In a new interview with music writer Joel Gausten, veteran hard rock/metal drummer Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge/ Ozzy / Rod Stewart / Cactus / Ted Nugent/Blue Murder) discusses working with brother and fellow drummer Vinny (Black Sabbath / Dio / Heaven & Hell / Last In Line) on their new album, Sinister, which will be released this Friday, October 27th, on SPV/Steamhammer. An excerpt from the chat appears below.

Gausten: Obviously, you and Vinny have each had long careers in this industry, and you’ve done the Drum Wars thing together for a while now. Why was now the right time to come together in the studio and do a full-length album together?

Appice: "There was no real plan. We hooked up with this management company last year, and they were going to book some gigs and everything. The manager said, ‘Look, I think it’s a really good idea if maybe we do an album. It’ll come out and give us something more to talk about, it would be easier to book you and maybe get some better shows and get on to other shows with other people.’ I said, ‘Okay, how do we do it?’ He said, ‘We can do a PledgeMusic campaign and then do a record deal.’ He manages Anvil, and they just did that same thing. About a year ago, we started doing the PledgeMusic campaign. By the end of January, we had raised all the money that we wanted, plus more, to start doing the record. We needed to get a record deal, so we used the song ‘Monsters And Heroes’ as a demo. I had that originally recorded with King Kobra and I played it last year at the Sweden Rock Festival and the audience loved it. I thought it would be a great song for us because of the connection to Ronnie James Dio with Paul Shortino, Vinny and me. So we used that song as the demo, and that got us a deal with SPV. The next think we know, we had a record deal and we had a Pledge deal. It wasn’t really planned, like, ‘In 2017, we’re going to make a record.’ It just happened."

Gausten: The musicians you brought in for the album are a great cross-section of people who have worked with the two of you individually over the years. You each obviously had a huge well to draw from in that respect. What was the level of difficulty, if any, in selecting the musicians who appear on the record?
 
Appice: "We just did it as it came. Because Paul (Shortino) was on ‘Monsters And Heroes’ and I worked with him in King Kobra, I knew Paul was a great singer and songwriter. I knew we were going to need somebody like that. Jim Crean’s been working with us over the last few years as a singer, and I know he was a fairly good singer and songwriter. Vinny worked with Chas (West) and Craig Goldy; I worked with Tony Franklin and hung out with Jorgen from Gov’t Mule, who brought in T-Bone (Andersson / Steelheart) to play some gigs with us as Drum Wars. I had just finished doing something with Bumblefoot, so that’s how he came into it. Through Paul Shortino, there was a Robin McAuley connection because Paul worked with him in Vegas in Raiding the Rock Vault. I thought Robin would be a great singer for the song ‘Riot.’ I called him and asked him. We’re friends; as a matter of fact, his wife made me some stage clothes. He said he would do it, but he wasn’t sure about the song. I asked Paul to help me rein him in. Paul worked with him in Paul’s studio in Vegas, and they did the vocal there. He did a great job.
 
I always try to involve Tony Franklin as much as I can use him, because he’s my favorite bass player. When we needed bass on some of the tracks, we got Tony. When we needed bass on some of the other tracks, we got Jorgen. As a matter of fact, we recorded with Jorgen at his studio in LA in the Valley. That’s where the started the record. We had a basic band of me, Vinny and the Okai Sisters – Mayuko and Tsuzumi. They were really good, so we said, ‘We’re going to put down five or six songs with them at Jorgen’s studio to get the ball rolling. From those five or six tracks, we can take them off and put somebody else on or take one of them off and put somebody else on.’ On ‘In The Night,’ we left Tsuzumi, the bass player sister, on and put Bumblefoot on. On my song that I wrote and sang, ‘You Got Me Running,’ we took the bass player sister off and put Tony Franklin on. We left the rhythm guitar part, but we put T-Bone Andersson on the leads. On ‘Riot,’ we took both sisters off and we put Jorgen and T-Bone on. But we needed a place to start where we went in sort of as a band and played some of the songs as a band, and that’s what we did."

