Project Resurrect began after being fed up with trying to work with other musicians. Wayne Noon and Pete Rigo started working together after Wayne left his band Phoenix Reign. Wayne and Pete knew each other from a mutual friend. Pete needed a drummer for his band and invited Wayne to a rehearsal. Things seemed to work out for a while but as with every band, members would come and go. After 2 years of not being able to get any songs completed the band dissolved but Wayne and Pete remained friends and considered to just work on music themselves and see what happens.
Ideas would pass back and forth and songs would form, but they weren’t sure what to do with them or how to get them recorded since going into a studio would be very costly. They kept working and more songs kept coming. They would finally decided to invest in recording equipment and record everything on their own. The original idea was to take the few songs they had and make an EP, release it and see what happens. During the coarse of looking for a singer, Pete would come up with more songs and eventually there would be more than enough for a full album.
3 years after beginning recordings they would finally find a singer who would fit the music perfectly in, Leandro Bastos from Germany. 1 year later some guitars and drums would be tweaked and then it was on to mixing the album when they found Alex Repetti through a mutual friend. Alex would really bring the songs to life and after 4 long years of not knowing if this band would ever release anything, their album is finally complete. With 8 songs with a mixture of Power Metal and Hard Rock, anyone into those genres is sure to find something they will like about the debut album of Project Resurrect.
Interview
Greetings from Metalheads Forever Magazine, I’m Keith Clement, the head of the magazine, how are you today?
Drummer Wayne Noon: Hey Keith! I’m doing good. Just got back from a walk. Trying to get back in shape. Been lazy for too long haha!
Your debut album “False Reality’ was out on May 2021, can you tell me about the songwriting and production behind the album?
The songwriting was fairly easy. Guitarist Pete Rigopoulos seems to never run out of ideas. We both listen to pretty much the same bands and know what kind of music we want to play. So, if he sends me a riff, I usually like it right off the bat and then we take it from there. Most times he’ll come up with the whole song, I’ll edit things here or there if need be and then I’ll put drums to it. For production we did all of that ourselves at home. Pete and I live fairly close to each other but since it’s just him and I, there’s no need to go to a practice space and work things out. We send things to each other through email. I’m only good at the recording part so I let Pete handle the rest, haha.
Was there any concept behind the album?
No concept. Actually the plan to record music changed a few times before we started and during recording. First we were going to make an EP and since we waited so long for a singer we just kept writing more songs and figured we might as well just make an album. Each song has its own theme. I’ve had an idea for a concept album, but I’m not the greatest at writing lyrics. Doing this album though helped me a little bit so maybe at some point we can do a concept album.
Are you currently working on more music or any plans to get back into the studio?
Yes, we are actually planning to record new music hopefully before the end of this year. There are some family things to take care of, but once all that gets squared away, we can hopefully get a new album out this time sooner rather than later. We also learned a lot from recording our first album so things should go quicker this time around.
I’m working with another band with a bunch of friends. We have an idea for one song, but again people are busy so it takes a bit longer to get things done. Also there’s 5 people in this band as opposed to Project Resurrect, so there’s more to deal with but it should be fun.
I also work on cover songs from time to time with people who have been on my podcast Rat Salad Review. We actually just released our first series of cover songs digitally. It’s called Rat Salad Review and Friends Cover Series Part 1. There’s songs from Alice Cooper, Def Leppard, Kiss, Stratovarius and Van Halen. That’s been a lot of fun. We’re in the middle of working on some more songs for that too.
How are the touring plans this year?
There aren’t any and it will probably stay that way. Between our day jobs and families plus the fact our singer is from Germany, there’s really no way to go out on a tour. We’d also have to hire a bassist and possibly another guitarist for that as well, so it’s just not something we see happening and I’m honestly ok with that. I like the recording part. I like creating something. This doesn’t mean if something comes up we wouldn’t play it but it would seriously have to be something worth doing.
Can you tell me how Project Resurrect was formed?
I used to be in a band called Phoenix Reign. I could feel the band just wasn’t getting along anymore, so I told them I’m doing one last show which was opening for Epica at the Gramercy theater in NYC. It was awesome and it was sold out. During that time, I was also looking for another band to play with. I was talking to a friend of mine and he mentioned one of his friends was looking for a drummer so I talked to the singer and went to their practice. Funny enough Pete was playing guitar and I had known Pete from him coming to my bands shows once in a while. He was friends with my old guitar player. Unfortunately this band was on again off again until I finally told Pete why don’t we just do this ourselves and we’ll just find a singer at some point. Pete agreed and that was it.
The name came fairly easy to me too. The band always felt like a project to me because it was just something that I thought would never come to fruition, It kept coming back so many times after I thought we were done, it was like it kept getting resurrected from the dead. So the name sounded kinda cool, Pete liked it and the name stuck.
The album features eight amazing power metal songs with elements of hard rock and heavy metal, a brilliant work from you guys. How as a band do you feel about the outcome of the album?
Honestly, it’s the album I always wanted to make with my old band Phoenix Reign. It has elements of like you said power metal (but the US kind not the European with keyboards), hard rock, heavy metal, there’s some thrash in there as well, I think. I listen to so many different genres of heavy metal, I think most of them came through on this album. To this day I will put it on for the hell of it and listen to it all the way through. I enjoy listening to it.
We purposely set out to not make it a long album. We thought 45 minutes was a good length and kept it that way. Anything longer than that you tend to get bored quickly. So this way if you like it, you’ll be more likely to go back and listen. If not you only wasted 45 minutes, haha!
How has the reach of the band and album been on a global scale?
It’s doing ok. We won’t be at the height of the success of Metallica any time soon but for basically being unknown it’s ok. We can do better which is why we hooked up with Online Metal Promo to get us some more reach to places we couldn’t get to on our own.
Would you like to share some great moments that you had over the years?
One of the greatest moments was actually seeing the songs take shape. Even though sometimes I felt we would never get this finished cause it did take us about 4 years to record with everything going on in our personal lives but seeing that it was actually finished was great. Then letting Alex Repetti mix the album for us and adding a modern edge to these songs made it even better. Also finally finding a singer in Leandro Bastos, because if we never found a singer we might not being doing this interview right now, haha!
What would be some of the upcoming plans for the band?
Pretty much what I said earlier once some of our situations get straightened out in a few months we can hopefully start getting to work on new Project Resurrect music. I do also hope we can have some special guests this time around. We’ll see. I’ve met so many cool musicians from doing my podcast Rat Salad Review we could pick a lot of really cool people.
What would be the musical focus on the future album and what would songwriting be based on?
We know we won’t stray too far from our debut album but we also know we need to up the game. We learned a lot from our first recording that we will do much differently for the next recordings. I like variation, so there will definitely be more of that. As far as lyric wise I have no idea. I like to write about current things and Pete, I have no clue how he comes up with his lyrics. I don’t even think he knows, haha!
Finally what would be the message for the fans?
For the fans, thank you for listening, liking the album and supporting the band. For any one who hasn’t heard of us yet, we hope you like the album. We have some cds still left, they can buy on projectresurrect.bandcamp.com or listen to it streaming on pretty much any platform you can imagine.
The Band
