Metal music is a wonderful way to blast away the Covid-19 blues, and the newest album by heavy metal supergroup Death Dealer, Conquered Lands, is a perfect prescription to help fix what ails anyone looking for a cathartic release, a dissonant distraction, and a damn good cacophonic creation with which to escape the slings and arrows of our current misfortune.
Death Dealer brings together several experienced, successful and lauded heavy metal veterans, pooling their creative resources, exceptional musicianship and collective desire to put out music that inspires and brings metal fans together. It is composed of veteran Australian musician/producer Stu Marshall (Dungeon, Night Legion), drummer Steve Bolognese (Ross the Boss, Into Eternity), Mike Lepond (Ross the Boss, Symphony X) and vocalist Sean Peck, also known for his band Cage, as well as his other supergroup, The Three Tremors, alongside Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens and Harry ‘The Tyrant’ Conklin.
The pandemic did play a bit of a role in getting Conquered Lands finished and released, since all touring was cancelled for the various projects of all the band members, giving them time to write and record what remained to finish the record. But it turned out that there was a lot more creative gasoline left in the tank once the material for the album was complete, according to Peck.
“I know just for myself, creatively I have recorded like 50 songs since April. So, for people who don’t have a creative outlet, who have to just go and watch Netflix every night because of lockdown, I feel sorry for them. But for people like me who are lucky to have that outlet it’s different. I actually have four albums of material I am working on and have already finished three, as well as some work on a fantasy game module that’s kind of like Dungeons and Dragons. I have all these creative things; I’m still able to work my regular gig, so the downtime has been really cool in that sense because I’ve been really productive,” he said.
“This album had been 80 per cent done for like four or five years. It’s kind of been sitting there on the shelf. And I remember seeing the Facebook memories coming up about the song Sorcerer Supreme [about Marvel Comic’s character Doctor Strange] where I was saying how excited I was to finish the tracking of that song, which was four years ago. So, we had been sitting on it for a while and then all of our schedules were aligning, the stars were aligning, and we were like, let’s finish this album. We went back to the songs and injected some, like, heavy metal steroids into all the songs we had, wrote a few more and finished mixing and mastering it, got all the artwork together so that it was ready to hit the streets on Nov. 13 through Steel Cartel.
“But then we just kept writing. We got on a roll and just kept writing, and now the fourth Death Dealer album is completely done, and we’re almost done with the fifth Death Dealer album. So, there’s Death Dealer music as far as the eye can see coming and they’re all killer. It’s not just a bunch of crap or filler. I am super pumped for all these songs that we have come up with. We’ve been on a roll and it was like, lets just keep on rolling. So, we figure the fourth Death Dealer album is going to be out around the third quarter of 2021, which I am really excited about.”
Conquered Lands is a truly classic sounding metal album, not in the sense that its sonics are outdated, but that it is bluntly straightforward in its presentation, in its lyrical content and in the passion behind every aspect of the songwriting, playing and production. This is not ‘hyphenated’ metal, trying to follow one trend or the other, it is simply bombastic, brilliantly played, hard hitting and loud, with topics that enliven every metal fans day – fantasy, horror, standing up for oneself and the power of metal music.
“I have done two concept albums with my other band Cage, and I do write a lot of conceptual stories within the albums, but this one is just a good variety of songs. We’ve got a song about vampires, we’ve got a song about witches, we’ve got some songs about the need to fight for freedom, we’ve got barbarians running onto the field of battle songs. You always need to have one or two of those kinds of songs when you’re in a band with Ross the Boss, that goes without saying,” Peck said, with a chuckle, referencing his bandmate who built his metal reputation as a co-founder of British legends Manowar.
“We’ve got songs that are celebrating heavy metal music itself and what the world would be like if everybody were a metalhead and that type of thing. We also have a ballad on this one, which is actually Ross’s favourite track on the whole labium, which is called 22 Gone, which is about the reports that 22 American soldiers commit suicide every day supposedly. Stu sent me some acoustic stuff he was working on and I took it upon myself as a challenge. I said to myself, what is the most depressing song I can write. If I put these words to paper right now. How dark and sad can I make this song. Yeah, it’s depressing, but it’s the truth, and I think it’s a really good song; I go back and listen to that one a lot too.
“The song Every Nation is the badass anthem on the album. It’s saying that if everyone was a metalhead, we wouldn’t have all these f***ing problems because you can be at the grocery store and some dude is getting a carton of milk with a friggin’ Judas Priest shirt on, it doesn’t matter if he’s transgender, or gay, or what colour his skin is or if he’s an amputee, it doesn’t matter what, you’re going to throw him the horns, smile and go, ‘what’s up dude?’ Metalheads are like an advanced society as far as I am concerned. We have none of those things that are dividing so much of society. The brotherhood and sisterhood of heavy metal just trumps every other thing that normally divides people. None of those other things come into play. When it comes to metal, all those issues become just pointless and not even worth talking about. All we care about is hell yeah, fist in the air, lets rock and have a good time and like you said, empower ourselves. I write a lot of lyrical stuff in that direction and I don’t really do political songs. If they are political, it’s all shrouded in metaphors and stuff. You’re putting on a Death Dealer album to get an escape. You can turn on the news if you want to see the other shit.”
