Chris Poland - NUCLEAR MESSIAH

By: Lori Smerilson Carson

When you’re an incredibly talented world renown musician and you create an album with many other incredibly talented world renown musicians, you have NUCLEAR MESSIAH and their album BLACK FLAME due to be released on April 24th. Guitarist Chris Poland of OHM and previously multi-platinum status metal band Megadeth is the key player of this star-studded LP which is comprised of thirty-four musicians and one outstanding actor whom utilizing their own brilliant styles, spawned an outstanding hard rock, heavy metal album.

Catching up with Poland in the midst of his several projects, he revealed some details about the new album BLACK FLAME, a bit about his past, and what fans can look forward to.

SFL Music Magazine: How did this concept come together with Rick Wakeman to create NUCLEAR MESSIAH?
Chris Poland: Oh my God! I was driving to my studio one day, and I get a call from Brian Perera at Cleopatra Records. We worked together with The Kings of Thrash and I’ve done other stuff, and he talked about this concept, and I was like, you got to be kidding me. He goes, “no. Let’s do it!” I said, ok. When he told me everybody that was involved, I was like logistically that’s almost impossible. To find everybody that’s on the record and find the time for them to, you know what I mean? So, I’m of the mind that this record was meant to be and that’s why it came out as good as it did.

SFL Music Magazine: That makes sense from William Shatner on “The Prophet of Fallout” to all of the artists on the other songs hearing their input, their style.
Poland: Exactly. That’s what makes it so good is because everybody did their thing.

SFL Music Magazine: Was there a theme to the album BLACK FLAME?
Poland: I guess the theme is the Nuclear Messiah. He’s the thread through the whole thing. I got to tell ya, it’s just been so much fun making that record and not knowing how it was going to turn out until I heard the final mix. Derek Hughes and Jürgen (Engler), those guys are really, they’re as much to do with why it’s so good as everybody that played on it. They produced the whole thing, and they took all those tracks and they made them happen.

SFL Music Magazine: The song “Black Flame” has almost a psychedelic keyboard sound with the guitars and drums and everything. What would you say inspired that song?
Poland: I can’t even say. These songs just all came together. Everybody, their input is how it all happened. My input, their input, Derek Hughes, Jürgen. It was just a collaboration with everybody.

SFL Music Magazine: You mentioned the logistics and you have Joe Lynn Turner, Sebastian Bach, Mick Box, Pat Travers, Joe Bouchard, David Ellefson, Carmine Appice, Fred Aching, Don Airey, Vinny Appice and Ronnie Romero on a few. There are a ton of musicians. How did it all come together?
Poland: I think Brian reached out to everybody and he would not let it go. Really his vision, and that’s pretty visionary to do that. I mean, I don’t know how many phone calls or emails he sent out, but it had to be hundreds.

SFL Music Magazine: I saw the video for “Dice And Thunder” with Rick Wakeman. How did the song and video come about?
Poland: The same way all of them did. There was like a core skeleton of a song and then everybody contributed. Then I went down to the Cleopatra building to shoot some video, but I got super busy and I couldn’t go back. So, a lot of those videos, it’s the same video shoot and they just kind of used the same footage. I wasn’t available because I run a bunch of studios during the day, and management teams, and I was super busy, but Brian understood and he gave me a pass.

SFL Music Magazine: Will there be any more videos?
Poland: I hope so. I hope we do more videos.

SFL Music Magazine: Is there a possibility of some touring?
Poland: I’ve talked about this before and there’s just no way. But if we could do say like the House of Blues in Anaheim and just have everybody on the record there and record and film it. Just in maybe two nights, a Friday and a Saturday. Charge ungodly amounts of money for people to come and watch it and then make a record and a video out of it. That would be amazing!

SFL Music Magazine: That would be. We will have to keep our eyes open.
Poland: Well, you never know. Brian can make stuff happen (he laughed).

SFL Music Magazine: What would you say influenced you to become a guitarist, a musician?
Poland: It was my cousin Eddie Bores. When I was a kid, he had a Fender amp and a Fender guitar and he had a Jordan Boss Tone fuzz that plugged into the guitar, and as soon as I heard that, I was in. I begged my mom and dad forever, and they finally caved in because they just couldn’t take it anymore. So, they got me a Supro guitar and my Jordan Boss Tone fuzz and a little cheap tube amp. Luckily, I got a tube amp, now that I think about it. I’m surprised they didn’t buy me a little solid state 10-watt amp. I think it was a 30-watt tube amp.

SFL Music Magazine: Since then, you have had years of longevity and success. What would you attribute to that?
Poland: I love playing guitar. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m lucky that I still have the drive. I don’t have the will that I used to have in my thirties and forties because I used to will stuff to happen (he laughed). Now I’m just trying to keep it going, and you know, I’m getting older so I’m slowing down. So, now I work on phrasing instead of speed.

