Michael Wilton states Queensrÿche drummer Scott Rockenfield wanted to distance himself for a while
Michael Wilton states Queensrÿche drummer Scott Rockenfield wanted to distance himself for a while
Queensrÿche guitarist Michael Wilton was recently interviewed by Andrew Catania of All That Shreds in advance of the release of the band’s latest studio album The Verdict, which is set to be released via Century Media on March 1, 2019. Queensrÿche singer Todd LaTorre ended up playing drums on the new album instead of original drummer Scott Rockenfield whose status within the band is unknown.
In terms of whether Rockenfield was involved with the new Queensrÿche album, Wilton advised: “No, he wasn’t. He said, guys, I just can’t do it. I give you my blessings. Go for it.”
With respect to whether he has any communication with Rockenfield, Wilton indicated: “Very minimal. Not much at all. He’s wanting to distance himself from this stuff for a while and do his own thing. His privacy is respected and above and beyond that, this is a business and we got to keep going. We’ve got to keep moving. I can’t wait around for things like that.”
In regard to how the writing came for The Verdict, Wilton stated: “Since we tour all of the time, it had been over three years since we did anything. The record company was starting to say hey guys, it’s time to record an album. Our management was telling us to get in the studio. Trying to work out a schedule for Chris “Zeuss” Harris, our producer. By the time we got into pre-production, it was just a bunch of ideas, and parts and lyrics on people’s hard drives and Zeuss was like OMG we have got to build these songs. Besides writing the drum parts, the rest of the songs had to be built. Song by song. So that’s how we did it. Everybody was involved. Everybody gave their creative element to the songs and we were under the gun. We had to get this done at a certain time because Zeuss had another project that he had to get to. After we did the first song, and Todd had done the drums, we sat up a mini drum kit and worked them all out. We listened to it and Zeuss, said, Hands down, this is going to work. We thought this sounds really cool and let’s move forward. That’s how it all got started. We were all on the fence, we didn’t know what we were going to do. The idea of getting another drummer in, it’s going to cause more delays. the album never would have been recorded.”
You can read the rest of the interview with Michael Wilton at All That Shreds‘ website.