By Aaron Small

“It was a long time coming, but I hope it was worth the wait,” says ORANGE GOBLIN vocalist Ben Ward in regard to the February 14th release of his band’s new album, A Eulogy For The Damned.

Their previous album, Healing Through Fire, came out in 2007. As for the four-year gap… “Basically, life got in the way for all of us. Not a lot of people are aware, but we don’t earn a living from doing this band; it’s just a hobby for us. We all have to work shitty day jobs to pay our mortgages, feed our kids and look after our families. After the last album, we spent a lot of time touring. Then in 2008 Chris (Turner, drummer) moved away from London to Brighton, which meant we couldn't get together and rehearse as often as we used to. Then Chris and Joe (Hoare, guitarist) both became fathers again. So they were spending a lot of time at home looking after their newborns. We haven’t sat around on our asses, twiddling our thumbs. We have been out doing shows; we toured the States last year. We’ve done as much as we possibly could, but with jobs and things, holiday time is restricted. You can’t always do those six-week tours anymore. It’s just been a case of finding the right time and not wanting to just put out a load of crap. We wanted to make sure the next album – and our first one for Candlelight – was like I say, worth the wait. That involved finding the right studio, making sure you have the right circumstances to record in, and working with the right producer as well. These things take time. I’m confident now that everything has worked out for the best. The product is as good as we can possibly get it.”

Speaking of Candlelight, Orange Goblin was forced to find a new label because the band’s former home, Sanctuary, ceased to exist back in 2007. According to Ben, finding a new label was not difficult at all. “As soon as wind got out that Sanctuary was going under, Candlelight approached us immediately and wanted to set up a meeting. They showed enormous commitment to the band, great knowledge of everything we’ve done. They were enthusiastic about it, and ever since we signed with them in 2008, they’ve showed incredible patience; bear in mind we’ve only just delivered an album. Not once did they phone and say ‘you need to get on with it.’ It’s been, ‘take your time. Whenever you’re ready to record we’ll finance it.’ They’ve been fantastic. I suppose there were a few questions raised when we did first sign ‘cause Candlelight has a reputation for working primarily with death and black metal bands. But we’d spoken to friends in CROWBAR and ENTOMBED to find out what it’s like. We knew that we wouldn’t be taking a massive gamble by going with Candlelight, and we’ve been proved right. As well as the patience and enthusiasm, they’re so professional and so organized with everything. No disrespect to the previous labels we’ve worked with, but you can’t compare a two-man operation like Rise Above, to a team of 70 people working on both sides of the Atlantic like Candlelight have.”

The striking artwork that adorns A Eulogy For The Damned, created by James Isaac and pictured below, is bright, colourful and intriguing. “James has been a good friend of ours for 13 or 14 years, he used to play in a band called TAINT who was signed to Rise Above. He’s a very talented guy. I’ve seen some of the drawings he’s done for CLUTCH and THE MELVINS. I knew instantly I wanted to work with him ‘cause I thought his style would suit what I had in mind for this record. Basically all we did was send him the album title and the lyrics. What he does is take elements from all the different songs and combine them into one piece. I’m sure when people get the final product in their hands, and they can read the lyrics, the cover’s going to make so much more sense. There’s little references to all the songs; the sea of blood is ‘Red Tide Rising’, things like that. It’s very clever what he’s done. It’s like the most stereotypical heavy metal album cover there is. There’s demons, motorbikes, blood, lightning.”

Having mentioned the lyrics, ’Stand For Something’ contains the line, “My only master is the man I see in the mirror. He’s done me more harm than he knows.” “It’s just about how you deal with your own addictions and problems. There was a time – not that recently, quite a while back – where all of us were probably consuming too much and too many things that we shouldn’t have been, if you get my drift. Around 1999/2000, this band was doing a lot of drugs. You get older and as you have kids, you get a bit more responsible and you look back at yourself and think; what was I doing? I had some great times and don’t regret it, but I was sort of dicing with death a bit there Aaron. That song, I had to save me from myself. It’s us basically trying to be a little bit more clever than what we actually are.”

The phrase, “My only master” could be interpreted as a lack of belief in a higher power; not living life under God’s rule. “Yeah, actually I was brought up a strict atheist. To me, the person you see in the mirror is your master; you’re the one that makes all your decisions. You’re the one that’s responsible for your misgivings; and your fortunes as well. In that respect, we are all our own masters.”

