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VICIOUS RUMORS – Friends With Style
Fresh off a tour, a serious shoulder injury, and above all, a new album — The Devil’s Asylum — here we are with Geoff Thorpe, guitarist, songwriter and founder of Vicious Rumors.
In this conversation, he tells us about the process that led to the band’s latest album, the various line-up changes in recent years, and the dynamics that emerge in a band with over 40 years career — without holding back a few anecdotes from the golden days.
Let’s get straight to the point!
When I first listened to the new album, I was kind of surprised by many facets. First of all, it’s more like a mid-tempo album and it’s strange, ‘cause I’m used to the fast Vicious Rumors stuff and this took me by surprise!
I guess there’s “Bloodbath”, “In Blood We Trust”, the title track and that’s almost it…
The end of the album is faster… “Better Than Me” and “The Devil’s Asylum” are fast enough!
You know, I wasn’t looking for fast or slow, I was just trying to capture a powerful riff and a powerful feeling like in “Dogs Of War”, “Butcher’s Block”, “Abusement Park”…
That’s my favorite!
You know that’s me singing on that one?! And we just made a video which will be released later! Anyway I was just going for song-oriented stuff, songs that would stick with people rather than ultra-speed stuff and this made me want to make sure on the next record to have at least four speed metal tracks because sometimes I miss it too!
I guess so, because when I think of Vicious Rumors the association with speed is automatic!
The current road is more old school VR compared to our last two studio albums, many people like this, and I tend to agree with that because our first album got re-released by our label so we toured around that and that got us into that kind of musical mood. I feel pretty free when I write and I always want a Vicious Rumors sound and I think we did; I noticed that some successful bands were simplifying their sound and I thought tat maybe if I just simplify and make it a little more “meat-potatoes” and instantly sink your teeth into, maybe I could reach more people. And now we are number two in the NACC college radio billboard along with Helloween and Bruce Dickinson and this is awesome! I really hope that people can be patient and wait for me to recover and then start to kick ass again since we had to postpone thirty dates of the US tour after my injury. We reached 130.000 views for our last video in just two months and there’s a big buzz around Vicious Rumors and we have a good chemistry with the new guys and the band is gonna get even better live.
When I saw you in Como in May you were already tight!
That was a fun show and it is always an honor for us to play in Italy! Chalice (singer, ndr) and Denver (guitarist, ndr) are really great guys and Larry (Howe, drummer, ndr) and I had to face reality, we are in our late 60’s and who knows how long we’re gonna be able to do this so it is really important to do it with people we like and we care about, so we are really excited to hit the road with the guys next year!
How important is friendship in a band, and especially in a band like Vicious Rumors?
Most people don’t know how hard it is to be in a band, the sacrifices you have to make to make it happen, from the time you take working on your music to the time you spend getting the band together, how hard it is on the road, etc. I still enjoy all of that, but I want to do it with people I care about and enjoy being around and now I have this! Unfortunately things went sour with our last singer and guitarist and that was the reason why Larry left the band for about a month and right after we parted ways Larry called me to get things back.
I was happy about it because we had our ups and downs, we went to hell and back together and are like blood brothers so we always work it out.
So we can’t wait to be on the road and get even tighter than we are!
About the new guys: many bands that have thirty or forty years of career welcome young musicians. I always wondered: how many of those young artists were already fans of the band they were joining?
That’s a good question; sometimes it happens that they are fans of the bands. In our case Chalice was definitely a fan of Vicious Rumors, he reached out to me at a time where I wasn’t even looking for a singer, he expressed his love for VR and said that if I ever needed a singer he would have loved to join. I don’t think Denver was a huge fan before 2023 when his band toured with us in Texas and we made an instant friendship and when I first heard him I thought he was a great player, so we became friends and fans of each other.
Chemistry between band members can’t be built from zero. And sometimes you can have musicians that are not technically perfect, but create an awesome chemistry that is worth a thousand times more than mere music ability.
I agree with you, you don’t build it from nothing, so the relationship must be there in the first place; think about Motley Crue, none of them were real virtuoso musicians but they had this chemistry that took them where they are, so chemistry is either there and undeniable or it isn’t and to me is the most important thing in a band.
The audience can notice lack of chemistry, that’s not good; and if you are the first one not into what you are doing, how could it be possible for me to enjoy the show?
No doubt about that. It’s funny because we are spread out on different continents, so basically we do hotel room rehearsals and for this reason, before the next tour, we want to have proper rehearsals!
