Anyway… Yesterday (a few hours before the announcement), I discussed with people (pretty much anyone who would listen) which bands I would like to play at Download this year. Once I’d finished it was helpfully pointed out that the festival was called Download and not LouFest. I must admit that the idea of LouFest is very appealing… so I started to think about who would play at LouFest… and this is what I came up with…

(Judging by this list, it may have to be several days long! …and this list isn’t really in order… although GN’R would probably be headlining)

Guns N’ Roses – Well, GN’R had to be there really, didn’t they? Since this is MY festival I get to pick which line-up of GN’R plays (it’s nice to play God at times)… Perhaps surprisingly, I’d like to see the current line-up. The YouTube videos and the bootlegs of the shows I’ve seen from Asia and Canada (and the surprise shows in New York) look and sound AMAZING! I’d have to be an idiot to not want to witness that firsthand! Also, since this would be MY festival, I’d like to suggest one or two songs for their set list – “Prostitute”, “This I Love”, “I.R.S”, “Estranged”, “Coma”, “Back Off Bitch”, “My Michelle”, “You’re Crazy”, “Shackler’s Revenge”, “Better”, “There Was a Time”, “Scraped”, “Madagascar”, “Street of Dreams”… well, you get the idea…

Black Ritual – There’s a chance that not everyone reading this will know who Black Ritual are. Well, I’ll bring you up to speed… they’re awesome! “1000 Yard Stare” was a crazily superb album and I’m really looking forward to the follow up. I’d be over the moon if they played “War Within”, “Terrified”, “These Pills” and “Below Zero”.

Lamb of God – Here’s another band that HAD to be there. Astoundingly good both live and on CD, it would be stupid not to include them on the bill. Songs I’d like to hear: “Reclamation”, “A Devil in God’s Country”, “Bootscraper”, “Now You’ve Got Something to Die For”, “Grace”, “Walk With Me in Hell”, “Redneck”, “Choke Sermon”… etc…

Omnium Gatherum – I love Omnium Gatherum. Really, really love them! And yet, I’m still not sure how to describe them… perhaps melodeath with a progressive edge? Whatever they are, they’re bloody brilliant! I would list songs I’d want to hear… but anything will do …especially “Just Signs”.

Devilish Impressions – I’ve had a bit of an obsession with Devilish Impressions since I first heard “Plurima Mortis Imago”. As far as I’m concerned, that album was (and still is) a masterpiece! Also, they’re bloody good live!

Vesperian Sorrow – Lou likes Vesperian Sorrow. A lot. The band can do no wrong!

Winterthrall – An awesome band that’s not afraid to work in different styles. I don’t care what they played so long as they did play! But, if they were up for taking requests, “Autumn Caskets” wouldn’t go amiss

Enfold Darkness – I’ve got so into this band recently. They are AMAZING!

Michael Monroe – Singer from Hanoi Rocks and solo stuff. Damn good… and he could always do a duet with Axl for “Dead, Jail or Rock ‘n’ Roll”.

Hate Ammo – Brilliant band! I can’t wait for their album to be released on CD (in the meantime you can listen to tracks on their MySpace). Definitely more than worthy of a spot here!

December Flower – This is a band that I discovered through the wonders of MySpace. Damn good.

Ozzy Osbourne – No explanation needed.

Sebastian Bach – I’ve really got into his “Angel Down” album recently (it’s amazingly good – if you haven’t listened to it yet, you should). A couple of duets with Axl would go down rather well too.

Tension Head – Another ‘MySpace’ band with a great sound! I’d love to hear “The Bear” and “Don’t Worry” live!

Metallica – I never used to be that into Metallica… but “Death Magnetic” changed all of that.

Finntroll – If you have not witnessed the majesty of Finntroll (either on album or live), then you have missed out.

Five Finger Death Punch – 5FDP are amazing live! I have to admit that I haven’t got into “War is the Answer” as much as “The Way of the Fist”, but if they played LouFest it would give them the opportunity to ‘sell’ those songs to me… as I’m sure they’ve all lost a lot of sleep over the fact that I didn’t like that album quite as much… That seems likely.

Aerosmith – Again, no explanation needed. However, Steven Tyler would HAVE to be there!

Thunder – I’d make Thunder reform for LouFest… If I smiled sweetly I’m sure they’d say ‘yes’.

Motorhead – No reason needed.

Alice Cooper – He’s a legend. He must play.

Meat Loaf – The first album I ever bought (on cassette!) was Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell” when I was 9. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Autumnal Reaper – Autumnal Reaper are one of those bands that I’d been meaning to listen to for ages… I recently got their latest album and was blown away.

