By Aaron Small

On June 2nd, Wednesday 13 will release his stunning new solo album Condolences via Nuclear Blast. After self-issuing his last few titles, W13 has returned to the world of record companies, and couldn’t be happier.   

“Basically, when the record was finished, I wanted a good label and the first one I thought of was Nuclear Blast. Monte Conner’s there – he’s been my A&R guy for… he did the Transylvania record, he did Murderdolls, just an awesome dude! He’s signed all the coolest bands (Fear Factory, Machine Head, Sepultura, Type O Negative). So I went to him first. We go way back and we’re friends, so I just asked him, what do you think about the possibility of this coming out? He hadn’t heard the record yet and said, ‘I don’t know? I don’t think we have room for it.’ But he hadn’t heard anything since Fang Bang (released in 2006). So he came out to our New York show, saw the band and loved it. I sent him the record the next day, he wrote me back saying ‘This is great!’ And we figured it out from there.”

“It feels awesome too because it’s the first record deal we got for being a band and not some Slipknot side project. Cause that’s how Murderdolls (featuring W13 and Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison) got signed (to Roadrunner Records); it wasn’t because they thought we were cool. My record deal (for Transylvania 90210), the first time, they told me no. Then someone else wanted it and they had the first right of refusal, so they put my record out just because someone else wanted it. This one feels good cause there was no politics or shit like that, they think it’s a good record and see potential in it.”

Wednesday 13 recently unveiled his brand new logo (which can be seen above) via his Facebook page, and it looks amazing! “Thank you, to me it looks like a Flash Gordon or Phantasm type logo; it’s still got the vibe to it, but it represents the new sound of the band. I’ve tried to keep a lot of the people that I’ve used in the past. A guy named David Frizell designed it; he did Calling All Corpses, Monsters Of The Universe – both covers of that, Spook & Destroy. He’s awesome, but when it came time for the Condolences album cover, I wanted to go with someone different. I wanted to lose the spooky Indiana Jones kind of look and make something a little more metal. For the cover, we hired this dude named Travis Smith who’s done all the Opeth album covers. So it’s a totally different album cover this time. It doesn’t have a picture of me on it, it’s just going to fit the vibe of the song ‘Condolences’. That’s what I told him to do – listen to that song and draw what you hear.”

Last time BraveWords met up with Wednesday 13 (click here for the article), he revealed two new song titles from Condolences, “Omen Amen” and “Cruel To You”; now we get two more. “It’s still early stages, but I want the first single to be a song called ‘What The Night Brings’. That’s the opening track on the record and to me, it’s the ultimate spooky song. We’ve been called horror punk forever; this is horror metal. There’s another song called ‘Blood Sick’ that will probably be one of the videos we do. Even the song ‘Condolences’, the title track, it’s seven minutes long and we’re trying to do a Type O Negative edit on it, so I don’t know how that’s going to turn out. This record, the cover and everything, especially that song, was inspired by Type O Negative… it’s our little nod to Peter Steele (RIP).”

“Roman (Surman, guitarist) says, ‘It’s the greatest hits album with brand new songs. We’ve been experimenting on every record. Monsters Of The Universe definitely had the heavier stuff, we had almost a death metal song with ‘Planet Eater’. But I think this record – it’s 13 tracks – pretty much covers everything we wanted to do new, but still paying respect to the past. The song ‘Blood Sick’ sounds like something that would have been on Transylvania, but the guitars and drums are more metal. It’s the first time we sat down… we had riff ideas and stuff, but before it was like here’s the demo, let’s get together and learn it real quick. This is sitting down every day… here’s a guitar riff, let’s put it together. It was cool, we spent a day on each song. We tried it every way; I’ve never done that before. It used to be, how many songs can I write in a day? That’s worked in the past, but it was really cool to do it this way – we’re going to write for two weeks, then we’re going to spend a month adding all the lyrics and little bits. Once we wrote everything, we did the demos. Then we had a month to go home, I wrote the lyrics, then we went into the studio for a month.”

Chris “Zeuss” Harris is producing, mixing – doing pretty much everything behind the board on Condolences. He helmed the 2010 Murderdolls album, Women And Children Last, did that make him the obvious choice? “He was the first choice. We’ve been talking about it since we did the Murderdolls record; I didn’t know Zeuss before that. It was Joey’s pick of a producer, we went and did the record and had a great time. When we left the studio he said, ‘I’d love to do a Wednesday record one day.’ We just kept in touch, and that was the plan three years ago. I was wanting to change everything up in my business camp… when I took the year off and did the Unplugged record, that was when this started. To get this far and get the record finished, and get what we wanted out of it is awesome!”

“This year is to do everything different than how I’ve done anything in the past. It’s worked in the past and it’s stayed consistent, but I want to move to the next level. We’re doing lyric videos, at least three full music videos. I’m going to make up for the absence of all my videos over the years. These are the ones that are going to make people think, what the fuck am I seeing? I’m going to go beyond anything I’ve done before. This record’s been done since September, so I’ve been listening to it and visualizing everything. Now it’s go time. I’m just trying to see what I can get done within the budget. Now it’s not about being on TV, I want to do something that’s extreme. I want it to be something you watch and say, ‘Oh my God! Did I just see that?’ The same thing with our new live show – ‘I can’t believe I’m seeing this right now.’”

Previously, Wednesday detailed how incredibly focused the studio sessions were; in fact, Ramon didn’t see the light of day. He now elaborates further upon that experience and being so ensconced in the process that was recording the Nuclear Blast debut. “To be able to go to Massachusetts, be away from our daily stuff that would distract us, we had nothing else to do but think about the record. That’s important, because I’ve never really done that with any of my stuff. I didn’t have all the lyrics before we got there; I was writing them when we were doing guitars and bass. But it came naturally, my favourite thing I’ve ever recorded.”

It’s no secret that W13 is a big Alice Cooper fan, just listen to “Something Wicked This Way Comes” from Calling All Corpses as it contains the line, ‘Alice Cooper and G.I. Joe taught me everything I need to know.’ When Alice was recording vocals for “Ballad Of Dwight Fry” on the Love It To Death album, he was buried under a heap of folding chairs to create a realistic environment for the ‘I’ve got to get out of here’ screams. Were any such similar tactics utilized for the vocals on Confessions? “When we do the vocal tracks, we always try to capture a vibe. On the last tour I bought a light saber for my 40th birthday from this place called Saber Forge in Oregon; it was a $500 light saber. When we tracked the vocals for ‘What The Night Brings’, we turned all the lights out and I just sang to my green light saber; it lit up the whole room. That inspired my mood.”