The New life of Crimson Glory with Todd Latorre and John Drenning

“We're not interested in being the heaviest and most complicated band, but we do want to be among the bands that write some of the best songs.”

This interview was conducted in Zoetermeer, the Netherlands, on April 28th, 2011.

J: With a career spanning 25 years, what do you think explains Crimson Glory's longevity?
John Drenning: I think you just you can do that just by writing great songs, not doing too much. I think that some bands make too many songs, and then get burned out. In our case, people still have a lot of interest in the band, because there are a lot of great songs, but not too many of them... so there's no burnout yet. Hopefully we will last another 25 years, if this human body can handle it [laughs]

J: Your last album, Astronomica, was released in 1999. Now, with Todd Latorre taking over singing duties, can we expect a new album?
Todd: We've actually been been writing material for the new record. It's going very well. This gives me an opportunity to put my stamp musically on the band. And although I'm "emulating" the classic songs in the way that Midnight sang, and doing the best I can, this is also a great platform to show how I sound like, showing my many influences.

John Drenning: One of the things that we didn't want to do, was to just jump right into the studio and start writing these songs out of the gate with Todd. We wanted to get to be better friends, become like brothers, go on tours together. To make a great record you gotta have a great chemistry, and that comes with spending time together, and a tour is a great way to do that. So after this this tour we go home, and then we can really buckle down and get focused on the music, and it will reflect our our time spent together on the tour will be effective in there.

Todd: All of us are closer during the tour.

J: With Midnight's death, and some members leaving the band over the years, was there ever a time in which you considered stopping altogether?
John Drenning: The only other singer we had before was Wade, because midnight was not in good health, and Dana took a break to spend time with his family. He had a large family, so he really wanted to have some time while his children were growing up. So we never broke up or anything like that, we were always doing things, it's just that we never made a lot of records because it was not something we felt compelled to do. We do it, I do it, when we feel the time is right; and the time is right again for another Crimson Glory record, and having Todd in the band is really the main catalyst behind that.
We have other things in our lives that are important to us; we're not slaves to the grind in the music business. We have things in life that we enjoy, our families, and other pleasures and things that we'd like to do. So, unlike some bands where, you know, being in the band is everything on a day-to-day basis, we try to have a full, well-rounded life.

J: Todd, evidently, you are seen as "Midnight's replacement". How have the Crimson Glory fans reacted to you so far?
Todd: Based off of the YouTube clips that everyone's seen, the response is great.

John Drenning: Last night's show was amazing!

Todd: It went really well. All the fans were very please. I think they know that there's no possibility of him coming back, so the fact that I'm able to sing these songs the way that I am... I mean, it's work, and I don't do it for me; I do it to make the band proud, to make the fans happy, and so far it's been amazing.
Everyone's has been very, very nice to me. Usually that's not the case when a new singer comes in, but we've been very lucky.

John Drenning: There's really no negativity out there on Todd at all. He's done an amazing job doing the classic Crimson Glory songs. That was important to us, to have a singer that could capture that; capture those true emotions and the torture and the heartfelt moments that Midnight would have put in the songs, because our fans were very particular about that. And Todd's the perfect person for it.

J: John, you've expressed anger at how the media portrayed Midnight's death as simply "another rockstar drinking himself to death". Why do you think that type of coverage happened?
John Drenning: Unfortunately, people leaked information out to the press right after he passed away, before his family had even been able to digest what had happened. And the information that was released was not true because, althgouh Midnight was an alcoholic, and he had a problem, what killed him was that he had an aneurysm, a bleeding aneurysm in his stomach. And yes, this was probably due to the drinking, but if had he gone to the hospital two days before his death, like he was asked to go, he would be alive today. Midnight was notoriously stubborn, and he just thought that he was just having a small stomachache, so he just didn't go, and then bled to death internally. He waited too long to go to the hospital.
Midnight will live forever. I mean, he was one of the great singers of our generation in the metal genre. There will never be another Midnight. It just will never happen. So we're fortunate to have someone like Todd, who's able to sing like Midnight and capture those moments live for us with the band, because a lot of people never got a chance to see Crimson Glory with Midnight, so this is as good as it's going to get. And I can tell you that we're doing a very good job, and Todd has been doing an amazing job. Maybe some fans had been were doubtful that he wasn't going to be as good as it was, but everyone has said that it's been amazing. That it's better than they ever imagined.

J: Way back in the beginning of Crimson Glory; why did you decide to wear masks?

