Quit your job and play heavy metal! Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Greyhawk! Similar to my hometown of Chicago, Greyhawk’s stomping grounds of Seattle average roughly half a dozen doom metal bands per city block. Leave it to these warriors to buck that trend, specializing in some of the finest USPM of the last decade. 10 years of blood, sweat, and more sweat (no tears here!) has culminated in their most powerful effort to date, Warriors of Greyhawk: An album that truly embodies everything this band is about. We sat down with founding bassist Darin Wall to discuss its creation, powering through personnel changes, and the endless inspiration that is fantasy.
Greetings Darin and welcome to Defenders of the Faith. How are you doing today?
Darin Wall: I’m great, man! Happy to be here talking to you today. It gives me a good excuse to not do any work for a little while, so I’m happy *laughs*.
Well you’ve been quite the busy man. I’d like to start by congratulating you on Greyhawk’s third album, Warriors of Greyhawk, which will be out by the time this interview goes live. How soon after 2024’s Thunderheart did this album start coming together?
DW: It was interesting. It was pretty quick. In 2024, we found out (singer) Rev (Taylor) was gonna be leaving Greyhawk, right before me and (guitarist) Rob (Steinway) left for the first Glyph tour. At the time, we went out on a tour with Glyph that was a month and a half. We came back home for 2 days and then we were in Europe with Greyhawk playing Keep it True and a string of dates. We ended it with a show at Legions of Metal. We found out just before that, so we were like, “Well, what are we gonna do here? If Rev’s down, let’s do these dates. It would be fun to have one last adventure with him.” So we did that.
After that, we came back and we said as soon as we were back from Europe, we were gonna put out an ad for a singer. Anthony (Corso) responded to the ad. He was the first guy! They always say, “It’s never the first guy.” Well, sometimes it is the first guy. He joined up and we set to work right away, starting to work on some demos for the album. When you’re transitioning singers, it’s very challenging. We were like, “This is gonna take some time to figure out.” So we got to work creatively right away.
Did any of you know Anthony beforehand or was he brand new to you?
DW: He’s brand new to me. I had no idea. He’s actually my neighbor. I live in a part of Washington that’s a little…I don’t live in Seattle. I live on the Olympic Peninsula. He lives really close, so I had no idea who he was. Like I said, we came back from Europe. It was weird to be doing the promo for Thunderheart and looking for a new singer at the same time. It was a little strange, but he just dropped an audition. We opened it up to the world, which led to some amazing auditions, some very interesting ones *laughs*. I have some wonderful demos in my collection.
He was the first guy, like I said. He blew our socks off. We met him for the first time at a Striker gig locally. Striker were playing and we all went. He was there and we met. He was a really nice guy. We had him to audition once. We asked him to learn 3 songs; he learned our whole live set. He basically watched the live set from Legions that year and learned it. We were like, “This is a no brainer.” The only time I’d heard him was he did a project called Power Metal Inc. which is a one-off thing he did with the drummer of Gloryhammer and a few other notable musicians. He’s wailing away on that one, so we were like, “Man, this is the guy right here.”
Whereas Thunderheart veered into traditional metal and hard rock territory, Warriors of Greyhawk seems to retreat back to the power metal sound of the band’s debut, Keepers of the Flame. Was this an intentional move on the band’s behalf?
DW: 100%. There’s two things involved here. First of all, when you get a new singer, my strategy was to not…everyone was like, “Where are you gonna find another guy that sounds like Rev?” I was like, “Well, I’m not.” If you look back at the history of rock n’ roll, I think a lot of the most successful lead singer transitions are ones that are not necessarily a complete directional change, but a pivot within that genre, like Dio coming into Sabbath. I love Tony Martin, so all the Sabbath singers, or Bon Scott being replaced by Brian Johnson in AC/DC.
