Screams of Winter: A BAND FOR ALL SEASONS

by Patrick Kubina
feedback@buzznews.net

The roots of heavy metal music can be traced back to Black Sabbath (definitely) and Led Zeppelin (arguably). The fortunes of the genre have waxed and waned over the years taking a particular hit in the early eighties with the rise of syntho-sounds so prevalent in the new wave movement. But unlike other styles of music, metal has never quite gone away as each generation spawns a new crop of testosterone driven, fist pumping head bangers who dream of pyrotechnic stardom. Among the newest group of rebellious metal-heads vying for the crown of “Kings of Metal” is Naperville’s own Screams of Winter.

Barely out of middle school these five dedicated musicians (Mike Scola -vocals, Maxwell Damske - guitar, Mikey Matthews – guitar, Alexander Damske - bass and Vince Liedig - drums pulled all the necessary elements together to win Buzz S&Es’ first ever Chicago Metal Wars competition. The prize package included an opening spot at The Pearl Room in Mokena in support of former Anthrax frontman Joey Belladonna. Not phased by the prospect of opening for a national act Screams of Winter took the stage by storm with a swagger that belied their tender years to proclaim that they had arrived on the scene and were taking no prisoners.

Buzz caught up with the band just after their energetic set to gauge their reaction to a taste of the big time…

Buzz: What’s Screams of Winter? Where’d you get the name? (Muffled murmurs) Did I stump you already?

Mike: The name came from name generator online (laughs)

Buzz: Serious?

Mike: I’m being dead serious.

Max: We were thinking of the name of the band and we couldn’t think of anything...nothing. We had to resort to a name generator. It’s so rough because there are so many great bands out there with so many good names and they’re all taken so that’s all that was left pretty much. We’re sorry!

Buzz: One thing that I noticed was that you guys really seem to personify fun while you’re on stage.

Mike: The fun aspect of the band comes from our guitarist Mikey who is the bands jokester and he’s right over there (gestures to Mikey)

Mikey: Umm - just trying to keep the band alive and have as much fun as possible.

Mike: No but we try to, ya know, keep it fun. You can’t take yourself too seriously. No one’s gonna have fun - you have to run around and make it as fun a show as possible. Get people into it.

Vince: Fun in a sense is that we all love what we do and we all love being on stage and if we can just have fun up there the crowd can feed off that and then they have fun. Of course the seriousness is there that we have to do a great show but at the same time we can still have fun.

Buzz: Is this the biggest show you guys have played so far?

Mike: Yes, for sure. It was a blast! And the best part about it was that we actually got to use our intro cause we got to walk one after the other on stage – it was the best. It made the whole show –the fact that we got to do that.

Buzz: Alex -from what I hear from Mike -you’re the main songwriter?

Alex: Yes, this is true.

Buzz: What’s your formula?

Alex: I sit at home on my computer and write the songs on the computer. That’s pretty much my whole life.

Buzz: A song generator?

Alex: (laughs) No.

Buzz: (to Vince) Now Mike was telling me that you have a bit of a problem with hearing.

Vince: Well I am over forty percent deaf so once we started playing gigs a lot I found that I had areally hard time hearing everything as a whole - and the monitor speakers just blasting was not doing the job at all.I really don’t want to rely on a wireless system so I just take my own mixing board and they all line out into it and I use a set of Shure ear buds and that works fine.



Buzz: Hmm-interesting. Does that ever throw you off –live?

Vince: No.It’s actually a great thing live.You have everyone in there and as long as I can hear everyone in time and since these guys are all great musicians I can hear everything perfectly. It’s really a great improvement and I got it just recently.

Buzz: So what are your guys musical influences?

Mike: Vocal wise I would have to say that Cradle of Filth is probabally the best.(everyone else laughs)Yeah they all pretty much hate Cradle of Filth.

Buzz: Where do you guys see yourselves two or three years from now.

Mike: We’ve talked about it to a degree and if everything takes off then we’re gonna let it take off. I see Screams of Winter getting only better and bigger.We’re getting a bigger fan base and we’re doing a lot more as far as playing shows and getting out there and getting people to come and see us.The more exposure we get, and I don’t mean to plug you guys (Buzz), but The Buzz news really helped us. The Metal Wars really forced us into self promoting.We were forced to go out…

Max: Going door to door…

Mike: Yeah,going door to door and handing out flyers to the people to support us.It was ridiculous but I think that all of this is giong to help us get big - you know - become a driving force in metal-especially in Chicago.

Buzz: What’s your next move? Are you guys going to take advantage of the studio time?(part of the prize package)

Max: Yeah,we’re hoping to get into the studio sometime soon as soon as we get all of the songs down and get the proper funds to record our entire LP.

Vince: There’s still some discussion as to what we’re gonna do once we go into the studio.

Mikey: We’re gonna record something over the summer and it’s gonna be amazing!

Alex: It’s comin!

Buzz: You guys actually wrote Mechanical Chaos for the contest, right?

Alex: We decided that we needed another song with that name cause it was a cool name so I wrote the song with the help of Max and it turned out to be good, I guess.

Mike: It’s great! He’s so modest. How long did it take you to write it Alex, seriously?

Alex: Umm...two evenings.

Vince: ...and it all came together that next practice.

Mike: I wrote the lyrics in twenty minutes.

Buzz: Do you write all the lyrics?

Mike: Yeah.

Buzz: Where does your inspiration for lyrics come from?

Mike: Anything. From mythology to current topics but I kind of try to stay away from current things. You can turn on the TV for that. So I try and write stuff that is based off of myths and all sorts of good stuff. If you read them it’s kind of like reading a story try not to base it off real life think it’s heavier when you make up the stories yourself. So many times you get things – especially politics - crammed down your throat from metal bands. It’s overdone. We have to go back to power metal. Power metal lyrics - about dragons (laughs)

Vince: This band is, in a sense, a chance for people to get away. We want to sweep them away with our stories and our myths.

Buzz: Last question. You guys buzzin?

Mike: I’m buzzed.

These guys are definitely not your father’s metal band - but I think he would approve.