Stigma – Love, love, love these guys! Can’t wait to hear the new stuff!

Crionics – Quazarre (Devilish Impressions) might find himself getting a bit tired, but Lou likes Crionics.

The Defiled – They’re bat-shit crazy, but in a truly wonderful way. And, well, they rock. So there.

Megadeth – It had to be done

Cor Scorpii – Listen to “Monument”. I don’t need to say anymore than that.

Bon Jovi – I know, I know… Jovi. I’ve lost interest in them for the past few albums, but if they played LouFest I would insist that they only play stuff from “New Jersey”, “Slippery When Wet”, “These Days” and “Keep The Faith”. I’m in charge, so I get to do things like that.

Terrorvision – Tequila, it makes me happy…

Skunk Anansie – Do I really need a reason? They’re brilliant!

Slipknot – I’m not a mega-fan of Slipknot, but I do like a lot of their stuff… and I’d love to see ‘em live… so that’s why they’re on the list!

Danko Jones – They recently toured Canada with Guns N’ Roses and Sebastian Bach and I read quite a few good things about them in relation to that tour… so I decided to check them out… and they rocked.

Sixx A.M. – DJ Ashba’s gonna be a bit busy, but I’ve really got into Sixx A.M.’s album.

A Road Eternal – A brutally awesome band. Everyone should worship them… Loucifer has spoken.

My Undoing – Another band from the same part of the world as Black Ritual and A Road Eternal. I think there’s something in the water there…

Buckcherry – They were fantastic at Sonisphere last year. I’m sure they’d be equally fantastic at LouFest.

Black Label Society – Zakk fuckin’ Wylde. I’ll say no more.

Arch Enemy – Brilliant vocals, brilliant guitar work… brilliantness…

Machine Men – Fantastic band… if you have not checked them out yet, you should do so… now!

Edguy – Great band! And, I want them to play “Trinidad”.

Balfor – Astounding Barbaric Black Metal.

Black Lotus – I’d imagine Black Lotus would be cool to chill out to.

Cancer Bats – Recently got into these guys – gotta catch ‘em live!

Ok… I gotta admit… I’m getting a bit tired of writing explanations now… so I’m just gonna give you a nice list!

Ironside
Swingshot
Destruction
Thin Lizzy *
Egypt Central
Winds of Plague
Ektomorf
Fragments of Unbecoming
H.I.M
Hell Within
Hexagram
I.C.O.N
Ignominious Incarceration
Nervecell
Powerwolf
Reverend Kill
Rumpelstiltskin Grinder
Secrets She Kept
Secrets of the Moon
Sammath
Slowtorch
Thirty 2 Life
Corrupted Truth
Queen *
Pantera *
Soilwork
Stemm
Stuka Squadron
Brother Grey
The Foreshadowing
Twisted Sister
Ugly Kid Joe
Extreme O.D.
Bite The Kerb
Sons of Beaches

…and that’s enough for now… perhaps…
(* I’m using my powers to bring people back from the dead for these ones)

I wish this was real

I’ve provided links where it was possible to do so… but where I haven’t, Google (or your prefered Search Engine) is your friend!

So… any thoughts on this? Wanna post your own Fantasy Festival line-up? Drop us a comment

If you’ve ever taken the time to visit Thirty 2 Life’s MySpace and/or Reverbnation pages and downloaded the free tracks there, you may already have some idea of what to expect from the band – Straight up metal with a dark edge. Perfect for any occasion!

The CD kicks off with “Raise Your Flag” – a hard-htting slab of metal with some fantastic lyrics. I mentioned in an recent interview with Michael from the band that some of these lyrics would work marvellously well on a t-shirt. Check them out: “Raise you flag / surrender / now your fight is over / on your lips the kiss of death”.

“Today, Tonight, The End” – The guitar tone during the intro to this track is beautiful – I seriously could listen to it all day… and the guitar solo just puts a massive smile on my face every time I listen to it. The lyrics are a little dark, but – for me – that’s all part of the T2L experience.

“Got One in the Chamber” – This is a great song to listen to late at night, in the dark, on your own. It’s perfect for when you just want to sit back and contemplate life, the universe and everything.

“The Silence Sings” – This is my favourite track on this album (or is it an EP? Or a mini-album? I don’t know…). The song itself is quite emotional, but it’s amazingly powerful. Have a listen and you should see what I mean. There’s not a single thing that I’d change about it – the tempo, the vocals, the guitar are all spot on!

