Sound shift
Personnel changes send the Raven Age in a new direction
The Raven Age has come into its own, and not because one of its founding members has a famous dad.
The buzz around guitarist George Harris being the son of Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris has died down some. Now the band’s music speaks for itself. The band released its latest album, “Conspiracy,” in March and had been taken aback by the response at its live shows supporting Iron Maiden.
“The crowds have actually been really positive on this tour,” George Harris said. “I don’t think we could ask for a much better response. It definitely seems to be a better response for us this tour than our previous tour with Maiden. I don’t know; I think maybe this time around people may have sort of checked us out a little bit more and hadn’t done it before. I’m not too sure,but there seems to be more people singing along and kind of carrying the words, and, you know, in general, the crowd response has
been pretty damn good.”
The band’s lineup has changed since its previous album, “Darkness Will Rise,” was released in 2017. The changes have pushed the Raven Age in a different direction.
“We have two different guys,” Harris said. “We have Tony (Maue). He’s our new guitar player, and, obviously, MJ (Matt James ) is the new singer. One of the biggest things, I think, the main difference is obviously is MJ’s voice, because really vocals are at the forefront of our sound, and it’s a different person singing it so it’s a totally different sound of voice so that’s what’s changed the direction of sound most drastically, I think. MJ has a totally different vocal range to our previous singer, so when he joined, we kind of adapted the songs to fit his voice to get a best out of it.”
The band not only changed its guitar tuning and tried to work the songs around James’ vocals but added more songwriters to the mix. Maue and James are both songwriters.
“They brought more ideas to the table when previously it was me and Dave (Wright), our old guitar player, writing everything,” Harris said. “But having new writers on the team just opened up the dynamic for the album quite a lot. ‘Conspiracy’ has been has been sort of more of a collaboration than the previous stuff we’ve done.”
The band is already looking to record its next album early next year.
“The good thing is George, Tony and myself, we do a lot of writing, so there’s not really a shortage of ideas,” James said. “We’re not even worried about that. We have a large body of work to work with.”