Ross the Boss was dream casting for what would become Death Dealer. Peck said the group came together quite organically from a long-distance collaboration between he and Marshall, who is a renown rock/metal musician/songwriter and producer in his native Australia.
“A number of years ago, Stu left a really well-known band down there called Dungeon and started doing solo albums where he would have guest singers on them. It was a project called Empires of Eden and had Udo [Dirkschneider] and a ton of people that every metal fan recognizes. He asked me to sing and we did a track, and that track was really, really good. We kind of hit it off and became friends through Skype, so we did another song. I was always a bit against being in multiple bands back then, I thought I had everything I needed in Cage – I was completely satisfied with what I can do with Cage,” Peck explained.
“He called me one night, pretty late actually, around 10 p.m. my time and he said, ‘hey, we need to start a band called Death Dealer.’ I told him that first of all, I was pretty sure the name was taken. But he said that there was a band from Canada, but that they were defunct. And, sure enough when I researched the trademark, it was available.”
For the initial lineup of Death Dealer, Peck and Marshall wanted to have a bit of a supergroup vibe to it, so cast their recruiting net far and wide, eventually drafting former Manowar Drummer Kenny ‘Rhino’ Earl Edwards and former Halford/Lizzy Borden bassist Mike Davis. But they felt there was still a little ‘umph’ missing.
“We wanted a badass guitar player. We knew that Stu was a huge Ross the Boss fan. I had talked to Ross online several times but wasn’t really tight friends with him. But one day I just messaged him and said that we already had Rhino and Mike Davis, that I was singing and that we need him to be in our band. And literally he was like, ‘okay. I’m in.’ Within 30 minutes of us just f***ing around as a joke trying to put together our all-star lineup, everybody had agreed to be in the band. So, we said, ‘oh shit man, I guess we’d better start writing some songs,” Peck explained, adding that the name recognition of the band members helped them quickly land some prestigious tour dates in Eastern Europe and Russia, playing in full-sized sports arenas building a fan base quickly, which paid off when their debut album, War Master was released to popular and critical acclaim in 2013.
A somewhat revamped lineup, still anchored by Peck, Marshall and Ross, issued Hallowed Ground in 2015. As Peck’s narrative earlier in this article stated, work began on a third album shortly thereafter, but other projects intervened, leading to the delay in finishing what would become Conquered Lands until 2020.
The current lineup was boosted in early 2020 by top European bassist, prolific songwriter and in-demand producer Mike Lepond, who is currently also a member of The Ross the Boss Band, as well as drummer Steve Bolognese, who joined in 2013.
From the beginning, because of his long-time opposition to being in more than one band, and not wanting to simply be a studio project, Peck has stressed that Death Dealer was, is and will always be a full-on recording and touring band.
“Death Dealer was innovative in the way we formed the line up, trying to get together an all-star band, supergroup kind of thing, but one that didn’t suck. There are so many of these manufactured all-star supergroup projects and none of them ever stand the test of time. None of them are ever as good when the final product comes out as they seem on paper. It’s true that the first two Death Dealer albums were critically acclaimed and completely badass, which was the goal. This is going to be a supergroup that doesn’t suck,” Peck said emphatically.
“This is always going to be a band, not a project where people assume it will never tour, so what’s the point. That was the same vision we had for The Three Tremors where this is going to be a proper band. We’ve done more than 70 shows with Three Tremors so it’s a bona fide live band. And this band is going to keep touring as well.”
As much as he and his bandmates acknowledge the preponderance of streaming and downloading as the primary ways people access music in the 21st Century, Death Dealer is focused on making each album release special, highlighted by exceptional artwork and packaging, both in CD and vinyl form, as well as bonus packages for merchandise and accompanying videos to make it ‘collectible.’ Peck said they will also not be releasing future albums in their entirety digitally.
“We’re really big on the physical medium. We’re kind of taking a stand against Spotify and streaming services. There are only three songs on this Death Dealer album that are streaming and those are the songs that have lyric videos or music videos to them. You’re not going to be able to go on Spotify and hear this whole album, or on YouTube. You’re going to have to plop down some cash and support the band. A lot of bands talk a big game about Spotify being a rip off and that sort of thing, and then they don’t do anything about it. I know we’re a microbe in a petri dish compared to the rest of the music industry and our defiance to streaming is not going to affect their bottom line at all, but we’re still doing it, and that’s a key part of our business model.
“For the next Death Dealer album, it’s going to come out with a Blu-ray, or we might even do a UHD high-definition DVD with a high-quality music video or lyric video for every song on the record. And, again, only three of them you will ever see on streaming or YouTube. If you want to see or hear all the content, you’re going to have to buy the record. And when we screen commercials showing how killer all the rest of the content is, it’s going to look like an Avengers movie trailer. And we know that this philosophy works because the pre-orders for Conquered Lands were amazing, and it’s carried on.”
For more information on Death Dealer, the Conquered Lands album, future recordings and possible post-COVID tour dates, visit www.deathdealermetal.com, or the band’s social media channels.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
