Q and A: Ken Mary (Fifth Angel)

By PAUL SOUTHWELL

IN the mid eighties, a slew of legendary metal bands came to fruition from the Seattle music scene, including Metal Church, the phenomenal Queensrÿche, and the melodic power metal beast that is Fifth Angel. The musicianship was revered too, with original Fifth Angel guitarist James Byrd appearing in international guitar magazines and with co-founding drummer Ken Mary cropping up, not just in drum magazines, but on tour with the incommensurate Alice Cooper for the Constrictor and Raise Your Fist and Yell tour cycles. 

Fifth Angel’s third album, The Third Secret, was released in 2018, some 30 years after second album, Time Will Tell, and a subsequent period of dormancy from 1990, ironically prolonged by the Seattle music scene. Drummer Ken Mary kept himself busy in a variety of roles, ranging from being an in-demand session drummer to being a respected producer and engineer, including setting up his own top-quality studio, SonicPhish Productions, in his home location of Phoenix Arizona, which has been used for both of the more recent albums. 

After headlining the Keep It True festival in Germany in 2010, and after several years, due to a variety of background and scheduling machinations, available band members reconvened, and The Third Secret was recorded, and released, with a strong, positive reception. Following the success of that project, their latest fourth album, When Angels Kill, is out in the wild and it is more than worth the wait. The concept album’s protagonist is named Phoenix, so the rising from the ashes analogy is apt. Paul Southwell had a chat to Ken in his studio, via Zoom.

Hot Metal: The new album is great, and your drum sound is fantastic. Is that down to production or just from using a live room?

Ken Mary: “It’s a little of both, there’s live drums and obviously we mix some samples in with that. But really, drums are kind of a weird instrument because there are a lot of components that get mixed in. For my kit there are 16 microphones; it is a lot. There are three room microphones, and a couple of overheads. It is a big kit and there are a lot of microphones.”

HM: A lot of metal today has a very quantised sound. I gather that you tend to shy away from that.

KM: “[Proceeds to show kit in the studio over Zoom]. As far as that whole quantisation thing, it is kind of weird to think about it, it is kind of machine-like, that would be the best way to describe that. But yeah, that sort of thing has been going on for years.”

HM: Your drum sound is very organic, in a sense.

KM: “I think so, I think that it sounds way more organic than most metal drums but that is on purpose. We are trying to make it sound genuine, and at the same time, you do have to be aware of what you are competing with; you’ll listen to the records that are out there and when there is a style and a thing happening, you don’t want to be left too far behind or you may end up with an album that sounds like it is from 1986 and everybody else will sound like they are from this decade. It is a mix, I mean, I think that with something like Fifth Angel, you’re walking that fine line between pleasing your fans who have been with you since the beginning and then you also have to try to gain some new fans because that is just the reality. We are all getting older, ha-ha, and you need fresh blood and you need fresh ideas and so we try to balance that and I think that the way we try to do that, is that we try to make songs that always have that hooky chorus. And with Fifth Angel, if you go back to first, then the second album, then The Third Secret, there are always these hooky choruses happening and we think that as long as we keep that going, then we can experiment a little bit more with other things, as long as have that singable chorus. We noticed that at the KIT [Keep It True] Festival in Germany, when we played there, the crowd was singing along to our songs, including the new songs, so that was really something that I think hammered it home for us; we’re doing the right thing for Fifth Angel.

HM: Do you find audiences almost get this nostalgia thing happening when there is such a time gap between older and new material?

KM: “Absolutely and it is really tough to fight against nostalgia. And I’ve been talking to a lot of people who’ve said,  ‘Hey, this is my favourite record,’ and for me, I am almost astounded by that. Because when I think back to the bands that I love – and that I grew up with – like whether it is Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Rush or Metallica, or whoever, usually the albums that you love are the ones that made you gravitate towards the band, you know?  The first album that you heard from those bands, like Permanent Waves or Moving Pictures or The Number of the Beast, whatever album you heard from that band first is probably the one that you love the most. So yes, I will say it is hard to fight against nostalgia, it is definitely a difficult thing to fight against but it seems like our fans are pretty cool in that regard. They seem to allow us to move in different directions, and to experiment a little bit and they don’t seem to hate us for it, so that is good.”

HM: Speaking of Rush, you worked with Terry Brown [producer for second album Time Will Tell], so did he have a lasting influence? The song, “We Are Immortal”, has that clear sonic positioning of the kit. 

