Interview with
Riley (vocals) from Steelwing
I have been a massive fan of the band and their vocalist Riley since first listening to their debut ‘Lord of the Wasteland’, after three distinctive records full of variation and top tier Swedish steel they sadly disbanded in 2016. I searched high and low for new efforts of member of the band, doing new stuff with different bands and, be it due to my skill in research or just bad luck, I almost gave up on it. In 2022 I finally found the private account of Riley on Facebook and managed to get him to agree on an interview. He was straight forward with him needing time to answer my questions and after what seemed like an eternity he finally answered to my satisfaction. So here it is my interview with Riley, the vocalist par excellence of STEELWING!
Reflections of Darkness [RoD]: I am sure you have been asked before but: why did STEELWING disband?
Riley: At the time, ‘Reset, Reboot, Redeem’ felt like it was the very best we could ever get out of us and it was a pain in the ass to get it done. Our label and management had already abandoned us, perhaps due to lack of commercial success, perhaps because we wanted to do everything our own way, from the style of music and production, to t-shirt prints, to flight bookings. Personally, I was sick and tired of all the touring and rehearsing, there was more I wanted to do with my life that I never had the time for because of the band. So, we decided to do a final round of touring for ‘Reset, Reboot, Redeem’ and call it quits at the top of our game.
RoD: What are you and the guys doing with your lives nowadays?
Riley: I’m raising a family and working a career in IT to provide for said family. Most of us are drowning in kids by now, I think that sums it up.
RoD: I know sometimes life just happens but, aside from Nic Savage I can’t find anything music relate about the other guys, why are there almost no new projects with STEELWING involvement?
Riley: We’ve been busy with the next generation of wasteland warriors. But there’s definitely stuff going on! Nic joined the legendary Swedish Heavy Metal band HEAVY LOAD on guitar and is also singing and playing guitar in his new band APOKALYPS. Robby is chugging and shredding Groove Metal with CHAINED from Siegen who are finishing up their second EP. Oskar is drumming slower than ever in Epic Doom Metal band BELOW, working on a new album. The only thing Alex is playing these days are vinyls. I hope he’ll pick it up again someday, would be a shame to see that songwriting talent go to waste. I needed a long break. For years it was a relief to not think about singing or music at all. But it’s itching again. I have some material written and loads of ideas, but no time to do anything with it. But I’ve dedicated more than half my life to making music so I’m sure I will be back some day in some form. For now, I’ll just keep my voice in shape in case I might need it again.
RoD: Aside from everyone else being fucking tight musicians I was always very impressed by your vocals, where did you learn how to sing these earthshattering high-pitched epics?
Riley: I was originally an YNGWIE wannabe guitarist who did some shitty singing on the side, but I realized guitarists were a dime a dozen while decent singers were rare. So, I figured I’d have to learn to do it myself. I guess I brought some of the guitar practicing discipline to the singing. I used to sing along to JUDAS PRIEST, IRON MAIDEN, QUEENSRŸCHE, etc., trying to copy what they did until I slowly started to get there. I also read a lot of books about vocal technique, but I never took any lessons so there was a lot of trial and error.
RoD: How would you describe the evolution that the band underwent through the years and through the three releases?
Riley: ‘Lord of the Wasteland’ was a lot of fun, youthfully energetic. Like most bands we tried to cram in every idea and cliche in our debut album to show off what we could do, and we wanted to establish our sound and the post-apocalyptic theme. ‘Zone of Alienation’ was more mature, this time the focus was on writing good songs with hooks. The production was more polished, we had toured a lot since the first album and had gotten tighter and more confident as a band. Where Skürk played the bass with Steve Harris style fingerpicking on the first album, on this album Nic’s overdriven picked bass pushed us towards a more thrash metal sound. It was originally planned as a sci-fi storyline concept album which shows in a lot of the lyrics. On ‘Reset, Reboot, Redeem’ we changed it up a lot… It was much darker and more experimental and we mixed up the heavy metal stuff with whatever influences we felt like, from black and death metal to punk and electronic music. In contrast with ‘Zone’, the production here was much more honest, raw and gritty. The lyrical themes were a lot more ambitious and we even did one song in Swedish just for the hell of it.
