{"id":10014,"date":"2012-08-15T07:00:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=10014"},"modified":"2012-08-22T08:29:52","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T12:29:52","slug":"blowin-wind-with-nick-and-chris-of-powerglove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=10014","title":{"rendered":"Blowin\u2019 Wind w\/ Nick and Chris of Powerglove: \u201cThe internet is just a giant warehouse of people standing on their soapboxes and screaming their opinions hoping everybody will hear them.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What do you get when you take four guys obsessed with cartoons, anime, power metal music, and video games and put instruments in their hands? Well, you get Powerglove. Since 2003, Powerglove has been delivering their dork infused power metal renditions of video game and cartoon classics such as \u201cTetris\u201d, \u201cPokemon (Gotta Catch \u2018Em All)\u201d, and \u201cMario Minor\u201d to a well earned and dedicated fan base. Powerglove has been out supporting their 2010 release \u201cSaturday Morning Apocalypse\u201d and are finally about to wind down their touring schedule long enough to record and release their much anticipated follow up album.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Powerglove has been on the road supporting nerdcore rapper MC Chris and when they pulled into Atlanta for their sold out show here, they were gracious enough to invite me in for soundcheck and to talk to me pre-show. Bassist Nick Avila and guitarist Chris Marchiel joined me next door at Chipotle where we talked about just why they play the kind of music they do, why they think cheating at video games sucks, and why \u201cReturn of the Jedi\u201d brings tears to Chris\u2019 eye. This was a really fun interview that went into so really fun and unexpected directions. Hope you enjoy getting to learn a little bit more about the mighty Powerglove.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Welcome back to Atlanta! You guys are currently on tour with MC Chris. Who the hell is MC Chris?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: It\u2019s weird. Any tour that went hip hop act\/metal act\/hip hop act on paper just sounds so bad but it\u2019s gone really well on every show. We did the Summer Slaughter tour last year which was all death core bands and it went ok but we had some bad shows where people were pissed at us. So far, this tour just works. The people that listen to MC Chris and nerdcore rap come more from nerd land and less so from rap land. Often times they\u2019re musical tastes go into rock and other kinds of music and nerdcore is pretty much the only hip hop that they\u2019ll listen to. We\u2019ve noticed that we can win over these crowds pretty easily. We don\u2019t play at our normal heavy metal volume. We back it off just a bit so that it\u2019s more about enjoying the music as opposed to that in your face metal volume.<\/p>\n

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So basically it\u2019s just the opposite of Summer Slaughter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: Exactly. On Summer Slaughter we just had to be as loud as possible [laughs].<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: We like playing with so many different kinds of bands and line ups. It just makes you a better band and you\u2019re always challenging yourself to engage the audience. We\u2019ve done a lot of power metal tours in a row and eventually we just go into the same shtick every show. It would just become a little too easy and we\u2019d always know what to expect what would work and what wouldn\u2019t work. On this tour we just feel like we always have to be on our game. Once you get comfortable it gets a little bit easier but we\u2019ve really been enjoying this tour.<\/p>\n

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Being on the road with two hip hop artists definitely must make travel and set up a lot smoother at shows.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Yeah. Touring with two rappers means there\u2019s more of us than there are of them including their crew. We\u2019re usually used to touring with six bands with six or eight people each.<\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: We\u2019re the only band on this tour with a giant Portnoy (former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy who\u2019s known for having huge drum kits)drum kit as opposed to one of six bands with a giant Portnoy drum kit [laughs].<\/p>\n

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The last time I saw you guys you were here supporting Symphony X. Was that tour beneficial to you guys as far as picking up a bigger following?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: It was definitely one of the better tours for introducing ourselves to people. That tour had a lot of problems with Soilwork and Nevermore dropping off but even though it probably hurt attendance a little bit, we went from being the fourth band on the bill to being direct support just before Symphony X. That meant that our set time increased giving us more time on stage and basically we got to step up. Attendance ended up still being very good and with us being direct support it was great. If we had gone on earlier in the show as planned, there would\u2019ve been a lot less people. Our van broke down 5 times on that tour and we had some nice five figure repairs so when all was said and done we didn\u2019t make a whole lot of money. Other than that it was a really great tour.<\/p>\n

