EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: CANDLELIGHT RED Talk ‘Demons’ EP, Uproar Festival & New Album

I spoke with guitarist Jeremy Edge from Candlelight Red while he was currently on the Uproar Music Festival tour alongside the likes of Godsmack and Shinedown. The band is currently on the road supporting the new EP ‘Demons’, which was produced by Sevendust drummer Morgan Rose.

Candlelight Red are off to a great start, in a big ass kind of way. After winning a nationwide talent contest which involved being selected personally by the band KISS , the boys have unleashed a full length debut called ‘The Wreckage’. That record contains the hit singles ‘Closer’ and ‘She’s Got The Look’. But now Candlelight Red have released ‘Demons’, which takes their sound in a more extreme direction. I spoke with guitarist Jeremy Edge about the new EP, a potential new album by the end of 2012 and the band’s love for metal icons Pantera.

Bandmates Jeremy Edge (Guitar), Ryan Hoke (Vocals), Jamie Morral (Bass) and Brian Dugan (Drums) recorded ‘Demons’ with Morgan Rose, who is the renowned drummer for Sevendust. Rose produced the new EP and the results are more than satisfying as the band’s sound has been enhanced significantly. “We kind of work from the same perspective, almost as if he’s a bandmember,” said Edge on Rose. “He took away a lot of the things he thinks works for his band and a lot of those things really worked for us.”

Keven: The new EP ‘Demons’ is out now, what makes this effort different from your debut ‘The Wreckage’?

Jeremy: ‘The Wreckage’ was written over a long period of time, with most of those songs written earlier and it was made with a lot of pre-production. ‘Demons’ was written spontaneously and I think the song ‘Demons’ was the only one where we kinda rehearsed riffs ahead of time. We put together four new songs in five days. Plus we had Morgan come in to produce and he had a very different approach than we were used to but it worked really well.

Keven: One of your main goals on ‘Demons’ was to capture the essence of the band’s live sound. What is different about the music live than maybe what was captured on ‘The Wreckage’?

Jeremy: We did a lot of multiple overdubs and piecing things together on ‘The Wreckage’ and it was maybe a little more middle of the road rock. I think the band is a little heavier live. ‘Demons’ is a little more where we wanted to go with maybe the exception of ‘Sleeping Awake’ which is an in-studio creation of sorts.

Keven: ‘Demons’ is a bit heavier than your debut, do you think you’ll build upon the sound you captured on this EP for the next full length record?

Jeremy: Yeah I think we’ll continue to go down that path. If you notice on ‘Demons’ a lot of the guitar and drums are heavier and more extreme. The stuff that is very melodic is really dynamic which is also to the other extreme so it’s heavier and lighter at the same time.

Keven: The Uproar Tour lineup is stacked from top to bottom, are you nervous at all?

Jeremy: I think when we first saw the lineup it was a bit intimidating but once we got there and met everybody we didn’t really think about that. We just went on stage and did our thing. It was actually a very comfortable experience. The other bands we’re sharing the stage with are very nice and down to earth. We’re actually sharing a bus with Redlight King, who are super cool guys.

Keven: After you’re done performing do you get the chance to watch any of the other bands on stage?

Jeremy: We get to see a good chunk of the bands usually after we play. We’ll usually immediately go to merch and try to sign as much stuff as we can and see the fans. Because you usually have to go shower and change after you play you have to pick and choose who you see each day. Like one day I’ll see Godsmack, the next day I’ll see Shinedown. I’ve seen most of the bands and they’ve all been really good.

Keven: The controversial music video for ‘Closer’ starts out like your standard love breakdown theme before exploding into this violent murder. Most videos won’t show that level of darkness, so who came up with this concept?

Jeremy: (laughing) Actually me and my friend Wade who directed it. Some of the stuff Wade had worked on was ‘safe’ so he wanted to do something really cool and theatrical. So we were just thinking about the lyrics and it turned into this scary concept.

Keven: One of my favorite tracks is your cover of Roxette’s ‘The Look’. It’s such an odd choice but works so well, whose idea was it to do that track?

Jeremy: That was actually Ryan. We played several songs like that when we were doing shows back home. We didn’t have enough songs to play for an hour and a half straight. Even if we did, we kinda wanna showcase our best songs and not bore the audience. We’ve never been one of those bands that would do a System of a Down or Black Sabbath cover or something that’s in our genre and obvious. It’s more fun to pick something outside of our genre and make it our own. Some people really loved it or they just really didn’t get it because it was a Roxette song. If you’re gonna do the cover just like the original, why do it? Why even cover it?

Keven: What are some of your personal musical influences?

Jeremy: Some of my earliest influences were Black Sabbath, Zeppelin, Hendrix, ZZ Top, Van Halen, Pantera….Pantera is probably a big influence on the whole band. Stuff where you can really hear the music like Rage, Deftones, Korn and a lot of the 90’s, 2000 stuff. A little bit of 80’s rock too.

Keven: Pantera is my favorite band of all time, so it’s nice to see the love for them even if bringing them up now gets me a little sad.

Jeremy: We play the last minute or so of ‘Domination’ in our set. It was kind of surreal – we played the Alrosa Villa this summer. I realized where we were, but I didn’t realize that when we were doing that song in our set, that we were playing the song on that stage where Dime died…. It was pretty crazy.

Keven: With a new music video coming out and ‘Demons’ still fresh, is Candlelight Red looking to unleash another full length in the fourth quarter?

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. This is just a little EP and we wanted to get the summer started off right with some new music. But we wanna try and get back in the studio as soon as we can and work on the next record. Whenever Morgan has time for us I think we’re gonna try to go back in and record some more songs and do a full record.