All photographs by Curious Kat PhotographySenior journalist Anabel DFlux caught up with metal act The Crown Remnant, upon the release of their debut album The Wicked King (Part 1). The Crown Remnant is an exciting metal act hailing from Los Angeles, California. Priding themselves on bringing in a variety of musical backgrounds together to create this bad-ass group, this band of friends are here to take over the city of angels. It was a pleasure to pick the brains of members Geordy Shallan (lead vocals), Will Ash (lead guitar), Jorge Lopez (rhythm guitar), Josue Lara (bassist), and Art Ramirez (drums).
RockRevolt: Hey everyone! How are you all doing?
Art Ramirez: I’m great, thanks for asking!
Jorge Lopez: Personally I’m doing great! Any day I am not being terrorized by Josue and Geordy is a great day. (laughs)
Josue Lara: I’m doing great too!
Geordy Shallan: I’m feeling amazing, we just put out our first record, so there’s so many emotions running through me right now (laughs). Will, how are you?
Will Ash: Hello! I think I speak for all of us when I say, we’re feeling fucking fantastic. We’ve got a new album, live shows in the future, and we get to do this awesome interview with you!
RR: It’s great to get the whole band together here for an interview. Tell me, what’s your favorite thing about engaging in a musical endeavor together?
WA: (Laughs) trust me, getting all of us boys together in one place is always a good time. Or an actual disaster, either way, we like to do things our own way. I’d have to say that’s one of my favorite things – we do things our own way. Every member of this band is creative and inspiring and when you’re working on a project with such talented people without any misconceptions of who you are or what you’re “supposed” to be, you tend to get some great stuff out of it. I think that’s a problem with the metal community sometimes and I love that we’re confident enough to be unique and Fleetwood Mac the whole process.
GS: Basically what Will said, we do things our own way, and we have the best time doing so! We’re real with each other, we know how to have fun together, and we inspire one another like no other. I think there’s this unique bond of personalities that really allows this band to shine.
JOS: These guys are great and talented; I love exploring genres I normally wouldn’t on my own. It’s quite a different experience going from Jamming and playing with a couple of friends to finding something that is so much more real and professional, it still blows my mind sometimes! I love it!
JOR: Being in a project that everyone is involved in and dedicated to is amazing. My favorite thing about it would have to be going on this adventure together with such wonderful friends!
AR: Quite simply, for me personally, it’s our chemistry as a band.
Artwork by Gray EldritchRR: What is your music writing process?
WA: So our latest record was penned completely by Geordy and I. Our writing like anyone else’s goes through a bunch of stages but I think that we approach it all in a really healthy way. Our creative process happens in a lot of different ways but I think typically the first step is when one of us just has a great, awesome idea. You know when it happens because you can feel it itching to get laid down, tracked or recorded somehow. When that happens, we’ll take it to each other in whatever stage creatively it’s in – it can be just a single riff or the backbone of an entire song.
From there, just about a million things could happen but I’d say wherever we decided to take it, it’s always super collaborative. We have a really open rule about criticism because both Geordy and I love hearing it, we think it’s the best teaching tool. If there’s anything we’re not 100% on, we rework it, play around with it, structure it in different ways. The greatest thing about our writing process is that literally anything can happen at any time with a song, as long as we agree that it follows our vision. We don’t feel held back by convention or some sort of “ruleset” for our songs, we just write what’s in our hearts and try and make great stories and experiences for the listener.
GS: Will nailed it on this! There’s no one “right way” that we have when it comes to writing. For example, our track “Burn the Throne” started with a backbone of riffs and a song structure I had written where Will then threw on some crazy leads and a classical guitar solo, and we were done, but then our track “From Damnation to Deliverance” started from about 30 seconds of riff ideas I brought to Will, and the rest of the track came from Will and I just bouncing ideas of one another and jamming it out until we had a full song written!
RR: Let’s chat about the new album, The Wicked King! What part of the recording process was most memorable to you?
GS: There’s a tough question, it’s all so memorable. I think the most memorable part for me personally was leaving the studio after finishing vocal tracking for Burn the Throne with our vocal producer Tyler Ruehl, sometime around 11:30 PM, the day before my birthday, and Will turned on my favorite song from the new Mastodon record right when midnight hit on our drive back home, and I couldn’t help but think “Holy hell, we’re doing this! We’re actually freaking DOING this!! I get to make the best music I’ve ever made with one of the coolest people I know!”, and I was just so unbelievably excited. What a freaking journey it’s been.
WA: The Wicked King: Part I has been the craziest journey since it started roughly a year ago. We’re very fortunate to have a lot of friends to help us out in this industry, so when we came to them with a rough draft of what turned out to be our first record, they’re were super supportive. We wanted this whole record done professionally so we ended up taking it to a few great engineers all in different places and I think that was the most memorable part to me. The Wicked King for us was a journey around California, a journey of great engineers and people, and a journey of the Southern California music industry. It was an epic in every sense of the term.
