Renowned Testament guitarist Eric Peterson recently announced the release of his highly-anticipated new Dragonlord album, entitled Dominion, out September 21, 2018 via Spinefarm Records. The symphonic black/death metal album serves as the long-awaited follow-up to 2005’s Black Wings of Destiny, but takes the fantasy and storytelling to a whole new level. Dominion explores themes of darkness owning and influencing these times we now live in, and things that have come to pass. It also delves into other eras, real and otherworldly.
We talk to Eric ahead of the release to discuss the new songs as well as jump into his other world in comic books and more.
Andrew: So you must be on the road with Slayer at the moment, how has that been going so far?
Eric: Yeah I think we got 8 shows left all through North America and it’s going really good, we’re in Oklahoma today.
Andrew: Have you been speaking to any of the guys in Slayer about the fact that they are calling it a day?
Eric: Yeah the first tour we talked a bit about it and I think this is definitely the last for them. They’re going out with a bang, I believe they’re going to be touring all through 2019 as well because since it’s a farewell tour they’re probably going to go everywhere. I would imagine they would be heading down under to so that would be awesome.
Andrew: Yeah we would love to see those guys but we would love to see you guys come with them as well if they do, it’s been a while since we’ve since Testament in our area.
Eric: Yeah I think the last time we were there was Soundwave maybe.
Andrew: Yeah I think so and that was a great show so we are looking forward to it. But we are also here to discuss your other band Dragonlord and you have a new album coming out in September. I’ve only had a chance to listen to the one song, the title track and it’s a beast of a song! It’s got a bit of an old school flare and has that gothic, symphonic sort of sound. Tell me a little about this album and how this whole thing came together.
Eric: OK so you only got to hear one song but there’s so many different elements on the record. So one song doesnt quite do it but I mean it’s definitely a good song I think, it’s a good representation. But there’s so many different elements I couldn’t really describe it to you but that song kind of has the jist of everything and at the end of the record there’s stuff that’s even crazier that is more just full on storm blasting through like a feeling between a hallway where maybe in one room there’s some classical music going on and then in the other room someone is playing some crazy black/death metal and there’s a point where they both come together and it’s like the perfect storm. so there’s some stuff going on like that and in the middle of the record it gets a little more melodic, there’s a song called “Lamia” which is about a kind of mythical, man-eating siren demon. That one rocks a little bit more and it’s got the more influences by bands like Misanthropic from France and it’s keyboard heavy but you have to hear it to know what I’m talking about. The big surprise I think from a lot of people who have heard the record is a song called “Love of the Damned”, the song is kind of – I don’t want to say ballad because black metal doesn’t have ballads – but it definitely slows the pace down and the lyrical content isn’t short of maybe some satanic vibes going on. But it’s a love story about a girl who falls in love with the devil and it’s kind of based around Dante’s Inferno, how Beatrice gets taken to the underworld. In that story she is let go and sees the ray up towards the light but in my song she stays and falls in love with the devil.
Andrew: OK cool lots of dynamics going on which is good to hear rather than listening to your stock standard sort of stuff. It’s been a while since the last album came out so how does it feel to jump back into the whole Dragonlord world again?
Eric: Well I’ve been in it for a good 4 or 5 years so this record took quite a while to make. It took a while due to starting out that some members of the band not being available and finding out too late and then turning into Testament getting heavy on touring and recording and me finding my time in between and working with my producer so it turned into a weekend warrior thing at one point. But right around 2017 after we had started recording in late 2012-2013, to me I started getting anxiety attacks like I’ve gotta get this done! But every hurdle that I had there was a gift for me in it, even though it was a setback there was always something that was presented to me that was very helpful towards the record. One being the missing in action drummer which I ended up getting Alex Bent who was maybe a better fit for this style of music with this playing on the record, someone who can go nuts with blast beats and keep up the pace. The other was getting Leah involved, she’s a Celtic singer, she does another band called Leah. I wouldn’t have bothered getting her at all but as time would permit and things get pushed back, she came into my world by us doing a Christmas song together called “Winter Sun” – actually that might of been after, but anyway we had been talking about doing something together and I was like, “I gotta get her in here to do keyboards on the women’s choir stuff’. Through that it brought in a duet with us which is in “Love Of The Damned”, it kind of goes back and forth and she’s more in the end I guess but she ends up being Beatrice where she is talking about where she is at in the song. So there’s other things, the bass thing I had plans for a bass player to come in but I ended up doing it myself which I pretty much had all the ideas I wanted to do anyway where I wanted it to be more like a Steve Harris, Geezer like licks in between everything. The guitars are definitely prominent in Dragonlord but I didn’t record four different tracks, I kind of kept it simple and just said one per side. I wanted to keep more real so all the other instruments like pipes and flutes and strings, violas, french horns and there’s just so much stuff going on at one time that the guitars needed to breathe a little bit.
Andrew: You mentioned that you started this whole thing about 4 years ago and until the day you started to really hit it hard in the studio, had much of the stuff within the songwriting itself changed at all or had you pretty much kept the roots of those songs together?
