By David Lee Wilson So you have been schooled intensivly on the infinite variables of BLACK SABBATH and are conversant with everything else from "Sgt. Peppers" to SLAYER? You have paid your dues in the backwoods and brick streets of New England as second, third and sometimes even first billed act? You have developed a style that is comparable to MONSTER MAGNET, CROWBAR, NEBULA and countless others but is still distinguishably your own? You have a new; your first, record full of riffs and beats powerful enough to open the gates of hell but still badass enough to slam it shut if you had a change of heart? Well then, you must be WARHORSE and that is definitely a good thing to be especially now that you will be touring the country with ELECTRIC WIZARD showing everyone everywhere just how to do this doom/stoner Metal thing. Yes, the album, "AS HEAVEN TURNS TO ASH," will be played in full with enough time left for a cover or two in most clubs and the prospect has us all thanking the gods for allowing real rock another chance at dominance. We all know that it will be bands like you, the soon to be mighty WARHORSE, that will lead the way and that by the time you have made your first run across America the word will have spread making all those who missed you scream for your return. For all of this, the music, the hope, the joyous pain from bobbing our heads, we thank you and offer this vow, play heavy and we will come! The 'HORSE broke gallop long enough to let its rider, bassist/vocalist Jerry Orne, down from his mount to speak with a new, but deeply dedicated fan, David Lee, exclusively for BALLBUSTER. David Lee:: Hey, I was sitting here listening to your record and it inspired me to pull out another disc by a different band called WARHORSE. Jerry Orne: Oh, the band from England? David Lee:: Yeah. Jerry Orne: Yeah, we didn't find out about that until after the fact. David Lee:: Well, I think that you would have had to be really into obscure DEEP PURPLE related bands to have noticed them. Jerry Orne: Yeah, they were kind of like DEEP PURPLE-like or something? David Lee:: Yeah, they had a couple of records in the early seventies and DEEP PURPLE's origional bassist was the main guy in the band. They were actually pretty good, if you like that kind of stuff. Jerry Orne: Yeah? To be honest I have never heard it. People have commented on it since but I am not too worried about it. David Lee:: Naw, two different things totally. WARHORSE -U.S., pretty nifty album you guys got here. Jerry Orne: I am glad that you like it. David Lee:: You all sound like a bunch of happy fellows.(laughs) Jerry Orne: Yeah!(laughs) David Lee:: It sounds like you have a pretty good grasp on the "VOL. 4" BLACK SABBATH sound? Jerry Orne: Yeah, I listened to the early SABBATH stuff and loved it but then again I was listening to IRON MAIDEN in the eighties and loving that to. I also like the "Dio-SABBATH" which was very Metal and I dug that too. David Lee:: Yeah, you can hear all of that too but I ask mostly because the Bio was intentionally vague about what you all did before WARHORSE so I have to dig at it to see how you came up with your sound. This is your first record, isn't it? Jerry Orne: Yeah, it is our first full length. We have got a seven inch and a twelve inch EP kicking around and then we have a five song demo too from '96 but we are treating this like it was our first record. It was our first conscience effort to make a full album of music. David Lee:: Was much of that early material re-used for this album? Jerry Orne: No, this album is all new stuff from top to bottom. David Lee:: When the three of you were writing for this album were you content to go along with the established sound for the band or did you try and change it up a bit for your first full length? Jerry Orne: Yeah. Well, you were asking what we were doing before and we were all in death metal bands. The three of us would play together in the same scene and at the same clubs but in different bands. Eventually Todd and I wound up in the same Death Metal band together in '92 or '93 and though we were all into Death Metal we were all into the heavier end of it, like AUTOPSY and INCANTATION, that end of it. We were all into SABBATH and Todd was the first one to play SLEEP for me and when all of our other bands fell apart we decided that we wanted to get something going in a more SABBATH like direction. David Lee:: The scene for this kind of music has blossomed in the last two or three years but I would imagine that you probably noticed something starting to happen even back in '92 when you put WARHORSE together? Jerry Orne: To be honest, when we first got together we were just looking to do SABBATH and CROWBAR kind of stuff and then we did the first demo when we were listening to EYE HATE GOD