“The Day We Dread” – A brilliant classic sounding track. It’s really got that Sentenced vibe going on, but with a twist.

“Despise Me” closes the CD. The riff in this one is awesomely heavy! This is the kind of track where I wish I knew all of the lyrics so that I could sing along at the top of my voice. However, I believe that my neighbours are pleased that I don’t know the words… I don’t think they appreciate my vocal skills!

All in all, I really like this CD (as you can probably tell)… What can I possibly give it except for a big, fat 10 out of 10?!

myspace.com/thirty2lifeband

Thirty 2 Life

Lou: Hi guys, thank you for agreeing to answer my questions again! It’s been a while since the last interview, so I’m sure we’ve got plenty to talk about. Anyway, let’s start things off nice and easy – how are you doing today?

Michael: We’re doing well. It’s nice and sunny and 60 degress here, a bit odd for January but I’m not gonna complain.

Lou: “Got One In The Chamber” is now available and I’ve been listening to it quite a bit. You’ve still got that Sentenced vibe happening, but you seem to also have come into your own sound a bit more now. Do you feel this is the case?

Michael: I’m so glad the “Got One In The Chamber” cd was finally released. It was a long time coming. We started recording songs for it in 2007, then Andy decided he was leaving the band. He had written and was doing vocals on half of the songs we were gonna put on the cd, so when he left we didn’t have enough songs.
So Brian joined us and I got busy writing songs. On Feb. 8, 2008 my cousin Billy died, the next day Daniel’s dad died. I was close to Billy, he was one of my best friends, a metalhead and one badass guitarist. Daniel was extremely close to his dad, so we spent the rest of that year battling depression. The sadness that we were feeling comes across on the cd. It was a rough year, but we slowly got the songs written and recorded. In early 2009 we did the drum tracks to 2 more songs, then we were planning on finishing those, calling the cd done and putting it out. But, as you know, in April 2009 Daniel died. Daniel and I had been working on mixing the songs and he had taken the hard drive with all of our recordings on it to his house to work on his drum tracks. When he died the hard drive was in his room and we had no idea when we would be able to get it and finish mixing. I had copies of the songs here, so we just tried to polish those up the best that we could.
Maybe one day we will be able to get that hard drive and get better mixes on some of those songs, possibly do a “re-release”. But for now the cd is out and we’re looking forward to moving on and working on the next one. Yes, I would agree with you about the “Sentenced” vibe. The song “The Day We Dread” sounds like it could have been one of their’s, but the rest of the songs on the cd don’t sound too much like them. Some of our newer material moves even farther away from the “Sentenced” influence.

Lou: “The Silence Sings” is a hell of a song. Would you be able to tell us anything about the lyrics to it at all?

Michael: “The Silence Sings”…a sad song, but a good song. When I write lyrics I’ll start with a line or a couple of words, then build the song around them. On this song I started with “‘Neath the evening sun” and built on the theme of night, quiet and loneliness. So the song ended up being about someone who is feeling lonely and depressed, they keep how they’re feeling a secret from their friends and family and decide to end it. My favorite line in this song is “the truth’s more painful in the blinding light of day”.

Lou: What, or who, inspires you?

Michael: Music inspires me. If I’m having trouble writing a song, I’ll put it away and listen to a lot of different music for a couple of days. Also, watching a badass guitarist live or on DVD always makes me wanna pick up my guitar.

Lou: How do you achieve your sound? What tips would you give to a would-be guitarist trying to play along with your CD?

Michael: Our sound is based on guitars with lots of gain and low end, and we usually have a keyboard in there somewhere. Actually our stuff is pretty simple, shouldn’t be too hard to figure out and play along with. So my tip would be the tuning, it’s one half step down from standard.

Lou: What has the reaction from the press and from your fans been like about the new CD?

Michael: The only press we’ve done regarding the “Got One In The Chamber” cd was with The ASU Herald. To be honest, most people around here are probably sick of us and wish we’d hang it up. LOL! We used to get alot of press and all kinds of radio play around here, but that’s kinda went away the last couple of years. But hell, that stuff don’t matter. What matters is the people getting our cd’s and digging the music. We’ve had a good response about the new cd. Some people like “Raise Your Flag”, others like “The Day We Dread” and “The Silence Sings”. Those are the three songs we hear about the most. But we did have one guy tell us that “Despise Me” made him wanna punch somebody.

Lou: Do you have any plans to create any kind of promotional video for any of the tracks on “Got One In The Chamber”?

