Interview with Drummer Drew Rizzo of Midnite Hellion

December 23, 2024

Interview with Drummer Drew Rizzo of Midnite Hellion

By Mad T

Cosmick View: Hello, Drew, and welcome to The Cosmick View. Thanks for taking some time out of your day to speak with us. It's greatly appreciated.

Drew Rizzo: Hey Mad T! Thanks for having me on The Cosmick View!

CV: Midnite Hellion recently released their third album, Kingdom Immortal, earlier this year. What was the writing and recording process like?

DR: This album was a dream to make. While I am the drummer and founding member of the band, I am also the primary songwriter, and both Rich (bassist & singer) and I write and play guitar. We typically get together with our guitars and hash out some ideas in the rehearsal studio; sometimes, one of us will have a completed idea and others we collaborate on. After that, I’ll head home and start arranging songs in GuitarPro, and then we’ll work on them on our respective instruments.

For Kingdom Immortal, there were a lot of songs that just happened to come together naturally. “Phantomland” is one of those, where I had one riff already and as I was inputting the tabs into the program, I kept having more ideas suddenly come to me so fast where I couldn’t keep up! I had to keep humming the ideas into a recorder before I could even finish the riff I was on. Lyrics all came to me quickly, too. The entire composition of “Rapscallion” came to me in a matter of minutes out of the blue, including the chorus and a few of the verses. Once the arrangement was set, lyrics were finished within the hour. “In Sickness And In Hell” was pretty set musically from Rich. I minimally helped arrange it to what it is now, and I also wrote the lyrics.

Once the tunes were done, it was time to get to business, and business was good! We linked up with the incredible producer Alex Perialas and recorded at his Pyramid Sound recording studio in Ithaca, NY. If that name looks familiar to any fans of OverKill, S.O.D, Anthrax, or Testament, it should, as Alex did work on some of their best albums, in my humble opinion. So not only were we recording with a master, but we were also using some of the same equipment he used on albums such as Speak English Or Die and Taking Over.

Being completely honest here, I was nervous as all hell on the first day. Here I am, sitting in LITERALLY the same spot as where some of my favorite drummers recorded albums that I hold in extremely high regard. Mike Parker, the engineer for the record, came out of the control room along with Alex after my first take. Mike walks up to me, nods, and asks, “You know who else is nervous when he records drums? Everyone!” After that, Alex comes over to the other side of me, looks at my metronome, and says, “You don’t need that. You wrote the songs, you know the songs.” I think Alex quickly realized that I am my own worst critic and never toot my own horn, and this confidence boost was exactly what was needed. No lie, all of the drum tracks were completed for the album after this moment over the span of 7 hours in a single day. We did an average of three takes per song and picked the best of each.

Once drums were done, bass guitar was done in a day and rhythm guitar tracks took two days. Vocals and lead guitar were done over two days alongside each other. The record was done in a total of 6 days where we worked an average of 14 hours per day.

The best part of Kingdom Immortal to me was becoming friends with Alex. He and I hit it off immediately when talking on the phone, and built our friendship when working and hanging out together. We still talk regularly, and I look forward to seeing him again as well as working together again of course!

CV: How do you approach drumming for Midnite Hellion? What do you look for in a drum beat to help move the song and songwriting process along?

DR: I always try my best to write my drum parts to play to the song’s needs and not to overplay. In addition to building a solid foundation, my job as a drummer is to make the lead guitar and vocals sound great. If I’m not on the money, everyone else sounds sloppy, too. If I’m solid, mistakes aren’t as noticeable. I’m big into playing fills that accompany the guitar riff, and I always try my best to coordinate the drum and bass guitar parts to be in-sync while arranging the songs. Sometimes Rich likes to play a rhythm guitar part on bass instead of a traditional bass part, so I have to compensate for that. It’s a fun challenge to write a drum part that fills in those gaps.

While I did mention the metronome earlier for recording, I am absolutely not into playing to the click to a T at all, but rather around it to let the song breathe. I always have it running live, in the studio, and in rehearsals for a point of reference so I do not run away with the tempo, which is easy to do with adrenaline!

CV: Most recently, you completed a tour with UDO in mid-October. What were your reactions when you found out that Midnite Hellion was going to open for UDO? How did you enjoy touring with UDO?