KM: “Well, I have worked with so many amazing producers and engineers. I’ve worked with Mack [Reinhold Mack], who produced Queen. I’ve worked with Michael Wagener who produced everything, from Metallica to Janet Jackson to Ozzy Osbourne to Extreme. He was probably my biggest influence. I’ve worked with Andy Johns, who engineered a couple of small bands you might have heard of, like Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and – I think – Cinderella was on his resume. He was a tremendous engineer and a fabulous producer but I have learned from all of these guys. And those are just a few of the guys I’ve worked with. Like you said, Terry Brown, Terry Date, who did the first Fifth Angel album [Fifth Angel – Date’s first project], and he ended up producing Pantera, Deftones, and Soundgarden, the list goes on and on. So, I have been blessed to work with some of the greatest engineers and producers on the planet.”

HM: It is intimidating at all given their stature and having to live up their expectations?

KM: “In terms of what you have to create? Ah, I never really had that problem because I think that most of the producers that I worked with had a certain … I did a lot of studio work, I had worked with equipment, I was always easy to work with and I was a nice guy and all that stuff. So I think that I was very easy to work with. I think that I was an easy session musician to work with. I didn’t really have any problems or feel any pressures there and you know, you always just wanted to make them happy.”

HM: Indeed, presumably that approach applies when working with Alice Cooper or with Jordan Rudess, people who are very well known in the industry.

KM: “Right, and with Jordan Rudess, when I played on his record [Listen], he sent me the sheet music and I looked at it and thought, ‘I don’t even know how I am going to play this?’. Because most people write in 4/4 time signature or sometimes 6/8 [counts it out], but he is writing in 12/8, 3/4, 5/4. The meters of the timing, or the counting, was changing from measure to measure and the weird part is that his melodies were just flowing over these bizarre time changes, and all of these weird time signatures. But it all made musical and cohesive sense, so his brain is way more advanced than most musicians. He thinks in a way that we generally do not think in. He is not restricted by time at all, he is just going by the melody and whatever time signature that falls under is whatever time signature that falls under.  

HM: Indeed, it is quite impressive stuff. By comparison, was working with Alice more open to interpretation?

KM: “Yeah, when I worked with Alice, he was very much, ‘I’ll give you a choice,’ and in the studio, he allowed the producer, which in this case was Michael Wagener to do what Michael Wagener wanted to do. So, he wasn’t really having that much input into what was happening with the drums, per se. Of course, he had everything to do with lyrics and melodies, and all of that, but as far as the drums went, I think he kind of left it up to the producer. Alice is a very interesting person; he is very talented and very knowledgeable and he is incredibly gifted, naturally. He is a naturally gifted musician and singer and his voice just moves you. He could sing anything and it would move you. He is a star, he is an actual, real, bona fide rock star, so there is something special and magical about that. And one thing I will tell you is that he didn’t really get that involved in telling me what to play generally but there was a time on the first tour I did with him, where I was very young and very excited about the tour and excited about all of the things that I could play and I was starting to play a lot of notes. Ha-ha, I was starting to inject a lot of drumming in a lot of different things into the music. And this shows you how cool a guy he is, you know, he normally didn’t say much about music but he pulled me aside after one show and he said, ‘You know, Ken, maybe you should tone it back just a little bit,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Whoa, if Alice is telling me that, I’d better listen to what I was doing’. So I went to the sound man, Robert Scovill and asked, ‘Hey, can I get a board mix of what we did last night?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah sure,’ and he gave me the tape, and I found that the drums, well, I was walking all over everything, it was like a drum solo for the whole show. So that just shows you how cool Alice is, you know? He could have come in and said, ‘What are you doing all over my music? I’m Alice Cooper, Hall of Fame artist’ but he wasn’t like that at all. He just politely asked me to maybe tone it back just a little bit. I love Alice, I think he is awesome, he is just the epitome of a rock star, and he handles his stardom so well, and he is so kind, and just an awesome dude.”

HM: You’ve also worked with guitar masters such as Impellitteri and Chastain. So do these experiences inform writing for Fifth Angel and how do your guitarists cope with knowing that you’ve worked with guitar luminaries?

KM: “Ha-ha, well, I don’t think they really care, to be honest with you. I think that, you know, Fifth Angel is its own entity. It is its own brand, its own thing and I think that as long as we are doing music that sounds like Fifth Angel … you know what, that was a real challenge for me, the most intimidating part for us was The Third Secret because there had been a long time span between albums. In fact, I think that at that point it was like 28 years or something, since we had released an album, and we knew that the first two albums were considered classics. And of course, you are fighting against nostalgia again. Some people are going to listen and no matter what you do, no matter how great it is, they will say, ‘well, you know, it is not as good as the first two records’. No matter what, because that’s how it is. And just like me, when I grew up with that favourite band record, when I heard that first … and so I really understand nostalgia, and I get it. But that was where the real treasure was when we made The Third Secret. On When Angels Kill, I feel like there was not a much pressure, because we knew we wanted to do something great and we knew we wanted to make a concept record. We wanted the songs to be killer and we knew that we wanted it to be enjoyable to listen to it all the way through. We knew that we wanted it to have an amazing story but we really didn’t feel pressure since we had a good idea of what we wanted to do and we feel like we were successful in accomplishing that.”

