Cleveland, OH has been synonymous with great rock & roll in its varying degrees for decades now. In recent years, the city’s delivered some great heavy metal bands unto the worldwide underground scene. In addition to his own outfit, Vanik of course, he’s also the guitarist for Midnight and a member of Vandallus, Eternal Legacy, and Sixx, to name a few.
Vanik’s always got plans in motion and stuff going on around him. It’s always great to check in with him on the continuing progress of whatever he’s got going down at the time. Not too long ago I spoke with him for a little bit, talking about his music and his new album, Vanik III. It’s set for its worldwide release on October 2nd via Austenitized Records.
FYI, Halloween happens to be Vanik’s favorite time of the year. If he had his way about it, that would be the time to release each new Vanik album. In time for that hallowed day, he’s releasing his third full-length album, Vanik III. The songs are usually descriptive clips of maniacally fun horror stories that come to life over the course of that three or four minutes they play through. Movies have helped shape his style in significant ways. “I take a cinematic approach,” he explains. “I try to make the album feel like a movie. I want the songs to paint pictures in your head. I’m not saying that this is the most original band or anything like that. I like what I like so I want to pay homage. All of that stuff is in my blood and the influences are going to come out.” So, with that in mind, you can see where the titles like II: Dark Season and now III come from.
To bring his music to life, he’s got his own place to lay it all down, called Mercinary Studios. The studio is located in a sizeable 2,000 square foot building that’s got a live room, two control rooms, an arcade room to kick back in to play some Mortal Combat or Pac Man or what have you. “It’s a great place to cut a record,” Vanik says. In all of the areas it’s definitely got its own vibe, you know, kind of like its own attitude. I don’t know, there’s an essence that you can feel that’s really hard to describe. You just have to go there to see what I mean.”
For Vanik III to’ve come out as successfully as it has, the whole process was done in a matter of days. There wasn’t a lot of time spent messing about, laying down a load of scratch tracks, focusing on any one thing for too long, agonizing over minutiae. With all things considered, the recording itself didn’t take long at all, maybe three days or so over a couple of weeks. After that it was down to mixing, mastering, bada bing, bada bang, it’s in the can. “We’ve just got a good flow going,” Vanik says. “And I don’t have to bring anything into the studio with me ‘cause it’s all there. But I try not to take too long, anyway. I just do what I do. Rock & roll is spontaneous in my eyes. I just want to capture the moment, and that’s where my focus is.”
Getting into the music, Vanik III comes from a place with some speed, almost thrash-like in a lot of parts. But regardless of the tempo, shades of gritty punk rock & roll show up to help keep the music sufficiently raw and abrasive. From the beginning, Vanik III is one of those situations where the music goes straight in with a full-on striking offensive. The songs are arranged in a way that generates a momentum similar to that of a live show with a forward-charging drive that exudes tenacious energy.
The hits start coming one right after another—“Carmilla,” “Running Wild,” “The Creature,” one, two, three, boom, boom, boom—without compromise. As it makes its way heading into the halfway point, “We Approach” is there to offer a bit of a different taste of something that’s a little more scaled back with a bit of an imposing mid-tempo stomp that injects some real heaviness into the mix. “Night Danger” is there to pick the pace back up immediately, going for the throat with the fastest speed metal attack on the album. “Raging High” and “Deadly Beginning” introduce a quick little piece of the aforementioned lip-sneering punk-ish rock & roll style to the album’s comprehensive sound that gives the album more stylistic dimension. Closing up the album with “Never Safe” forces itself to linger in the mind. It’s got a heavy, dominating mid-tempo verses that lead directly into choruses with the biggest hook on the album before a shift occurs that delivers the speed one last time with some epic guitar work before playing itself out with a triumphant fade-out.
Vanik III ‘s mix is handled remarkably well. The band’s rhythm section is rock-hard and uncompromising with a staunch presence that has no problem performing the task of carrying the whole of each song on its back. “Corpse Room” and “Never Safe” are both fantastic examples of just how on point they are together, with the dynamism of the percussion working with the driving and rolling bass lines that’re perceptibly audible just enough to be heard in the full mix. Big, solid walls of guitar are put up and stand anchored on the structurally sound foundation.
As a result of the process this time around, Vanik III is definitely the richest, fullest sounding album from the band so far, hands down. It was essentially Vanik and Mercenary Studio’s in-house recording engineer, Noah Buchanan, that handled most of the technical parts of the recordings. With Noah’s engineering, Vanik’s producing, and their coming together to mix and master, Vanik III is an absolute killer of a record. The recording, its production values, the overall ambiance of the songs; they’ve delivered on all fronts. In the end, Vanik III turns out to be an outstanding marriage of classic and contemporary as it retains copious primitivity despite its big, full, clear overall atmosphere. It’s an incredibly easy listen that can play over and over without becoming stale too quickly. Looking at the big picture here, Vanik III is a complete success, so there’s no doubt that it’s among the very best heavy metal albums of 2020.
Be absolutely positive to check out Vanik’s complete live set as they perform the new album, Vanik III, in its entirety. It was originally broadcast live from Mercinary Studios on the day Vanik III was released, October 2nd, but you can catch the whole performance now, just below!
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