John Drenning: Early on in the band, we were gonna do our first official photo shoot, and I was trying to think of a way that we could have a different look than anybody else. I thought our music was strong and that we had a great sound, but I also wanted to make sure that we had a unique look, so that way we would not go unrecognized. Back then, and probably even more so today, there are so many bands out there, so what else can you really do to look different? Plus, having been a fan of Kiss growing up, I really liked that imagery, the whole the Greek and Kabuki style, and the drama associated with it. So we just tried to come up with a great way to have an image that was identifiable, uniquely identifiable, and that no one would ever forget.

J: Crimson Glory are seen as one of the bands that started what we now call "progressive metal". Do you like any of the "modern" prog metal bands?
John Drenning: Firewind, Pain of Salvation
Todd: Pagan's Mind, Symphony X, Circus Maximus
John Drenning:Also our friends in Kamelot. I respect them a lot for how hard they've worked, since they were always considered to be a bit in Crimson Glory's shadow, but now they have really established themselves as one of the great power/progressive metal bands.

J: On the topic of Kamelot, the last few weeks have been rought for metal. Roy Kahn leaving Kamelot, KK Downing leaving Judas Priest...
John Drenning: I respect musicians for making decisions like that. It's hard for someone to leave a band, especially when they're successful; but there's almost so much time in life, and time is the most valuable thing, so spending it doing the things that you love is very important. If that's being in the band, 24/7, it's fine, but if it's spending time with your family, if it's friends, it's traveling the world, if it's just doing whatever you want to do, I say, do it. That's what I do.

J: John, you've said that Midnight "lived in the key of Midnight", and that he was quite a character. What are some of your fondest memories?
John Drenning: There's plenty of memories of Midnight. Never a dull moment with midnight. I can think of some funny times when we'd be looking for him before we went on stage, and he'd be sleeping in the audience somewhere, because he'd be passed out from exhaustion. That's because one of the things midnight loved to do after his show was that he didn't want to go back to the dressing room, he didn't want to go back to the bus or to the hotel. He always wanted to go hang out with fans and stay up all night long. And so he was always tired the next day. So that's one of the things about Midnight; he loved his fans. He loved the attention. He really did.

J: Even though you're a US band, your 25th anniversary tour takes place in Europe. Why not tour the US as well?
John Drenning: Our fan base has always been here. This is where we started. Europeans were the ones who opened their arms to the kind of music that Crimson Glory plays back when we started in 86... so much so that a lot of people in America thought America thought we were a European band early on. But it's not surprising; it's just the way it is. The American music market is driven more by the radio market, which is big political thing. It can make anybody big in America based on the promotions on radio or TV, and so metal isn't one of the genres with which they do that over there.

J: What was your goal when you started Crimson Glory?
John Drenning: We've never sold out to anyone, and we've always done what we wanted to do. I remember somebody asked me that question when we released our first album, and I said that my goal was to make another record. A lot of bands want to last forever but, typically, bands do not last forever. They break up, they fail. So to have Crimson Glory together for as long as we have been for the last 25 years is pretty impressive.
We're still the same people, besides Midnight... but having Todd is just like having Midnight back in the band again in the beginning. Like Midnight, who was an unknown person and never sang with a band before, Todd had the same background. You know, no one knew who Todd was. He had never sang with a band before. He was a drummer. To be a part of Crimson Glory is a truly special opportunity to get, and we didn't want to just give it to anybody.

J: What can the fans expect from this new tour, and the new album?
Todd: For this leg of the tour we've got 10 shows scheduled. Some of the venues are smaller, while others are larger, like the Keep it True Festival, which is a couple thousand people. They should expect high energy! They're going to get the first two records, and we've got a couple of other things that we could pull out of our sleeves if we wanted to, and we want to meet and greet as many of the fans as we can.
As far as the new album's concerned, it's primarily inspired by Midnight, his life and death, or transcendence. It's going to be a concept record, the first concept record that Crimson Glory has done. It's going to be very musical, it'll have some very nice, pretty things, but also dark and evil things. It's not going to be one style the whole way through. It's very eclectic, which is today the definition of progressive. Progressive is sometimes a million notes crammed together in a small space, with everybody soloing, which is impressive, but not memorable. We want to write songs that when each time you listen to them you'll get something new.
John Drenning: It's interesting because we get thrown into the progressive genre a lot, but I don't think Crimson Glory has ever really been a "progressive" band as far as technicality goes. It's been progressive as far as how we approach the music, how we create things, and maybe the lyrical content. We're not interested in being the heaviest and most complicated band, but we do want to be among the bands that write some of the best songs.