“I make music for real people, and when real people come back to me and say ‘I feel that struggle’, ‘I’m going through something similar’ or ‘I’ve been through this and the music has done this for me’, it means a lot.”
AJ Channer
US metal outfit Fire From The Gods consolidated their growing stature in October 2022 with the release of their third album, Soul Revolution.
Featuring the singles SOS, Thousand Lifetimes, World So Cold and Soul Revolution, the album quickly became a fan favourite and propelled the band into a fresh legion of fans and supporters.
Fans quickly demanded more, so Fire From The Gods have provided with Soul Revolution Deluxe – The Collabs, an extension of the original album featuring the tracks found on the first recording, plus four of the songs re-recorded with collaborations from Yung Mosh, Nate Vickers, Corey Glover and Jayden Panesso as well as a cover of Guerilla Radio by Rage Against The Machine.
It portrays the four reworked songs in a different light with the use of guest artists and showcases a different musical side of the band.
Vocalist AJ Channer joined HEAVY to dive deeper into the new album which will be released on June 14, starting with if he still feels the same excitement releasing a deluxe version of an album.
“You know what, I’m happy about this one because as I have told everyone it’s about the family with this one,” he explained. “It’s about the homies and some really solid, close individuals for Fire From The Gods, so I’m really excited about this one. I am excited about the release. Typically, Fire From The Gods will release a record, then we’ll do some reimagined version of it. We’ve done it since our first record, Narrative, and people are really excited about hearing the different version of the solo or a different take or reimagining of the record. But with this one, it’s collabs. It’s people that specifically are close to our hearts as brothers, as bands, as musicians. We hand-picked those that we wanted for this. I didn’t wanna blow it up and get a massive name on it and spend a tonne of money going after Jonathan Davis or some big name to try and boost sales or anything. We really wanted to do it as some homies that we wanted to show love and some people that we know really respect our band and respect what we’ve got going on.”
In the full interview, AJ talks more about how fans embraced the original album version, how he measures success in the modern age, runs through each of the collaborations individually and offers more about the songs and why each person was asked to collaborate on it, the Rage Against The Machine cover and why it was chosen, the selection process for which songs appeared on the Deluxe version, touring plans and more.