Some of the less successful or more polarizing ones maybe are Sammy Hagar coming into Van Halen because that’s a full directional switch. We were like, “I wanna do something different so everyone’s not like, “That’s Temu Rev.”, but still within the genre that we’re doing.” We’re not betraying our fanbase. We’re not doing the full modern power metal dress like a Power Ranger and play Eurovision stuff. It’s more of the old school stuff that’s near and dear to my heart: The Helloweens, Sonata Arcticas, Lost Horizons, etc. I thought that fit Anthony’s voice better.
To go to your other point, which is a great call, it is a callback to Keepers of the Flame. When we did Keepers of the Flame, in the subsequent years after, we had the global pandemic. We had a couple guitar player changes, so we only managed an EP for a couple years. During that time, Rev’s voice, as it does as we age, settled into a lower register. He wasn’t able to get up to those high epic notes as much anymore. On Thunderheart, we definitely wrote more of a rockin’ record. Like you said, it was more traditional metal, more rock n’ roll.
The Warriors of Greyhawk title was something I had in my head since Keepers of the Flame. I always viewed that as the next logical Keepers Part 2. So when we got Anthony, I was like, “Oh man, we can do this thing that I wanted to do back in the day.” I’m not throwing any shade at Rev. I’m very proud of Thunderheart. I think it’s an awesome record, but this is the one I wanted to make next and now we got the opportunity.
It’s been 10 years since Greyhawk initially formed. How did the band first come together?
DW: I had just moved to Seattle at that time. I was looking for a band to play and I was like, “I’m in Seattle. I should play in a doom metal band.” That’s what I was looking for *laughs*. That’s what people seem to gravitate to around here. Then, I saw this kid who had an ad on Craigslist. He’s got these YouTube videos of him playing Racer X and Malmsteen. I was like, “Man, I wanna see if this kid will jam with me.” That was our guitar player, Jesse (Berlin). I messaged him. He was like, “Can you play “Far Beyond the Sun”? Can you play this? Can you play that?” I said, “Yeah, I could play those songs.”
We got together, practiced, really hit it off, and then decided we’d forge ahead. We had a lot of trouble getting a lineup together because musicians around here that want to play that type of music and have the chops to do it are not necessarily a dime a dozen. I veered off. I was in Skelator for a while. I did some other projects. Then, one day, I had a barbeque and invited Jesse. Maybe in a half-cut stupor, I was like, “Why didn’t we do those songs, man? Those songs were great. We gotta do them.” Next thing you know, he showed up on my doorstep 2 weeks later with a guitar player and a singer. I was like, “OK, I guess we’re doing this.”
It sounds like it came together fast from there.
DW: Once we got our feet under us and we found a couple other people to help out, that was probably around 2018. We wrote songs and floundered from 2016 to 2018. Once we got to 2018, it was off to the races.
From the lyrics to the album art, it’s no secret Greyhawk are proud purveyors of fantasy metal. For you, what sparked your interest in fantasy, and do you have any current genre recommendations, whether it be music, film, literature, or so forth?
DW: Going back to when I was a kid, my parents would have me watch movies like The NeverEnding Story, The Sword and the Sorcerer, and things like that. I grew up watching a lot of those planet movies like Krull and the animated Lord of the Rings, a lot of the old school…what you would call campy fantasy now. That’s all very near and dear to my heart. That was my childhood. I played a bit of D&D in high school, and of course, coming out of high school, the Lord of the Rings movies hit. From there, retroactively, I read the books and became obsessed with that too.
Unfortunately, between being in 2 bands and running my own business, I don’t get a lot of time to read for pleasure anymore. I wish I did, but I’m cautiously optimistic for the new He-Man movie. I don’t know. Whenever they remake something from my childhood, I’m like, “Is this gonna be awesome? Am I gonna be able to suspend my disbelief and watch this and enjoy it, or is it gonna piss me off?” *laughs* It’s one of those 50/50 things whenever they bring something like that up. I’m gonna go watch it and see what happens.
Now while I know Greyhawk is not of the “Power Rangers power metal” breed, as I look upon that fantastical album cover, I can’t help but ask: Could we one day see those alter egos appear in a music video or perhaps even onstage?
