William Alexander at Metal Exiles recently caught up with W.A.S.P. frontman Blackie Lawless. An excerpt from the interview is available below.

Metal Exiles: You seem to have tremendous success of having a “midas touch” with cover song selections and making them your own with previous W.A.S.P. records. How did the DEEP PURPLE classic 'Burn' find itself on this record and incorporation into the meaning behind (new album) Babylon?

Lawless: "Thanks man, we thought it turned out pretty good. It was kind of funny the way it happened, it was almost an afterthought. We had played around with that song a little bit when we were doing Dominator, but there was no room for it so we didn’t really pursue it seriously. When it came time to do this record we got to the actual mastering phase of the record and for people who don’t know what that is, it is basically your last chance gas station for sonic repair, before the record goes to the public. We got to mastering and I had all of the song titles in front of me and I’m listening to what is going on, because we’re starting to assemble the parts. For the first time I looked at all the song titles put together because prior to that when we were working on the record I wasn’t looking at the record as a whole, I was looking at the individual tracks. When I was looking at all the song titles put together I thought man there’s a lot of fire on this record. Then it made me start thinking about the burn thing, so we went back and polished it off real quick and put it on the record and I think it works well on the record."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

W.A.S.P. have updated their live schedule with a string of US dates in February/March. The band now have the following dates scheduled:

February

26 - Canyon Club - Agoura Hills, CA
27 - Galaxy Theatre - Santa Ana, CA
28 - 4th & B - San Diego, CA

March

4 - The Cubby Bear - Lincolnshire, IL
5 - Alrosa Villa - Columbus, OH
6 - Harpos - Detroit, MI
9 - Showcase Live - Foxboro, MA
10 - Mulcahys - Wantagh, NY
11 - The Gramercy Theatre - New York, NY
12 - Jaxx Concert Hall & Night Club - Springfield, VA
13 - Starland Ballroom - Sayreville, NJ
20 - Backstage - San Antonio, TX
25 - New Oasis - Sparks, NV

April

22 - El Teatro Colegiales - Buenos Aires, Argentina
25 - Victoria Hall - Sao Paulo, Brazil