ICED EARTH Guitarist Jon Schaffer - "We’re A Metal Band; I Don’t Give A Fuck About The Categories And Subgenres"
July 4, 2013, 11 years ago
ICED EARTH guitarist/founder Jon Schaffer is featured in a new interview with Rolling Stone India, conducted at the Bangalore Open Air. An excerpt is available below:
RSI: I remember the first time I came across Iced Earth, it was recommended to me as heavy, extreme metal with clean vocals. What do you think of that reputation, and where Iced Earth fits in the metal world?
Schaffer: "I think it fits in just about everywhere. I mean we’re a metal band. We don’t get into subgenres and all that shit. I think it’s something that fans and journalists care about a lot more than musicians do. For us, we’re a metal band. We can have everything from PINK FLOYD emotions and melancholy passages to SLAYER and everything in between.
Iced Earth is a musical journey and a very dynamic band and it always has been. It’s really hard to pigeonhole us. I mean, people call us power metal, but I don’t think it’s really fair. We have a lot more happening in the band. We’re a metal band and I don’t give a fuck about the categories and subgenres. It’s a way to pigeonhole a band and then it sort of predetermines what someone’s opinion might be, if you label bands. Iced Earth is way too varied to be stuck in some kind of pigeonhole term."
Go to this location for the complete interview.
Schaffer recently checked in with the following update:
"We have a few weeks of rehearsal, then we start tracking the new album in between a string of festivals in Europe, and one in India, which we are all excited about, since it’ll be our first time there. Tracking will be done at a studio in Germany to try to keep the jetlag at a minimum. The numerous trips across the Atlantic during the Dystopia recording were a bit brutal, so we are doing it smarter this time. If we stay on target, you will have the new album in October! It’s a tight schedule, but we are intent on making it happen. I am very happy with the work so far, and it’s only going to get better when we are all together cranking it out."