DR: I was elated to have this opportunity, and then the tour was delayed for 10 months! However, it finally happened, and I had a total blast!! I grew up listening to Udo’s work and am a fan of both Accept and U.D.O., so it was a great experience all in all. Having played with him once before while under the Dirkschneider banner, I knew we were in for a great show night after night. The tour itself was incredible. Making new fans and seeing repeat ones is what it’s all about. My favorite part of every show is hanging with the fans at the merch booth every night. I love playing, sure, but I love getting to know you all most of all. We have one fan that has seen us three times in three years, and in three different states! Now that’s dedication to heavy metal rock ‘n roll if you ask me!

This tour was very special for me. My fiancée typically joins me for the end of the tours, but this time around, she joined me for the first few shows. Nothing better than having the perfect companion to start off what was a great tour with U.D.O.! I became great friends with their merch manager, and we hung out on days off when possible. We went to the Alamo together, and no, we didn’t get arrested like Ozzy! I got to see some close friends who I don’t see often except while on the road, and I was also able to see some family that I haven’t seen in almost a decade.

CV: How have you seen the New Jersey metal scene grow and change since 2011. Who do you feel have been mainstays or foundational blocks in the scene and what do you think sets them apart from their contemporaries?

DR: I’ve been fortunate to have been active in the scene since I was a teen in the 90’s, and of course I have seen a lot of changes over the decades. Growing up, we had literally nothing left in the Trenton area, aside from a few record stores. City Gardens was done by mid-decade, no tours came through, and if we wanted to see or play a show locally, we rented out a firehouse or VFW. This was a city where we had pretty much you name it, they played there. An extremely short list of bands that came around in the 80’s and 90’s includes Johnny Winter, S.O.D, Overkill, Ramones, Venom, Megadeth, Kreator, and GWAR. Nirvana even played here a matter of weeks before they exploded in ‘92. Our city motto is “Trenton Makes, The World Takes” for a reason.

If I wanted to go to a metal concert as a kid, I typically had my choice of NYC or Philly. For whatever reason, none of my friends ever wanted to go to the Birch Hill so I didn’t get a chance to go there until the second to last show in ‘03, but I digress. There were a few shows in Asbury Park, including the legendary Metal Meltdown festivals which were some of the best weekends of my youth. Of course, my favorite year was when I played the festival with my old band, Skinslip!

I say all this to say this. Around ‘06, there was buzz again in Trenton - venues were coming back, and not just hosting local bands, but becoming a tour stop again like the City Gardens days! For almost 10 years, we had a scene again where major bands as well as bands that would become major played in town almost every night. Of course, I played out often with Midnite Hellion as well as with bands I was in prior to our formation. Seeing and sharing the stage with bands such as Forbidden, Joey Belladonna, Obituary, Onslaught with Neil Turbin, Agnostic Front, Philm with Dave Lombardo, Dizzy Reed of Guns N’ Roses, Murphy’s Law, and Alestorm right in Trenton was really something special, and I’m extremely fortunate to have been a part of it. Holy shit, I just realized that I shared the stage with two Anthrax singers in Trenton, that’s pretty wild! Even cooler, these were 50 to 150 capacity rooms. I even caught 3 Inches of Blood’s first tour where they played to about 10 of us in a dive bar basement on a Monday night. About six months later, I saw them play to a packed house supporting Metal Church at Dingbatz, another great Jersey venue in Clifton which is thankfully still running strong.

I also started promoting shows again during this time like I did in my teens, and of course I had to play my own shows, too! A few notable ones include Impaler, Deceased, October 31, Attacker, Blood Feast, and probably my all-time favorite show that I promoted, OZ! They weren’t able to make it to the States in ‘85 with Slayer and Venom, but sure made up for it in ‘13! The crowd didn’t want to miss this chance, as it was wall-to-wall packed, and to this date it remains the one and only US tour for them.

The day after OZ was the Rock ‘N Roll Heaven Reunion show with Twisted Sister, TT Quick, Anvil, The Rods, and Raven in Freehold, NJ, and that weekend was the peak of underground metal shows in Jersey. The Jersey scene became fractured almost immediately after this, and has been for the better part of the last decade. It wasn’t like there was any brawls or nonsense at either event, so it remains a mystery as to why. What would have been sold out shows before that weekend became half capacity, and it slowly decayed until 2017, when the Trenton area metal scene seemed to dissolve almost completely. Even larger touring bands that used to play the bigger venues in the state have scaled back to smaller dive bars. However, as these things tend to go in cycles, it’s getting close to time for a rebirth as it’s been almost 8 years now.

Unfortunately, many venues that we once had in the great state are long gone, and while there are a few awesome ones left, there’s more closing than opening. There’s not a lot of original heavier bands left in the state, and the primary focus has become the tribute and cover circuit.