RoD: What was the reason ‘Reset, Reboot, Redeem’ was so darn different than ‘Lord of the Wasteland’ and ‘Zone of Alienation’?
Riley: It started with Alex feeling that ‘Zone of Alienation’ was too predictable and that we just did what the fans and label expected of us. He wanted to do more interesting and unexpected things. Tensions were high in the band at this point and I was planning to quit after the “Zone tour”. But then something changed. While all the touring between 2010-2012 had taken its toll, we really started to find ourselves as a live band and kicking ass on stage like never before. I came up with some conceptual ideas for a new album and came around to Alex’s idea of stirring shit up. I wanted to experiment with mixing in new vocal techniques, and so I got hooked and was stuck for another cycle of writing, recording and touring. And we took forever with this new material. It was a very different process from before. We wrote songs, rearranged them, split them up, fused them together, rearranged them again. Since we were spread across four cities in two countries at this point, we booked full weekends where everyone would get together to rehearse the new material in gruesomely long sessions, blocking out the sunlight from the rehearsal space, drinking beers and wine, lighting incense and getting hypnotically deep into the playing, then picking apart every detail. When we were done for the day, we would go to Oskar’s place to drink more beer and listen to music until we passed out from exhaustion, then we went at it again early next morning.
With a limited budget for recording we had to be smart about how we split the tracking between different studios. But we ran into a lot of problems along the way. I blew my voice early in the sessions since the new material was so demanding to sing. This meant even more careful planning so I could get my voice back and deliver on time without blowing it again. There was an insane work ethic we had built up by this time. The sound and style changed a lot and we knew it would piss people off. Our label and management had already moved on by this time so they didn’t care. Even though we had all these things working against us, I still think this album turned out to be our magnum opus. It really divided the fans though: some say it’s our best, others think it’s a piece of shit. They’re both valid opinions.
RoD: Are there any plans to release or re-release some stuff that never saw the light of day?
Riley: Nope, sorry… Even if we wanted to, I think it would be too much of a legal hassle. But if anyone wants to track down all the rare recordings, I’ll jot down what I can remember. As far as originals go: ‘2097 A.D. - Extended Cut’ - bonus track of ‘Zone of Alienation’ digipak, the original long version of the John Carpenter inspired intro track from the album. ‘Hit ‘Em Hard’ - bonus track of ‘Zone of Alienation’ digipak, from the 2010 ‘Zone of Alienation’ demo. This song has a bit of a cult status among some fans now, but at the time, Alex thought it was too bland to include on the album. I think ‘Hit ‘Em Hard’ and ‘Hardwired’ were the only songs we recorded but never played live. Our first ever recording as a band - though we were called Scavenger at the time - was the ‘Headhunter’ demo from 2009 with demo versions of ‘Headhunter’ and ‘The Illusion’. This was never officially released but it was sent around a lot in 2009 and was up on Myspace, so maybe it can be found in some form. Except for ‘Hit ‘Em Hard’, we never released the rest of the ‘Zone of Alienation’ demo. I think it was only shared with friends and people in the biz. It included demo versions of ‘Zone of Alienation’, ‘Solar Wind Riders’ and ‘The Running Man’ as well. These songs were reworked quite a bit for the album, if anyone can get their hands on them, they’re in for a surprise.
And the covers: ‘The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)’ - the infamous cover of a cover… ‘Steeler’ by JUDAS PRIEST. Both were included on the ‘Roadkill (…or be killed)’ EP that was shipped with an issue of Sweden Rock Magazine. ‘Green Manalishi’ was also used as a bonus track for the Japanese release of ‘Lord of the Wasteland’ and ‘Steeler’ for the Japanese ‘Zone of Alienation’ release (this release had a really cool variation of the cover art by the way…). During the ‘Reset, Reboot, Redeem’ sessions we almost recorded a cover of ‘Digital Dictator’ by VICIOUS RUMORS, a song we played live as well, but we never got around to recording the vocals since we ran out of studio time and budget.
