By Aaron Small

Blues rock band FIREBIRD, helmed by CARCASS guitarist/vocalist Bill Steer, saw their new album, Double Diamond, released in Japan in July 2010; an agonizing eight months later and it finally received North American issue in March 2011. Given the considerable gap between street dates – and the proliferation of music downloading via the Internet – Steer weighs in exclusively to BraveWords.com about how that’s affected his enthusiasm towards the material.

“Well, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect my enthusiasm, ‘cause this record is 13, maybe 14 months old now. I still like some of the tunes on there, but it’s just representative of what we did at the time. It isn’t necessarily the record we’d make today. I’ve got mixed feelings, but generally, as a document of January last year (2010), it’s ok.”

Firebird recorded Double Diamond in The Netherlands at Graveland Studio. Why the decision to travel as opposed to recording at home in England?

“That’s a good question. Sometimes we find ourselves in a position where we’re really struggling to find a studio that suits us. The UK is full of good studios and good engineers, but bear in mind the fact that the London studios in particular tend to be very expensive. We’ve ended up going to Sweden three times and Holland once for this latest record. Arno (Krabman), the guy who runs Graveland is an amazing engineer; a very musical guy. He’s actually a musician in his own right. He’s been friends with Ludwig (Witt, drummer) for a while now and he ended up being the number one choice for us. Just in terms of a guy who’s very enthusiastic about working with us, and also wasn’t going to charge us the Earth. Obviously we’re working on a fairly limited budget.”

The album title, Double Diamond… “We’ve had that kicking around as a possible album title, going back to the third record. But along the way, it never seemed appropriate for the albums we were making. Looking back stylistically, they somehow didn’t fit with that title. So it was just there at the back of the notebook and when this album came up, it seemed to suit the sound of the record. The phrase itself we got from an old beer that was brewed over here (in England) going back a few decades really. It was very popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I believe you can still find it in parts of Europe, but it doesn’t exist in The UK anymore.”

Kind of like ‘Gold Label’ from the Grand Union album – a song named after a beer. “Yeah,” chuckles Steer. “That’s funny that. The thing is there’s kind of a fascination with old British pub culture, so I guess that kind of seeps out sometimes. But the phrase Double Diamond goes back a long way in time to previous centuries when they used to stamp barrels of the highest quality ale with a double diamond symbol. So that’s why somebody named a beer after it and that’s why we decided to name an album after it.”

Speaking of centuries past, William Shakespeare seems to have influenced Firebird as there’s a song called ‘Pound Of Flesh’, which is a phrase derived from Merchant Of Venice, written in 1596.

After his laughter subsides, Bill says, “Well I guess only that phrase really because I don’t think the lyrics are particularly literary or poetic. It’s just one of those phrases that found its way into a song. I’m very… I guess you’d say scatter-shot with the lyrics. It’s just whatever seems to come out when we’re working on a tune. I try not to analyze it too much, or agonize and rewrite. It’s nice to have the right words with the right chords, but to me, it’s just a part of what we do. Nobody’s ever going to take our lyrics and look at them separately from the music. They don’t really stand up in that way.”

The lyrics to ‘A Wing & A Prayer’ are pretty obvious. It’s a song about playing a club show, travelling to the gig and unloading the gear. How has touring changed over Firebird’s 11-year career?

“Not that much to be truthful. It’s a very similar situation; we’re just somewhat more efficient at it. When I started Firebird, I was clueless because I really hadn’t done much organizing in the past. In my Carcass days, (vocalist/bassist) Jeff Walker handled the organizational side of the band, the business elements. I was just the guy who came up with riffs really. The work load in the band was very compartmentalized; looking back it was quite efficient in its own way. With this thing, I had to take on all kinds of responsibilities I had no clue about. I’m not saying I’m much wiser now, but I definitely picked up a trick or two along the way. Just from losing money in the past and organizing things in a haphazard fashion, it always comes back to bite you later down the line. But that song (‘A Wing & A Prayer’) is really like a snapshot of a typical gig for us really. There’s something about that tune, it suddenly ended up being some kind of road song. But I really did not want any lyrics creeping in there that were standard clichés, glamorizing the whole thing because that’s just not reality for us. I kind of tried to look at it the other way, just pick one of the least impressive gigging experiences.”

