I remember as a kid growing up that if you were into Thrash Metal bands like Slayer, Exodus or Dark Angel you were generally considered to be one of the… “scary kids”. My parents and teachers warned me often to stay away from that particular crowd because they were nothing but trouble. I actually find that mentality to be pretty funny today when taking into account the music that was supposedly safe or at least more acceptable in those days and the current rise of Death, Goth and Black Metal that is gaining popularity across the globe. Thrash was just a means to let off some steam and enjoy life more abundantly; it was probably the closest thing to good old Americanized Rock and Roll that we had during the 80’s. There was no blurring of the lines, so to speak, when it came to gender, politics or religion, we new exactly what we believed and what we didn’t believe, we were more into being social than anti-social than most realized and we definitely enjoyed throwing back some cold ones with our friends. Needless to say it was a very exciting time to be alive and a period of life that has not been forgotten despite the over saturation of bad music and social anarchy that placates the Metal world and - dare I say - music in general, today. I recently had the immense pleasure of speaking with a longtime friend of mine about the evolution of the Metal genre, the early days of Thrash and its current role in today’s market. My friend, Ms. Loana DP Valencia who works as a publicist for Nuclear Blast America also happens to be the vocalist for Dreams of Damnation, the band that features the extraordinary talents of guitarist Jim Durkin of the now legendary thrash icons Dark Angel. I know that if I were given an opportunity to perform along side one of my musical heroes I’d be literally beside myself so I completely understand the reverence that is shown throughout this interview, but Loana herself surprised me with all she had to say, in fact she covered so much ground that this will only be the first part of our lengthy conversation. So hang on tight as we mosh down memory lane and discuss some of the finer moments in Metal history and how DOD are continuing to further the cause.

OT: So have you got a lot of press lined up today?

Loana: No, actually, we had the press days last weekend so, yeah, I’m fine, that’s why I told you to just name your time.

OT: So you’re making a special exception for me?

Loana: Well y’know what, this is how it should be when there’s no nine hour time difference. Oh, couldn’t do it? Ok, next time. It’s the time zones and festivals and all the touring that goes on in Europe that really puts a kink in us being able to do what we can do.

OT: No doubt, yeah I understand. Well I’m glad to be able to sit down and chat with you for a little bit.

Loana: Yeah, well I’m glad that you even have an interest to speak with us.

OT: It’s interesting because I’ve spoken with you outside the band on so many different occasions and having not actually seen you guys perform; I have this tough time visualizing you up there sounding like what I hear on the CD, it’s like night and day.

Loana: (Laughing) Oh the Doctor Jekyll, Mr. Hyde scenario, yeah some people drink some sort of elixir to get that other side out, but I don’t drink, so it’s more kind of anger management for me.

OT: (Laughing) That’s a good way of looking at it actually.

Loana: It is. I just cannot tell you how I’m able to work things through just through a practice. Like I might have had a really difficult day or something really frustrating happened at work, something, and then I go to practice and everything’s ok. Everything is alright so it helps to relieve a lot of stress.

OT: Well right on. So let’s go ahead and dive in here. I was thinking about the early days of thrash, that critics were very quick to write off this genre as nothing more than a passing fad. Obviously it continued to evolve into a monster that has now defined a generation. What do you think have been the primary reasons for its continued longevity?

