As storm clouds billow and thunder roars across the Chicago sky (not to be confused with the WNBA team of the same name), Kyle McNeill, mastermind of heavy prog phenomenon Phantom Spell, shines through our computer screen via Zoom, eager to share tales behind the making of his latest opus, Heather & Hearth. At one point, he apologizes for an answer as long-winded as Phantom Spell’s music itself, to which we refused, instead encouraging this long-format discussion. After all, in a world of corporate masters, we hold our freeform approach with a sense of pride, and are grateful for like-minded individuals who take the time to sit down and read these interviews. In this latest chat, McNeill dives deep into the creation of Heather & Hearth, discusses the differences between American and English prog, and of course, pays homage to the late (I can’t believe I’m typing that) Ozzy Osbourne.
Greetings Kyle and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Kyle McNeill: I’m doing very well. Thank you very much.
Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. What time is it near you? I know it must be nighttime by now.
KM: It is, yeah. It’s 10 o’clock at night right now.
It is 3 here in Chicago, but it looks like 10 o’clock. It’s dark and gloomy, but perfect weather to discuss mythical, magical, heavy music like that of Phantom Spell. I’d like to start by getting a little background on this project and how it came to be. When did ideas first start coming together for what would become Phantom Spell?
KM: I suppose back in 2021, about that time. It started to take shape during the first lockdowns of the pandemic in the UK. I just had this idea for a song that I just recorded with no real aim to do anything with it. I just wanted to write something with some Hammond organ in there, Uriah Heep style. At that time, I’d never done anything else outside of Seven Sisters. I finished the song, which ended up becoming “Keep on Running”, which is the first single that I released. I never planned to do anything with it.
Then Paula, my wife, she said, “Why don’t you release it?” I’d never really considered doing that. As soon as she put the idea in my head, it was like, “OK, let’s do it.” I thought about a name for a little while. Paula also came up with the name. She’s responsible for all this, basically. I put out the single digitally, just on Bandcamp and threw it up on YouTube, not really expecting anything much of it. (It was) just something to do. People seemed to respond to it really well. It struck a chord with people because it’s almost like this missing link between the late ’70s prog and early heavy metal, which is something I always wish I could’ve found more bands that did that kind of stuff. That’s why I wanted to write material like that in the first place. I just kind of took it from there.
“Keep on Running” came out and was received really well. I got to writing an album, but it was a little bit later. Between releasing “Keep on Running” and releasing the debut album, Immortal’s Requiem, Paula and I moved from the UK to Spain. Also, I released Shadow of a Fallen Star Pt. 1 by Seven Sisters. Quite a lot happened in between those two releases, which is why there’s a bit of time. It’s kind of taken over my life now. Phantom Spell is one of the main things that I do, which is just crazy and it’s really cool. I’m just enjoying it while it lasts.
Many know you from your work with Seven Sisters. Has there ever been an instance where an idea for a Seven Sisters song was used for Phantom Spell or vice versa?
KM: It’s very separate processes. I have to put one hat on and do Phantom Spell, and then take that off and put the other hat on for Seven Sisters. It’s very intentional, because I think if I try to do them in parallel, writing music for both bands in parallel, it would just become a mess. That would happen. Ideas would get crossed over. For my own sanity, and also for the sake of the projects themselves, I write and I focus entirely on one project. Once I’m done writing, I’ll shift over to the next one.
They have different approaches to both as well. Again, that’s intentional. Even down to things inside my DAW, my digital recording software, I have my templates setup very differently. The way that I record for Seven Sisters is different to the way that I record for Phantom Spell. I use slightly different plugins. For Phantom Spell, everything that I try to do, I try to use “era appropriate” equipment, which obviously is ridiculous, because it’s all zeroes and ones inside of a computer. I limit myself to equipment that would’ve only been available during the late ’70s. That’s a way of limiting the sonic palette, in a way.
With Seven Sisters, obviously it’s more ’80s oriented: The sounds that I use and the different types of reverb and delay and all that kind of stuff. It’s two very different thought processes, even though it’s the same person doing the writing for both. It’s a conscious decision to do that, because if I didn’t, it would just end up becoming muddled and a mess.
Phantom Spell sees you handling all writing and musical aspects. What was the first instrument you learned to play? From there, when did you pursue other instruments?