The Double Diamond press release states: “this recording heralds a new chapter for the band… drawing inspiration from some of their earliest metal favorites such as BUDGIE, FIST and TANK.” There’s a slight difference between Double Diamond and its predecessors, but the tremendous change in musical direction being alluded to doesn’t seem accurate.

“That’s really interesting to hear because we’ve had a lot of people saying the same thing as yourself. Reviews both good and bad saying it’s business as usual, these guys haven’t really changed much. Then we’ve had a whole load of other people saying there’s a drastic alteration in sound. I would tend to say the answer’s somewhere between the two. I do think Double Diamond sounds quite different to our previous records because we actually looked into what you might call production values a little bit more. In some ways, we were thinking along the lines of making a record that was a little bit drier, more up front in the speakers. It would leap out at you, even if you were driving down the road in a car at high speed or whatever, it’d still be there. Our previous records, certainly a couple in particular, they tended to be really, really loose and almost kind of improvised. We had song structure, but you could tell you were listening to a performance by a band in a room. It had a very live feel. This is the first time that is not the prime characteristic. Ludwig and I did play together live, but we actually thought about adding things to the recording, which in the past, I would only do that if it was necessary; but I was very much against it. But I figure there’s only so many records you can make in that style. One of my favorite bands is STRAY DOG. Their first record is just Heaven for me, but I know a lot of people haven’t got the patience to listen to something like that.”

The second last song on Double Diamond, ‘Lose Your Delusions’, instantly brings GUNS N’ ROSES - Use Your Illusion to mind. “Oh yeah,” giggles Bill. “I’ll tell you what it is. The song doesn’t really apply to Guns N’ Roses at all. But that title came about when I was sitting in the pub with a friend… I actually can’t remember the exact sequence of events but we were talking about a band that we knew personally who were maybe a bit deluded and that Guns N’ Roses album title came up, Use Your Illusion. So we just corrupted it to ‘Lose Your Delusions’. It’s really nothing to do with GN’R except that we messed with their album title a little. That was definitely a great band.”

Has Firebird begun work on the follow-up to Double Diamond? “In a sense we have, but really what we’ve done is take a side step and start doing singles. With Rise Above Records, we’re stuck in this cycle now where we do an album and they sit on it for a length of time. In our minds, we should be making an album right now. But there would be almost no point because we would be waiting a good year for it to come out. I’m certainly not blaming them for that; it’s just something that started with the Grand Union record because that was a year old when it came out. So when we were ready to enter the studio and do Double Diamond, in their minds that was far too soon. But the Japanese took a different approach; they were ready to do it instantly. So that’s kind of the reason for the discrepancy in those release dates.

But we’re doing a single and that’s kind of liberating ‘cause we’ve done six albums. This is a different way of recording for us. We go into a studio, record two songs in a day and it’s a lot more fun ‘cause it is a lot of work doing an album. So that’s the plan at the moment. We’ve already done one: the A-side was an original called ‘Bird On A Wire’ which was actually based on a tune I wrote when I was 13. It’s pretty much the first attempt at a song I came up with when I started playing guitar. The B-side is a Tank cover called ‘Set Your Back On Fire’. It’s from the second Tank album, Power Of The Hunter. Certainly on a sonic level, the single is the best thing we’ve done ‘cause it’s much closer to the kind of sound I’ve always wanted. It’s really raw; it’s got that kind of intimate, natural room ambiance. Not far off rehearsal tape, just a little bit more hi-fidelity I guess.”

Will this be released digitally via iTunes and the like? “We actually pressed up 300 copies on 7” vinyl. We’ve been selling those via Facebook and I guess once they’re gone, yeah we’ll make it digitally available.”

Firebird is six albums into their career, yet they’ve resisted the urge to release a greatest hits or live album. “I think it’s just realistic for a band at the level we’re at. We could do a live record but I would find it a little bit artificial because the days of having a two-inch machine running, recording every show and then compiling all the best parts, those days seem to be gone. The few live recordings I’ve heard in recent years tended to be extremely touched up. I know they always have been, but now it’s getting to the point where they’re just keeping the drums and the audience from the original recording. For the time being, we’ve got no plans to do that really. We’re happy just recording original material, maybe the odd cover if we feel we can do something with someone else’s material. And I guess just refining the sound because as you mentioned, that new record – latest record shall we say – still sounds like Firebird. It’s kind of a riffier, harder-edged version of the band that did the previous records. It’s definitely recognizable, but if you play it back to back with the first album, there’s quite an extreme difference.”