‘Acid Trial’ features lyrics about astronauts, medication, and dinosaurs. It seems as though Ben really was on acid when he wrote this. “No, that was more born out of experience. Back in the early days we used to do quite a bit of acid. We were more an acid band than we were a smoking band. What that song was actually aiming to do was… I’ve been reading a lot of books the likes of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and books about the Hells Angels at the end of the ‘60s – Sonny Barger’s autobiography, Hunter S. Thompson stuff. Acid was a very prevalent drug in San Francisco and northern California at the end of the ‘60s; it made for a very interesting scene out there with the likes of Tim Leary. The Hells Angels pretty much governed the trafficking of all that sort of thing. I wanted to cover that sleazy biker feel, which is very fitting for heavy metal subject matter. It’s the sort of thing MOTÖRHEAD and SAXON have always done; British bands seem to have a connection with it. We feel comfortable with that.”

An audio sample leads into ‘The Filthy And The Few’. “It’s from a 1969 movie starring Russ Tamblyn called Satan’s Sadists. It’s about a motorcycle gang funnily enough. It’s not very well known, but it’s a great movie.” The intro to the song is definitely a pro-marijuana speech. “Yeah, that’s a snippet of quite a long rant that he has in the movie. If we’d put the whole thing in there, you’d be talking about three or four minutes, so we cut it down to just that. It’s like a rebellion thing. The whole song ‘The Filthy And The Few’ is about a biker gang – step aside ‘cause we’re coming through.”

In ‘The Filthy And The Few’ Ben sings, “We fight the world but we’ll never win. We’re born to lose but baby that’s alright.” That seems almost a defeatist attitude, which is contrary to the Hells Angels credo. “No, it’s more an homage to the Motörhead thing - Born To Lose, Live To Win; just a play on words really.”

With all this talk about motorcycles, it’s somewhat surprising to learn that Ben doesn’t ride himself. “No, I’m not allowed. My Mrs. won’t let me have a motorcycle. Even though I keep hassling her for it, she says we have to keep the car ‘cause it’s handy for doing the shopping. That’s not the rock n’ roll image I should be giving up really (laughs).”

Looking back at the studio experience of making A Eulogy For The Damned, Ben compares it to the recording of the six albums prior. “Well, I think the proof is in the pudding. This album was a lot more professional and a lot more sober. In the past, we’ve always gone away to residential studios, spent two to three weeks holed up together. Cabin fever sets in, there’s nothing to do but sit around and drink. You end up not being as focused on the job at hand as you should be. Whereas this time, we recorded nearer to home. It meant driving to the studio every day, which obviously meant that we couldn’t drink. We’d have a few beers afterwards, but we had the intention of getting the job done first. Instead of doing it in a residential studio, we recorded over a series of weekends; I think it was nine weekends we did. It was beneficial for everyone ‘cause you could do your parts, go away for five days, have a listen and reconsider stuff; figure out what needs changing, what you can do better, and come back in and do it. In that respect it was perfect for us; specifically me as a vocalist. I’d do two songs one weekend, go away and rest my throat for a week, then come back and do another two songs. After 16 years of doing this, and with it being our seventh album, all of us have learned a bit. You pick up the knack of doing it. If you’ve got somebody in the building trade and on his first day of work you ask him to build a wall, he’s not going to be very good at it. But after 16 years of building walls, he’s going to know how to build a pretty mean wall. That’s pretty much what we’re like in the studio now.”

A year ago, the first five Orange Goblin albums were re-mastered and re-issued – both individually and collectively as a box set. Now that 12 months have passed since that undertaking, which stands taller, the original recordings or the re-masters? “I’d have to say the re-masters, just because more recently that’s how we wanted them to sound. I’m happy with the whole thing as a package, not just the sound, but the extra artwork, the way it’s all laid out with the sleeve notes, the bonus tracks, everything. Obviously when you do those sorts of things, you can get accused of ripping people off and re-selling stuff. But the main reason we did that was because Rise Above’s distribution deals over the past few years have meant that a lot of those albums were out of circulation, people weren’t able to get them anywhere. Now it gives people who are only just getting into Orange Goblin an opportunity to go back and purchase Frequencies From Planet Ten and Time Travelling Blues, whereas before this box set, they may not have been able to. We’re just glad to have everything out there and available again.”