KM: I started with guitar. Just before I turned 12 years old, so I was 11 years old, just turning 12 when I picked up the guitar. My music taste developed along with my guitar playing, so I started playing guitar and also brought my first CD at the same time, which was American Idiot by Green Day, by the way, if anybody’s interested. I still love that album, by the way. I think it’s great. My taste developed with that.
Then, I found myself being drawn to writers who…I liked the idea of overseeing the whole thing. That wasn’t from a control perspective. It was more that I was impressed by these people that had these galaxy brains that could oversee an entire project, like all the writing was done by one or two people. It just fascinated me that people could do that. I think along the way, I got interested in producing or recording myself. Basically, every band that I’ve been in, I’ve ended up recording that band or doing something to do with the recording and the mixing. Just through production, I think I had then gotten into other instruments.
I think everybody who enjoys recording gets fascinated with drums. Every recording engineer will go through a drum phase, or will just be obsessed with drums for the rest of their recording careers. They’re one of the most fun instruments to record. It’s also incredibly difficult. I don’t know if you do any recording yourself, but it can be tricky to do properly. I just enjoy music in general. It’s not just about guitar playing for me. In fact, I don’t really consider myself much of a guitar player. I’m just a songwriter.
It came with the territory of wanting to direct the whole picture, having these ideas that weren’t just guitar ideas. I could hear other instruments in my head. I needed to find a way to get them out. Thankfully, being in the recording age that we’re in, where we have all these virtual instruments at our fingertips, you can “play” whatever you want. There’s lots of great software, emulations of vintage synthesizers, and whatever you can really think of. The limit is your imagination.
I’m not a great drummer, or anything like that. I can play drums. I’m not a great piano player or keyboard player either. I just play the parts that I come up with, record them, and then forget about it, really *laughs*. The instrument that I am most proficient in is absolutely guitar. I play bass too, as a bassist, not a guitar player playing bass. Of course, I sing as well, but that came later. I didn’t start singing until I started Seven Sisters, and even then, that was by accident. We were supposed to be a band with a separate singer and couldn’t find one, so I was filling in whilst we were looking for someone and just never did find anybody *laughs*, so here I am.
It’s worked thus far! Phantom Spell’s latest album, Heather & Hearth, feels like an even proggier continuation of your last album, Immortal’s Requiem. Was this a direction you purposely set out to achieve, or rather a natural evolution of the project’s sound?
KM: Maybe a bit of both. I always go into a new album project with some things in mind that I wanna try, or some angle that I’m coming at it from. This time, it was definitely folk, more folk. I’ve been listening to a lot of late ’60s, early ’70s folk revival stuff like Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and Renaissance and all those kind of acts where they’re on the cusp of progressive rock, I suppose. The Canterbury scene blended those too. There’s a lot of folk in the Canterbury scene of prog. I listened to a lot of that, and that bled into what I was writing.
The songs are longer, yeah. I don’t know if they’re proggier, in my opinion. I guess they are in some ways, but I listen to the intro of “Seven Sided Mirror”, for example, off the first album. That’s quite intense. There’s a lot of stuff happening in that intro. It’s very proggy, as far as I’m concerned. Stuff like the instrumental, “Black Spire Curse”, is also a really proggy song. I don’t think that Heather & Hearth gets that proggy. It doesn’t get that blippy bloppy, but there are other elements. It’s definitely grander in the atmosphere that it conjures up, but I think that has to do with production.
The mix on this album, I’m really happy with it. I’m actually quite proud of it. Normally, I’ll listen to a mix I’ve done back of other things and cringe a little bit, hear all the mistakes that I made and what I would do differently. For this one, it turned out pretty well. I basically took a less is more approach with this, and just tried to get everything sounding how I wanted it to sound on the way in, so I didn’t have to fuck around with it afterwards.
Really, my experience is what can kill a mix and suck all the life out of it. The more that you mess with it, the worse it’ll sound. I just tried to do it in a way where I didn’t end up tricking myself into doing that. It’s very easy to mess around forever and ever and ever, especially if you’re like me and you’re recording yourself and mixing yourself. There’s no pressure of a studio. There’s no time limit. I try to put those limitations on myself, just to keep the process a little bit more natural and streamlined.
I had the album title quite a bit before I even started writing any music. I already had a feeling in mind, a sort of image, a loose image. I had images of the countryside from around where I’m from, these green and gray hills with sort of speckles of heather running through them. I really wanted to try and channel some of that. Sorry, this is a really long answer to the question *laughs*, but yeah, it’s a bit of both. There’s some small intentions, but no specific plans. I just like to see what happens when I start.
