INTERVIEW: Cirith Ungol is not done yet
Photo: Cirith Ungol recently released Live at The Roxy on Metal Blade Records. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Cabral / Provided by Earsplit PR with permission.
Cirith Ungol, the legendary metal band that has been sonic-blasting for more than 50 years, was gearing up to enter retirement in 2024, but something didn’t sit well with the group, especially Robert Garven, the drummer for the band. His mantra to his companions on stage was simple: He wasn’t ready to hang up the drumsticks for good.
“We were on the cover of Decibel magazine, and we were in Europe playing,” Garven said in a recent phone interview. “I was doing an interview with Decibel, and I was having all sorts of second thoughts for this.”
Here’s how Garven and the band came to their reversal. They had released the album Dark Parade in 2023; this was a rare treat for fans because Cirith Ungol has only released six studio albums since the early 1970s. They also had plans to play The Roxy in Los Angeles and record a live album and music video. The plans went awry when the guitarist for the band had to bow out two weeks before the gig due to health reasons. That’s when Armand Anthony stepped in.
Anthony was well known to Cirith Ungol. He actually helped the band record its last few albums, and he’s also the guitarist for Night Demon, a group that often tours with Garven and company. In fact, bass player Jarvis Leatherby double-times as a members of Cirith Ungol and Night Demon, so the groups know each other well.
“He offered to step in graciously just on a limited-term basis,” Garven said. “Then the whole final tour came about. Well, this is over. We can’t continue because we really don’t have a band anymore, but then we did 30 days all over the world. And I think with each date we started playing better, and the crowd was really excited. And it seemed like it was not only going good, but we were all having a lot of fun. And Armand is just a great guy and amazing guitarist. He already knew most of our stuff because he recorded the album Dark Parade. He did Forever Black and [the single] ‘Witch’s Game’ and worked on our live album I’m Alive, so he kind of knew all the band stuff already.”
Anthony jumped in and learned all the necessary guitar parts in less than two weeks. They played the music, and Garven started thinking to himself: “Hey, I’m not ready to go yet. The whole reason that we were going to do our final tour and the band was going to stop playing live was we thought there was no way forward, and all of a sudden, a path opened up in front of us. I kept bugging the guys in Europe. ‘Look, I’m not ready to go yet.’ They’re like, ‘Well, we’re doing this magazine article telling everyone how the band has stopped playing live.'”
That’s when Cirith Ungol made a pivot. Garven sat down in a hotel room and sketched out what the future may hold. They want to work on some new material, which is what’s taking up their time nowadays. The drummer predicts a new album is on the horizon.
“My goal is always to make everything improved, so I think we can even do a heavier album than Dark Parade, which was amazing,” he said. “A lot of people are going, ‘I’m so sad that you’re leaving’ or ‘Please don’t leave.’ I’m doing everything I can to get the band to keep producing music. We’re never going to do a giant tour like a traditional tour like most bands do, and we never did that because most guys in our band worked regular jobs, right. So we could never go on a 30- or 60-day tour in Europe or around the world, right. So we’ve always been doing one-offs or maybe two- or three-offs, like fly to Europe, play 2-3 dates and come home, and I hope that we can continue to do that.”
Specifically, Garven talked about visiting Japan for the first time and parts of the United States that have never had a Cirith Ungol show. It would seem many areas of the map are a possibility.
To keep fans satiated, the band recently released Live at The Roxy, on CD, DVD and vinyl. The recording comes courtesy of Metal Blade Records, and there’s a new single out called “Relentless.” Garven remembers The Roxy gig as a tough one. Not only was Anthony filling in, but Garven was having trouble that night.
“I was really sick,” he said. “I had a really bad flu. This was during the pandemic. Whenever you’re sick or you’re coughing, no one even wanted to sit next to you, so they got me my own little dressing room, which I’ve never had before. I didn’t even know how to take that. As a matter of fact, even before the show, I called Jarvis, our manager and bass player, and I said, ‘Hey, look, I’m not sure I can do this. I’m really sick.’ He’s like, ‘We’ve got the camera crew there, and they’re going to record it for a live album. We’ve got to do this, right.’ I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll do what I can.’ So I showed up there, set my drums up, and I thought I played actually extremely well. I watched it 10-20 times altogether when we were looking at it in the studio before it came out and after it came out, and there’s not too much stuff wrong with my playing. I don’t think I look that good because when you’re not feeling well, you don’t come across as your best, but I think the recording came out good.”
This recorded video for the DVD release is actually the first professional video that Cirith Ungol has ever done in its entire career. When the band released Frost and Fire in the 1970s, and King of the Dead and One Foot in Hell in the 1980s, they never had professionally shot footage of their antics on stage.
“I know that’s amazing since we started 52 years ago, and we made it through the whole MTV era,” Garven said. “We never really had enough money or a budget or anyone that actually wanted to pay for a video for the band, and so this was the first video of any kind that is professionally done for the band. And so I think it came across really good. I thought the night was exceptional. It was almost a completely sold-out crowd.”
Although no professional recordings of the band exist from the 1970s and 1980s, there is an amateur video that was shot on VHS when Cirith Ungol played The Roxy 40 years ago. When Metal Blade Records released King of the Dead as a deluxe edition almost a decade ago, they decided to include that video on the DVD.
“Back then, before the internet and everything, you’d give a guy $20, and he had a VHS camera,” he said. “He put a tape in there, and you’d give him $20. And after the show, he’d hand you the tape. That’s how we got the tape from that, and I had a cassette off the board of what the sound was that night. So I had a friend that actually pieced those two together digitally.”
Garven added: “Any time you get to go back to those places it’s a real blast from the past. I always liked The Roxy because it’s where we saw some of the bands that we grew up listening to. Bands like Rush would show up there and play. It’s pretty amazing to go back and stand on the same stage. … It kind of takes you back on a trip down memory lane.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Cirith Ungol’s new album is Live at the Roxy, out now from Metal Blade Records. Click here for more information.
