BW&BK; scribe Carl Begai recently caught up with guitarist Joe Stump (HOLYHELL, REIGN OF TERROR) to discuss the HolyHell debut EP, Apocalypse, and the forthcoming as-yet-untitled full length album. An excerpt focusing on MANOWAR's Joey DeMaio's involvement in the project as producer, songwriter and visionary can be found below:

"Joey’s got his hands on the production of the record and he’s very particular about certain things," Stump reveals. "As far as my involvement, he pretty much lets me do whatever I want. The stuff that I wrote for the new record sounds like me. There’s one song that sounds like an evil Black Sabbath kind of thing, another sounds like it came from a Reign Of Terror record, then there’s stuff that sounds like Priest or Accept, with lots of hot shit guitar and solos that are just as long as what you’d hear on a Reign Of Terror record. It’s not quite as saturated, but as a whole the new HolyHell record doesn’t sound all that far removed from anything I would do. We’ve got a female singer, but it’s fairly straight-ahead power metal. Some of it sounds very European, some of it has that Dio or Dio-era-Sabbath vibe, so it’ll be quite a bit stronger than the EP."

Conversation turns to Stump playing a reduced "team-player" role on stage with HolyHell versus being the focus of his own live shows.

“It’s fairly easy for me to switch gears, especially since we’ve been out touring with Manowar in Europe doing these big shows. I’m obviously not going to play the Olympic Stadium in Munich with my own thing, so when we go out my concentration goes to different areas, like making sure the band sounds tight. Joey’s got a lot of great visions when it comes to metal and he’s very good at developing a band when it comes to bigger shows and festival shows as opposed to just rehearsing, going up there and just knocking out a bunch of tunes. But yeah, it’s easy for me because because I get to play a ton and I don’t have everything being dictated to me. It’s a band thing and a team thing, but it’s not like I’m being put under all kinds of constraints.”

Watch for the full interview in the Features section on this page, coming soon.