Loana: Well I think that just metal as a whole has been a genre of music that has continually progressed. So many people looked at it as a sub-culture but it’s not going anywhere, its showing no signs of extinction, it’s like this is really something that’s gaining momentum. If it had never progressed it would have never become as big as it has. I think for us as people there’s this constant push, maybe it’s ingrained in our DNA to kind of move forward. Everything leads to something. For me, the way I see it in terms of genealogy, metal started and then thrash was one of the early branches of that tree, but thrash metal was really the foundation for the black metal movement. It was the double-bass drums it was the speed of the guitar licks and all that, that’s what so many black metal musicians come back to. So in terms of progression, you have the initial big bang, the initial explosion of just this type of really loud music and then it finds its way to progress a little more which leads to something else, which leads to something else… So the longevity is just more that fans of this type of music are completely loyal to it. Whether it’s in the eye of the mainstream or not it will continue to exist. We may not be on MTV anymore, well MTV’s just a joke now, but I guess the VH1 Classics are what people go to now more than MTV, but whether we’re on their radar or not, the fans always come out to support. And as an example I will say that when September 11th (2001) happened the entire entertainment industry was really up in arms. On the one hand it was like, ‘Well where’s your show of compassion? But what happened? ‘You’re just kinda worried about profits.’ Oh, are people not gonna go to the movies any more? Are they not gonna buy albums?’ That sort of stuff, so the major labels were really worried and for metal, for the independent labels that really push metal; our sales did not decline. Our sales, not only did they stay steady but they went up. So it just goes to show that we have our own very viable community that is so extremely loyal that the longevity of it is really due to the lifetime commitment that fans make to this lifestyle. And it’s not a fad, it is a lifestyle. There’s always another generation that comes through, very much the same way that a lot of the pioneer bands that started out at the beginning give their thanks to Black Sabbath and all that, there are all these roots that people refer back to. And for a lot of the bands that we grew up with, a lot of the younger crowd, they’re fifteen years old and here they are they’re wearing Razor shirts. And you’re like, “Were you even born when Violent Restitution came out? Probably not.” But how do they know about this? So here are these really young kids who weren’t even born, maybe their parents weren’t even together yet when Exodus’ Bonded By Blood came out, but they know all the words! So it’s a legacy, almost like an heirloom that we hand down, whether it be through siblings or through your own network of friends, it really is the fans that give it its longevity; there’s no ifs ands or buts about it, it’s the fans.

OT: Yeah I totally agree with you. I’ve always found it interesting that other music that debuted during that same period of time, we’ll say the 80’s heyday, what people thought would be around for a long time didn’t last.

Loana: Right, right. ‘Cause you grew up around here didn’t you? Were you in Southern California?

OT: Yeah.

Loana: Ok. I was just recently going through some old band magazines; this was the local rag that taught everybody how to read magazines from back to front because you’d always go to the back first to see which bands were playing. So I’m going through these magazines and I’m looking at who was playing the Troubadour, The Waters, The Whisky, Gazarri’s and all that and you look at the list of bands and you’re like, ‘Who’s that?’ or ‘Whatever happened to them?’ There were so many names that didn’t make it. And then, of course, you see the ad for Slayer playing at The Country Club, well obviously they made it. We’re really going back to this metaphor of evolution, it’s exactly like that because its survival of the fittest; who makes it and who doesn’t. Who fades away into oblivion and who goes on to spawn another generation. So it’s a fun thing to go back and look at all of those old ads and who was playing shows and all that. It really goes to show, well aside from being able to trace like a ‘musical lineage’ back like ‘oh well the guitarist for this band actually started out in this band and now he’s doin’ this, there’s always some sort of connection, there’s definitely some very strong blood lines and it’s very evident in picking up old literature who those blood lines are and who just didn’t survive the cleansing, I guess you could say.

OT: Definitely, definitely, you’re right. So there are a lot of extremely heavy bands in existence today, many of which don’t exactly measure up to the traditional standards that you and I are used to. What do you think of bands that attempt to play heavy music simply for the sake of sounding heavy?

Loana: I think that people who do that know what they’re doing and they know what they’re not doing. I think that there is a style of music that comes very naturally to people. I don’t necessarily think that Black Metal could have started here in L.A. It was a result of an environmental ‘setting’ I wanta say, a very specific cultural context that doesn’t exist here that couldn’t have started it. For people who are playing something for the sake of playing something heavy, they kind of look at music more like they’re students of it, like they study it and they say, ‘Oh ok, this has this element of it and this has this element of it.’ and they’re just kind of picking elements to fit their recipe, they’re trying to follow a formula. Whereas for people who write something that comes naturally to them they don’t follow a formula, it’s just what naturally comes out of them. So I think the ones that follow a recipe, the ones that kind of create a blueprint, they probably won’t last. The ones that create something that naturally flows out of them, those are the ones that have a little bit more integrity; they’re not trying to follow anything, that’s the music they hear in their heads, it’s the transcription of the noises that they hear. It’s not trying to pick what they think the best parts are of a certain type of music. And they’ll fade away, they’ll fade away. Ten years down the road and we’re looking through old magazines that are current now, its gonna be the same thing, we’re gonna look at them and say, ‘Who was that? What ever happened to them? Obviously they didn’t make it. What a funny name.’ That sort of stuff. Every cycle of a music scene in any given city has that sort of, ‘What happened to these guys.’

