Parry, Ian (Consortium Project, Elegy) (November 2001)

Of Alliances And Time - An Interview With Ian Parry

What is a neofem? There's a happy end to the story? Has reality gone too far? Let's hear what Ian Parry had to say about these intriguing questions regarding his latest project, Consortium Project II, and the great concept album Continuum In Extremis that deals with a distant and unlikely future ... or not?

Igor Italiani: Hi Ian. First of all, can you tell us why you chose Area 51 Studios to record the album? Lately it's been a frequent choice for a lot of bands!

Ian Parry: Well, with the Consortium Project I album we did a lot of recordings at Area 51. We did guitars, drums and the mix there. I had a good experience working with Tommy [Newton] back in 1998, too, when we did Elegy's Manifestation Of Fear album, and I was very impressed with the way he works, his knowledge of engineering, his ability in mixing. As I was producing the CP II album by myself, I needed someone to work with, someone which I could trust when it comes to mixing, so I could concentrate better to the production part.

II: So tell me if you are completely satisfied with the final results of the album ... and do you think you'll do a chapter III?

IP: Well, I'm always very self-critical, it doesn't matter what I do. Things sometimes never turn out the way you hoped, but the one thing I'm really happy about with the CP II, like the first one, is the fact that it seems like an album recorded all in the same studio. It's not as if the songs are so different that you get the impression that it is recorded all over the world. In fact, we recorded guitars and the vocals in various studios located in Holland, Germany, America ... but when you listen back, it sounds like one album, and on that side I'm very, very happy. I would have preferred, as far as recording, if we could have done all the guitars all in one studio, then we could have been sure that we got a similar guitar sound. But as an overall sound, the songs seem connected in a sort of way. It's clear that the atmosphere changes, but that's another thing ... and you also have to remember that we have two different bass players on the album, one that plays with the finger technique (Patrick Guers from Patrick Rondat's solo band), and the other one (Jan Bijisma, an old Vengeance colleague of mine) that plays with the plectrum. So with the finger technique you get less definition from the bass sound as opposed to when you use the plectrum. That's another subtle difference, even if it's one that is related to the way the different musicians play.

However, I think I'll be able to do a chapter III of the CP. I can tell you that because since I ended the work of CP II, I had an e-mail from Rob Halford's guitar player, Michael Chlasciak. He is based in the States, so he e-mailed me, saying that he loved the last Elegy album and also the CP I stuff, and that he wanted to do something with me. I was really surprised by that request, because he also seems such a nice guy and it's good to work with different people. In fact I would like to introduce someone new to the Project next time around, even if I want to retain the main core of players. So yes, I think that next year I'll be back recording songs for chapter III!

II: Great! But do you think you'll be able to do some live dates regarding the Consortium Project in the future?

IP: I don't know. It's a bit difficult, because at the time I'm also working on the new Elegy album, which will be called Principles Of Pain. We plan to record the new album in Spain, between January and February next year. The release of the album is planned for the beginning of May, and then it's off to the summer festivals, I guess. I must tell you that we've had many, many requests from our Italian fan club, Supremacy, and our friend Fabio Arena has also started a new web page regarding the band. We have already been asked by the fan club to play again in Italy, and I think that this time we will not play once or twice, but hopefully three or four times in your country. So we are planning summer festivals and hopefully a lengthy European tour after that.

II: What's the thing you remember the most from your last visit here in Italy?

IP: The enthusiasm of the great Italian fans plus the great food, because I had a chance to stay in Milan ... and all the beautiful women of course.

II: Ian, you know it's the same thing Enchant said to me when I interviewed them!

IP: Yeah, I know, but it's true.

II: OK. Let's talk a little about the music. Continuum In Extremis is a concept album, right? Can you tell us the story behind it?

IP: Yes, CP II is a concept album. Well ... basically it's a fictional story. It's a story about a world that goes out of control. I worked on this idea when I was on holiday in Malta, in summer 2000. I was flicking trough the Oxford English dictionary when I came across the word feminine and female and woman. I said: "Hey, all the references to masculine words, and there's no other word, except feminine, that describes the woman world." So I thought ... what about neofems? ... you know, taking the idea from neologism, the word you use when you create new words that don't already exist. Like Collide-o-scope, the one phrase I use in one of the last songs of the album. But anyway, it's a world in which I've put a lot of references taken from the actual world of media and the press, like global warming or the Kyoto treaty, which the Americans unfortunately didn't sign. I've taken all the references about cloning, the human genome ... but the most astounding fact I included, in my opinion, is how people are hypnotized nowadays by the so-called reality TV, like the Big Brother [Oh boy! How you are right!!! - II] ... for me it's astonishing that people have nothing better to do with their lives instead of sitting in front of a TV. I'm watching a bunch of people ... you know ... acting like fools, and that's basically what it is, waiting maybe that someone will do something in an extreme sort of way. [Sadly, seven years later, there are more of 'em -ed. 12/2008]

So I took all of this and I put it in the story, a story where reality TV becomes the sport of the day. And I go to the extreme, with people betting, like on a race course, on males that try to kill each other. In the story, the women are the only ones that realize that the planet is at the brink of extinction, and so they form a new society with neofems. It's a society run by women, it's in a protected world with no violence inside, and the women don't even need their male companions to procreate, because they use cloning and new technologies. Men are put away, out of this society and live alone wandering on Earth. At the time I was writing this, obviously, I couldn't have predicted what happened in New York, but that exemplifies what I was thinking from a lot of years. There are a lot of good people in the world, but somehow society seems to go in an extreme direction, a very dangerous one. So that's the reason why I wrote a story with all these actual elements. But I put a happy end to the tale, because women save the planet. And it's not kind of a finished story for men either, because I left the tale open, where the monomales direct themselves to the four corners of the Earth in search of their Nemesis. I left it open to continue the narration in the CP III.