Back to the album, I noticed that in some bridges, especially in “Abusement Park” and “Wrong Side Of Love”, you use chords that were your trademark in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Is this a direct effect of playing the old songs live?
Absolutely. We toured playing older songs and seeing the reaction made me want to bring back some old VR harmonies. It’s never gonna be like before and it shouldn’t be, so i feel good about this. And the melody is always the main thing, even more than lyrics, that’s what makes a song stand out. I hope I can continue to find good melodies, especially when I have riff-driven songs, because at this point the riff is not just a cool riff, it serves the melody.
When do you decide that a melody is good and goes with the song? Let’s take “Bloodbath” as an example: how many times did you modify it?
Not that many! When I came up with that it felt good right away and the interesting thing about this album is that this was the fastest we made a record since Digital Dictator (1988, ndr) that was forced to be made fast because they told us “you have a 100 hours to record” and this was broken into ten days; in this case I was more under the gun for the writing because at the same time I had to rebuild the band and you gotta have the right people and the right songs, and all happened very fast and that melody on Bloodbath was one of the first that came out.
Have you ever written an arrangement just to realize that you have already used it in another song?
Yes, it happens sometimes, but sometimes I just let myself get away with that because after forty-five yeas of Vicious Rumors I can call it a “style”.
Where is the line between “style” and “I’m too lazy to write something new”?
[Ride, N.d.R.] There’s definitely stuff that I wrote that I found too similar to other stuff so I either re-wrote it or tossed it. It’s funny, I don’t feel like a guy who has an unlimited supply of musical ideas; I’m in my rock/metal realms and I’m kind of okay with “similar” because I established this sort of melodic-speed metal sound a long time ago and I think VR one of the few bands in the Bay Area that lasted this long and has this variety of sounds; we’ve done everything from ballads to speed metal, to mid-tempo, to atmospheric instrumentals and I feel we have a wide variety to pick from, but it happened that I had to redo stuff and that is why I also put it down for a little while, I’m not a guy that’s constantly writing and some times it feels better than others.
Did you write everything on the album?
Basically yes! Chalice and Denver came to the band after many songs were done; maybe on the next album they will contribute to the songwriting. I gave them freedom to interpret things. When I give the demos to the other guys I do it to present the song and because all of them are very good at what they do; take Robin: he is a solid player, he puts the riffs in the right places and I love how he plays overall, he doesn’t overdo things, he gets into the groove leaving the right space for the guitars and the drums. He can take my bass on the demos to the next level. They all take the songs and transform them from the dome to album-quality songs.
When I think about bands with one or two original members left and then new guys, sometimes I got the impression that the new guys are “just players”, but it’s nice to know you have respect for the other musicians, leaving them play with their own style and letting them suggest their ideas.
From the beginning to now I feel like I have a very good eye for talent. I don’t get talented people to hold them back, I get talented people to accelerate music and bring and create magic for Vicious Rumors, and I want people to shine and give them room to shine. When I sent the guys the demos everyone expected me to go “I really love this but could you try something else on this part or another version?”, and this happened in the past, but on this record Robin sent me the bass tracks and I didn’t ask him to redo one thing, not one. Same thing with Denver Cooper, I loved every single solo he did. Larry knocked out 11 songs in 15 hours total! Chalice spent in week in California, we worked very well together, and I gave him room to use his creativity. So that’s what I meant, it came together so easily and I loved the way it felt, loved the magic, so it was an exciting process! We knew we had something special and the show went so well that we enjoyed this incredible experience.
And since you mentioned live shows, I have one last question: who decides the setlist and how does it come together?
You know, I’ll usually put something together with like a flow because I know how Larry likes to do it. Larry doesn’t like to do a bunch of fast songs in a row. You know, he likes to pace it. So I’m aware of the way he likes to pace a set. And so I’ll usually like throw it out there, for example Chalice really wanted to open with On The Edge and go into Abandoned first two songs, and I was like “okay, that sounds awesome!”. It’s the same kind of things where I lead the charge and if nobody has any other suggestion we do it the way I had it. Like I said, I am open minded and we have a good chemistry and we use it. And the only reason I would reject something is if it just didn’t truly make sense to me and they also respect this from me, but with this lineup everything has gone smoothly.
Geoff, thank you very much for your time and for all the interesting things you told me about the band! I hope to see you on the road again very soon!
Absolutely! Thank you, this was fun!
And, of course I hope you recover soon from your injury.
Thank you man, and thank you Heavy Metal Webzine! See you on the road with Vicious Rumors!