No need to apologize! We here at Defenders live for the longform answer. It’s part of the luxury of not having to cut to a commercial break. You mention the production of the album, and I’m sure we’ll touch on that more in this answer, but another aspect I really appreciate is the sequencing. We’ve got these ambitious bookends in “The Autumn Citadel” and the title track. Then, in between, we’ve got these three “shorter” songs, that are still vast in their own respect. When it comes to writing, do you have an idea which songs will be on the more ambitious side beforehand, or again, do they just come out as such?
KM: That reveals itself at some point during the process. I never set out to write a song of any particular length when I’m writing. It just is what it is. It could be 30 seconds long or it could be 12 minutes long. It just sort of happens. At some point in the process, at some point during writing the album, things will start to find their place. You just let them fall into place themselves naturally. Personally, I find sequencing is a very important part of an album. I really enjoy listening to albums as a whole, and writing for the album format. Sequencing is such a huge part of that. It’s something that I do spend a bit of time, making sure that the songs flow into each other the way that I want, getting the silence in between the songs as well, the right amount of time in between each song. As far as any planning was concerned, nah, that comes later. Once the songs start to take shape, the picture starts to paint itself after a while.
With the emphasis on riffs throughout Heather & Hearth, much comparison can be drawn to not only the NWOBHM staples of the early ’80s, but also riff-based heavy prog acts like Kansas and Styx. Being that you hail from the country that birthed prog rock, what are your thoughts on American prog, and do you have any favorite acts from the scene?
KM: Well, you already mentioned them. Kansas are probably one of my main influences when it comes to Phantom Spell. They’re certainly one of my favorite bands. There’s a lot to love about the British prog stuff, but it can be a difficult listen at times. Bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, they have some fantastic songs, more traditional style songs, but a lot of it is pretty heavy-going, basically 20th century classical music. It’s so intense to listen to. I’m not good at writing that. I don’t have that level of musical IQ, but not everybody is Keith Emerson, to be fair *laughs*.
Bands like Kansas really captured my imagination when I first discovered them, because it was all of the stuff that I love about prog rock, all of the ambitious song structures and little details that they add and the frilly bits, but also not sacrificing a catchy song. They have hooks. They have vocal hooks, and they have riffs that you can remember. It was the best of both worlds. I’m British, but I definitely approach Phantom Spell from a more “American” point of view when it comes to the songwriting style. I still want to write a good song. I just like to embellish it with all the other nonsense *laughs*.
Kansas are such an interesting beast of a band. Many prog “elitists”, as I like to call them, will question their prog credentials. “Are they REALLY prog?” Well if “Song for America” and “Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel)” aren’t prog, I don’t know what is! However, like you said, they boasted that fusion of proginess, but with hard and heavy riffs, and pop-flavored hooks to top it all off. It’s probably one of the most unique sonic combinations in rock history.
KM: Yeah, for me, they’re very much rooted in traditional American songwriting, in that classic songwriting style. Almost musical theatre-esque, but embellished with the musicality and ambition, and obviously influenced by British acts. They were just a real melting pot of things, which is kind of the point. That’s the point of prog. I’ve joked on several interviews before. Phantom Spell are billed as a prog rock band, but there’s nothing progressive about what I do. If anything, it’s regressive *laughs*! I’m just copying what’s already happened. I’m not doing anything new. Those bands were doing new things at the time.
That’s the beauty of a genre like prog. One reason why I really love that classic era is that every band has a distinct sound. They’re all under the umbrella: Jethro Tull, Yes, Kansas, Starcastle. They are all prog rock bands, but they sound nothing alike. Jethro Tull sounds nothing like Yes. Yes sounds nothing like Genesis. Genesis sounds nothing like Kansas. They all have very distinct personalities, which is something I feel that is lacking in modern prog rock, that sort of prog metal, or even prog rock stuff. It comes from such of a mush of influences that it’s almost like world music, a lot of it when I listen to it.
A lot of it is lacking personality, and also the hook. They’ve got everything right when it comes to the equipment and the song structures and the intention to write prog, but they’re missing the hook and the…I don’t know…the gayness of prog rock! It’s camp! It’s queer as fuck when you listen to it, at least to me, anyway. It’s just missing some of that. It needs a bit of queer in there. I guess that’s why I’m here *laughs*!
