PHIL HORNER - CONJURING FATE

💿 Hi, it’s a pleasure for us to have on Hardrockheavymetal PHIL HORNER, guitarist of CONJURING FATE!! Welcome!! Hey Giovanni, a total pleasure man. Thanks for the invite! 💿 On Nov 15th will be out your new album CURSE OF THE FALLEN. We have the chance to listening to it in preview and we were really impressed!! Can you tell us something about its composition process and style? Thank you very much, I’m glad that you digged the album! I would write a lot of the songs musically. Stuff like Original Sin, No Escape & Voodoo Wrath. They pretty much sums up my style. Some of the albums darker songs comes from bassist Steve. I worked on Children of The Night with him and he wrote Night of Knives & Journeys End. I then got a rough 2 min demo from Karl of what is now Daughter of The Everglades. Again to bring it into the CF style I cut it up, added to it and made it into what I think is a standout track. Lyrically Tommy & Steve write most of them as they are great storytellers. My only contribution is Midnight Skies. I just needed one song to get some stuff out. The band at this point was getting hard to deal with. And the general message is lifes to short, get on with it. 💿 Can you tell us somethin’about the birth and the name of your band? After my previous band split (bassist Steve Legear was also in that band) I started working on a new project. This later became Conjuring Fate in 2005. Myself & old bassist Micky McAuley came up with the name. No deep meaning, but needed something original and cool sounding. Lol... I wanted to play something that was more classic heavy metal based. Stuff like Maiden & Helloween. Which artists or bands impressed you the most as musician? I listen to a range of music. Growing up I was a huge QUEEN fan. That then changed when I discovered EXTREME and Nuno Bettencourt. His guitar playing blew my mind! Poison was also a big part of my younger years. I loved CC’s playing and stage presence. Not a virtuoso guitarist, but put on a great show. It wasn’t until 1995 when I discovered Iron Maiden during the Blaze era. Since then I just fell in love with all thing heavy and classic sounding power metal. 💿 You come from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Can you tell us somethin'about your local scene? There has always pretty much been a metal scene here. Sometimes bands start doing a little better most, but most would stay ‘local bands’. Within our general genre bands like Sandstone, Stormzone & Maverick have been doing well in recent years. It is hard for gigging though as Ireland as a whole isn’t the biggest. And only certain promoters are willing to take a chance & help original rock/metal bands out. In general though for the size of the country its thriving. 💿 There's a great return of format such as vinyl and cassette. What's your thinking about these classic format..love for vintage or is it impossible a future for music outside digital? Vinyl I think will always have a following. Cassette tapes though, I believe that’s only for real diehards and I think a bit of a novelty. I listen to vinyl, cds and listen to spotify. But if I do discover someone I like on spotify I always buy the album, sometimes more than one. I think there is enough room for vinyl, cd and digital to co exist. 💿 Inside your songs what’s the role of lyrics in the composition process? Words follow music or vice versa? In general the music always comes first, then lyrics. Melodies would be worked on after that. Melodies this time were being changed up until the point of recording. We wanted to try make things as ‘metal’ as they could be, but catchy at the same time.

💿 We love the cover of CURSE OF THE FALLEN..Can you tell us somethin'about? My wife Kym is a photoshop wizard! She has designed our previous CD covers & booklets aswell and various other bands. We pretty much gave Kym free reign over the cover, and we think it tell the story of the album perfectly. It ties in well with some of the song concepts. Like Burn the Witch & Voodoo Wrath. 💿 New album out via PURE STEEL RECORDS. Can you tell us somethin'about birth of relationships with them? It just came by chance to be honest. We had mailed various labels but hadn’t yet recieved any offers. So we did a self release of Valley of Shadows in December 2016. For the launch show we limited it to 100 copies. Just after that 2 labels contacted us and wanted to release it. We went with Pure Steel Records in the end. We only had the album out a week and then had to pull it form all digital platforms. Was a bit of a false start, but we got there. They all seem like nice people who just love heavy metal. So it was the right decision to make. We released a new music video for Trust No One in June 2017 to coincide with the PSR album release version.

💿 Can you tell us somethin’ about your live plans to promote new album? As the album is released on November 16th it doesn’t leave much time this year for touring. So we are only doing 3 special album launch shows to finish the year. Cork, Belfast & Scotland. We will be hitting mainland UK sometime next year and some stops in Europe for some select shows. 💿 Thank you so much for your time! See you soon on Hardrockheavymetal! Total pleasure man. I hope you enjoy many more spins of the new album! #pics Pure Steel Promotion/Pure Steel Records

#PHILHORNER #CONJURINGFATE