Examiner Interview with Video Game Inspired Metal Band Powerglove

The Examiner now features an interview with video game and cartoon-inspired melodic death/power/thrash metal band Powerglove, who are currently on tour with power metal legends Sonata Artica.

Below is an excerpt from the interview with bassist Nick Avila.

Examiner: You guys have been around for five or six years now, and you are just now starting to make a name for yourselves in the national circuit. What took so long getting things off the ground?

Avila: It was actually hard to get out name out there, being an instrumental band that played video game songs. We had to do a lot of trial and error. We started out in the video game theming world, where the only shows we could get were video game conventions or shows with other video game bands. We ultimately didn’t play a lot of shows, because we wanted to build a fan base first.

The first couple years of the band was just recording and working on putting a solid lineup together. When we initially began recording, we were all actually in a melodic death metal band we were trying to “make it” with, and we started doing Powerglove as a joke. We recorded the Mega Man theme as a metal song and laughed about it. Then we posted it online, and people started to really dig it.

In 2005, we recorded the first EP, Total Pwnage, and our fan base increased. We did a lot of hardcore online promotion and landed our first tour with Psychostick by complete chance. One of the bands that was supposed to be on the tour dropped off, and we got on it at the last minute. And during that time, our guitarist Chris Marchiel emailed Herman Li from DragonForce. He saw that we were on tour and invited us to open a show for them in Portland.

The show went amazingly well, and then they invited us to tour with them. And it wasn’t until then that we started to get a lot more attention, a lot more press, and label interest. It was a real chain reaction, and everything really started coming together.

For me, it really doesn’t seem like that much time at all, because there are tons of bands out there that take 10-15 years before people start paying attention to them. I think we’ve been very lucky so far.

Examiner: I find it interesting that it still took that long, because DragonForce, which is a huge band, is, in essence, playing the same kind of music that you are, but they have vocals.

Avila: [Laughs] Yeah, we are all fans of DragonForce, but most of our actual influences come from Japanese pop-metal bands. And that’s actually where we got the ideas for the costumes, because in Japan, the stage shows are really overly-dramatic. There’s a style over there called visual kei that we like a lot; it’s a lot like glam but taken a step further – they dress in big, poofy, post-Renaissance costumes, which make for a very bizarre and goofy live show. Bands like Versailles, Malice Mizer, and X Japan were all big influences on Powerglove. But we do get the DragonForce comparison a lot.

Examiner: And I noticed that recently, you’ve started branching out from video game music and into cartoons. At a recent show, I saw you perform a tribute to Optimus Prime as well as the X-Men cartoon theme.

Avila: Yeah, our next CD is actually not going to be video game-themed at all. It’s going to be all old TV, cartoon and movie themes, but all from the same era, from the mid-1980s to the mid-90s – everything from The Transformers theme to the Pokemon theme. We’re branching out from video games and invading other areas of pop culture.

We take the approach of thinking of songs we knew as kids and imagining how awesome they would be as metal songs. I think it will speak to the same people as our previous albums, as well as pick up some new people who might not have been as into the video game stuff.

Examiner: I think it’s funny that you guys are doing this for fun, having a good time with it, and causing metalheads to reminisce on their childhoods. But I think a deeper humor lies in the notion that you could also act as a gateway band to lure little kids into metal.

Avila: Oh, definitely, definitely! Our fan base definitely ranges into several age groups. On the first show of the Hammerfall tour, there was a two-year-old doing a spin-dance to “Mario Minor.” And I’ve seen shows where there were nine-year-olds and thirty-year-olds headbanging right next to each other. It’s a lot of fun. And it does surprise me sometimes to see those kids there, because I swear a lot live.

Examiner: How much of what you guys do is writing and recording, and how much is actually rehearsing a stage show? Whenever I see Powerglove, I’m amazed at the energy of the band – you in particular run around like a crazed cheerleader.

Avila: The band pretty much overtakes all of our lives completely. We keep the stage show as a non-serious entity – we try to be goofy, have fun, and be easy-going on stage. But the music we take very, very seriously. We pull our hair out arranging and writing original parts.

We do all of the recording ourselves; our drummer is actually an engineer, and we record everything in his studio. We’re very anal-retentive in the studio, so we do spend a lot of time doing that.

But for the stage show, we just have fun. We’re an instrumental band, so we don’t have a front man, so to speak. So, to make up for the lack of a vocalist, we just aim to be completely ridiculous live – throwing candy out and giant props, wearing outrageous costumes, and basically making people turn around and go, “who the f*** are these guys???” I think if we came out in jeans and t-shirts, playing video game music and looking at our shoes, I don’t think anyone would give much of a sh** about us.

Powerglove’s current tour will stretch until May 2nd with their next show in Edmonton Canada this Saturday and a headlining show on the 21st. More information on the band can be found on their respective official page, MySpace and Facebook.