The word that I used to describe this crop, in the last paragraph of my review for the album, is the sterility of it all, the collective Dream Theater-fication of prog.
KM: Yeah, right! You’re right, that’s a great word, “sterile”. It really does sound like that. The production is so, so good, so much fidelity to it, at the sacrifice of any and all personality. You listen to the classic prog records. If you listen like I do, I listen to everything through my monitors that I use to mix, just so I’ve got a good reference point and I know what my room sounds like. A lot of that stuff just sounds like shit. It does not sound good *laughs*. Some of the parts are so gnarly. They’re crunchy. They’re kind of sloppily played, but that’s just part of the charm. That’s part of what makes it so great. It becomes part of the bigger picture. A lot of this newer progressive music, there is such a focus on it being perfect. It does sacrifice a lot of that personality and becomes quite sterile, at least in my humble opinion.
I’m inclined to agree. Upon repeated listens, the song I return to the most is “Evil Hand”, which might just be the best Mk. II Purple song that never was. How did this one come about, and could you see yourself further exploring the Purple vein in the future?
KM: If the occasion rises, yeah, cool! Never say no if the idea comes around. I had the chorus for that song before anything else that came about. There is a version of “Evil Hand” knocking around on my computer that is totally different. It’s about 8 minutes long, it has a bunch of different sections, and I got to the point where I’d almost finished it. I was listening back one day and I was like, “This is not it. This is not right. There’s something not right about it.”
It’s one of the worst lessons that a songwriter has to learn, is when you just need to move on. It’s just not happening. You need to move on. You need to do something else. I’ve gotten quite good at that. I can be quite brutal with ideas. If I’m not feeling it, I just kind of know at this point and I just move onto something else. I never throw things away. I just come back to them at a later point. Another day, another mood, another perspective, it might be the right idea, but it just wasn’t working. That same day, when I decided I wasn’t going to go ahead with that version anymore, I just did the short one the same day.
Rarely does a song come out in a day for me. Normally, it takes a bit of work. That one just fell out the way it did. For the most part, it’s a pretty straightforward heavy metal song, a proto-heavy metal song, I suppose, except for the ending, that frilly bit at the end. It was just fun. When I was doing it, I was smiling. I was laughing. I was like, “Fuck yeah, this is like Deep Purple or Dio era Rainbow.” I was having a good time. Don’t fight that! I didn’t fight it. I wasn’t questioning, “Is it progressive enough to go on the album?” I just did it and had a good time.
Another trait that stands out to me, specifically on the latter half of “A Distant Shore”, are these jammy Uriah Heep-esque passages, which I’m always a sucker for. In this instance, however, I’m impressed because we’re circling back to this being a one man band. When you’re jamming with yourself, so to speak, is it more improv? How do you build those sections?
KM: You know, it’s a bit of a sort of feedback loop. The way that I start when I’m mapping out a song, when I’m mapping out sections, I always start with drums. Either I’ll just be humming the part to myself whilst I’m sorting the drums out, while I’m programming the drums. Then, I’ll refine the parts as I go. The drums will get done. Then I put down the bass. Then I put down the guitar, and then whatever else on top. Then, I’ll listen back to it, and then maybe go over the drums again. Then, what I do there then influences if I need to go back over any other parts. It becomes a bit of a loop that way until it’s at the point where I want it to be at.
One of the benefits of it being me playing all the parts is that I can anticipate myself. I can anticipate what I’d like to do, where I think it would go, or where I’d like to guide it if I were in a jam session with some other people. I could map out the drums and they dynamics before I’d even written a solo or anything. Most of that solo is improvised anyway. I can anticipate the dynamics and flow of where I wanted it to go. I would just give myself a backing track. That’s how I’m approaching it. I’ll just give myself an interesting backing track. Then, I’ll react to that backing track whilst improvising over the top of it.
Depending on if I’d had my Weetabix that morning, maybe I’ll do it in a couple of takes, or maybe 20 or 30 takes, but I’ll just go over and over and over, keep improvising, keep playing, and keep seeing what comes out. Sometimes it’s a single pass and it’s the entire solo and I don’t need to do any comping or anything. Other times, it’s like I like 4 bars of this and 4 bars of that and I’ll mash it together. Once I’ve done that, I’ll go on, learn it, and then play the whole thing in one go. That one came about pretty quickly. I was quite happy with it. It’s probably my favorite guitar solo on the record, maybe my favorite guitar solo I ever recorded, actually. I really like that song in general. It’s just a really good example of what Phantom Spell does, but in a single song.
