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Their debut album is out for Atomic Fire, the newborn label created by ex members of Nuclear Blast. Power Paladin is a new sensation in the Power Metal kingdom, coming nonetheless from the far Iceland. We got a chance to talk about “With The Magic Of Windfyre Steel” with the guitar player and mastermind Ingi and the singer Atli.
Hello guys, welcome to the pages of Heavymetalwebzine.it
The album “With The Magic Of Windfyre Steel” is one month old, can you tell us about the feedback you’re receiving?
Ingi – It’s been a bit of a shock to see people react to the album. We’ve gotten some pretty high chart listings in Japan and Germany, which we never in our lives expected to happen, so much so that a big in-joke has always been the phrase “when we get big in Japan…” – which would always follow with us laughing at the absurdity of being big anywhere, let alone in Japan. Now I’m not sure that we could be considered big there at this moment but Jesus Christ.. be careful what you joke about!
How does it feel to debut for Atomic Fire, which is a new label although created by people with great experience in the metal scene?
Ingi – Exciting! They have been the biggest help to us, and helped guide us through the mystical forests of being a band with an international stage, and just being a band signing with a label as well. We’re pretty green behind the ears when it comes to all this stuff and they have been super understanding. Also just being signed to the same label as Helloween, Meshuggah, Opeth, Sonata Arctica, Amorphis etc is pretty cool!
Iceland is so far from us that we cannot imagine how different could be to live there. How do you share with other bands the local metal scene being the only power metal band?
Ingi – We pretty much just play with people who want to play with us. Everything from rock bands to death/black metal. We were even offered to play at last year’s Andkristni 2021, a local black metal festival and graciously accepted. It was a lot of fun and they didn’t kill us which was pretty cool!
How do you compose you songs?
Ingi – It normally starts out with Atli or me writing down some basics in Guitar Pro, that we then take to band practice to figure out the details. After we’ve brought all our inputs into the song, we try to record a demo to edit down the rest, but in the case of our album, a lot of the songs weren’t finished until in the latest stages of recording. The main riffs etc were all down but a lot of the flavour comes when we add the orchestrals and backing vocals.
Did you decide to play this genre of metal or was it a natural choice among the band members?
Ingi – It’s a bit of a ‘who came first? the chicken or the egg?’. The choice was power metal and the members were chosen because they wanted to play power metal!
What are the main musical influences for all the members?
Ingi – Iron Maiden.
Atli – Yeah, Maiden, Helloween, Gamma Ray, Rhapsody, HammerFall, all the great ones!
In “‘Ride The Distant Storm” I heard echoes from our Italian Rhapsody, do you agree? Who created the orchestral arrangements?
Ingi – Hahaha, you’re not wrong. We always refer to that song as our Rhapsody song, and for obvious reasons. We’re all gigantic Rhapsody fans! I’m pretty sure it was a mix between me and Bjarni Egill for the most part who did the orchestral arrangements. Bjarni did most of the choir, symphonic stuff and I threw in the harpsichord lines. The backing vocal arrangements was me, Bjarni Egill and Atli.
About the production of the album, how did you record? You mixed in Sweden at Mastertape Studios, how did it go with Haukur Hannes?
Ingi – The album was recorded by me and Bjarni Egill at a pretty much mobile studio named Windfyre Studios. We travelled between different locations, my bedroom, Atli’s and Bjarni Egill’s place of work, a cabin in the woods etc. All the places where we could find time, space and creativity we utilised.
In regards to the mixing, although Haukur Hannes used to live in Sweden, Mastertape Studios is his personal studio. Ironically, at this point in time he was between proper studios and the whole album was literally mixed in his bedroom, with us sitting on his bed. And in light of how well the album sounds, even when mixed in a makeshift bedroom studio, you should have your answer why we went with him! (Also he’s just a really good friend of ours). So the whole album is pretty much a bedroom production album, and it would probably not have worked out any other way, we would have gone broke if we had gone to the studio and spent as much time fucking about as we did while recording the vocals.
In With The Magic Of Windfyre Steel there are a lots of comics and fantasy reference. Do you have a passion for Marvel comics (referring to Kraven the Hunter from Spiderman) and the classic D&D style games?
Atli – Absolutely, I’m a huge comic book and fantasy enthusiast. Those are the things I love the most so naturally it inspires our music.
The videoclips are very funny and are clearly done by people who enjoy their music, how did you film those videos? Did you create the story yourselves?
Ingi – Our first video was the playthrough video for Righteous Fury. That one was recorded originally as a lyric video backdrop but we bailed on it since the shots were really cool. But we also shot that video after fourteen hours of recording the Kraven video, which might explain the low energy in the playing, haha.
Kraven The Hunter we wrote the story pretty much the days before and basically around stuff we knew we had at the place of recording. The ‘Creatures Of The Night’ storyline we basically just gave the animation team the concept, which was us entering a spooky town, being hunted by werewolves and slowly dying off one by one. The amazing animation students at RMIT did the rest!
What can you tell us about the artwork of the album?
Atli – I had an idea for what I wanted the artwork to look like. So I started searching online for an artist who could bring that vision to life and James did an amazing job.
Are you planning any live shows? What about the pandemic that’s still spreading?
Ingi – We have a date reserved in Iceland for one release gig but we haven’t planned anything into the future, especially outside of Iceland, since booking flights is really expensive for a band and would be a big financial hit if we would have to cancel the gig.
I know it’s too early, but have you considered a new album yet?
Ingi – We’re working on some new songs at least, and the next album is always in our minds!
Ok, thanks for your time, the last words are for you to the readers of Heavymetalwebzine.it
Ingi – Go check out our album, if you like power metal. We’re not reinventing the wheel but hopefully we cano ffer you some fifty-one minutes of good time. If you absolutely hate it, just spam our comment sections on YouTube about how we steal from Iron Maiden! Either way, we’re happy!