JOS: I stepped into some sessions during the last bit of tracking with Geordy and Will, since I joined the band in the middle of the recording process, but as far as the most memorable moment in that time frame, would be when Jorge brought sweets for us (laughs).
JOR: Getting to watch the tracking and gain some real experience in a more professional studio was very educating for me. I realize the importance of simple things like a metronome or a click track much more now.
RR: You know I have to ask… favorite song?
AR: I have to say Light The Flame!
JOS: From Damnation To Deliverance, hands down. If I had to choose another one…maybe Burn the Throne.
JOR: From Damnation to Deliverance is a very dynamic song and is so close to being my favorite, but I am going to have to vote for The Execution for my favorite just because it is so fun to play.
WA: You know, if those words just disappeared from the English language, I don’t think I would feel bad one bit. The Wicked King is such an amazing record because Geordy and I paid so much attention to every single song. Every song has its own story and meaning, and they’re all unique to each other – to me there’s no “dead spots” whatsoever on this record, it’s a blast all the way through. However, if you want the short answer – From Damnation to Deliverance (The Journey).
GS: Yeah, I’m with Will, it’s hard here! It’s like picking your favorite child as a parent. If I had a gun pointed at my head and had to choose, I’d go with either The Execution or From Damnation to Deliverance as well. Coincidentally, The Execution is also my dad’s favorite (laughs)!
RR: How do you describe your music to people?
JOR: I always tell people that if Avenged Sevenfold and Killswitch Engage had a baby we would be that baby. We are heavily melodic with crushing riffs that will melt your face, in a good way!
WA: With a mouthful of misnomers honestly. Since our music ends up taking so many different risks with a “no holds barred” approach to creative ideas – like adding classical guitars or a brass section – it turns out it’s hard to spit out a short, defining phrase of our music! I’ve been going with “melodic heavy metal band” as my go-to, because I think that describes us best. I describe our music to people as a creative attempt at reviving the modern metal scene. We love metal so much and right now, I think we’d all agree that outside of the underground, music in general has been missing a lot of heart lately. We want to bring metal back to the people of SoCal and beyond.
GS: Yeah, I’d agree about the heart in music missing, and also that I’ve had the same freaking issues with genres! We span so many sub-genres of music, it’s near impossible to pick just one. In the time since the record has come out, I’ve had people call it everything from “Metalcore with a mission” to “Power Metal-y Melodic Death Metal”. I tend to describe it as what I want modern metal to be, where the songs are both rhythmically and melodically interesting, while embracing that “no holds barred” approach Will mentioned, implementing everything we think can add to the songs we write. The line I always tend to give people is our music is “what happens when you combine the Gothenburg sound with early 2000’s metalcore, with elements of emo, hardcore, and groove metal”. I’ve been using the “melodic heavy metal” moniker as well, it’s a lot easier than saying “a bit of almost every metal subgenre you can think of smashed together in a unique way”.
AR: Three words: Powerful, meaningful, and passionate
JOS: I’m a man of few words, so I’d say metal, and I’ll let you guys decide what kind of metal.
RR: What are your musical backgrounds? Tell me your history as a musician!
GS: Well, I grew up as a weird mix of being a band guy and a theatre kid. One day you’d catch me as doing a matinee musical, the next I was in the pit at a Trivium show. I started singing as a kid in 7th grade, when I got put into my second choice of middle school elective, Performing Arts, against my will. I thought I’d hate it, but the second I gave it an actual chance, I fell in love with it. I’d discovered Green Day the year before, and that mixed with watching my grandpa play, led me to guitar. By 8th grade, I’d found Escape The Fate, Atreyu, System of a Down, and Avenged Sevenfold, which all made me want to get a drum kit, and to learn how to do screamed vocals. By 9th grade, I had my first band, by senior year, I was on my 3rd. Outside of bands, I was still doing a bunch of musical theatre as well. Honestly, I think my love of theatre and literature definitely lent itself well to a lot of the lyric writing on this record.
Fast forward to my second semester of college, and I’d moved back to California and started studying at Loyola Marymount University. That’s where I met AJ Minette, who was not only one of my favorite guitarists of all time from his work with The Human Abstract, but who also was a professor there. He not only mentored me in guitar and songwriting, but inspired me to write a lot of my contributions to this record.
So yeah, ultimately, I’m a weird blend of singer, screamer, guitarist, bassist, and drummer who started doing all this stuff in middle school because I didn’t get my first choice of elective!