That, the “emulated jam” sort of vibes, it’s a bit of a feedback cycle with the parts and a work in progress. It comes about naturally with my songwriting style anyway. I’ll map out a song in the bare bones style. I’ll do really basic drums and I’ll get a structure. Then, I’ll go over it again. Maybe that happens two or three times, where I’ll just refine the parts. I’ll refine the transitions. (Guitarist) Graeme (Farmer) in Seven Sisters likes to call them the “McNeill variations”. Going from verse 1 to pre-chorus 1, I’ll have one transition, but from verse 2 to pre-chorus 2, there’ll be a different transition, and so on and so forth: Just little bits that keep the listener interested, maybe not consciously. It’s just variation. I’ll go over and do that. After two or three passes, it’s like chipping away at a piece of marble. It reveals itself.
Lyrically speaking, Phantom Spell is largely inspired by fantastical lore and narrative. Are there any specific works, whether it be film, literature, or other, that proved influential on the development of Heather & Hearth?
KM: Yeah, there’s no strict songs about this book or that book or whatever, but I had finished reading (Tolkien’s) The Silmarillion whilst writing and recording Heather & Hearth, so there are some Tolkien bits in there. The title for “The Autumn Citadel” was inspired by a Tolkien bit. There’s the Melkor fortress, which is autumnal fortress, or the autumnal citadel. It kind of sounds like the Spanish word for autumn, which is otoño. I thought, “”The Autumn Citadel”, that would be a really cool song title!” It sounds cool, “The Autumn Citadel”. That came from Tolkien. Even though it’s not a Tolkien song, it was just inspired by a little thing.
There’s a line in “Heather & Hearth”, which again is inspired by a bit in The Silmarillion. It’s a power phrase. I can’t remember it exactly, but it’s during the fall of Fingolfin chapter. It said, “Their bed was the heather, and their ceiling the sky.” There’s a line in “Heather & Hearth” which is very much inspired by that. I just thought it was a really beautiful bit of imagery. It kind of fit perfectly with what I was writing about. Then, as always, my hero is Ursula K. Le Guin. The Earthsea series is a constant source of inspiration for me. There’s nothing specific. It’s not like there’s a song based on X book, but there’s influences from a lot of The Silmarillion and again, the Earthsea series, and all those join-on things to inspire imagery and try and get the creative juices flowing.
It’s been a couple years now since Phantom Spell became an active live vehicle. What’s that experience been like, and are there any shows that stand out thus far as favorites?
KM: It’s been a really good, positive experience. The band that I have, they’re such wonderful people. They’re really just the sweetest people. I got super lucky. Obviously, I moved to Spain a couple years ago. I already had friends in the city where I live. I don’t live in the city of Murcia; I live quite close by. Murcia is in the southeast of Spain, just below Alicante and that kind of area on the Mediterranean coast, for anybody that was interested. I moved here, and Paula introduced me to Miguel (Moreno) and Jose (Soler), the bass player and guitarist, just to hang out. They’re into the same music. I think Miguel’s favorite two bands are Rush and Thin Lizzy, and they’re my favorite two bands as well, so wicked!
We got talking and hanging out. Obviously, we’re into similar music and we get along. Phantom Spell became a thing and I was quite open that I didn’t want to do it live. It was just a studio project. I never really intended to do anything live because I didn’t think I would be able to. I wanted to do it like it is on the record, with the vocal harmonies and stuff like that. I never really put any thought into it. Then, I started getting offers, and it was like, “OK, it would be silly not to do this. Let’s just give it a go and see what happens.”
I mentioned it to Miguel and to Jose. They were immediately like, “Yes, let’s go.” José (Vicente), the drummer, came with them as a package, because they’re in a band called Chantrice. It’s like a US power metal/prog metal kind of act. They already have a really good working relationship because they’re in bands together and they’re used to playing with each other. The difficult part, at least what I thought was gonna be the difficult part, was to find a keyboard player. They’re rarer than rocking horse shit, especially a keyboard player that understands classic prog and gets the sound that I wanna go for and just gets the style. Then, I found Ramon (Romero), just this wizard!