SFL Music Magazine: What would you recommend to a new musician?
Poland: You got to play what you love otherwise it’s not fun. You don’t want to try and write another hit song copying a song you heard on the radio. You got to find your own voice and if you find it, great. If you don’t, if you don’t love playing, you’ll quit.

SFL Music Magazine: That is good advice. Is there anything else project wise that you would like people to know about?
Poland: I have so much stuff going on. I’m really blessed. There aren’t coincidences. They’re not. Randy Burns got a hold of me a couple years ago, asked me if I still had the two-inch maters to RETURN TO METALOPOLIS and I said, yeah, I’ve had them all these years. He goes, “I’m sending you five hundred bucks. Go have them baked. Take it to this guy and he’ll send me the digital stems.” He said, “I’m going to remix and remaster that whole record.” So, I was totally excited. Then we started talking about it as we kept doing the project and I told him, I said, I don’t even want it to sound like the original record. I want to add the lays. I want it to sound like we recorded it yesterday. So, that’s what we’re doing and it sounds amazing! My brother Mark Poland, he played drums on it. My brother lives in Florida. He’s got like sixty drum students. He’s an amazing drummer. You can hear that on Metalopolis and damn the machine, and all my solo stuff. Right now, we’re finishing up the latest OHM record for M-Theory Audio, and we did it in (Steve) Lukather’s old studio. He sold it, but it’s called The Steakhouse in North Hollywood. We were there for four days because we do everything live, and anything that we had to repair, we repair in my studio just to fix stuff here and there. It’s coming out really good! So, I’m excited about that, but something really close to my heart is my bass player Robbie Pagliari found all these old rehearsal CDs that we recorded twenty years ago, whatever of date, when David Eagle was our drummer on OHM. I didn’t think much of it then, but I had a lot of really good equipment then, and I would make those guys let me get a mix together. Sometimes it would take forty minutes. So, my bass player brings them all in and he’s like, “these things sound like a record already.” So, I gave them to Randy Burns, and he made them sound more like a record. Then I had another guy do some mastering. His name is Rob Sizwe. He’s out of Chicago, he’s a mastering engineer, and that record sounds so good. I can’t wait for people to hear that. People need to hear how he used to play.

SFL Music Magazine: Definitely something for fans to look forward to. What else do you want people to know about BLACK FLAME?
Poland: I can tell when I listen to the songs that everybody involved really cared about their performance. You can hear it. You can hear it in Sebastian Bach’s performance. You can just hear that he’s giving it all he’s got. So did Arthur Brown. I mean, it’s going to be hard to get a tour together for this record. So, anybody that likes hard rock and metal, they should just buy this record and hear the whole thing. Especially the William Shatner track. That was amazing! That’s his first take too.

SFL Music Magazine: Really?
Poland: Yeah, we were at his house, in his backyard on his patio. There’re airplanes going overhead. Lawn mowers going, and Brian gives him the sheet because Brian wrote the words. Brian’s a super creative guy. Anyway, he reads it all the way through, first take, does another one. We didn’t use that one and when I got to the studio, I was working with Luis Torres doing that, and we looked at each other and I said, is that in perfect 6/8 time? And we started listening to it and counting it, and he read it in perfect time. Not even trying to. It just came out that way. So, I wrote the music around his timing. That was so cool.

SFL Music Magazine: That is cool. He is just so natural.
Poland: Yeah. He’s going to make another record right now. Brian said, “you want to play on it?” I’m like, yeah, I want to play on it!

SFL Music Magazine: Do you know when that will be out?
Poland: Oh, it still has to be recorded, but he’s going to make a metal record. He’s all in. I want to mention one thing to all the guitar players in Florida. There’s a product I’ve been using for like thirteen years. I don’t get paid to use it. I’m just friends with the guy that makes them, his name’s Rob. The company is called Stone Tone and it’s a granite block that you use instead of a brass block on a Floyd Rose bridge. He handed me one, he just gave me one at NAMM, like years ago. I didn’t think much of it, and when I put it on my guitar, it changed everything. A lot of people think it’s snake oil, but it’s not. It’s really miraculous what it does.

SFL Music Magazine: How would you describe what it does?
Poland: It adds almost compression style sustaining and it takes that nasty brass top end away. It kind of makes your Floyd-equipped guitar sound like it doesn’t have a Floyd on it which is what everybody wishes it sounded like because Floyd’s are really bright and kind of steely sounding.

SFL Music Magazine: Is there anything else you would like to add about the new album BLACK FLAME?
Poland: I’m still blown away by the NUCLEAR MESSIAH record. I just can’t believe that it all came together like that. Hopefully we’ll do some kind of show. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but we’ll do a live show, I’m sure, somewhere.

SFL Music Magazine: Maybe Florida???
Poland: That would be great!