DW: *laughs* You never know! I don’t think we would do the full Manowar loincloth thing. That would be a little embarrassing *laughs*. I don’t know if we’re really built for that, so to speak, but you never know. I think a music video is definitely possible. We actually just dropped a music video today for the title track. It actually is a story-based music video. It’s very simple. The message is quit your job and play heavy metal. That’s what it is. Chase your dreams and do that kind of stuff. It’s very possible.
When it comes to album covers, between this one and Keepers of the Flame, we took a bit of a pivot on Thunderheart, I always want to make something that…I think it’s a very nice piece. It looks like a ’90s RPG game or fantasy novel, but I like to make things that are eye catching. The Keepers of the Flame cover is silly. There’s a guy with a fire sword and a laser gun, and a burning lady who somehow is not melting the ice. It’s hysterical to me, but I wanna make an album cover that when people see it, they go, “I need to know what this is.” In a sea of black album covers with very artsy things on the front, which I love, I feel you need to standout somehow. It might result with some people calling your album art campy or whatever. I think that’s a small price to pay for them to listen to the record.
Who handled what aspects of the writing for this album and was there anything the band did differently, whether it was intentional or not, when getting everything together?
DW: This is definitely a group effort, so the songs come together in different ways. A lot of times, when it comes to demos, we will each individually pitch a lot of demos. For example, Anthony wrote the demos for the title track and “Ascension”. “Land of Ashes” was one of mine. Rob was “Endless Race”, and a lot of the more AOR sounding ones are Jesse. Jesse’s the ’80s guy in the band. Everyone will pitch a demo, and we all will discuss it, work with it, make changes, and then make it in it’s final pre-production demo form.
The idea this time was to write as many songs as possible. We got a new singer. Let’s try to get 30, 40 ideas together. We wound up with 30 to 35 demos in the pocket ready to go. We sat around a table one night and debated for hours. We said, “Which ones do we absolutely agree on? Which ones do we disagree on? Which ones do we not like for sure?” It took 5 or 6 hours for us to come up with a track listing of 11 songs.
That’s something in my other band, Glyph, that me and Jeff Black started doing. We always hear these interviews of Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and the greats being like, “We wrote 100 songs and got it down to 10.” Every great band does this. Why aren’t we doing it? That’s it. It’s hard because naturally, when you write something, you become connected to it, but you have to disassociate yourself a little bit from the emotional attachment to a given piece and think about it from a group collective point of view, and sometimes from a business point of view. What makes the most artistic sense? What makes the most commercial sense?
You mention Jesse brings the AOR angle to the band, which carries over from Thunderheart onto cuts like “Chosen” and “Rise Above”: Two songs with a real Turbo era Priest vibe. When it comes to writing for Greyhawk, do you as a unit have a line you won’t cross, or is it anything goes?
DW: It’s kind of anything goes. If you saw our demo folder, you’d probably laugh. It’s really schizophrenic. There’s some stuff that sounds like Extreme in there. There’s a couple demos presented that were ’90s hair metal funk-up pieces. There’s lots of different ideas. We basically chuck ideas in the pile. Chuck ’em in there, and if we decided this is not for Greyhawk, then the band will decide that. We definitely have the idea this should all be fun. If you’re feeling something, do it. Present it and we’ll make a decision artistically. That being said, again, even with the pivoting to power metal, the fanbase who got us here, we always want to respect them. We wanna try to make stuff that they’re still gonna like. I guarantee you there’s probably some German dudes with filthy jean jackets that are gonna hate this album and think, “Whatever.”, but that’s OK *laughs*. We still love them, no matter what, and we’ll still play the old songs for those guys *laughs*.
Lucky for that crowd, there are no shortage of high speed power metal ragers on here, on which you and drummer Nate Butler go absolutely haywire as a rhythm section in the best way possible. Do you have a preference for fast songs, and what qualities does Nate bring to the table as half of the Greyhawk battery?