I joke about being a wizard online. Ramon is actually a wizard. He’s a genius level bassist, keyboard player, multi-instrumentalist. He’s studying at the conservatory in Murica, composition, and is just next level, galaxy brain musician. They all are. José, the drummer, is the same. He’s a multi-instrumentalist. He plays guitar better than I do. He plays flute. He sings. He plays keyboards, everything. He’s just insane. I just got really lucky. I just found the right people. We all hit it off really well and we all get along really well. It’s just become a really pleasant experience, to hang out with them and to play live.
As far as favorite shows go, Athens at Up the Hammers really sticks with me. It’s such a magical atmosphere at that festival. There’s something in the air in that building, at that festival in Athens with the crowd. It’s just nuts. That year, Visigoth also played and it’s one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Paula and I were watching together. The setup is kind of like a theater, where the floor starts off low at the stage and inclines towards the back. Then, it has a balcony as well. We were on the balcony, just watching and just listening to the crowd. The energy was just insane. We both looked at each other and said, almost at the same time, “This reminds me why I got into heavy metal in the first place.” It was such a good concert. Our time onstage in Athens was also really special. That one was great.
Also, we played in a really, really small place in a town in Germany called Göppingen. It’s one of those places that’s such a small, little town, a proper one horse town. There’s just a venue where this guy, Chris, works and he puts on heavy metal shows. It’s the perfect midweek venue because it’s a tiny room in the back of this traditional German pub, a hangout place. It can only fit, at max, 60 people in there. It’s a box room. No stage. You’re in the corner of the room, crammed in there, but it’s just incredible. It’s such a cool little place. There’s so much love put into it.
The people that work at the bar have started this tradition now where they have these little canvases that they make up. They can only be 20 centimeters by 15, little rectangle canvases. They hand paint the logos of the bands that have played there and hang them on the wall and get you to sign them. There’s so much love put into that venue. It’s a really small little place. It’s the total two ends of the spectrum of being in a heavy metal band. In one way, you’re on a beautiful stage, playing in front of loads of people, and in the other one, you’re in a tiny boxed room and the crowd is literally right in front of you and the microphone. It’s 55 people in a sweatbox and you’re absolutely drenched in sweat. Those are my two favorite shows that we’ve done so far.
Isn’t it funny how those tiny shows sometimes end up being the best? You’re surrounded by the metal!
KM: Yeah, it just becomes one unit *laughs*. It’s great.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the elephant in the room, that being the sudden passing of Ozzy Osbourne. Do you have any memories of Ozzy or Sabbath that come to mind, and do you have an album from either you gravitate towards the most?
KM: Yeah, this is before I started listening to music by myself. There was always music in the house when I was living with my mom. There was always music on the stereo, but I’d never really listened to any of my own music. A kid that lived on the same block as me lent me some PlayStation games. In amongst these CDs, I remember quite clearly now, it was a burnt CD of Black Sabbath songs, but it just said “War Pigs” on it, and it had a scribbling on it of an orc looking thing. I was like, “Oh, that looks like a cool game!” I put it in and it wasn’t a game! It was Black Sabbath, and it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know what was going on and I was actually scared. As a kid, it was like, what the fuck. Black Sabbath is coming out of my TV! Help!
I never played that CD again. I turned it off and was like, “Nope!” *laughs* Thinking back on it, fuck, that was probably one of my first proper experiences of heavy metal *laughs*. So yeah, Black Sabbath scared the shit out of me as a kid. Now, retrospectively, looking back, I think my favorite Black Sabbath album is Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. There’s just something about Ozzy’s voice on that album in particular that I think is peak, just really, really awesome.
It’s really impossible to summarize a person like Ozzy and the legacy that he’s had and the impact that he’s had. It feels like we’re never gonna see the likes of him again, in music. People of that influence and of that importance, they’ve had their time. It’s like watching the elves go to the west again, back to their islands. It’s crazy, but yeah. My first Black Sabbath experience left an impact on me, that’s for sure. Another thing as well is that Sabbath’s stuff, for me, it was scary.
