‘Winter Sun’ has been released in December of last year, the song is a musical collaboration between Canadian Symphonic / Celtic Metal artist Leah and Testament guitarist Eric Peterson, here’s what Leah has to say about the song:
“Hey friend, I thought I’d tell you the background behind the last single I released called Winter Sun.
“Have you heard of Eric Peterson? (guitar legend from thrash-metal band Testament, and writer/singer of Dragonlord). Well he and I have been saying for years that we should do some sort of project together…. but weren’t sure how it would work exactly …….. Especially since he comes from such a thrash background which is a totally different genre and different audience from mine. We wondered if people would love it or hate it. But at the end of the day, you just have to make music you love, right?
“Back to the story…
“He was working on his latest Dragonlord album which is more black metal in nature, and he had me sing all the female choirs for it (the album still hasn’t been released yet). And man, he pushed me to my limits in the studio, let me tell you!! He kept telling me to sing like the Excalibur theme song — and me — not having any formal opera or classical training AT ALL was sweating bullets trying to pull it off…. but it did work! I was pretty happy with the end result. Anyway …. long story short — we ended up finding our own groove, combining his epic guitars and my softer vocals.
“Then last year, Eric was on a big world tour with Testament and he sent me a guitar riff via Whatsapp (a direct messaging app on his iphone). And he’s like “Hey Leah, what do you think of this? Want to jam on this?” And I immediately knew it would be a good song… so I ran to my keyboard and starting jamming on his riff. I recorded it straight to Whatsapp and sent it back to him. We literally wrote the whole song from our iphones!
“One thing I will say about Eric Peterson: He’s a wizard when it comes to songwriting. The guy is a genius – even if you don’t follow thrash or black metal….. and you can tell in this song. It’s not his usual style but I think it’s safe to say our co-writing combination turned out alright!
“Wanna hear it?? The Lyric video can be seen below.
Leah‘s latest album “Kings & Queens” has been released on January 30th 2015 in Europe and on February 3rd in North America through Inner Wound Recordings. An Impressive new album from Leah featuring Timo Somers [Delain], Sander Zoer [ex. Delain] and Barend Courbois [Blind Guardian, Vengeance].
Our review of “Kings & Queens” can be found here.
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