Like Midnite Hellion, a lot of the bands that graduated from local to touring rarely play in the state on a regular basis aside from a tour stop. What sets us all apart is the desire and drive to be more than just a regional band, simply put.

CV: With digital downloading and streaming seeming to make full-length albums almost obsolete, do you feel audience consumption of music would serve itself better with a "less is more" attitude? Are EPs and singles the way to go these days?

DR: I’m still an albums guy, because I feel that there’s still something special about the ritual of buying a record, CD, or cassette, bringing it home, putting it on the stereo, and diving into the artwork, lyric sheet, and liner notes while listening to it. Also, I’m big into the cohesiveness of the songs, the track listing, and the flow of the album, not just for a cover to cover, but what also best serves the A side and the B side of an album.

Personally speaking, I feel stand-alone singles aren’t necessarily the best plan of action when releasing everything independently. If you’re just introducing your band or have a single that is advancing an upcoming album release, that’s a different story. If issuing say two EPs in the same calendar year, I would say to hold off and just release one full album instead. You’re creating artwork for each release, plus you’re putting all of the exact same marketing and manufacturing budget into a single song or an EP that you would a full-length album. If you’re looking to recoup any of your costs, you’ll have to physically print the single or EP since streaming is the worst shakedown of recording artists since the tour buy-on became normalized, or the breakage clause for shellac records still being included in recording contracts by the time we got to CDs. Also, it’s impossible to sign a stream, and a vast majority of Metal fans still want physical mediums.

CV: With a plethora of new bands and genres popping up almost every day, how does this change the way you and others consume and experience music, both live and “on the record”?

DR: For me, this makes it hard both as a fan and as a recording artist. As a fan, it’s hard to discover new bands because there’s no more artist development so finding one new band I’m gonna latch onto is like being delivered a bale of hay every Friday, which is the album release day. There’s simply no time to inspect every individual piece of hay, so after a dozen or so, that’s it. As a recording artist, I hope to be within that first dozen or so pieces of hay for every new fan! Live, I still enjoy going to shows and catching the support bands to find something new to me to dig more into. As an artist, we deliver our best every night and the energy captures new fans.

CV: If you were to describe Midnite Hellion to someone who hasn’t heard you before, how would you demonstrate the band’s uniqueness to this potential listener?

DR: Simply put, we’re Heavy Metal Rock ‘n Roll with groove ‘n attitude. We offer a wild mix of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Heavy Metal, Blues, Thrash Metal, and 70s & 80s Pop Music, inspired by bands like KISS, Overkill, Michael Schenker Group, Judas Priest and Don McLean. It’s all of these influences that mold our sound and make us into a band unlike any other newer act, unable to be pigeon-holed to any specific sub-genre. Appealing to fans of all ages, we’re the perfect fit for the older fans looking for a newer band with a similar sound and feeling that they grew up listening to and the younger fans looking for their next favorite group closer to their age bracket. We always have an element of fun to it all, and we write from the heart with feeling behind everything.

CV: With many bands and artists that set the foundations for multiple genres today retiring, who do you see as carrying the flame for heavy metal here in the United States?

DR: I do feel that we, Midnite Hellion, are a top contender simply because of the response we receive every show. We’re constantly told about how much the fans love our show and songs, and how we’re needed to keep this metal thing going, which is a direct quote from a fan from a date in the Midwest a few weeks ago. Plus, we’re road dogs and love to play constantly to every audience anywhere and everywhere from the smallest towns to the largest cities.

I see a lot of potential bands out there, and a lot of them are content with doing one-off festival dates or playing locally instead of touring. While I respect everyone’s path, I personally don’t see how this method can sustain the relationship between the band and the fan in the long-term if the fan never gets opportunities to see the band in a city near them.

While I do have a few bands in mind to join us in the future of heavy metal in the US, I am eager and excited to see who and what is coming up next. I think we’ll all have a lot of fun getting to the level of playing the arena and amphitheater circuits!

CV: Thank you again for this great conversation!

DR: No problem!

Check out Midnite Hellion at:
Midnite hellion links:

https://www.midnitehellion.com/

https://www.facebook.com/midnitehellion

https://twitter.com/midnitehellion

http://www.instagram.com/midnitehellion

http://www.youtube.com/midnitehellion

About Mad T

Drummer to the traditional Heavy Metal band Corners of Sanctuary, Mad T has always had a knack for finding out what the word on the street is. With recently joining the Cosmick Krew, Mad T is refining his knack into a skill.