Brad Parmerter has issued Part 2 of a two-part interview with drummer Jeff Plate (TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA / METAL CHURCH / SAVATAGE) as part of his ongoing series of TSO interviews. An excerpt follows.

Q: Generation Nothing (Metal Church) sounds great and after you get off the road with TSO you don't have that long at home before you hit the road again.

A: "About a week or so. We've got a month of dates with Metal Church. You know, Metal Church and Savatage kind of almost walked in the same footsteps throughout their careers. Great bands, great songs, great records, great live reputation, this and that, but just because of bad management or individual stupidity and problems, things don't always go the way they should [Savatage had a notoriously bad management issue in the mid-80s before Paul O’Neill was introduced to the band and worked with them on Hall of the Mountain King]. When I got into Metal Church I was invited because I had known [Kurdt] Vanderhoof for several years. I was actually touring with Chris Caffery, we opened for Metal Church over in Europe and I got to know the guys really well and of course Kirk Arrington, the Metal Church drummer, was having health issues and some other things were going on and it was kind of a struggle for him. I knew it then and after that Kurdt was writing A Light in the Dark and trying to figure out how to proceed with the band. Kirk wasn't able to do it so Kurdt called me and I said, "Absolutely." I didn't even think anything about it. Metal Church is another band that once I really started getting into the back catalog and listening to some of this old stuff I realized why the band had such an incredible name.

So A Light in the Dark was my first record with the guys and we too ran into some problems with booking, some management problems, some overall operating problems. After we did This Present Wasteland it really kind of just became one of those things where it was so much work and aggravation to actually do shows. And to the common person it may sound petty, but when you're not able to go out with the proper crew and people around you to make your show better and you go to a club and the monitor guy in the club is making out with his girlfriend or he's drunk or something and you sound like crap it's like, "Why am I doing this?" This is kind of what we were running into. So Kurdt, out of respect for himself and all of us just said, "Let's put an end to this." So we did Rocklahoma, I believe that was in '08, and announced then that that was the last gig so on and so forth.

And then over the years we've obviously all stayed in touch. Ronny Munroe had his stint with TSO on vocals, Kurdt Vanderhoof was actually running sound for TSO west for a number of years so we were always in the vicinity to talk to each other and there were always offers to play shows and to do this, but then you look at things and go, "How much is it going to cost us to get there? What are we going to make in the end? Is this really worth it?" And finally we were offered to do the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise this year in ‘13, the beginning of February, and it was something that we all discussed and said, "You know what, this really sounds like fun. Why don't we go ahead, let's get together for a week and rehearse, let’s go down there, do this cruise and have fun." That was the main motive of us doing the show. ‘Cause we're doing a cruise, we're sailing to the Turks, we're getting paid for it, we're getting fed, it's like, "What the hell, let's go have some fun." So when we did the performance on this ship the reaction was so strong from not only the fans but our peers and the press, we said, "Ok, what are we gonna do? We just got a little new shot of momentum. Why don't we do this and let's try to be smart about it." Of course we had to discuss how we were gonna approach doing the record without a record label, without financing, and how are we going to go about touring.

Part of the inspiration for this record was the fact that on this cruise we did the entire first record, the very first Metal Church record ever, which was a lot more thrashy, a lot faster, more aggressive, and we took this whole vibe and kind of brought it over into Generation Nothing. So Generation Nothing, even though it was put out in 2013, it sounds like a record that could have been done back in the late '80s or early '90s and that was the whole intent. So right now the reaction to this new record has been really strong, we've got these tour dates set up here in the States for our first month, and we've got some stuff going on in Europe and we are looking to hopefully do a package in the States and really try to work the American market really strong this year. So things are looking good, but for a while it was kind of bleak and once we thought about it and realized, "If we're going to do Metal Church we should do this NOW while we're all still able to do it. We have the time and with the 70,000 Tons of Metal we had a buzz. We have to get to the fans so it was time to take advantage of it so that's what we're doing. I'm really happy with the record. It's my favorite one I've done with the band so far and I think this tour is going be a lot of fun. I think we're going to reestablish the band as one of the major metal players that's out there. You’ve got your big four and Metal Church was right there in the beginning of it with all those bands: Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer. They were all happening at the same time and Metal Church had its share of issues which kind of derailed things and sidetracked it, but our goal is to get the band reestablished and get right back up there so we can go out and do some of these shows with these other bands. I think it will be great."

Read more here.

Read Part 1 of the interview at this location.