WA: My life has been its own little musical journey so I’ll try to keep this brief. I’ve always loved music since I was a kid, as a baby I would only fall asleep to big band and swing music like Benny Goodman. As I grew up, I was still in jazz bands all throughout school but I also got a taste of classic rock and roll, blues rock, and eventually metal. I’ve studied music a lot on my own and in school. Beyond jazz band, I also participated in a lot of music events, including classical ensembles, guitarist for the pit orchestra, Battle of the Bands style contests, and performances for school events. I have almost always had a band or project going on since I started playing guitar at the age of 9. When I was a teenager, I got my live legs under me with a bunch of shows throughout the year with a punk band I was the lead guitarist for, that experience and everything from school has prepared me to be the musician I am for The Crown Remnant. A lot of people don’t know this, but I also play piano, bass, drums, I sing, and I like to compose orchestral music. A lot of that made its way into our latest album.
AR: I’m a versatile drummer, I love exploring new things and playing them. No prejudice! One minute you’ll see me playing Death covers, the next I’ll be playing Dream Theater!
JOR: For me I started playing in high school at the age of 13. Mostly to find a niche I could feel a part of. One of my closest friends at the time was a great guitar player and I would always look at him with such awe that I went and got my own guitar to start learning. It was fun to play some of my favorite songs and meet new people. Shortly after, Josue got a bass and by junior year we were the best of friends playing music in various bands together.
JOS: I started playing bass because of Iron Maiden, and a lot of other classical metal bands like Motorhead and Megadeth, and they also have the biggest influences on my playing. This all around 10th grade for me, so about 7 going on 8 years of playing and I haven’t looked back! I love learning new play styles and grooves and that has kept me pretty busy the whole time, I wouldn’t call myself an expert in any genre, but more of decent player in many genres.
RR: What made you gravitate towards the instrument you play?
JOR: As I mentioned a minute ago, a close friend from my childhood was a huge influence in my decision to play guitar. I always thought it looked so cool, and it was very convenient having someone to show me the ways in the beginning and keeping my morale up!
GS: I have a fairly musical family, and I think they always inspired me to follow in their footsteps. My grandpa, my dad, and my sister in particular all have amazing singing voices! As for screamed vocals, I remember the moment I screamed correctly for the first time, when I was covering old Escape The Fate songs in my garage with my friend Thomas, who’s now actually the vocalist of a super sick metalcore outfit called Lady Violet, and that emotional catharsis was undeniably amazing. As far as role models that inspired me, I can definitely say Troy Sanders and Brann Dailor, M. Shadows and The Rev, Alex Varkatzas and Brandon Saller, Anders Fridén, Jesse Leach, Howard Jones, Serj Tankian and so many more made me want to sing in a band.
WA: When I think back to how I got my first guitar, my main instrument, I don’t know if I can honestly remember the reason why. I think it was a mixture of things. I looked up to a lot of rock stars and guitarists in the music that I listened to, I was awed and inspired by the virtuoso guitar players I found throughout different genres. I knew I wanted to be able to do that. My father is a guitarist as well. He’s big into country, old rock, blues, and used to be in his own bands. I didn’t grow up with him but I got to visit him every now and then and I’ll bet that rubbed off on me. All of that aside, whatever the reason was for me picking up my first Epiphone SG guitar for my 9th birthday, I think I stuck with it because it assuaged something deep inside me. It feels good to play, and it’s just so damn fun.
JOS: I just love playing bass and holding down the groove with the band!
AR: The feeling it gives me, plain and simple.
RR: Fondest musical memories?
WA: It’s funny you should ask, an old friend of mine from school recently reminded me of some great times I’ve had. I have too many fond memories to count, but one of the highlights had to be my band’s first place win at a Battle of the Bands contest that went all the way up to Paramount Picture studios. I adore playing live and some of my fondest memories are of playing in front of a thousand people, or performing in contests like this as a kid. So we beat out everyone in our performing arts school, went to Paramount and performed our own re-scored rendition of “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, complete with guitar solos and more. We thought we had gotten outdone by the group after us but when they called our names up to the stage, we just went wild. It was a great feeling with those guys, and a great day for me as a musician.
JOR: I would have to say just hanging out with the guys. In my last band we had some of the funniest time writing in his garage. We would set up, get “prepped” to play, and just jam riffs out until we liked something. To this day most people I’ve had the privilege of playing with became very good friends of mine. It was amazing to go over to a friend’s house after work or school and just jam for hours
GS: That’s really hard to answer, because there’s so many! But the first one that pops into my head is probably when I played “Come Together” by The Beatles for a charity thing that Loyola Marymount puts on yearly. First off, I loved that it was for a good cause, but secondly, I got to teach a friend of mine, who’s now actually my roommate, how to drum in order to play the song, and I got to teach another friend bass! Something about playing with your friends is undeniably magnificent. Probably another reason I love playing in The Crown Remnant too!