II: But it was you that completely wrote the story or have you taken inspiration from something else?

IP: No ... I mean, I wrote it all by myself, but I'm sure that I went through things that were already done in the past. I don't call it a unique story, because I'm sure that there have been movies made, books written[*] ... however I didn't consciously copy anyone. But to me it felt very appropriate that the thing that sparked the idea was realizing that women don't have a name that determines their own species ... you know, without a reference to men. This made me think how actually women are bound to men. So I just imagined a twist of fate and created this perfect universe ruled by women, in which there's no poverty, no wars?

II: But your thoughts are basically hidden behind the lyrics of this album, or what is your real point of view regarding such topics like the human genome or global warming?

IP: Well, I just raised to attention these subjects. But I never made any kind of conclusions myself. I just used the topics to make the story more interesting, to have some content, and to be more "believable" as well. But I never tried to write messages on how people should live their lives. However I hope that the story makes us aware of what's going on around us. I'm sure, I'm really sure, that the people that buy progressive, melodic, power metal are good people and will open their eyes. I tell you this because in all the years that I've been doing music, I've found that metal fans are really good people. In all honesty, in all those years I've never met fans who were aggressive and bad.

II: So, what was the exact contribution the other musicians [Patrick Rondat, Thom Youngblood (Kamelot), Gunter Werno (Vanden Plas), Stephen Lill (Vanden Plas)] gave to Continuum In Extremis ?

IP: You know ... with the first album I wanted to write the songs by myself. Instead, with the second one, I asked all my colleagues to write songs for me, because I knew that, from a fan's point of view, the album would have had a lot more atmosphere, and in fact the thing turned out perfectly. I started working on the concept story idea and having a lot of different atmospheres, in my opinion, made the story more realistic. Now Stephan Lill, when he writes songs, he normally works with Gunter, so he simply asked him to supply keys and drums parts to him and collaborate. One thing that's very important is that I've not made any change, as the producer of the record, to the songs that the others wrote for me. For example, with Stephan's songs I kept intact the original arrangements, working only on the vocal melodies and lyrics. And the same with the others ? the guys wrote such strong songs that there wasn't any reason to intervene much.

II: Ian, on "Lapse Of Reason" there's also an Italian phrase in the background. Sounds a lot like Dream Theater's "Take The Time." Can you tell me something about it?

IP: Oh, well ... it's an explanation of one part of the album, because what I tried to do was put explanations of it in different parts of the songs. All in different languages, like German, French, Italian. Fabio helped me with the Italian phrase in "Lapse Of Reason," summing up what had already happened in the story so far. I wanted to do this as a small, but significant gesture in respect to all the international fans we have out there.

II: Ian, I have one final question ... what was the concert or album that persuaded you to start singing?

IP: Well, I have to say that it was the band Free. It was just albums in the beginning, even if I was always involved in music, because my father used to play drums himself, and my brother played drums as well. So back in Liverpool I used to play the drum kit of my dad sometimes with a hard rock band. It was like 1976. Then one day our singer didn't show up, and they said to me: "Why don't you bring along your brother who is also a drummer, so we can still rehearse, and you go behind the microphone... So I started to scream my balls off! That's how it went. I began to listen to a lot of records with great singers, like Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio, Deep Purple with Gillan and then David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes ... these were for me the ultimate vocalists and I prayed to reach one day their high notes. Now I thank God for finally being successful in reaching those same high notes, after building my voice along the years?

II: OK Ian. I think that's enough. All is left for me to say is that I hope to see you live here next year?

IP: OK. Thank you Igor and many thanks to Metal Force [where this interview also appears], because I know that the magazine supported me a lot in the past, doing a great article last year, as well. Well, hopefully we'll be drinking a beer together in Milan next time. OK? Good bye.

[*There are elements in Parry's concept that that remind me of Marge Piercy's novel Woman On The Edge Of Time . - ed.]

Discography:
Elegy - Lost (1995)
Elegy - Primal Instinct (EP) (1996)
Elegy - State Of Mind (1997)
Elegy - Manifestation Of Fear (1998)
Ian Parry's Consortium Project (1999)
Elegy - Forbidden Fruit (2000)
Consortium Project II: Continuum In Extremeis (2001)
Elegy - Principles Of Pain (2002) Consortium III - Terra Incognita (the Undiscovered World (2003)
Consortium IV - Children Of Tomorrow (2007)
Consortium V - Species (2011)