The legendary Metal Church have crafted a cornucopia of music for their fans with the upcoming release of ‘From The Vault’ on Friday, April 10th via Rat Pack records. This package features a collection of new music, b-sides, covers, and live tracks bundled with a comic book called “Return of Fake Healer”. We had the great fortune to spend a few minutes with founding member and guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof to discuss the current pandemic, the new From The Vault album, and future plans for Metal Church.
The Covid-19 pandemic has hit the world hard. We asked Kurdt how he, his family, and the rest of the Metal Church crew are doing and what they are doing to cope with the isolation that this pandemic can create? Kurdt replied “For me personally, I’m trying to make the best of it. Everybody in my family is fine. Everybody is following the rules” adding “Everybody seems to be hanging in there. We’re alright. I’m getting a lot of guitar playing in and a lot of songwriting in, so I’m making the most of it.”
Regarding coping with isolation Kurdt said “One thing you know as musicians get older, sometimes life can distract you. Getting back to playing guitar, which is my first love, is like Woah, rediscovering that.” Kurdt continued “I have a prediction that after this in about 9 months there’s just going to be a glut of new albums coming out and new babies”.
We talked that a silver-lining in all of these measures to contain the pandemic may be artists flexing their creative spirits. Kurdt also mentioned “Once we get through this, things are going to be a lot better on the other side of this. There is a lot of stuff going on and people don’t buy into the fear. Don’t do that. Just wait it out, follow the rules, and know this is going to be a lot better on the other side.
The new album ‘From The Vault’ gives fans a taste of all things Metal Church. We wanted to know what was the spark for creating this immersive package of metal for the fans? “We had all this stuff. And if we just kept compiling it, and compiling it, and compiling it, it was like, well, let’s not waste it” replied Kurdt.
“Conductor” is an outstanding metal song in its original form. It is always fun when Metal Church bakes this one into their live set. We asked Kurdt what led the band to take another look at this classic for ‘From The Vault’? Kurdt replied “It was just kind of a response from the fans. Being that that record is so hard to get and so hard to find. And because of contractual things and bad record deals and things with that particular album, not to mention the bad cover…we talked about redoing the whole record, but we were like ugh…you know…but since I haven’t been able to re-release it and you know re-put it out again…people love that song…so we figured we’d just kind of acknowledge that and kind of do that for fun”
‘From The Vault’ features some very interesting cover song choices. “Green-Eyed Lady” by Sugarloaf and “Black Betty” by Ram Jam are super fun jams, but we had to know how Metal Church ended up covering Nazareth’s “Please Don’t Judas Me”? Kurdt responded “Well the whole idea behind the cover tunes is that everybody picked a song…and Mike picked “Please Don’t Judas Me” and I went awe that’s brilliant that’s great, what a great song. Stet picked “Green-Eyed Lady” and I think Rick picked “Black Betty”. The one I picked didn’t work”
While we are all exiled for the good of the realm, we asked Kurdt if the band has any plans for online events to support the new album? “Not really,” said Kurdt. “I think we are just going to leave it at this for right now. When this all passes, obviously like everybody else we’ll get back to work.”
Later this summer, Kurdt mentioned that the Metal Church will start working on a new studio album. While we look forward to that gem, we can have fun jamming ‘From The Vault’.