MetalAsFuck.net recently caught up with STUCK MOJO / FOZZY guitarist Rich Ward. An excerpt from the story is available below:

Stuck Mojo changed lead vocalists, and he defines their previous vocalist, Bonz, as a character: a dude that was super-aggressive, crazy, and that had an interesting vibe and aura. But he also thinks that Lord Nelson, the band's present vocalist, is even more interesting still.

"He wasn't nearly as deep a vocalist and wasn't nearly as interesting, in my opinion, as the guy we have now. And I wanted to exploit that by trying to write music that was a little more interesting," he said.

But the other thing that Rich pointed out is that most of what is possible in metal has already been done. He didn't mean that metal is generic, but more that there are limited ways in which it can be written, and limited sounds that you can get out of one scale.

"The minor scale has, like, seven notes," he emphasised. "And there's only so many ways you can play a heavy riff without kind of sounding like one of either Slayer, or Metallica, or Pantera. It's all kind of been done. And in order to not end up being just another one of those bands making just another one of those records that sounds like everybody else, I really wanted to try to do something that was different."

Rich is aware that this approach may not have been a commercial success, and that the press would identify that the album was well outside of what people had come to expect from Stuck Mojo. But his goal wasn't necessarily to meet expectations nor to create a commercial success. One thing that Ward is very wary of, is writing music that meets people's expectations. The other thing of which he's very conscious, is of the mutual respect that exists, however ethereally, between bands and their fans.

"You know, ultimately, I don't live in a mansion and I don't drive a Ferrari. I'm just very fortunate that I make music for a living," he said. "But ultimately I think that the true fans of this band want us to make albums that are honest. And if I wake up and decide that I should write a heavy album because that's what's expected of me, or I should write a typical rap-rock album - whatever that means - because it's expected of me, then I don't think the fans would respect me."

Go to this location for the full story.