JOS: My fondest musical moment was when I was asking Jorge how to play bass and he said, “well just get one and play” that sentence literally changed my life because I kept bugging my parents until I got one and without that, I wouldn’t be here with the boys doing what we all love!
AR: Playing for the Arts Academy for the Boys and Girls club. It just really meant a lot to me.
RR: What would your desire for this band be?
WA: Oh this band is destined for greatness, (laughs). I’m so excited about this band. I’ve never been able to flex my creative muscles in the same way as this band has afforded me the opportunity. My desire for the band would be for us to bring back the passion, creativity, solos, and heavy fucking metal to the people that are ready to see a metal revival. One of the things that makes this band so great is that we’re unique and unflinchingly unafraid to take risks and be a pioneer of things that maybe people don’t think belong in metal music or whatever. I want this band to show that you can become big and you don’t have to lose your heart, creativity, or soul in the process. Metal – the anger, the intellect, the drive, the passion – is something I think this world needs more of especially in today’s day and age.
GS: Will pretty much nailed it! We want to be able to support ourselves as musicians, playing what we not only want, but what we feel the world could really benefit from. This is our passion, our livelihood, and we’ll stop at nothing to make our dreams come true. We want to grow as musicians and people, with a group of friends we’re lucky enough to call a band.
JOR: This band is crazy good! My desire is to go on and play fantastic shows with these guys. I feel we have a bright and shining future ahead of us. My deepest desire is to travel and see the world together with great company. It’s about the journey for me and the adventure waiting to unfold.
AR: I’ll keep it to three words again here: Success, prosperity, and perseverance!
JOS: My desire would be to be the greatest band of all time, somewhere in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame! To showcase good music and people to the world.
RR: What does success mean to you?
JOS: Right now, I’d say we’re successful in that we have our first album out, not many people can say that, but for me…I don’t really know, I guess I’ll know a better definition later after some time to take a look back and see what we either did or didn’t do.
AR: To me, it’s achieving a goal… your dream.
GS: Ultimately, success to me is us being able to support ourselves as musicians and creatives, to love being able to do what we do, being able to create something we love. It’s being able to make ourselves proud of who we are, and what we’ve become. Based off the record and how things seem to being going right now, I’d say we’re on the right path to being successful in every way I just mentioned.
JOR: If I sustain myself doing what I love, then to me I am successful. I don’t want to wake up every day, and be going through my boring routine, to a job I barely like. I would rather be out enjoying my work and doing what I love.
WA: It’s all baby steps for me. Success is going to mean different things for me at different times in my life. Right now, all success is to me is being able to afford to not work two or three retail jobs just to survive in L.A. I, like everyone else, am ready to be able to do what I love for a living. I think overall though, success to me is just happiness. I’m happy when I’m productive on projects that I care about, and when I’m working towards something; something that can impact the world or just my best friends. We just released our first album and that makes me very happy. So today, I feel pretty successful.
RR: Any last words for your fans before we conclude this interview?
AR: I love each and every one of you. You’re in for a blast!
JOR: I just wanted to thank you and everyone that made this interview and entire record possible. I hope everyone in the scene is ready for The Crown Remnant. We are going to blow your minds! I want to hear the crowd chanting “For The Crown” one day.
JOS: I want to give a huge thanks to everyone who made this album possible, from recording, mixing, and mastering, to everyone involved. I came on board later but I was able to see everything that had to go into making the album, lots of people doing great work at all times of day! And I personally want to thank everyone in the band, Geordy for starting something amazing, Will for putting more time and effort that I could ever imagine in making the music we hear, Jorge for inviting me to join this band of merry men, Art for adding a little of spice and flair to the group.
WA: I just wanted to thank you and everyone at Rockrevolt for the attention and opportunity you’ve given us here. As one of the first publications to ever interview us and see the potential in us as a band, we can’t thank you enough. We’ve got a bright future ahead with some really great music that’s out now (and you should go check out if you haven’t!) and we’re proud to start off on the long road with you guys. I’d also like to thank my band members – best group of guys in the world. Thanks.
GS: Similar to what Will said, thank you so much for taking the time to interview us! To people reading this because they checked us out and like what we’re doing, I can’t thank you enough. Your support is not only appreciated, but integral to what we do. If you love what we’re doing, please share it with your friends! And to people who don’t know us or our sound, thanks for taking the time to read this interview, and please go check out our new record, “The Wicked King: Part One”. It’s available on all major streaming services and online music retailers. And to echo Will once more – I’d like to thank the guys. Josue, Jorge, Will, and Art, you guys are amazing. I couldn’t have followed my dreams without you, and I appreciate each of you more than you’ll ever know.
RR: Thank you!
GS: Thank you Anabel! Always so much fun talking to you!
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