Guitarist Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal (Sons Of Apollo, ex-Guns N' Roses) is featured in a new interview with Ireland's Overdrive. An excerpt is available below.

Overdrive: There’s no doubt that each of you (in Sons of Apollo) are bringing your own influences to the table with a multitude of flavours from The Who, Van Halen and Led Zeppelin to name but a few. Were there any points where it was a case of "overkill" with the mix of styles/genres and if so, how did you feel your way through it without causing any friction?

Bumblefoot: "We do what we do, we play the way we play, we write the way we write. If anything, it should be the opposite. Every band should have an unfiltered inclusion of their personalities. Every member of the band should give 100% of their identity, and part of that is also the things that influenced us and inspired us. So, I find that, with this record, you don’t just hear us, you hear the things that inspired us, you hear moments of Van Halen and The Who for example. We just did our thing, from the beginning. It was just a bunch of guys jamming in a room together and it was like ‘Oh that’s cool! What if we go to this part next?’ or ’Oh nice! Let’s do this part! Now go back to this bit!’ and by the end of the day we have a song recorded. It was just very spontaneous and not over-thinking it and going by our guts. It’s very honest – that’s where you get the honest stuff."

Overdrive: Having been in G'N'R and now the Sons Of Apollo project, do you find that it’s been an epic journey, to say the least?

Bumblefoot: "Not really, I don’t think about that stuff. I think about ‘Oh damn – do I have clean socks?’ or ‘Oh I gotta take a shit!’ or ‘What’s for breakfast?’ (laughing).  Normal stuff you know? You live your life every ‘now’ moment at a time. I never look back and pat myself on the back for this or that or condemn myself for this or that. We’re just specks of cosmic dust that just happen to be around at the same time as Van Halen. I don’t think about that stuff,  in four billion years it’s not gonna mean a damn thing. Just enjoy yourself and make people happy now and enjoy the experience of being alive when you’re living."

Read the complete interview here. 

Sons Of Apollo kicked off their first ever European live dates last month. To celebrate, the band launched a video for the track "Signs Of The Time", filmed during the band's recent North American tour.

Mike Portnoy commented: “The ‘Signs Of The Time’ video was shot on the recent US tour and is a good taste of what the band is like on stage. We are about to embark on the band’s first tour of Europe and the UK and can’t wait to bring this 5-headed musical monster to our fans overseas all throughout the summer.”

Sons Of Apollo tour dates:

August
3 - Wacken Open Air - Wacken, Germany
18 - Prog in the Park 2018 - Warsaw, Poland
19 - Barba Negra Track - Budapest, Hungary

The band have further live dates planned for later in year, including an appearance at ProgPower Festival in the US, the band’s first Japanese shows, and more live appearances in Europe including a very special performance at the Roman Theatre in Plovdiv Bulgaria alongside the orchestra of Plovdiv State Opera.