and MY DYING BRIDE and that kind of stuff but I had never really heard of many of the newer bands that are doing this. After we did the demo people would come to us and say, "You guys are pretty good, you should check out ELECTRIC WIZARD" and we were like, "Who is that?" The next thing you know we are getting into tape trading and finding out about all these awesome bands. To discover all of that, I mean, finding other guys who were tired of playing Death Metal but still loved BLACK SABBATH and DEEP PURPLE and Jimi Hendrix, it was real cool to get introduced to that whole scene. David Lee:: Now, do you know about this ELECTRIC WIZARD tour, will it really be over when they have done this North American thing? Jerry Orne: As far as them breaking up? That is news to me. I certainly hope not. David Lee:: Yeah, they are just starting to happen here and it would be a shame. It is funny how underground bands still manage to have quite a bit of information on the internet about them albeit too often false. Kind of reminds me of the old days before the internet and all you had was the one really tuned in guy at school who got Kerrang so he could be the knowledge source on all these European bands. Jerry Orne: Yeah, I know. I think that whole Rock and Roll mystic has lost its value because there is too much information. It was like, and I am sure you were the same way, but coming up through the years you would hear all the LED ZEPPELIN stories and stuff like that but it was all super hush-hush and you talked about it in the boys room but now it is all over VH1. They even have shit like the color of Vanilla Ice's underwear, like somebody gives a shit!(laughs) David Lee:: Time is a fucking killer but for all the Rock stars that should have hung it up long ago there are guys like Ronnie James Dio who have done their thing for forty fuckin' years with no appreciable loss of quality. Technology seems to spread light on so much that a DIO can be considered underground again and I dig that because now I can see him in a decent size club.(laughs) Jerry Orne: Yeah. David Lee:: It's a long time before you have to worry about such things though I suppose? Jerry Orne: Man, they are pushing us of the stage now!(laughs) I can't say that there will ever be a time to quit because I have thought about getting out of it and then I am right back in to it, I could never quit. David Lee:: It's a better gig than framing houses!(laughs) Jerry Orne: You know, I saw DIO a few months ago and he was great. When Ozzy and the rest of SABBATH came I stood in line for three hours to meet him in Boston and Ozzy didn't look too good but he still puts on a hell of a show. I remember seeing pictures of AC/DC when they were young getting oxygen backstage just because they give it their all so I don't know, as long as I can still do it I will do it! David Lee:: The fact that you have had some time to become experienced in the everyday life of a regular rock and roller, how do you think that has tempered the music? Jerry Orne: I think that all of it really influences and really shows but we don't set out to say " this song is going to sound like this." I mean, I was born in '71 so I was raised by all my Aunts and Uncles who were smokin' pot and listening to old David Bowie and Hendrix and Steve Miller and all that so I have been listening to music all along. You get a little older and then it is heavier and heavier, SABBATH and AC/DC, then the next thing you know someone gives you a JUDAS PRIEST record and from there you are hanging out with your friends listening to SLAYER so a little bit of everything has an effect and it is a similar story with the other guys in the band. We all draw on our experiences including the ones we have had in this band. That is where the dynamic and texture of this band comes from. David Lee:: That's great that you would have had such a wide variety of experiences with music because what happens a lot is kids will only listen to one thing and then start a band and strangely enough, it sounds like a poor copy of that band instead of something that is its own. Jerry Orne: Yeah, I know what you mean. I have had Aunts sit me down on the floor and listen to the BEATLES in full-blown stereo. I have had babysitters get stoned out of their mind and put on "AXIS BOLD AS LOVE." I didn't even know Pot was illegal 'till I was twelve!(laughs) I just thought it was like beer, it was just something that grownups did! David Lee:: Oh man, to have that innocence back again!