DW: Nate is, first of all, we have a lot of nicknames for him. We call him the Chief Engineer, sometimes we call him Sensei. If you ever wanted a bandmate who’s centered and grounded and logical and thoughtful and not emotional and willing to go with whatever we decide, he is the guy. He’s one of my best friends. I absolutely love playing bass with him. I’ve played with a lot of great drummers over the years, but he’s probably my favorite guy to rock out with. This album was pushing the limits for both of us. I’ve played a lot of speedy stuff in my life. I used to play in a Blind Guardian tribute, so I’m used to going very, very fast, but these songs, from a performance standpoint, are definitely much more bombastic.
I have to practice everyday now, which is both good and annoying *laughs*. Especially for me, personally, a song like “Endless Race” is brutal on the bass guitar. It’s fretboard gymnastics that’s all over the place. I don’t usually write stuff like that, but it was needed there. It’s definitely a little more frenetic. It’s also fun. I always say that sometimes the songs you hate when you’re learning them at first wind up being your favorites. They’re the ones you put more effort into.
You make a great point. It’s one thing to play fast. It’s another thing to play fast and bombastic, like Running Wild. I hear A LOT of those moments on this album.
DW: Thanks man! “Endless Race” particularly, it’s fun to play in an adrenaline junkie way because we’re locked in and we’re going. It feels like you’re driving 100 MPH and you’re just trying to keep the car on the road. It’s a surge of adrenaline, but it’s also nerve-wracking. We’re definitely workshopping it a lot. It is in the live set. That one and “Hyperspace” are in the live set, spoiler alert *laughs*. It’s definitely been a new challenge for us.
I always find it interesting when an artist is actively working with two different bands. You’re no exception. In what ways do you approach Greyhawk differently from Glyph and vice versa?
DW: It’s two different animals. I started Greyhawk with Jesse, so I’m a lot more responsible with the artistic and creative direction of the band. I handle all the visual stuff and the business end of things. In Glyph, that’s Jeff Black’s band. That’s his band artistically. He’s one of my best friends and I love him. That band is good for me. That band makes me step out of my comfort zone a lot, which as an artist is definitely a good thing, but my role in Glyph is more handle the basslines. I also act as tour manager. A lot of the bookings and logistics on the road fall to me to handle, and a lot of the internal organizations. My job is much more like a project manager in Glyph, whereas in Greyhawk it’s a little bit more my baby and brainchild.
And like I said earlier, you’re quite busy with both. In closing, what does the rest of 2026 have in store for you?
DW: Oh boy *laughs*. There’s a lot going on. Greyhawk plans to be super busy. We’ve got our CD release show in Seattle coming up on the 21st. Of course, the album drops on the 13th of February. We then have a bunch of shows around the pacific northwest in March. We’ve got one in Bellingham. We’ve got one in Port Angeles where we’re workshopping a live show, playing to our friends around here. Then, we’re playing a big festival in southern Oregon in April. We’re playing something called Life Force Festival. Zetro from Exodus and Testament is headlining. We’re gonna be direct support there. That should be pretty cool.
Of course, in May, we head out with Alestorm and Twilight Force for a full tour of Canada. Unfortunately, for my friends in the Maritimes, we’re not coming there, so it’s not a full tour of Canada, but it’s most of Canada. We start in Montreal and we work our way back west to Vancouver. There will be a homecoming show in Seattle. The rest of the year, we’re trying to get back to Europe. For Glyph, we’ll be in Chicago at Legions of Metal coming up in May. It’s my favorite festival in the United States. I go to Legions every year either as a fan or performer. I think there’s another Glyph festival coming up, but we’re trying to get Greyhawk over to Europe again in the Fall, so we’ll see if we can make that happen.
The new Greyhawk album, Warriors of Greyhawk, is out now on Cruz del Sur Music. For more information on Greyhawk, click here. For more information on Glyph, click here.
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