My dad had a Black Sabbath boxset. It was an anthology collection and it had the devil on the front of it, the fallen angel. It said “Black Sabbath – The Ozzy Years”. That freaked me out. I don’t know why, when I was staying at my dad’s house and looking at his CD collection, I’d see that and it would scare me. One time, I opened it up, and it was the front cover of Black Sabbath. It was this creepy woman standing in front of this…as a kid, again, I looked at it and was like, “Fuck no, I’m putting that lid back on. I’m not looking at that.” *laughs*
I think many had a similar experience. Speaking for myself, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has always been my favorite as well. I remember picking it up on vinyl at a very young age. I couldn’t have been older than 10 or 11. Whenever I’d put it on, and still to this day, I just stare at that album art, the front and the back cover. I’m struggling to think of any other musical act, metal or otherwise, that compares to that era of the giants, which is what they were. You’ve got the whole package: The music, the artwork, and the atmosphere. It grips your very soul. I can’t even describe it.
KM: Yeah, it seems to come from a place that’s just elsewhere. I guess a lot of it was. They were kids at the time, literally plucking ideas out of the void and seeing what sticks, because heavy metal in its early days, there was no formula for it. You listen to early Judas Priest records and the variety on one album is crazy. You get straight up heavy metal songs, and then you get stuff that’s got folk influence, and then you get stuff that’s kind of groovy and got a little bit if funk in there. They were making it up as they were going along, seeing what they can do. For me, personally, it’s what makes that early heavy metal period so fascinating. There was variety in it, much like when I mentioned the prog bands. They all had distinct personalities. So did the heavy metal bands.
Obviously, Sabbath, I can’t really say anything that hasn’t already been said. What a legacy. How could you sum up somebody like Ozzy Osbourne? Just an absolute fucking character, through and through. His little bit in The Decline of Western Civilization is one of the most incredible things ever committed to camera. It’s just amazing how endearing and sweet this guy really seemed to be, just a normal…well, as normal as you can be when you’re Ozzy Osbourne, but just a regular fucking dude who was a bit of a sweetheart. Fucking hell, it feels like we’re watching the giants sail away now. It’s bittersweet in a lot of ways. I’m grateful that they left behind what they’ve left behind. We get to listen to their music forever and such, but it’s also sad to see this era coming to an end.
In closing, what does the rest of 2025 have in store for yourself, Phantom Spell, and Seven Sisters?
KM: Just a bunch of shows. Not a crazy schedule. Tomorrow, I actually go to UK to rehearse with Seven Sisters over the weekend. We’re playing Wacken, which should be cool. Don’t get the wrong impression: We’re playing on Wednesday *laughs*! From what I’m told, it’s one of those festivals where people go and they spend the whole week there. It’s my first time going to Wacken. I’ve never been. Graeme, the other guitarist in Seven Sisters, used to go quite a lot when he was younger, when he was 18, 19. There’s just so many people.
It probably comes as no surprise that I’m a bit of a recluse. The thought of 100,000 people in one space, it’s like, “No!” *laughs* The place that I come from, it’s a medium sized town, 80,000 people. It’s bigger than my hometown, which is just mind boggling! It’s a fucking festival, and it’s bigger than my hometown! That’ll be cool. Obviously, it’ll be an experience to go to Wacken and experience this heavy metal heaven. Then, we have a tour with Seven Sisters at the end of August doing 10 days or so with Mindless Sinner, the Swedish heavy metal band, which is cool.
After that, September, we’re going to the UK with Phantom Spell and playing 4 shows. It’s gonna be their first time in the UK. I think Miguel has played the UK before with Witchtower. He plays bass in a band called Witchtower. For the other guys, it might be their first time, maybe even visiting the UK. In October, we have Keep it True Rising with Seven Sisters, which is the final farewell of Posthalle, the venue where Keep it True Rising has been at this entire time, and festivals before that as well.
I think Oliver, the guy that organizes Keep it True, he’s been using Posthalle for years now. Obviously, other acts play there all the time. It’s a very active venue, but it’s being shut down! It’s going to get turned into fucking luxury flats, or whatever people like to do with important fucking community venues these days. I don’t know *laughs*. It’s probably going to get liquidated by a private equity. It’s a final farewell for Keep it True Rising at that venue. That’s actually right after the UK shows, so I stay in the UK for a couple of days. Then we drive to Germany to do that. That’ll be the last show of the year for me, so yeah! Got some nice ones to look forward to.
The new Phantom Spell album, Heather & Hearth, is out now on Cruz del Sur Music. The new Seven Sisters album, Shadow of a Fallen Star Pt. 2, is out now on Dissonance Productions. For more information on Phantom Spell, click here. For more information on Seven Sisters, click here.