate about being a girl in a band?
Johnny: Just being around all these guys (laughs!) They’re just always trying to rub up on me!
WTL!: What’s the worst thing about being on the road with a bunch of guys?
Johnny: They just smell so good, all the time! (Laughs!) It’s just really hard to be a single woman in a band and have all these awesome smelling guys around! There is this company called Axe, just kills me! (Laughs!)
Winds of Plague on Myspace!
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