HM: Who plays most of the guitar solos on this album?

KM: “On this album, it is Jim Dofka and he is a classic player. I’ve played on some of his records. Jim is a fabulous guitarist and he stepped in when we had some scheduling issues and he even co-wrote a couple of songs. The way I would describe the guitar situation on this record is similar to Helloween’s Pumpkins United approach. We’ve got our guitar players and everybody played a part. Ed [Archer] had some hand problems at one point during the recording, so I called in my buddy Steve Conley from Flotsam to do some rhythm guitar and do provide some help with the writing. Ethan [Brosh] was helping out with some of the writing; his schedule was a little weird, so we got Jim in to play solos. Everything worked because we just did whatever we had to do to make the record and get it done on time and in this case, I think it worked out great. We have a family of great musicians to draw from and I think that in this case, it actually enhanced the record.”

HM: The rhythm figure in “Empire of Hate” reminded me a little bit of Megadeth.

KM: “I don’t know but I would say that it is so tough because people will always say various songs sound like this and that. But I will just say, ‘well, on a keyboard, there are only 12 notes,’ so there are only going to be so many different combinations chords and different things so there is bound to be some overlap somewhere, especially in a generation where there are so many records out there now. But, you know, if it hearkens back to a little bit of Megadeth, I’m okay with that. That’s one of my favourite bands. I am okay with that as long as it is not ripping something off, but yeah, for “Empire of Hate”, I could understand somebody saying that [has Megadeth traits].”

HM: In a good way, similarly, “Kill the Pain” had a little bit of Dio or Mark Boals [early Malmsteen] style to it, which is a credit to your vocalist really. He is quite a powerful singer.

KM: “Yes, Steven Carlson has been with the band since 2018, and yes, he is a fabulous singer. And he really stepped up for this record. I think that the vocals are honestly one of the high points of the record. His vocal performances have killer emotion and killer tone. I think that he just brought it home and did a fantastic job on this record.”

HM: For it to work, the rhythm section also has to be really good but many listeners tend to focus on the lead singer, or sometimes, the guitarist. There is a weird politics thing that goes on in bands.

KM: “Well, I think that for most people, they connect with the vocal. If they feel the emotion and if they like the voice; if they connect with the vocalist, that is a very important aspect. I understand people thinking that the most important thing is the vocalist, but then I agree with that, I think that the most important thing is the vocalist. I think that the singer does set the tone for everything but at the same time, you need a killer band as well. I mean, if you’ve got a great singer but a lousy band, then it is probably not going to be that great either. So, I think you need all of it and on this record, in particular, I feel really happy about all of the musicians that are involved in this and that gave of their time and talents. I think that we did come out with something that is a little bit special, and that is our goal. Our first two records stood the test of time and we are still talking about them, 35 or 36 years later. And our goal is always to make an album that will stand the test of time and hopefully we did that.”

HM: I remember the guitar magazine advertisements [Guitar Player] for James Byrd, with Ibanez guitars, back in 1988.

KM: “I asked James to play a couple of solos on this record. He is a little older now, he is not playing guitar and he said, ‘I literally don’t have a guitar,’ and I said ‘well, what if I rent one for you? Would you be able to play some solos?’. And he just didn’t want to play any solos on it. We tried to get Ted [Pilot] to sing some stuff on here too; we tried to do like an Angels United to have everybody involved in the record but sadly that didn’t happen on this one. I really wish it could happen. Ted just cannot sing anymore, period. He just cannot sing as he got some sort of sinus congestion and drainage that I guess has ruined his voice. So, you know, there are some things that I would loved to have happened but unfortunately, we were unable to do that. But on the flip side, I feel like we did make a great record that we were excited about and we’re happy with. I always say this as a joke: ‘well, if we’re happy with it, then hopefully 78 million people will be happy with it as well’.”

HM: Is there any song on the album that you feel represents where the band is at now, sonically?

KM: “Well, that is tough to pick one song but I really do love the opening title track. Because it has got orchestration in it, it has got this really cool introduction called “Descent into Darkness”. And whilst that is one of my favourites, so is “We Are Immortal”, as is “The End of Everything”, and “Empire of Hate”, so I cannot easily narrow it down. But I do like all of the different elements in the song “When Angels Kill”; there are a lot of elements that make it a very exciting and grooving song, and it sets the tone for the whole record. If I had to pick one, it would probably be that track but certainly, it would be a tough call.”

