RESISTANCE - PAUL SHIGO

RESISTANCE

💿 Hi, it’s a pleasure for us to have on Hardrockheavymetal Paul Shigo, bassist of the American band RESISTANCE! Hi, Giovanni and thanks for taking the time for this interview. 💿 Let’s start talking about the early days of the band. When is this all begun? Which bands have influenced you? I’ll do the best I can to make this a short answer. The core of the band, Dan Luna (Guitar), Matt Ohnemus (drums), and myself (bass) actually started playing in our first band together in 1986.

The name of the band was “Heathen” (not to be confused with the bay area thrash band Heathen). At that time there was obviously no internet and we were young and not yet aware of them. We were all about 15 or 16 years old and were crushing backyard parties allover Southern California as well as some of the local clubs (“The Dancing Waters Club” and“Timbers” to name a few). So we changed the name and the three of us played in several different bands together with different names and lineups (most notably was the “AnarchyDivine” name and lineup where we actually recorded a 5 song demo with in 1991 that hasnever seen the light of day) before settling on the name RESISTANCE in January of 2000.There was a point of inactivity for us between 1992 and 2000. Unfortunately during these early lineups we never recorded any material, which is really too bad, because if we had, it would make Festival booking much easier today.

As far as influences, there are many. As a matter of fact, our bio reads, “A full on MetalAssault from a broad range of influences.” Haha.

For me it started with the classic Metalbands, Triumph, Scorpions, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Ronnie James Dio, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath (with Ronnie Dio), Fates Warning, Mercyful Fate, Armored Saint, Queensryche, Riot, Leatherwolf, and morphed into the great Thrash Metal band like Slayer, Celtic Frost, Venom, Exodus, Dark Angel , Agent Steel, Abattoir and so on. The other guys I think would agree with this list and add a hell of a lot more of their own. 💿 We’re all in waitin’ for the new platter METAL MACHINE out on June 27th. Can you tell ussomethin’about this new album and its composition process? Which will be differences by previous work? We can’t wait to get this monster out to the masses ourselves. The main difference on this album from my perspective is we were very focused on producing and writing better songs. We weren’t trying to write the heaviest, most technical, fastest music or anything like that. We concentrated on writing classic Heavy Metal music that encompassed our influences while sticking to the true RESISTANCE sound. Songs that we believe are memorable and will stand the test of time. Songs that will leave our own unique mark on the World of Heavy Metal. Our guitarist Dan Luna is a musical genius and definitely raised the bar on hissongwriting on this one. The bass and drums were produced and recorded by Bill Metoyer and the guitars and vocals were produced and recorded by Dan Luna in our own studio. The final product was given to the highly acclaimed Engineer/Producer Neil Kernon for the mixand Alan Douches for the master. 💿 The album will be out on No Remorse Records; Can you tell us somethin’about relationships with this label? Yes, No Remorse contacted us in 2015 after we recorded and released the “Volume 1 Battle Scars” album with an offer to release that album on vinyl as well as the follow-up “MetalMachine” on CD and vinyl. No Remorse is well respected and easy to work with. It was aneasy decision for us 💿 The real “news” in music industry is the return of vinyl; What’s your feeling with this classic format? I LOVE VINYL. I still have every vinyl record I ever purchased. Whateverformat that can be used to get Metal Music to the fans is ok by me. Speaking of Vinyl, Iremember sitting in Matt’s (our drummer) bedroom when we were teenagers, with the lightsout, and spinning Led Zeppelin's “Stairway to Heaven backwards while picking out thebackward masked lyrics. There really there. Check it out… 💿 Can you tell us somethin’about your experience in UP THE HAMMERS FESTIVAL and your next live gigs? UP THE HAMMERS FESTIVAL for us was truly a magical experience. That’s really the only way I candescribe it. Some of the greatest Metal fans in the world were there. The festival promoter Manolis Karazeris and his crew were extremely professional and ran it top notch. I can’tspeak highly enough of them. For RESISTANCE, coming in as the underdog to many of the legendary bands that were on the bill really worked to our advantage. We were the somewhat unknown, underground, cult Heavy Metal band from California. Many fans were seeing us for the first time and had no idea what to expect and were blown away with ourperformance. We met and hung out with dozens of our loyal fans from all over the worldand were described in one performance review as the “show stealing surprise” and in another as “the first highlight that should remain constantly in the pole position from now on for the rest of the continuing festival. Needless to say, we were very appreciative and humbled by the overall experience from the great fans and this world class festival. Up next for us is a short run of shows in August on the East Coast of the U.S. New York, Baltimore and Columbus where we will be supporting Official Blaze Bayley and headlining a few of our own shows.

We are also working on booking for next year’s festival season. So if you’re interested in booking the band please shoot an email to: themetalmachine2003@yahoo.com. Thanks again for the interview and hope to see you onthe road soon. Cheers and Hail to the Horns! 💿 Thank you so much for your time! See you soon on HARDROCKHEAVYMETAL!

(Thanks MARCO MATIS for getting us in touch with the band).