Michael: You know, we were actually planning on making a video for one of the songs. But, that was before Daniels death. He would’ve been the one to do that, since he was our computer guru. We’ll probably try it one of these days.

Lou: Have you got any gigs coming up?

Michael: Hopefully 2010 will be a busy year for us. So far we’ve got these upcoming shows:
Feb. 5 The Dead Horse Saloon in San Angelo, TX
Feb. 12 Metal in The Park in Paragould, AR
March 20 The Dungeon in Bono, AR
Also, the 3rd annual Billyfest will be in June. It’s a memorial concert honoring my cousin Billy. One night is all local bands and one night is all out of town bands.
Last years proceeds went to St. Judes Childrens Hospital and to the family of Daniel Frederick.

Lou: How would you describe a T2L show?

Michael: If we are playing locally, people know us and know the older songs. We’ll start the set with some newer stuff then kick into “Gagged and Bound”.
That usually gets them fired up. And of course there’s always people screaming “Killing You” between songs. And we always play it last. If we’re playing out of town in front of a crowd that’s never heard us, that’s a little tougher. We always try to play what we think are our best songs and win them over with musicianship and good songs.

Lou: You mentioned in the previous interview that you used to have some T2L t-shirts, but had run out of them. Would you consider getting some more printed? I think that one with some of the lyrics from “Raise Your Flag” would be awesome. ‘Raise your flag / surrender / now your fight is over / on your lips the kiss of death” (sorry if I got the words wrong there!)

Michael: Our ReverbNation store has a shirt that has the cover of our “Powered By Pain” cd on it. We will probably have some printed ourselves this year, we’ve been talking about it and discussing different ideas. One idea is similar to yours, but with the lyrics to “I Dreamed Of Killing You” on the back.

Lou: Changing the subject ever-so-slightly… I don’t know if you are aware of it, but here in England the Battle for the Christmas Number 1 slot in the charts was kinda unique – with Rage Against The Machine going up against some X Factor bloke (X Factor is a reality TV show thing)… and awesomely, RATM won. The campaign behind them was purely Internet based, with various groups being set up on Facebook, and loads of people (obviously) downloaded the song from iTunes and Amazon so that it counted towards the chart… So, I have a couple of questions that are kinda related to that… The first one is that should the occasion ever arise when your legions of fans (because there WILL be legions) decide to get one of your songs to Number 1 in the charts, which song out of your current discography would you like them to pick?

Michael: Should there ever be a “legion” of fans, I guess the song would be “Gagged and Bound”. Judging by the plays and downloads online, that song is our most popular by far.

Lou: Do you think that the mainstream charts even matter any more? Aside from RATM at Christmas, the charts in England aren’t exactly looking healthy for anyone who’s into Rock and Metal. Is this the case in the US?

Michael: The mainstream charts don’t matter to us, that’s for damn sure. I don’t keep up with the charts or listen to the radio that much, but sometimes on a Saturday morning I’ll have my tv on VH1 and watch their countdown. If that’s the stuff that’s on the mainstream charts, then yes, they’re in sad shape.

Lou: Thirty 2 Life has, as far as I’ve been aware, always embraced the Internet. I mean, a lot of your tracks are available for fans to download for free from your Reverbnation page and we touched upon this briefly in your last interview with Loucifer Speaks. Would you ever be interested in doing something like the RATM thing? Not necessarily to get a number 1, but to spread the word about Thirty 2 Life that little bit further? If you were ever up for this, I’d SO be there to help promote you! Just say the word!

Michael: Hell yes, we’d be interested in doing something like that. If we could get enough people excited about us to spread the word and expose more people to our music that would be great.

Lou: What’s coming up for T2L in 2010?

Michael: Hopefully 2010 will be a good year for us. We’re looking forward to getting back to traveling and getting to work recording a new cd.
There are three songs in our set that we never got to record with Daniel and they are: “The Chill Of February”-which is like a letter written to my cousin Billy(RIP),
“Dead And Gone”-one of our older songs that we were playing when Andy was still in the band, “Fingerprints”-a song about violent sex. We’ve been working with Josh(the new drummer) since May 2009. While he’s been getting familiar with our older material we’ve also been working on these new songs: “The Whirlwind”, “Tripwire”, “Shadows”, “Lying On Your Deth Bed”-an instrumental which is a nod to a thrash metal band Daniel and I played in called Deth Bed. I’m excited about getting these songs recorded and can’t wait for people to hear them. It’s a new year and a new beginning for us in a way, so we’re gonna move on, leave the sadness behind us and keep cranking out music.