HM: Your drumming has the traditional heavy metal angle with double bass drums and lots of cymbals. What are your thoughts on how metal drumming has changed into the world of triggers and blast beats?

KM: “Yeah, I think that it is cool, but I am a huge Buddy Rich fan. For me, there are three drummers who were the biggest influence on me: Buddy Rich, Neil Peart and John Bonham. They are all completely different drummers but I say that if Buddy Rich were alive today, he would be a metal guy, because he was about speed and precision, and doing these blast beats at 240bpm takes an enormous amount of discipline, and I like it. I like the fact that metal drumming is pushing the drumming barrier, you know, it is making us think in different ways and making us do different things that really, say 10 to 15 years ago, most of us would have thought it to be impossible. I remember when people thought that 200bpm was impossible for double bass. Now we’ve got people doing 240bpm and I am doing double bass stuff and I think that one of the Flotsam and Jetsam songs was maybe at 230bpm. So we are doing things that we used to think are impossible and we are pushing the envelope. That is a great thing and I think it is exciting.”

HM: I reckon I can hear a bit of Dave Lombardo [ex Slayer] and maybe some Alex Van Halen in your drumming too.

KM: “Well, honestly, yeah, and Alex is one of the most underrated drummers, maybe ever. He was just so overshadowed by, in my opinion, probably the greatest guitar player ever, in the history of music, Eddie Van Halen. Maybe that is just because that is my era or whatever but he influenced guitar players from 1978, until grunge took off in 1992. Everybody in there, I don’t care whether you’re Vai, Malmsteen or Lynch, everybody was influenced by Eddie Van Halen. He is the Buddy Rich of guitar players.”

HM: Radio listeners who heard “Jump” may not have noticed how Alex’s rhythm figure changes or flips around the accents during the classic guitar solo part, then flips back for the bridge and chorus. It is perfectly executed.

KM: “Yes, I didn’t really notice that but I’ll have to go and check that. But that wasn’t one of my favourite Alex Van Halen things though, as for me, one of the most exciting things he did was “Hot for Teacher”. That introduction was stunning, and killer and still is hard to play today. So you know, he had all kinds of things. I think that he was very overshadowed by Eddie and I am not saying that that is not right, but certainly, I think that if Alex had been on some other band that had been successful, I think he would have gotten a lot more attention than he did. But yeah, I think that he was a fantastic player as well.”

HM: Indeed. Finally, the album’s artwork is very eye catching and dramatic. What was the story behind that happening?

KM: “Well, actually that is a great story, and the album cover has a couple of different meanings. I don’t want to give too much away but there is a love interest that goes bad and so there is sort of like a duality, like a dual personality that is happening there so that was perfect for the cover. There is an artist named Andy Pilkington [Very Metal Art], from the UK, and he is doing a lot of artwork with different bands that I have worked with, so I sent him the idea from some songs and lyrics, saying that this was a concept album. He saw some previous artwork that we had done but then he turned this in, which when we all went ‘wow, that totally fits on so many different levels’. Because you’ve got “When Angels Kill” and you’ve got angels and demons, you’ve got this love interest that was good but turns out as being bad. It fit in with the story on many levels and so the minute we saw it we knew it was perfect. That was his idea. He is the one that came up with that and we cannot give him enough credit. I agree with you that it is kind of a stunning, beautiful piece of art.”

HM: In metal circles, whenever you do a concept album, someone will pipe up, ‘Oh, Queensrÿche!’

KM: “Well, it is likely they’ll say, Pink Floyd, Queensrÿche, Helloween and anybody that has ever done a concept record. But, you know, that is just part of the deal. I don’t really mind the comparisons and one of my favourite albums of all time is Operation: Mindcrime. I remember listening to that on a tour bus in Europe with a band called House of Lords and I remember that I had my CD player, and I was listening to this saying ‘oh My God! this is genius’. And it ended up being their first gold album. People don’t remember but at that point, they were struggling. They weren’t really taking off and when Operation: Mindcrime came out, that was the album that really broke them and when I first heard that, I thought it was brilliant. If somebody wants to compare us to Queensrÿche, bring it on, I am all for it. I would be happy to be compared to Operation: Mindcrime.”

HM: Lanny Cordola was in House of Lords back then, so it makes more sense that you also worked with virtuosos such as Impellitteri.

KM: “It was, yes, thanks for the interview, what time is it there?”

HM: It’s around 9:30am. We’re generally 18 hours ahead, or thereabouts.

KM: “So, you’re calling me from the future, maybe I should ask you about stocks? Ha-ha.”

HM: Or Trump, nah, maybe not.

KM: “Oh, so you’re from the past. Ha-ha. Take care.”