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FIREWIND

Despite being a metal market, aside from Rotting Christ, Greece has produced very little in the way of internationally acclaimed metal acts – Firewind, the brainchild of guitar virtuoso Gus G broke onto the scene in 2002 like a gift from the gods!

-Shan Siva

How did you get this amazing line -up - you’re Greek, the vocalist is from Sri Lanka, the drummer is from Norway....wow, you give hope to humanity!

Gus G: actually the drummer is on his way out.....no just kidding ha ha! Actually its always been that way with me, Dream Evil has 4 Swedish guys and 1 Greek guy, have you heard of Mystic Prophecy, theres 1 Swedish guy, 1 German guy, 2 Greek guys....it was always like that, the Greeks are always involved someone ha ha. Actually, the truth is that I couldn’t find the right guys in Greece, so I’ve been travelling around since I was 16 in fact. First to the United States and then to Sweden where I met Frederick and started Dream Evil. Then I started to meet more people and made friends and stayed in touch with them which is really useful when you form your own band. If they’re great people and great musicians so that you can communicate on a musical and personal level then it shouldn’t matter where you come from. Take Chity (Somapala - vocalist) he’s from Sri Lanka, which is really far away - ok, so he’s lived in Germany for 20 years but he’s such an excellent guy and a brilliant musician, why should I care where he comes from and what skin colour he is - let’s just play music together!

I haven’t seen Chity live, is he quite different to Stefan (besides his suntan)?

Gus G: he’s quite different as he doesn’t have such a rough style and has brought a melodic element to the band. He also has a greater range so he can sing softly for ballads but he can also rock and I’d compare him to Tony Martin. I’ve always liked singers like Tony and Klaus Meine and so its good to have these influences come into the band. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but this is also a more permanent line up than when you saw me before. We’ve been together now for over a year and we’ve done quite a few gigs together including a Japanese tour and we’re getting ready right now for this European tour so right now everything is going really well and we’re like a family. Before it was more of a studio project with Dream Evil because there was always this problem of trying to get the guys on tour: some guy would be working, another guy wanted to be with his family, another one didn’t want to tour.....it just didn’t work out.

So as a co founder why did you leave Dream Evil?

Gus G: well, like I said it was like a part time band. But Dream Evil got success pretty quickly like, we’d just be sitting at home and get offered US tours and when you get served it like that on a plate you really have to go for it. That means that you have to drop everything and some of the guys didn’t want to do that which I thought was a sad thing. So I thought ‘well, maybe I can do the same thing but with my own band’ and do things my way, the way I want it. Its not like theres a bad feeling though, I’m still friends with the guys and talk to them but I feel more healthier in this band, none of the Spinal Tap thing with drink a beer and scream metal y’know. Firewind has different lyrical messages, more political, more everyday stuff and less metal ha ha. More importantly its full off hungry musicians that like to tour and want to do this full time.

You covered the Scorpions ‘Pictured Life’ in your debut album but also I note a coincidence in the name ‘Firewind’ and an Electric Sun song....

Gus G: yes, I got it from there, Electric Sun. Like you, I’m also a fan of Ulrich Roth when he was in the Scorpions but I also like the word ‘fire’ because its such a powerful word and its pretty catchy too kinda like ‘Whitesnake’ y’know.

Well, anyone influenced by the Scorpions can’t really go wrong. I grew up with ‘Lovedrive’ and ‘Animal Magnetism’ and I still listen to them to today.

Gus G: yes, the Scorpions are probably my favourite band too but I also like the 70s stuff like ‘Virgin Killer’ and ‘Tokyo Tapes’ which is of course why we covered ‘Pictured Life’ which is one of my favourite songs which I grew up with - in fact this is what I listened too to learn guitar riffs ha ha! Tony Iommi was my other big influence especially during the Tony Martin era. Also all the classic stuff like Maiden, Metallica and Megadeth. I’d learn the technical stuff from my guitar teacher and then develop my own style by combining what I learned with my influences.

When did the student decide that he no longer needed the master (copyright Annakin Skywalker)?

Gus G: ha ha that was when I went to Berkeley in 1997. I decided I didn’t want to be in school anymore but I wanted to start on my career and launch my own band. So I went to Berkeley - for 2 weeks and dropped out ha ha! They were like ‘wow - why?!’ and freaked out. So I told them to keep the scholarship money cos I wanted to do an album of my own, I didn’t care if it sucked or not but thats what I wanted to do.

So have you sent them the albums you’ve done?

Gus G: no but mebbe I should now that you mention it ha ha....actually you’re right. Y’know I still hear that they still talk about this crazy Greek guy that dropped out many years ago. Maybe thats because of my old teacher Joe cos he’s still there and I hear he always says good things about me to the kids like “look what happened to this Greek guy after 2 weeks, imagine if you study here for 4 years - you could be Tony Iommi!!” ha ha!

I think you have what it takes to be the next Greek (guitar) god.....except mebbe to the Greeks

Gus G: this is what happens. There is an old saying which is ‘you can be a prophet, except in your own land’. In Japan I was gracing the covers of guitar magazines but in Greece it took a long time to prove to them that I was serious and that I was opening new horizons for them and now the press and the fans are starting to realise. This was the first year that they’ve voted me amongst the top 5 players in magazines which is a good thing but this is after 10 years of me struggling - even with David Chastains help and let me say he did a lot for Firewind - and having already become a star in Japan and Sweden and then I come home and they’re like ‘ok, now you’re a hero’. So do me a favour and go tell the Greeks that Firewind is out there and they’re idiots if they don’t wanna give us a chance!