OT: Absolutely. Some students will never be teachers.

Loana: Yeah. And you know what? I’m also finding, and this is something I never realized, there are different types of students of music. I’ve given it some thought and I’ve tried to see like where did I come up with these concepts? I never can get an answer because I think that when you’re really young you create your own fantasy of what you think a band is. For me, my concept was a complete democracy. Say there are four members of a band and everybody contributes musically, everybody’s an equal partner. And what I have discovered, now that I’m older and have been privy to band dynamics, or just more aware of what goes on, usually there’s one songwriter, sometimes it’s a writing duo. But for the most part it’s people who play their instruments who play what they’re told to play; they don’t necessarily create. And that came as a shock to me like, I didn’t know that. And then there are the ones that are the channels for this music and they’re the ones that write it all down and present it to the band and say, ‘Ok, here’s what we got.’ And then there are people who just want to be in a band to say they are in a band; there’s no true commitment to wanting to make a mark on the scene its just more like, ‘Hey I wanta be cool, I wanta be in a band.’ So there are varying degrees of different types of musicians that people don’t realize. It’s just like everything else. When you think of all the personalities of people that you deal with, like if you go back to the younger communities that we were a part of growing up, there are always the leaders that organize things and stuff, there are people who are better with more kinda hands on behind the curtains types of things, and there are people that are just there; so it’s the same types of personalities in different situations. These personalities exist in the metal scene as well; we’re no different in that sense.

OT: There are some artists out there who try and write and they probably should never attempt it, it just doesn’t come across. I can’t believe that half these band actually make it to the studio and spend x amount of time and money recording crap.

Loana: (Laughing) Well I will tell you I am old school in the sense that, given a choice, I would go back to recording on tape and releasing everything on vinyl rather than really going through the Pro Tools thing and the electronics stuff. One of the things that I love about my old albums is that you really kind of sensed how devoted people are to their instrument. And I’ll say this even though I don’t play an instrument, back in the day, especially with limited budgets and all that, musicians came a little more prepared when they came to the studio, because you wouldn’t have an endless amount of tape to record on so you knew that you were only gonna get a couple of takes in, so then people would come in a little more prepared. Whereas there’s a degree of slack that people cut themselves so maybe they’re not performing at the best that they can do because they know they can fix it later. So are you giving a hundred and ten percent as you should or are you just kinda going, ‘That’s ok, we’ll fix it later.’ And a lot of engineers have verified that for me, just like, ‘Back in the day its like, people come in, do their stuff, that’s it.’ One take sometimes. So yeah, there are those that really just kinda love how easy recording is in that sense, in that electronic medium. But I really wonder what it’s done overall to how much people devote to a recording. Like, is that urgency there anymore? I mean granted, the people who do really devote themselves to their instrument always come up with something really great that catches people’s ears. For those that, again, are coming from a different place it creates a total package that really doesn’t make an impact. But if I had my way all these recording schools would be teaching young engineering students how to record on two inch tape because it’s not even being taught anymore, which is sad. So I think if someone definitely wants to fill a niche market, go into school and ask to be taught this and I think you’ll be in demand; you’ll be able to record in analog and it’s not a skill that a lot of people can claim that they have. Because, again, Pro Tools and all these electronic programs, Acid and Cake Walk and all that sorta stuff, are too readily available.

OT: Yeah, yeah absolutely. I think technology is only great until it becomes something that sounds plastic, y’know, fake.

