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InterviewsPale Divine, RAMSHEAD.ORG April 10, 2002 Visitors of the RamsHead site should by now know Pale Divine for their recent collaboration with Bobby Liebling on their debut album “Thunder Perfect Mind” (Game Two Records). The band covers “20 Buck Spin” (originally from the first Pentagram 1985 LP), with guest vocals by Bobby, and the CD also features the new song, “Dark Knight,” which has lyrics written and sung by Bobby. Pentafans are advised to check out Pale Divine’s CD --and not only because of the Liebling connection! The album is all around great! RamsHead.org is pleased to offer its first ‘real’ interview with Pale Divine's drummer Darin McCloskey, talking about the band, the music, and, of course, working with Bobby. - Darin, congratulations on the new CD. It’s great! Pentafans who are new to Pale Divine may be interested in knowing a few words about who you guys are, since when the band has been around, and where you’re from. From what I heard and read in a recent Psychedelic Fanzine interview, there is the odd similarity with Pentagram... many line-up changes and at present you’re just a twosome, no? No, actually that much has changed. Jim Corl [bass] is back on board once again and we’re really pleased with that. As far as a little background for those who aren’t familiar with us: we’re a three piece doom/metal band from Glen Mills, PA., formed in late 1995 by myself [Darin McCloskey, drums] and Greg Diener [guitar/vocals]. We released a demo in 1997 called “Crimson Tears” that did fairly well in terms of sales and exposure, thus putting us on the map so to speak. Since that time we parted ways with our original bassist Jay Purnell and went through a series of bass players until settling (FINALLY) with Jim Corl. - Your debut album, “Thunder Perfect Mind,” originally started out as a demo, even before you had a record contract. What were some of the musical directions you had in mind? Did you have any specific objectives of what the record as a whole was going be like? Tell us a few words, if you will, of the creative process of writing the music and making the record. Basically the most important thing to us really is that the songs stay with the listener long after they have finished listening to it. Whether it be from a memorable vocal line or cool riff, there has to be an element there to make the listener keep coming back to it. That’s the main thing we try to accomplish when writing songs, to compose something that’s ultimately going to make someone keep coming back to it time after time. As far as the making of “Thunder Perfect Mind,” there really wasn’t any kind of agenda other than to just record the songs we had written since we recorded the “Crimson Tears” demo. Once all the songs were recorded, we kept the ones we liked best, those being the eight originals (including the two instrumentals “Dream Flower” and “Gods, Monsters and Men”) as well as the two with Bobby. - What struck me most about the album are the abundance of riffs, variety in sounds, tempo changes, and so on, that in my opinion are more typical for traditional heavy metal (from power metal to thrash) but that are rather alien to most doom metal. Would you agree? How would you situate your music relative to the heavy metal and hard rock tradition? Well, our music I think is a combination of many influences coming together in a way that is hopefully unique to most people’s experience of 'doom' or 'traditional' heavy metal. After all, think about how monotonous things would be if every 'doom' metal band sounded exactly the same! Eventually someone has to come along and push the envelope a little further. I’m certainly not saying we’re breaking any new ground here musically speaking, because basically our music is essentially a melting pot of various styles. But sooner or later something has to happen creatively for any genre to continue to progress and stay musically relevant. As long as there are the basic defining elements within that genre to establish it, I think it’s safe to take the ball and run with it to some extent. Of course all this really depends upon how mindful you are of staying within those boundaries. In the case of “doom metal” I think there’s still a lot that can be accomplished. - The other thing that I really like about the album are the very bright guitar sounds (again not a typical aspect of doom) that combine with the driving, galloping beats and the deep vocals. I thought I heard some obvious influences, say Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, but also and a lot more of Ted Nugent, UFO (Michael Schenker era), Status Quo, Jeff Beck, NWOBHM bands, and much more. What are some of your influences in your music, bands and or genres? Well