ARMORED SAINT/FATES WARNING bass player Joey Vera recently released his second solo effort titled A Chinese Firedrill and spoke with Metal Asylum about the disc as well as updates on Armored Saint, Fates Warning, and recording the new SEVEN WITCHES album. A few excerpts follow:

Metal Asylum: So tell us about why you called your solo album “A Chinese Firedrill”?

Vera: "Well with this solo album I am doing everything on my own, shopping it around and that. It's not out on a label yet but it is available through www.cdbaby.com. It's an online distributor. They basically sell your stuff for you, you have to produce and print everything up, which I did, and then you ship it to them. They keep it in stock for you so its pretty cool. I’ve actually sold quite a few through them already so it does the job. The name of the album is something I just came across one day. If you look up what a Chinese Firedrill is in the dictionary its defined as a chaotic and ineffective exercise. So I thought that was kind of funny, and ironic given the type of music I was writing for this solo album. Made sense to me."

Metal Asylum: What was your goal with this album. Were you going for a particular message or musical direction?

Vera: "Yeah what the fuck was I trying to do (laughs). Umm you know what it is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while ever since I did my first solo record in the early '90’s after Armored Saint disbanded. I had a bunch of time on my hands then and the music had no direction really with that first record. So since then I wanted to do something a bit more focused. In the early '90’s and 2000’s I got back into more progressive music, and it probably came through my association with Fates Warning. But revisiting bands like JETHRO TULL, YES, ELP, GENESIS, RUSH, all this older stuff that was basically a part of me when I was growing up. And on a side note I was also listening to BLACK SABBATH, THIN LIZZY and ZEPPELIN along with the more progressive rock bands. So then I started discovering newer bands like OPETH and PORCUPINE TREE and I started to really listen to that music a lot more."

So after the ANTHRAX tour in April of 2005 I started doing some writing and a couple songs came out kind of proggy sounding and right at that time my wife got pregnant, so that’s when I made the conscious decision to make another solo record. So I took a year off to be home with my wife and work on this solo music since I knew had the time to do it. So having all this progressive music in my head I kind of went for that direction with this album. I like to call it art hard rock instead of prog rock because progressive rock has become so fractured at this point anyway. I think it has a bit of an influence of OSI. That was a band that I was really into the first record and I really like working with Jim Matheos I think he is a really good song writer and I learned a lot from him. Same with Kevin Moore as well having played on his first record and playing and working with him for Fates Warning. So I think they both rubbed off on me. I love OSI I think they are really cool."

Metal Asylum: Who played on the songs?

Vera: "I did everything actually accept for the drums, arranging, singing. Took me a whole year to finish it. Some songs were rewritten. A lot of people asked why its not more flashy, you know with a lot of soloing and riffing, the impressive musicianship you know what I’m saying. I wanted to make a record for me that I would find interesting. My intention was to make it very self indulgent to me. Going back to why it was called a Chinese Firedrill, essentially it was an exercise in my song-writing and arranging ability, be the end result chaotic or not. Its pretty gratifying."

Metal Asylum: How is the new Seven Witches material sounding?

Vera: "It's sounding really good. It sounds like he has been listening to the Trivium record a lot. Jack has a tendency to write some things that are a little bit modern sounding so the new music still has that part of it. But many of the new songs are really fast, I think some of the fastest songs he has ever written. The drum beats are flying by like really quick."

Metal Asylum: Status of Armored Saint?

Vera: "Right now not very much. We are doing the Rock Hard festival in Germany on May 26, its one of the smaller ones but really cool. I have played it before with Fates Warning and Tribe After Tribe. John Bush just had a little boy so he’s busy being daddy right now taking some time off to be with his family. As far as new music, we get asked that all the time, the thing is that I just had a baby last year as well and I’m just rearing my head again to do music, same thing with John and his thing with Anthrax has pretty much ended. So right now after having a baby he’s in no hurry to just back into the band and going back on the road. Its not to say he wont come back to do anything with music its just not the time right now to dedicate to something. And for us it’s a huge commitment to do the band thing so we have to be ready to do it full on. But I am getting the itch back to make music and do some touring. I mean there has been some loose writing but we haven’t said ok lets sit down and right the record."

Metal Asylum: Fate Warning update?

Vera: "It's kind of on hold right now. They are doing some writing but nothing really has been planned. We did the Rock Hard festival last year and were supposed to do some touring in Europe but that fell through unfortunately. And from what you were just telling me Pleasant Shade Of Grey was reissued packaged with a second disc of a live show from Germany in 1997 on the tour for that record, which I had directed and edited. That show was a mess when we first got a hold of it, we got the tapes from the people who shot it and it was a real mess. They were gonna scrap the whole idea but I said let me do it let me do it (laughs)."

You can read the entire interview here.