Page 33 - RockRevoltMagazine-Summer2019

AN INTERVIEW WITH RANDY ARMSTRONG
RED
by Alice Roques
eavy Metal is a way of life, and for the artists that delight the fans in ways indescribable, it’s more
than that. It’s more than a way of life, it IS life. Never has it been so poignant and apparent than
with the band Red. We’ve watched them grow as artists, and now, as they embark on their own
Hjourney, they are taking what they’ve learned and are making that life and the satiation of their fans
their true focus. We had a quick conversation with Randy Armstrong about the Red Entertainment journey.

Tell me about “The Evening Hate”. I’ve been production team and extras and all that stuff. We
watching it online, I’ve been hearing it on called a construction company and had them dig
Octane. Tell me about your thoughts on it. some holes for us and we wrote, directed, filmed,
We are over the moon excited about the response edited and released “The Evening Hate” in three
that we’ve received so far. We had things in and a half weeks.
mind of what we wanted it to do and it’s already
surpassing goals. I think fans are just pumping Oh my gosh. That was ambitious.
there -- everybody is saying, “Red is back. This Yeah, so it was an everyday thing for three and
is the Red I remember!” Those are the comments a half weeks of filming. Then the editing process
we were hoping for. We’ve changed our sound took a week and a half, but it was lofty goal and
a little bit here and there in the past. Our last we kind of wanted the challenge. It was the first
album wasn’t one of most popular albums, but time full on directing and doing it all ourselves
I think fans have been wanting us to get heavy and it was a rewarding process. We learned a
and “The Evening Hate” seemed like a perfect lot, we made a lot of mistakes along the way
launching pad for us to do that. The song itself (mistakes that I guess only we would know, but
just recognises that hate exists and it’s never we made tons of mistakes but it was a lot of fun
going to end and it’s always an opportunity to and that’s what it’s all about.) We’re excited
crawl up and rise above it. people love it. Anytime you do something for the
first time and it does really well, I think it’s almost
Got you. Tell me about the videos that go 570,000 streams on YouTube now if not more.
along with it. I mean there’s the regular We’re over the moon that people are that excited
video, but then you’ve also got this extended about it.
cinematic version going on. What was the
inspiration to do that?
So, we have done a stream of videos that kind Oh yeah, the cinematic version has like almost
of tell a story of a world that is metaphorical 55 000 views, it’s like a mini movie. You wrote
for what our world tries to tell us to do, how we the treatment for the cinematic version of it as
should be, what kind of friends we should have, well?
what we should eat, how we should look and Yes. It’s actually part of screenplay we wrote to
all that stuff. “The Evening Hate” invokes a lot do a full-length movie when we were on a label.
of similar realms or visual representation of what We presented to them a goal of doing a movie
the song is about. So, we just thought it was a called Red and they turned it down. They didn’t
great opportunity for us to pick up where our want to give us the money for it and for whatever
story left off with Release the Panic and “The reason, didn’t want us to give us the opportunity
Evening Hate” picks up where we left off. We to pull it off. This is opportunity for us to say,
had a meeting with our manager and radio team. “well, we told you we could do it.”
They were asking us, “Are you guys going to have
a video for this song?” We actually weren’t even
thinking about it and then they kind of presented Now you’re independent?
us the opportunity and then the challenge and Yes. We left our label last October and decided
-- we said yeah, we could do that. So, we’ve to go full-on independent and do everything
had a pretty heavy hand in writing and directing ourselves so we started our own company called
and editing videos in the past and plenty of Red Entertainment and we’re releasing our
experience with shooting videos. So, we threw music still under the name Red (of course) of
our cards on the table and said we’ll do this. I course but that Red entertainment is essentially
went home, wrote treatment for the video and our label now.
started making phone calls. We put together a
33 // RockRevolt Magazine