STARKILL was formed at the tail end of 2008 by Parker
Jameson, Spencer Weidner and Charlie Federici. The band makes no qualms about
wearing their influences on their sleeves. They combine what they love —
melodic death metal, shredding guitars, blasting drum beats and the epic sounds
of modern film scores — and make some of the most promising metal music heard
this side of the Atlantic in years. The main ringer leader of these guys,
Parker Jameson, lead guitarist, vocals, keyboards, orchestral programmer, took some
time to talk about the debut as well as other plans these guys have gotten
lined-up!
1. Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Starkill, and
how long the band has been together.
Parker: My name is Parker Jameson I am the lead guitar
player and singer for Starkill, I write a majority of the songs and I also do a
lot of the instrumental keyboarding stuff. Me and the drummer and the other
guitar player have been playing music together for 4 and a half years now,
while being in other projects as of December 2012 before getting signed onto
Century Media Records.
2. How did you guys come up with your band name?
Parker: After going through about 8 million of them having 3
people who don't sync 100% we want something different we didn't want the
aspects of a typical black metal or death metal band, we do use a lot of black,
death, and power metal aspects, but what we wanted to do was, we wanted to mix
it up and settled on something pretty good.
3. You guys are signed with Century Media Records, how did
you get signed with them and are you happy with the results?
Parker: We had been touring on our past name having had an
EP out, we just had a growing online presents, two music videos, and other
interviews, and they had picked up on that and then in late 2011 we received a
phone call and emails then put it altogether with them come December 2012. They
are one of our dream labels and we're definitely happy with them, some of our
biggest influences have been on their label so it's been pretty cool.
4. What bands have influenced your band and its sound?
Parker: For the earlier stages of these songs a lot of them are
a couple of years old, the earlier Children of Bodom, Dimmu Borgir, Nightwish,
Amon Amarth one of their live DVDs really amazed us so a lot of that stuff really.
5. What lyrical theme do you guys use in your music? What
message do you want to send?
Parker: Most of our songs are stories within themselves,
it's not a concept album, and I really don't like those self boosting lyrics
it's all about battles and killing people, it's like mixing The Lord of the
Rings, or epic movies like that to a musical element. When listening to the
lyrics we wanted it to be that cinema effect, so the lyrics themselves, there's
mythology, satanic, whatever the song calls for really.
6. What inspired the Fires Of Life title?
Parker: When we
entered the studio we had 9 out of the 10 songs written and all of the lyrics
were done except for Fires Of Life which didn't have a title of the lyrics for
it. So most of the songs has that epic peek of power, courage, perfection, so
the title has to have that climax force, we thought that would work. We're not
serious about the meanings of the lyrics, we do take some of them seriously but
there are means to happen behind the vocals on a record.
7. Who produced Fires Of Life and what was it like working
with them?
Parker: I was the main producer and Spencer and Charlie were
there on the bulk of it. Not to sound self absorbed but we knew what we wanted
on the record, I know a lot of bands say this, but we had these songs for a
while and sat back and wanted it to be us, we didn't want the sound to be
different, we wanted to do it all ourselves and from what people have said the feedback
has been great.
8. Who did the cover art for Fires Of Life and how much
input did you have on it?
Parker: Joshua Belanger he's an artist whose' done tees and
poster art and checked out his style, he had a comic book flare going on, so we
had a few email exchanges, explaining what we wanted, and we wanted a guy with
long hair, on top of a mountain with a sword sucking in all of the power of the
universe so he got it immediately. Also look at every Amon Amarth album it has
some epic graphic on it, so that's what we wanted to do because our styles and
lyrics are so similar.
9. What are your expectations for the CD?
Parker: Mainly to propel us as a band, just go out and tour,
we don't know what to expect. Our first appearance and since we're a younger
band we just wanted to get out there and see what happens, just go out there
and tour that's really all we want to do right now.
10. What can the fans expect to see from you in the future?
Parker: Touring, touring, touring, working on our second
album, writing new material, release another music video, just wanting to get
out on the road and tour, if we could play 365 days in the year we would so do
it. So just tour, tour, tour!
11. Anything else you'd like to say to your fans?
Parker: Just catch us on tour, we're pretty chill we like to
talk with everyone after the shows and keep frequent updates on the social
networks and stuff so come check us out!
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