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At what point did you guys decide to go the route of game theme metal and become Powerglove?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Well, it just started off as something we were doing for fun. It was just a different kind of challenge arranging the songs that we knew as kids into metal songs. It was purely a fun thing. We were all in \u201cserious\u201d bands before and this was just something we could do to be ridiculous and goofy and make whatever kind of music we wanted. It was a light hearted project that just bloomed from there. We didn\u2019t have any big hopes of touring or even getting signed. We did some college shows, house shows, basements. We were just having fun with it.<\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: The original MO of the band was to put songs on the internet and to play house parties around town.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: The thing that changed it all was in 2008 when we started getting some tour offers. We got offered a tour with Psychostik which lead to a tour with Dragonforce. From there we started getting label offers and then it just turned into business from there. The first four years of the band we were just having fun.<\/p>\n

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Powerglove has a really strong, loyal following. What is it about this music that connects with your fans?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: Our music is basically emotional manipulation. We just take things that people already love and put a new spin on it. It\u2019s like playing people lullabies. These video game songs are like lullabies. People remember them from when they were kids and it soothes them and it brings back memories. There\u2019s this reverence for these songs and they really are great songs in their own right. Powerglove has its advantages. For instance, we can go on stage and say, \u201cWe\u2019re going to play a new song tonight.\u201d When most bands say that, the crowd just says, \u201cOk\u201d and they sit very still and they don\u2019t know how to react. If we say that and we play \u201cGiles\u2019 Theme\u201d from Street Fighter, then everyone knows what that song is and they get into immediately.<\/p>\n

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Some people may say that by doing this kind of \u201cthemed band\u201d you may be limiting \"\"<\/a>yourself.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: Creatively it does pigeonhole us but I think if we did it the right way we could make original music in the style of Powerglove.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>. It would still be video game themed.<\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: Yeah, we\u2019ve had some ideas of how to introduce that and we\u2019re working on it.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Also, we\u2019re constantly experimenting the way we approach the re-mixes. The next album we\u2019re going to try and vary it up a little more.<\/p>\n

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Powerglove released Saturday Morning Apocalypse<\/em> in 2010 which has some really great renditions of cartoon\/video game themes. Is there a new album in the works?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: The album came out in 2010 and we\u2019ve been touring with those songs since 8 or 9 months before the album came out. We had done two back to back tours that were SMA focused so we\u2019ve been touring for that album for a good while. Right after the MC Chris tour we are going to start working on a new album.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: We would\u2019ve been working on it all this year but we actually have an album coming out in Japan called TV Game Metal<\/em>. We re-arranged and re-recording some of the songs from our first EP and also remixed a bunch of songs so that took up the first chunk of this year.<\/p>\n

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I heard about this. Why are you only releasing it in Japan though?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Eh, it\u2019s a very complicated and boring story [laughs].<\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: Let\u2019s just say legal reasons. The big con about being Powerglove is legality. Everything that we do requires months if not a full year of legal wrangling. Every time we say, \u201cWe want to cover this song\u201d, because we\u2019re signed and known now, it\u2019s a big legal hassle before releasing it. That\u2019s why we don\u2019t\u2019 sell our old albums in America. It\u2019s just an unbelievably slow process securing the rights to record these songs.<\/p>\n

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So what makes it harder to get the rights to cover video game themes then to say, cover an Elton John song? I mean, if I want to cover an Elton John song, I just pay the publisher for the rights.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: There are few video game songs that you can do mechanical licensing on but most video game songs aren\u2019t available for mechanical licensing (a license that grants certain limited permissions to work with, study, improve upon, reinterpret, re-record something that is not in the public domain). They are not with Harry Fox or any of those other agencies so you can\u2019t just say, \u201cI\u2019m going to pay you a statutory rate to cover this song.\u201d A lot of those songs you can\u2019t even find entries for in the US and only in Japan.<\/p>\n

Nick<\/strong>: Mechanical licenses only cover straight covers. Any arrangement changes are called a derivative work so even if you cover the song exactly the way it is but say change the lyrics from English to Spanish, you have to get permission straight from the person who owns the song.<\/p>\n

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So have you guys received any feedback from the composers of these songs that Powerglove has covered?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: The composer of the Power Rangers\u2019 song really liked our version and the guy who wrote the Pokemon theme liked our cover of that one as well. We even collaborated with Daisuke Ishiwatari who designed the Guilty Gear game series to do the cover art for our Japanese album which contains one of his songs. That\u2019s really cool.<\/p>\n