The complete interview is available at this location.

 

Sinister is available for pre-order now at this location. All digital pre-orders include an instant download of the song "Monsters And Heroes”.

Sample the first six songs from the album below:

You’re unlikely to find a phenomenon like Carmine and Vinny Appice a second time in the history of rock music. For more than forty years, the two brothers have been among the most sought-after and renowned rock drummers worldwide.

Carmine and Vinny (each of them on their own) can be heard on numerous legendary albums and have toured countless times with some of the world’s greatest acts. Carmine embarked on his musical path in the 1960s with the unforgotten Vanilla Fudge, manning in the course of his illustrious career the drums for superstars such as Rod Stewart and Ozzy Osbourne, among others. His brother Vinny, who is eleven years his junior, looks back on an equally spectacular career, having worked with acts such as Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell and Dio, among others.

With the exception of the live album Drum Wars - Live! (2014), there has been no direct collaboration between the two so far. That’s about to change. Sinister is the first joint studio album by Carmine and Vinny and was recorded with the support of a number of prestigious guests. Vinny: “As Ringo said: with a little help from our friends.”

Sinister consists of a total of 13 tracks, recorded by Carmine and Vinny together with distinguished colleagues. “Killing Floor” and “Future Past” feature the wonderful Craig Goldy (together with bassist Tony Franklin), Franklin resurfacing, together with Paul Shortino, on “Suddenly” and on “You Got Me Running”. Shortino also lends his awesome vocals to “War Cry” and the programmatic “Monsters And Heroes”, the latter also featuring Bulletboys guitarist Mick Sweda, while Shortino teams up with Whitesnake stringsman Joel Hoekstra on “War Cry”. Talking of vocals: “Sinister”, “Danger” (bass: Phil Soussan), “In The Night” (guitar: Bumblefoot) and “Sabbath Mash” (guitar: Erik Turner, keyboards: Erik Norlander) are all sung by Jim Crean, while Chas West recorded the vocal parts for “Killing Floor”, Scotty Bruce featuring on “Future Past” and Robin McAuley on “Riot”. The biggest surprise of all: Carmine himself doubles as vocalist on “You Got Me Running”. Vinny: “Carmine has been singing lead and background for years. He's a very good singer and I'm glad he sang one number on this record.”

So fans can look forward to a haunting rock album which the Appice brothers plan to premiere live on stage as soon as possible. Carmine: “We cannot wait to take the album on the road! Heavy drums and heavy songs. It will kill!”

Sinister will be released on CD digipack, double gatefold vinyl, download and stream.

Tracklisting:

“Sinister”
“Monsters And Heroes”
“Killing Floor”
“Danger”
“Drum Wars”
“Riot”
“Suddenly”
“In The Night”
“Future Past”
“You Got Me Running”
“Bros In Drums”
“War Cry”
“Sabbath Mash”

"Monsters And Heroes” lyric video:

Lineup and guests:

Carmine Appice (drums & vocals)
Vinny Appice (drums)

Jim Crean (vocals)
Paul Shortino (vocals) (Rough Cutt, ex-Quiet Riot)
Robin McAuley (vocals) (MSG)
Chas West (vocals) (ex-Lynch Mob)
Scotty Bruce (vocals)

Craig Goldy (guitar) (ex-Dio, ex-Giuffria)
Bumblefoot (guitar) (ex-Guns N' Roses)
Joel Hoekstra (guitar) (Whitesnake)
Mike Sweda (guitar) (Bulletboys)
Erik Turner (guitar) (Warrant)
David Michael Phillips (guitar) (King Kobra)

Tony Franklin (bass) (ex-Blue Murder, ex-The Firm)
Phil Soussan (bass) (ex-Ozzy Osbourne)
Johnny Rod (bass) (King Kobra, ex-W.A.S.P.)
Jorgen Carlson (bass) (Gov't Mule)

Erik Norlander (keyboards) (Lana Lane)

Photo by Joey Wester