RoD: What was the best about being a touring band and what was the worst?
Riley: The best part was all the amazing people we met and realizing that our music actually meant something to someone. Also, there’s not much in the world like the euphoric high of a really good show. The worst? Where should I start… Cold or non-existing showers. Small and crowded dressing rooms crammed with local opening acts who ate all the food and drank all the beer even though THEY JUST CAME FROM HOME, NOT LIVING IN A MINIVAN THE PAST MONTH. Freezing your ass off as you get into your cold, moist, stinking stage clothes… Sitting on your ass all day waiting in boredom getting ready to cram a day’s work in the 15-minute change-over between bands. Having to be around people all the time and try to be nice even if you’re having a shit day. Worst of all though: being away from family and friends for long periods.
RoD: What were your favourite venues when touring?
Riley: There’s been so many awesome venues, promoters and local crews over the years. And also, some really shitty. But here are some that stood out that we kept coming back to:
Z7, Pratteln, Switzerland - The stage, the catering, the local crew - everything was just awesome about this place!
Escape Metal Corner, Vienna, Austria - A weird shaped stage, with a looong walk and stairs from the backstage which made us always fuck up the beginnings of our shows, but the shows where always so fun with awesome crowds.
Little Devil, Tilburg, Netherlands - It was always a pain in the ass to get into our spandex behind the beer kegs in the tiny cellar, but the shows and the hanging around drinking after the shows were always epic.
Estrado, Harderwijk, Netherlands - amazing venue and stage where we played some well-arranged events by our dear friend Sander.
RoD: What was the best band to tour with?
Riley: We’ve met many friends on the road, and there are a lot of bands I would like to name, but I’ve gotta give SKULL FIST a special mention. We had some really good times together on a rough winter tour. Of all the headliners we’ve opened for, being on tour with ACCEPT was a dream come true for us.
RoD: Were there any bands you did not want to tour with?
Riley: I can’t remember us ever turning down a tour because of the other bands. Maybe at some point we felt we didn’t fit in with the genre of the other bands in a tour package. We’ve had to deal with our fair share of assholes but most of them were individual rotten apples of headliner crews. No names…
RoD: How the fuck did you guys do ‘Breathless’ it should be too cheesy to hit hard but it does…
Riley: It wasn’t written for STEELWING initially, I was playing around with this “late 80s ALICE COOPER”-ish song, but we decided to try it out with the band and thought it would fit with the rest of the material we had for ‘Zone of Alienation’. Most Heavy Metal bands in the 80s had that MTV song on every album anyway so it shouldn’t be that surprising. But I guess we played it with a metal mindset - perhaps too much so… When we toured with VANDERBUYST they wisely suggested we should try toning down the Metalness when playing it live. Before that we just headbanged our way through it like all the other stuff.
RoD: The vocals on ‘Lunacy Rising’... I had to listen to this record for years to find my definitive fave but someday I listened to this one and it was like...
Riley: If I remember correctly, this song wasn’t finished by the time we went into the studio. There was a kind of tug-of-war between us wanting to do a really long MAIDEN-esque epic and producer Rikard Löfgren wanting to relentlessly cut out all the unnecessary stuff to get to the core of each song. Löfgren has a really good ear for vocal production and he got me to try out a lot of different stuff with the melodies until we got a good flow and progression to match the lyrics. And if I may say so myself, I think the lyrics are among my best work. I had delved deep into moon phases, lunacy and superstition to write a coherent story about this Renfield-ian character. So, I guess the vocals are just me trying to bring this story to life over Alex and Rob’s epic riffs and arrangements, guided by Löfgren’s ear. Teamwork!
RoD: Thx a lot for the interview Riley and keep us updated if something happens when it comes to music.
All Pictures by Karsten Rhezak
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