Eric: Yeah once the drums are put down there’s the roots, I mean you got your foundation built but what we put on top of it might have changed a little bit. The biggest thing for me is getting the lyrics right, the one song that held me back was “The Discord of Melkor” and that is a super long song, it’s super fast and I just couldn’t find a pattern. I remember I had a pattern and I forgot it and at one point I came back to it and I was like, ‘How do you sing over something lke this? This is insane, what was I thinking?’ [laughs]. I remember I was reading the Silmarillion, it’s about the first age of Lord Of The Rings and I just remember I didn’t know if I had that song in the background, I was reading it but something connected. This song is totally about that because in the middle of that song it breaks down to just an orchestra during this epic and very dynamic piece that goes up to the lead section and I thought that was a perfect way to follow up the beginning of the story, the Yahweh which is God, Tolkien kinda took the genesis of the bible and did his own thing with it and took the Ainur which is kind of like his angels I guess, Melkor would be like Lucifer. He disrupted a lot of the harmonies and the sounds that Yahweh was trying to make which formed our world, middle earth, their world, they go down there and start life as it is, they start with elves where we start man. It’s cool how he took that from the bible though and turned it around and made his own little story, so Melkor becomes Morgoth which is like Lucifer becomes Satan and then dragons are born and orcs. It’s a really cool story and I think I was able to capture, even though there’s so much going on in that story, I think I chose to write words to put it all into that one story and the song is about seven and a half minutes long but it keeps it interesting because of the storyboard.
Andrew: Yeah sure so it sounds like there is somewhat of a theme running through all these songs then, it’s all story based so it would be fair to say there is an idea or theme running through this album?
Eric: Definitely in a fantasy sense, there’s a lot of things that tie together even though the Tolkien world doesn’t have anything to do with Dominion which has to do with my comic, the character of “The Burner”. He’s kind of like a pagan, black metal superhero, especially in the comic how he perseveres and has to come to this world on different occasions like in the 11th century fighting with the pagans against Christianity. The story is really kind of cool in the comic but for Northlander where his whole identity was brn and we dubbed him “The Burner” because of the church burning but it wasn’t a satanic thing, it was more like punishing people that his behind Christianity to do their evil deeds. And I picked the time when it was pretty crazy so it wasn’t like I’m picking on the church right now [laughs], things are a lot different now, way different now. But yeah back then they were doing crazy stuff.
Andrew: Speaking of the comic book, how has that been going so far? I understand that you had just made an appearance at Comic Con right?
Eric: Yeah that went really well, I got rid of a lot of pieces and I got introduced to a lot of bigger comic people, publishers that release stuff like this and I got a lot of interest. I can’t really say who but I think I’m going to get it published and I’m going to be able to do like a 3 arc or a 5 mini-series which will turn into a graphic novel and maybe do a couple of them. But my ultimate goal for this character is to do something with the animation, I think that would be super cool with just the whole black metal superhero and Dragonlord and a different platform for that. But I’m not going to throw any pun at it, I’m picturing more like…I don’t know if anybody has heard of Berzerker in animation but it’s just like taking Braveheart and making it into animation, you go the violence and the sex and beheadings and the blood. There’s no holding back, it’s the real deal but a cartoon.
Andrew: That sounds cool! How did you get into the whole comic book world? I guess you must have been a fan of comics since you were a kid.
Eric: Oh yeah definitely and I think even more so in my early adult years, discovering Lady Death and Spawn and stuff like Demon and lots of stuff. A lot of the newer companies like Dark Horse and Image, just a lot of new comic book companies that spawned or own new super heroes away from the more American Superman and Batman which are definitely some cool stuff and I think some of the newer stuff is actually pretty awesome. But I’m more of a fan of stuff like Elric or Lady Death, Spawn for sure and that’s even older stuff now but the newer stuff like Lady Mechanika is pretty cool and there’s probably stuff I’m missing. We’re now discovering the French side of the graphic novel and one in particular that they’ve re-done was the Elric series and wow, what a good job they did. It’s exciting to see this becoming like an animation or even a movie.
Andrew: I always felt that the whole comic book world and heavy metal in general kind of have a kinship together, sort of a natural connection together.
Eric: Yeah for sure, especially with my character. I don’t know if there is any character out there like mine that’s liike a black metal superhero kind of thing. It sounds kind of silly but when you read the comic, again there’s no pun, it’s pretty serious stuff. It just sounds kind of weird!
Andrew: [laughs] It sounds cool to me, I’m certainly into it so I’m looking forward to grabbing a copy. It’s great to see Dragonlord back again and I hope the new album is a huge success for you guys and we hope to see you guys at some stage down under. I know it’s probably a bit of a longshot but at the very least we hope to see Testament down here as well. Thank you for your time and hopefully we will see you on the road in one of your bands!
Eric: That would be awesome, thank you so much!
More info: www.enterthedragonlord.com