Loana: Yeah. I was really upset when I got the news that records were obsolete, it took me awhile to get into CD’s, like I resisted until the bitter end; I still have my turntable, I still have all my vinyl. But when they released Van Halen’s Women And Children First on CD and I’m listening to it, they completely cut off the end of what the band calls ‘tank.’ Don-chika-don-chika-don-chika-don, dadada-ch-da-dahda-dadada, and it fades out on the vinyl. Well on the CD they just went -eh- and I thought, ‘What the hell is this?!’ I was so insulted because to me, it’s like, if you’re gonna transfer this to a different medium - if you’re gonna transfer this from analog tapes onto CD - then at least do it the way it was recorded, the way the artist meant for their song to sound. It’s an edit that, to me, is blasphemy! But that soft, kind of ambient hiss in a fade-out, I love it. I love the sound when the needle first hits the vinyl. I love sitting down and just staring at the album cover and reading the liner notes. I still do that, even with CD’s now, it’s like I open it up and even before I put the CD on I read the liner notes, like, what can I learn about the album before I listen to it? But it’s on such a smaller scale. I liken listening to an album to reading a book. And the CD inserts are just kind of pamphlets that you pick up and you wind up throwing away anyway. But the experience is completely different. So the digital age did something else, I think it took licenses where it shouldn’t have. I cite that edit on the Van Halen song as an example, like you don’t do that, you don’t mess with a band’s musical message just because you’re putting it in a different format, that’s wrong. But that’s me, I’m very opinionated when it comes to, especially early Van Halen, because oh god, they’re gods.

OT: You’re not alone in your thinking on that, I mean I’ve talked to a number of different people and myself included, that I wish the records were still around too so you’re not alone in that. So we have to talk a moment about the fact that you are a female-fronted band, a phenomenon that has become increasingly popular in recent years.

Loana: I like to think of us as a riff-driven band. When you think back to the scene as it was starting up, women have been present as performers from the get-go. And actually, I’ve gotta say, I was shocked, my jaw just dropped when I opened up the new issue or Revolver and they have a list…, y’know sometimes they do these, “Essential Ten Albums” or “Essential Ten Artists” and stuff like that; y’know like death-grind and hard-core and all these different sorts of things. Anyhow, they mentioned Necrodeath and that is one of the early female-fronted bands, I wanta say she played bass also, Lori Badabel. Who I thought no one would remember her, and there’s a picture of her, and I thought, how they got a picture of her I don’t now but I think that’s great. Again, women in metal didn’t come from nowhere, you have the woman in Snow White, they were on Metal Blade, ya had Betsy from Bitch, they were on Metal Blade, and Sabina from Holy Moses, Lee Errin, the Great Kat, y’know, just all of these women doing stuff so there’s definitely some history there. I think that people who are kinda new to this recent ‘resurgence’, for lack of a better term, think that women in Metal came from nowhere. But if you look deeper, you’ll see that women have always been there, again, not just as audience members but as artists. And, for me, honestly this band really is about Jim Durkin. I think that when I first met him back in 2000 I was pretty nervous. Here, to me, I was getting to meet a man whose anger spoke to me when I got Darkness Descends. And so I pulled out my Darkness Descends vinyl and I got my Leaf Scars album and DOD was a three-piece at the time and this was their first show but I didn’t know it was their first show so I went there and I was nervous! Here I was, I’m going up to this guitar legend going, ‘Oh my god, can you sign my Dark Angel vinyl?’ So to me, the person who’s driving this band is Jim, because, for one, he writes the music, he’s the one that gives us the musical map to follow. To me, I’m really lucky that whatever it was that he heard in my voice was not necessarily something that I understood that I had but he saw it as a genderless voice. He wasn’t asking me to join the band because I was a woman, he asked me because he liked my voice. And, more importantly, the voice that he heard matched up with what he wanted to do on guitar. So for me, his riffing still ranks way up there in terms of what’s available to us, on the scene to enjoy. I’m glad that in the time after he left Dark Angel and then kinda really remained in his own underground, that he’s coming back with something that can really put his name back in circulation for riffs that never ran out of date. The one thing that I keep telling Jim is that the great thing is he never played any other music but thrash. He left Dark Angel, he didn’t do anything else, and then all of a sudden he decided to put another band together Dreams Of Damnation and he went right back into thrash. He has never played anything else, he has never wanted to. So this album is an opportunity for him to take these riffs that he’s put away and just let ‘em out into the world as a contagion, like, ‘Ok, here ya go.’ It’s time for everyone to get infected again, and I think he did an excellent job. I think a lot of Jim Durkin fans are gonna be really happy with what they’re hearing. And again, to me, it’s more of a riff-driven album than it is about female vocals.