pretty much all the ones you just mentioned as well as Uriah Heep, Captain Beyond, Budgie, Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate... the list can go on and on. - Your musical influences obviously take us to the Pentagram connection. Since when do you know Pentagram’s music and what aspect of their music do you like most? I’d have to say the self-titled LP (rereleased on CD as “Relentless”), “Day of Reckoning” and “Be Forewarned” are timeless classics!! I would also have to cite the incredible guitar tone of Victor Griffin as well as the amazing voice of Bobby Liebling as the two main aspects of my admiration. I can’t think of any other band that came close to capturing the sound the Death Row era Pentagram did. It’s almost criminal that they weren’t more widely recognized for what they were doing during that time period. I also think that what Joe and Bobby have done together recently is amazing not only for the fact that it proves that music is indeed timeless, but also how far having a strong determination can take you. I mean when I listen to “Sub-Basement” it’s hard to believe that album was recorded by only two people!?!? Pentagram certainly aren’t ‘superstars’ the same way Metallica or say maybe Korn are, but as far as I’m concerned there’s a hell of a lot more integrity in those two individuals than 99.9% of any of the so-called ‘nu-metal’ crap that’s currently burning up the charts. - Your collaboration with Bobby on the album started with a 7” project. Could you say a few words how that happened and when? Quite simply we planned on doing a 7” for Game Two Records with our cover version of “20 Buck Spin” for the B-side. We had trouble settling on what track we wanted to use for the A-side since we were laying down tracks for our full-length CD and we wanted what we thought was the best material to be included on that. On the back burner we had some songs that we liked a lot but weren’t actually completed. I posed the idea to Mike at Game Two about asking Bobby if he might be interested in maybe taking one of our songs and contributing his own lyrics to it as the A-side, thereby making it sort of a Pentagram-themed project. Mike turned the idea over to Conan at Game Two who said “go for it!” and gave me Bobby’s phone number. I called Bobby up one night to ask him about the project and the rest is history. - When did you finally get together with Bobby and how and where did the recording take place? Was it a long and difficult process or was it a one-take-only affair? We arranged to have the recording take place closest to Bobby. I inquired about Chris Kozlowski since I was familiar with the work he had done for Spirit Caravan, Internal Void and others as well as having worked with Bobby before on the Captain Beyond and Blue Cheer tribute tracks. Chris agreed to do it and we arranged a time to pick Bobby up and head over to record the track. We had the music already recorded at a studio we used in Pennsylvania, so all we really had to do at Chris’s was record Bobby’s voice. Everything went real smooth. We were totally blown away with Bobby’s contribution and it was just such an overwhelming experience to hear his voice with our music... it was just an incredible experience! - From what I read in Psychedelic Fanzine, you spent quite some time with Bobby talking music in general. Could you tell us a few words of what you guys were babbling about? Mostly just talking about music, predominantly 70’s bands such as Stray, UFO, Toad... just to name a few. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the man is a walking encyclopedia of rock! To talk to Bobby about music would be like talking to Christ about religion... the man lives it! - Back to the band, what are your plans for the immediate and near future? Any shows we can look forward to? Any new recordings? Well, we’re currently writing new material and we’re planning on hopefully having about 4 or 5 new songs to demo by the end of the summer. We’ll be playing as many shows as we can now that we have a bass player. In fact, we just played with Internal Void and Countershaft a few weeks ago which was a lot of fun! We hope to have a new CD in the works soon. We want to keep the creative juices flowing and the momentum moving along as much as possible. We had some set backs in the past but things are looking pretty hopeful for us now so we can only hope they continue. We’ll certainly try our very best to keep Pale Divine alive for many years to come. - Thanks a lot for taking time to talk to us! Thank you for the great interview and keep up the great work with RamsHead.org! It’s about time someone had the good sense to honor the mighty PENTAGRAM on the internet!!! ...Check out RAMSHEAD.ORG Back to Pale Divine Home Back to Interviews |