(laughs) Jerry Orne: Yeah. David Lee:: Who writes the music, the lyrics, how does WARHORSE write a song? Jerry Orne: Well, it is pretty interesting because Mike, our drummer, actually plays guitar and Todd the guitar player also plays drums and I hack around on both guitar and drums so we just switch around a lot. Whoever gets to practice first just starts jamming on whatever and as the rest show up they jump in, it is different every time. You might have a song that Mike and Todd started on different instruments and then I come in and we all switch around. Maybe that is why it takes a while to get a song together!(laughs) But, I do like it like that. It is a little bit of a battle but the finished song usually has a lot going on in it. We don't just sit down at eight o'clock and have a song by ten, you know? A lot of times we will do a song live a dozen times and decide, "Hey, you know what, this sucks, lets change it." We just keep playing and tweaking and changing this and that until it is done. David Lee:: How long did it take to get from the point where you said, "OK, lets do a record" until the time you were ready to send it to the label? Jerry Orne: It is kind of hard to say because we didn't intend to write a "record" really. I hope this story isn't too long but the twelve-inch that we did was going to be a split twelve-inch at first with us and another band but the other band fell apart and we were left with a bunch of songs that we didn't know what to do with so we just kept playing thinking that we would just save it for the next demo. We didn't really have a plan as far as a record and then Greg at Southern Lord approached us and said he was interested so that is basically how that all happened. I would say about a year and a half or so is how long it took to actually make the whole record. When we were approached to do the full record we had about four songs that hadn't been released and then we took a couple of months to get some of the other songs together but the acoustic bits came together pretty quickly actually. I had an idea and Todd had an idea and a month later it was done. "Dusk," that was kind of like a one night kind of thing where Todd came down and said, "I got this" and I just followed him with a bass line and then Mike picked up an acoustic and said, "Cool, what if I do this over it?" and bam it was done. Some of it came together really quickly and some of it seemed to take forever. David Lee:: Southern Lord is a really cool label so you could have done much worse than to get involved with them? Jerry Orne: Oh yeah. He is great, he really is. He has done a great job and everything looks really professional and everything. That was really the thing that we all liked, he really had his act together and he didn't release crap. Though it is a small label it is totally pro. David Lee:: How does the cover artwork tie in with the record? I can't tell if it is a collage of some sort of overlapping images, what does it all mean?(laughs) Jerry Orne: Exactly!(laughs) Well, we wanted to make an album, not just a collection of songs so we had the songs kind of weave this tail so if you look through the booklet you have, "As heaven turns to ash. . ." and then it has "and the angels begin to weep" and then at the end it has " our blackened hearts and brittle bones rise soulless from the deep." That is kind of the beginning, middle and end to the story and that is why it is such a lush forest with so much going on with the nymphs and the women and I don't want to keep going on about it but you will figure it out if you look at it hard enough. There is so much life and mysticism on the front and then it is just post-apocalypse on the back, the final ultimate battle. David Lee:: This would have been extremely cool in a big gatefold vinyl release. Jerry Orne: It is on vinyl actually. David Lee:: No shit? Jerry Orne: Yeah, double vinyl. It is not a gatefold, that would have been too expensive but it is a double vinyl package. I love vinyl, I just got to have it. There is so much more soul to it. David Lee:: Have you begun working on material for other projects after this one yet? Jerry Orne: Yeah, we have some new stuff but we are not quite sure if we are going to release a full length quite yet or another ten-inch or what. We might just hold off for a while, nothing has been decided yet but we do have a few new songs that we are going to be playing on tour and we might be doing the occasional cover song here and there. As far as plans, we are touring with ELECTRIC WIZARD for the next five weeks and then we will see what happens. David Lee:: Is this like the perfect bill for you to be on now? Who would you feel most comfortable doing a tour with if you could pick anyone? Jerry Orne: Our dream gig? Hmm, that is a tough one. How about DEEP PURPLE, CATHEDRAL and BOLT THROWER?(laughs) That would be a cool festival! David Lee:: No doubt! OK then, I will see you there and we can rush the stage for DEEP PURPLE! Jerry Orne: Sounds good!(laughs) Copyright 2001, BallBuster, The Official Int'l Underground Hard Music Report