Here’s the challenge: listen to tracks two (‘Head On’) and three (‘Left Hook From Right Field’) on ARMORED SAINT’s new disc, La Raza, and try to not feel like you’re king of the world. Which is pretty much the spirit of metal in a nutshell, and who better to deliver than these guys? Even with a ten-year gap between records (their last was ‘00’s Revelation), the new disc sounds fresh, alive and vital as can be. Actually, maybe that should be because of a ten-year gap…

“Armored Saint is one of these things we have the opportunity to do when we feel the urge,” says bassist Joey Vera. “We have a great amount of freedom to do it; it’s a great way for us to work. We don’t have to feel like we’re under anybody’s thumb or have to live up to something. It’s a liberating way to work. We’re quite happy with that.”

Vera says that if the band wasn’t operating on this relaxed schedule, things would be different. The fact that La Raza wasn’t made in an effort to create a mortgage-paying machine is what makes it so natural and relaxed.

“I’ve been there,” he says on being in a career band. “It’s a lot harder, it takes a lot more effort, there’s a lot more riding on it, a lot more frustration comes into play. You have to play the game; you have to do all the things that keep a career going. We did it for a long time and a lot of it was great, and a lot of it was not great. We’re quite fortunate that we have a label that lets us do things on our own terms and we have a lot of fans that will wait around ten years between records (laughs).”
“It’s not like we’re sitting down to write a record to help further our career,” he continues. “We don’t have that hanging over our heads. For all intents and purposes, we’ve abandoned our career. I have to be honest about that; we have basically done that. Just the sheer fact that we put records out every ten years… you can’t sustain a career by doing that. It’s just not logical. So, we don’t have to do this. We’re doing it because we like it. It’s a much greater way to work.”

When vocalist John Bush and Vera first got together to start writing music for the disc, they weren’t even really sure it was going to be Armored Saint. They toyed with the idea of doing something else under a different name entirely, but in the end, stuck with the name we all know and love.

“People are going to hear John’s voice and they’re going to associate it with Armored Saint,” explains Vera. “It’s going to sound like Armored Saint. If it’s the singer and the bass player from Armored Saint, it’s not going to be that much different. So we called the other guys and told them we’d been writing, and asked them if they wanted to make a record. Of course everyone said, ‘Yeah.’”

The only thing impeding the writing process was a nagging feeling that instigated many conversations between Vera and Bush, a feeling that maybe no one would care anymore. (Foolish, really, considering just how much of an ass-kicker this disc is.)

“We said, ‘Shit, how is Armored Saint going to matter to anybody, putting out a record now, in the climate today’s music is in, and what was done in the past?’ And finally we just said, ‘Fuck all that. We’ve never thought that way, so we shouldn’t think that way now.’”

Then all that was left was the guys to put aside expectations and to stop comparing what they were doing with what they’ve done in the past.

“All of our records have had their own thing about them, be it good or bad, they’ve always been their own entity,” says Vera, who adds that the band hopes to gig out a bit, but fans shouldn’t expect any extended touring. “Our records, it’s not like listening to AC/DC records. Our records are pretty different. By the same token, I didn’t want to have to feel like I had to live up to the music that we did on Symbol Of Salvation, or the music that we did on Revelation. A lot of people in the press and a lot of fans have a lot of regard for Symbol Of Salvation, and that’s a lot to live up to if I were to think about it too much. I don’t want to do that; I don’t want to have to live up to anything.”