Interview: Howie Bentley
July 8 2010 at 01:04:17 AM  Born of fire. Georgian Howie Bentley brought the monster riff for Cauldron Born, and rekindles the fire with gargantuan Heavy Metal trio, Briton Rites. The latter’s debut record, For Mircalla, is heavy homage to NWOBHM, gothic lit, and the sort of song-craft that will remain long after any band being given the “die hard” treatment these days. Dim the lights, kids, and let’s journey back to simpler times. When and how did you become interested in Heavy Metal, and how did that evolve into you taking up guitar? How long have you been playing guitar and what were some early influences? I guess it was 1981. I heard Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album around the same time that I heard Ozzy’s Blizzard Of Ozz album. I was simultaneously pulled in by the atmosphere Sabbath created with their music and blown away by Randy Rhoads’ guitar solos–I HAD to play the guitar, and I HAD to find more music like that. My earliest influences were everything that Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest had done. Those were my three main bands. I lost interest in anything Ozzy did after Randy Rhoads died, but those first two albums are classics. As time went on I got into bands like Venom, Witchfinder General, Mercyful Fate, the first two Dio albums, and guitar stuff from Yngwie and Michael Schenker. It just kept expanding. What attracted you to Rhoads’ playing? Randy Rhoads was one of those few guys who had a magical combination of technique and the ability to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up when he played. I was familiar with Van Halen, and I thought that he was a really good player, but I didn’t connect with his playing emotionally like I did with what Randy Rhoads was doing. Although, guys like Ritchie Blackmore and Uli Roth were already incorporating classical influences into their playing, Rhoads was the first one I heard doing it. Even listening back today, I think his playing was perfect. He didn’t waste a note in his guitar solos, everything is there for a reason. Rhoads, along with Michael Schenker, had the best phrasing of anyone I have ever heard. I have heard players who are certainly technically more proficient, but none of those guys give me cold chills when I hear them play. One can only take so much of “sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep” before it all starts to sound like just a bunch of classical violin exercises on an electric guitar. How did Briton Rites come about and how were the band’s aesthetics decided on? Whose idea was it to base For Mircalla on La Fanu’s gothic novel? Are all Briton Rites members interested in gothic/horror lit? How did you/they become interested in it? I was reading CARMILLA and it impressed me so much that I felt a strong urge to make some music that made me feel like that story did. My former band, Cauldron Born (which I am in the process of resurrecting, for at least a studio album) was more of a Sword & Sorcery band. I didn’t think the style that I did with Cauldron Born would appropriately capture the feeling that I wanted to present with the Gothic Horror stuff. I had been listening to a lot of early Black Sabbath and Witchfinder General, so the music naturally gravitated towards that style. I got the idea to form Briton Rites while carving a jack-o-lantern for Halloween. I had been reading a lot of gothic horror and watching Hammer films and obscure European horror movies. I was immersed in the Samhain spirit and just had one of those moments where a spark ignites and something manifests itself. I don’t know if the other guys read this kind of stuff or not, but I do know that Phil Swanson (vocalist) is a big horror film fan. He has seen everything and is very knowledgeable on the subject. As far as gothic horror, I have had a penchant for the macabre, weird and horrific as far back as I can remember. I was watching horror movies when I was four or five years old. I have been a fan of Hammer films since I was a teenager and I have always been an avid reader of speculative fiction. I just delved a bit deeper into gothic horror, in particular, after reading CARMILLA. Briton Rites is the better “vehicle” for this subject matter. Cauldron Born is so epic, with some pretty hard nods to various Power Metal bands, especially Maiden. Was this your first Heavy Metal band, and what compelled you to resurrect it? I have played in a bunch of bands. Most of those bands were cover bands and not worth talking about. No one I knew of, or had met was playing Heavy Metal up in Kentucky and Tennessee back in the mid to late ‘80s. I kept hearing about “all of those heavy bands down in Atlanta”. I moved here primarily to go to the Atlanta Institute of Music back in 1988. While I was here, I searched for a band that played the kind of music that I like, to maybe join up with. There were some so-called thrash bands here, but the ones that I encountered were more punk or hardcore influenced than Heavy Metal. I decided to form my own band, and it was an up-hill battle all of the way. It took me years to put Cauldron Born together. As far as reuniting Cauldron Born, how can you stop doing something that you love to do? I wrote all of the music, lyrics and vocal melodies for Cauldron Born. I can work with any good musicians who will support my vision and it will sound like Cauldron Born. Briton Rites, in my opinion, operates much as Iron Man does, which is to say as a “post-Sabbath Doom Metal band.” But song subject matter differs dramatically, and the playing, while rooted in Sabbath, offers provocative twists on old tricks. Is it possible to pay homage to your influence while simultaneously forging a new path? With Briton Rites, I had no intentions other than to make some music in the style of early Black Sabbath and Witchfinder General. With Cauldron Born I was trying to extend a tradition by building on what bands like Sabbath, Priest and Maiden had done. Of course with Cauldron Born there were some progressive influences, as well—modern classical music (Stravinsky, Holst, Bartok), early Fate’s Warning, and to a degree, Watchtower. With Briton Rites, I feel like I am really just preserving a tradition, though I suppose that I have put my own stamp on it, in the process. My main goal with this music wasn’t to re-invent the wheel, but to effectively capture a certain atmosphere, like in La Fanu’s novella, the writings of Lovecraft, Poe and Hawthorne, and 1970s British horror cinema. It has been refreshing to me as a songwriter to pursue this musical direction, and if others find something new in it that they enjoy, I am glad. For what it’s worth, I say the spirit, atmosphere—it’s there. And this is one of the enduring questions as far as I’m concerned, namely ‘clarifying the spirit.’ What is ‘Heavy Metal’ to you? What does it ‘consist in’ and why have you chosen to dedicate much of your life to its glorification? Okay, this is always a hard question for me to answer. Heavy Metal, to me, is this dark, ominous, fantastic music that speaks to the mind on some sort of primal level, while sweeping you away into another world for a while. The roots of Heavy Metal are in the British bands—primarily Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden. Heavy Metal is NOT crotch-rock like Motley Crue, Def Leppard, and Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen played Heavy Metal lead guitar, but the songs were nothing more than party-rock, though musically they were done very well. Heavy Metal is NOT a bunch of bellyaching and whining like hippies and Seattle grunge bands in the ‘90s were doing. Heavy Metal bands write about things like witches, wizards, barbarians, black masses, ancient battles and other things that set the imagination soaring. The sound of the music itself, of course, supports the lyrical themes. A Metal fan should be able to pick up a Heavy Metal album, look at the album cover and go ‘I’ve got my ticket for my trip, right here.’ Regarding my choice to dedicate my life to playing Heavy Metal, I am hopelessly addicted to making Heavy Metal music like some people are addicted to alcohol or drugs. I know that this is probably kind of a bad comparison to make, but it is true. When I disbanded Cauldron Born back in 2003, it didn’t take long before I was really starting to get aggravated, being without a creative outlet. Eventually, it was inevitable that I come back. I never stopped listening to Metal, I just didn’t want to deal with other musicians to make music, for awhile. If I look at it realistically, everything in my life revolves around writing and playing Metal, or is connected to it–from my interest in weird pulp fiction from the 1920s-30s and Sword and Sorcery stories, to my interest in horror and the macabre in film and literature, to the relationships that I have formed with people, it has all been connected to me playing this kind of music. It is all rolled up together. Explain your connection and/or opinion on the following: Satanic Rites of Dracula There isn’t one Hammer film dealing with vampires or the occult that I don’t absolutely love. This movie has both. I like the way they combined Stoker’s character with traditional, sensationalistic, diabolic occult imagery and rituals. I think that setting the story in what was then modern day London (1973?) put some fans off, but not me. All of the atmosphere is still there. It really is hard to botch up a Dracula film in the first place when you have Christopher Lee portraying the Count. Although, I consider all of the Hammer vampire films brilliant, with or without Lee, some of the endings can be downright goofy, I guess, depending on your perspective. I liked the ending of this one, with the hawthorn tree–pretty unique, I think. “Diary of a Madman” The acoustic guitar intro establishes a spine-chilling gothic atmosphere that is built in intensity to a crescendo by the end of the song. Though you can tell that Ozzy was having trouble with his falsetto, it really doesn’t matter, as this only adds to the tortured feel of the lyrical subject matter, and lends itself perfectly to the atmosphere. You either succeed artistically and fail financially, or you succeed financially and fail artistically. This song was appropriate as the last song on the last great album that Ozzy made, because as far as I am concerned, it was the last of Ozzy’s artistic success. He went out with a bang. Then it was on to good fortune with his party-rock albums. I am glad the guy has had a rewarding career, and I am just appreciative that Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley were a big part of his first two (and only good) albums. The Castle of Otranto I guess Horace Walpole wrote the first story back in 1765, in what we would officially call “Gothic Horror”, but I found the story uninteresting to read. Although, the blueprint for the genre is there, with the old Gothic castle, supernatural phenomenon, damp corridors, hidden catacombs, and ghosts--it is really just a romance story dressed up as horror and lacks any truly weird atmosphere. I think it is important because of its historical value, but aside from that it is of little more value to fans of the genre than the “Bit Lit” of today. From my point of view, and to my knowledge, the line of authors who were important to Gothic Horror began in the 1800s–Poe, La Fanu, Hawthorne, Stoker, and Mary Shelley. Tony Iommi He invented Heavy Metal. He is THE most important person in the history of Heavy Metal music. If I had to point to one person who has been the most influential individual on what I have chosen to do with my life, it would be Tony Iommi. [Stewart Voegtlin]
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I didn't know Briton Rites is by Howie Bentley, I shall have to investigate. Thank you for this very informative interview.