two full records. The last one came out in
September 2018.
By Kelley Simms
SACRED DAWN RETURNS
Sacred Dawn
C
hicago's Sacred Dawn is back in
business thanks to founder/gui-
tarist/vocalist Lothar Keller, who
resurrected the band in 2019 after a years-
long hiatus. Re-joining Keller is bassist Joey
Vega, guitarist John Vitale, and new drum-
mer Mike Mousel. Sacred Dawn's last
album was 2011’s A Madness Within, which
saw the band's progressive heavy metal
approach acquire a more melodic sound
with the addition of keyboards and
stronger vocal harmonies. In honor of the
reformation, Sacred Dawn is working on
new material that Keller expects to be a lit-
tle gloomier, mostly because of the influ-
ences that rubbed off on him while playing
in the doom metal band The Skull. Keller
talked about his time in The Skull, the new
Sacred Dawn album, and more during a
recent interview with IE.
Mosh: How did you end up joining The
Skull, [the band formed with members of
the iconic Aurora metal band Trouble]?
Lothar Keller: It was a great opportunity. I
grew up listening to [their] music. I would
say I was already a fan going in, and I was
pretty excited to see where it would go.
When it first started, it wasn't even going to
turn into making original music; we were
covering some of the early Trouble stuff.
But after a year or two, we started getting
the itch, and I just started throwing some
riffs out to the guys, and the same thing
started happening [with them]. So here we
are today, it's still going on, and we’ve done
34 illinoisentertainer.com january 2020
Mosh: As a musician growing up in the
Chicago area, what type of music influ-
enced you?
LK: I've listened to all the different genres;
the neoclassical, the doom metal, the speed
metal, and thrash. For me, Trouble just had
the sound that was a bit different than
everybody else, and I automatically gravi-
tated towards that; the guitar tones, every-
thing. Even just the way their music is writ-
ten.
Mosh: Is The Skull between tours right
now?
LK: We just played the Forever Deaf Fest at
Beat Kitchen (on Dec. 6). That was our final
show for the year. We just came off of sev-
eral months of touring. We were out with
COC in September-October and Orange
Goblin before that. Then we went over and
did some stuff in Germany and Hungary
this past November. So I've only been home
for a few weeks. We’re celebrating the 35th
anniversary of **Psalm 9*, which is crazy.
Mosh: Since you joined The Skull in
2011, you put Sacred Dawn on the back
burner. Are you now jumping back into
Sacred Dawn full force?
LK: The pieces just all of a sudden came
together to allow us to do so. I've got anoth-
er band too, Divinity Compromised, and
that one's still active. We’ve been on the
search for a bass player, which we just
found. But Sacred Dawn, I put on hiatus
because MyKull Carpenter, our guitar play-
er at the time, moved back to Florida, and
our drummer, Eddie Foltz, had some things
going on and he wasn't able to do it. I was
getting super busy with The Skull, so I
decided ‘Lets put this on the back burner
for a bit. When the time is right, and the
pieces align, then we'll revisit it.’ John
Vitale, the first guitar player we had, also
had moved away, but then came back to the
area and [he] had the itch. So we'd been
talking for the past year, and we're like, let's
write a couple of tunes. Let's put out a vinyl
single and see what happens. And we did a
few shows this past summer, and right now
we're planning to record a full record this
winter.
Mosh: The vinyl single “Contradiction,”
was released in July. Why that song? Is it
a new composition or something you had
worked on previously?
LK: The song is on the B-side of
“Sympathy,” actually, and I'd been sitting
on it for about ten years. We had started
working on it back in 2012, and I had re-
recorded [and] messed around with it off
and on since then. So, that song was
already kind of there. “Contradiction” was
basically a few riffs and ideas that I've been
tolling around with since that time, but it
wasn't complete. John and I got together
and started working through it and kind of
put [it] together in a couple of months last
year. That's when we decided to record it to
see how it would turn out. We initially did
demo versions and then released it in
Europe with a compilation CD in a maga-
zine in the Netherlands. In the meantime,
we're gonna start finishing up [the writing]
and getting enough material to get this full
[album] done.
Mosh: What's the process like when
you're creating new material for an
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