Photo: Ty Klingsick
Eric
Around these parts, Trouble is a doom
metal institution. With the release of its first
two albums, Trouble (1984) and The Skull
(1985), the band almost single-handedly pioneered the sound that created an entire subgenre of heavy metal. In 2012, ex-Trouble
vocalist Eric Wagner, along with former
you started The Skull in 2012?
Eric Wagner: I was actually working on
my own record called Blackfinger. After
I left Trouble I was just writing for a couple of years; taking a break from touring
and all that crap. I started to get the itch,
wrote a bunch of songs and recruited
some friends of mine who I grew up
with over the years and recorded the
album, which came out at the end of
January of 2014. I was also working on
The Skull, actually the record (For Those
Which Are Asleep) was done before that.
We started working on this a little over a
year ago. So I did two records in that
amount of time … I've been busy.
The Skull, Eric Wagner far right
IE: Most fans know that The Skull's
name is taken from Trouble's 1984 self-
01•2015
band cohorts, bassist Ron Holzner and
drummer Jeff "Oly" Olson, formed The
Skull. The veteran musicians, joined by guitarist Lothar Keller (Sacred Dawn) and
Matt Goldsborough (ex-Pentagram),
have just released its debut full-length
album, For Those Which Are Asleep. It's a
10-track affair that captures the original
gusto of their former band with satisfying
results. Speaking from Pittsburgh on a brief
US tour, Wagner discussed his new band
with IE.
IE: After you left Trouble in 2008 (for the
second time), what did you do before
titled sophomore release, but was it a
conscious effort to pick a name that had
heavy connections to your past?
Eric Wagner: No, not really. I think we
were on a conference call – me, Ron and
Oly – and we were just going over some
different names. I can't even remember
what some of the other names we had.
Since the beginning, the premise of the
Skull was to go out and play those old
songs from the first two (Trouble)
albums and to do that era. So it kind of
came down to either Psalm 9 or The
Skull, and everyone picked The Skull.
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