OT: I completely agree with you on that. Not to forsake the song structure itself, but I wanted to just kinda touch on that a bit. Obviously females in metal, it’s really nothing new, you mentioned a lot of ‘em and we have new artists such as Angela (Gossow) from Arch Enemy and Otep and Kittie. They’ve managed to establish a pretty impressive fan base, but I still come across individuals who refuse to accept women in this role regardless of their talents or abilities.

Loana: Right, right. I’ve been lucky in the sense that I’ve never come face-to-face with them; I haven’t encountered that attitude yet. But it’s just like everything else, David; there are some things that some people want to keep only to themselves. And for some people, they believe that Heavy Metal is an all guy’s club. Some guys think that mechanics is an all guy’s club. So there are those that are reluctant to open the door to anyone that doesn’t fit their membership requirements. I know that’s out there, I know it exists. I think that the law of averages is in everyone’s favor that it’s a minimal few. And those aren’t the people that you’d want to buy your albums anyway. I don’t even know that those people would want to spend their money to buy an album to critique it, or to lambaste it, or whatever, I don’t think they would. The good thing is that in people who can accept - I don’t even want to say accept - who never doubted that women would do this is more that we, as women, are allowed another channel of expression that isn’t necessarily granted to us. If you take some very sexist ideas of what women and men are about: men read novels, women read poetry, men fix cars, women knit - you know, really, really sexist stereotypes. What I would like people to realize is that part of us being women is also having a very natural physical aggression that doesn’t have an accepted avenue of expression, with working within these very sexist stereotypes. So yeah, you see women in the pit, yeah you see women gettin’ in fist fights; but we have that, it’s all within us. With women who are in extreme music, it’s a very natural extension of who we are, but for some people it’s a little too strange. And to those people I just say, ‘Hey, there’s more to being born with these female parts than you’ve been led to believe.’ So just knock down those borders in your head, there’s more to this than what you see. And you can say that about women lookin’ at men as well, there’s more to being male than what men are given credit for. So it definitely works both ways. But I think, luckily for me, I’m teamed up with musicians who all happen to be male that don’t even make an issue out of gender. It’s just, hey we’re all here, and that’s it. We’re here to work together to work towards this musical goal of creating quality thrash with low-fat content. (Laughing) And it’s not about gender. I’m really lucky, I am really, really lucky. I think that, this being my first band, I lucked out; big time; aside from being able to write music with Jim Durkin. Believe me, recognize that there are musicians who are great fans of his and they would love to work with him and I got the chance to do it and I better do everything within my power to earn my keep because he could have picked anyone; he could have picked any one and he picked me and I’m grateful to him for that.

OT: Very, very cool. So being that you’re not the original vocalist for the band, have you had any problems winning over the pre-existing fans?

Loana: Well I think, in this culture especially, shock value goes a long way. I think that because the original vocalist, Charlie, because I’m the complete antithesis of what he is, he’s this tall Brazilian guy; he’s like 7’2”. When he walks in a room people are immediately afraid. (Laughter) So when I came in Charlie was doing backing vocals, but here I am, I’m 5’2” and a half, if I stand in a crowd people can see over me! And I think that shocked a lot of people, and for some people its like, ‘Woah, check that out! That’s kinda interesting!’ So we were able to kinda make a name for ourselves in the sense that, ‘Well the tall guy isn’t singing any more but it’s this little female that’s doin’ it.’ That kinda created maybe a, ‘Oh well now I gotta see ‘em.’ That sorta thing. But I think that the people that have supported Jim from the release of that first EP are still supporting him. Again, if there were people who were behind the band and then heard that there was a female in the band and they just said oh forget it; I don’t know who they are, I don’t know if they stopped coming or whatever. But luckily we’ve been able to nurture a really healthy following here in L.A. and wherever we go. I don’t know if it’s a function more of the band members more than it is the music. Like if you were to take me out and put somebody else in the mix, it’s still Jim Durkin’s music and I think that’s what speaks to people. The riff or the breakdown, all of that sorta stuff, it’s probably more the music that makes something memorable and makes people get behind something, more than who’s behind the microphone, I think.