Some of you may be wondering why I have a typical rock band on this webpage. Yes, I admit that I normally have the typical underground or unknown artist often interviewed here, but this band is different. I was in my late teens and I was fed up with the hair bands and generic rock sound of the 80's. Groups like Ratt, Poison, Motley Crue, and Def Leppard no longer filled my taste buds. I had gone the way of Industrial and Goth sound completely. Then my sister brought me Warrior Souls debut LP, "Last Decade Dead Century" For the first time in years, I was drawn to the Rcok sound again. With lead singer Kory Clarke's poetic anti government lyrics and pounding guitar riffs from John Ricco, I was actually feeling that Rock may make a comeback. I started to collect their albums as they came out. Each one better than the last and really hitting hard on the fucked up government. It was like re-living my Punk days again!
The first LP brought great songs like "The Losers", Lullaby" and the spoken word "Four More Years"
The second album "Drugs, God, And The New Republic", hit hard with songs like "The Wasteland" and the title track. I thought they hit the top until I bought their 3rd LP in 1992 called "Salutations From The Ghetto Nation". Every song hit hard and all the lyrics made their point that we were living in the end of a free government. Songs like "Love Destruction", "Blown" and the old school punk sounding "Punk and Belligerent" could be played any better. I was in awe.
But the 90's showed no mercy for Rock. Grunge came out with its distorted guitars and "whoa is me" lyrics. Warrior Souls 4th LP (1993) "Chill Pill" got little air play and some bad reviews. Unfortunately the reviews were not wrong. I thought the band hit its peak and I was losing interest with them once I heard "HA HA HA". Some of the songs were good like, "Cargos of Doom" but the album wasn't holding together, just like the band. Bassist Pete McLanahan, and drummer Paul Ferguson were later replaced by Mark Evans and then Scott Dubois.
The 1995 album Space Age Playboys was released on the independent Futurist Records label, but the band disbanded within the year. Odds & Ends was released the next year as a posthumous collection of demos and outtakes. Also in 1996 Kory Clarke went on to found a short lived band called Space Age Playboys. Kory Clarke then became the lead singer of Dirty Rig for a brief period. Mark Evans, the band's drummer for three of their albums, was murdered in London, UK in 2005.
Most thought the band Warrior Soul was never more, until Kory announced a re-union tour in 2007. That quickly became set tour dates May 20 of this year.
Kory Clarke agreed to an interview before their recent appearance at Nottingham’s Rock City and I was well keen to hear where he thinks we’re at right now.
Warrior Soul arrived on the world somewhere around 1990, ’91 and spent the early Nineties prophesising all kinds of things. Ten years after your arrival 9/1l happened and now Warrior Soul are back – tell me what’s changed for America, what’s changed for you?
KORY: I’ve put Warrior Soul back together, it’s been on hiatus, and my explanation of the rest and what happened, what’s changed, I think the documentary Loose Change, which is online, at www.loosechange911.com probably covers a lot of what I think is going on right now. As for Warrior Soul, we’re doing a new album, and I’ll be expressing what I think of all that, on the new record.
We read about stuff like the US Patriot Act here in the UK, and I wonder, how does it affect an artist, someone with a public voice – what’s the feeling for you as someone who’s not just clocking in and keeping your head down?
KORY: Well certainly, some of the laws like the hate laws, that they’re trying to get sneaked through the Congress right now, that could certainly harm an artist like me, and it’s meant to.
Is the wider political environment harmful? We seem to have imported wars from the Middle East to our own countries, the US, the UK, I wonder why?
KORY: It can certainly harm anyone – and it’s coming up from all over, not just there, we have people coming up from the south: what I think is, it’s designed to dilute the belief in your nationality - that your country doesn’t matter, your rights don’t matter. You don’t matter.
What do you think about the way the Oklahoma bombing got blamed on nationalists, surely there are so many questions…?
KORY: I think that was probably a run-through. I think maybe for several other things that happened.
What’s the "war on terror" about for Americans?
KORY: I’m just a rock dude, I don’t understand it all! (laughs) No, let me be serious, go on.
We’ve got a lot of big rock bands who broke in the nineties coming over now, playing arenas and stadiums, and I love it but it’s like "The Silence of the Lambs" – how come they’re not talking about this stuff?
KORY: I think they’re scared. They’ve always been chicken! For the first time in my life, I’ve felt personally like there’s a lot of decisions made at the top that, it doesn’t seem like the world’s a normal place right now, these guys are beyond ruthless, and it’s not that safe to speak your mind in front of a microphone. Why would anyone risk their life!? Point is, they’re not here to do something, though they probably do behind the scenes, I’m sure they do speak out and I don’t know what – I’m sure there’s tons of charity work, stuff like that.
And Warrior Soul are coming back, when we most need to hear this stuff?
KORY: Well, I re-released all the records, because I thought, it’s still good, it’s still relevant, so let’s get it out there, and let’s go out and do a little tour, and we’re also doing the Dirty Rig tour. I’m not doing politics in Rig - It’s just, serious rock n’roll.
It’s almost a political statement just to say, "I want to do, what I want to do" these days…I mean we have one CCTV camera to every 14 citizens here in the UK, watching every choice and every move.
KORY: My comment is, why? What are you being protected from? The security side – nah, I just don’t want to talk about that shit, just put a chip in my arse!
A lot of your stuff references psychedelia, the Sixties, the whole trippy thing – and there’s a shamanistic precedent of using altered states to bring back truth and power. You guys have referenced the whole idea of altered realities, so, what do you think you bring back from that perspective?
KORY: Well Daoist meditation, at this point, going through the energy fields that we’re going through on the planet - and it’s bringing a huge psychic awareness as well as huge energy - anyone can access it through meditation, if they want to. The success of things like The Secret and all this stuff, there’s this growth in people whether they’re artists or not, in this area of meditation this reaches out and brings more love into the world. As an artist, when I am performing, I am putting on a play, every night is a different play, with the characters being the songs, and I just like to perform. I don’t know if I’m trying to get into trance necessarily, at one time I probably did that, I’ll tell you though now I’m more like - Vegas! The Rat Pack!
It’s always been pretty counter-culture to be so physical – you should really just become a slave - clock in, clock out, eat gruel, live for the TV…
KORY: You don’t feel that's appealing? It’s, no... Maybe not!
Has Warrior Soul manifested its goal? What’s the person in your audience getting then?
KORY: When, I’m playing the stage I want to be on, the people there are learning about performance, about society, about what’s going on, and he has what he believes.
And if Warrior Soul was an entity, to be a bit surreal and abstract, when has the Warrior won?
KORY: That’s a good question – I’ve never been close enough to find out. Yet. I’d visualise, people clapping, everybody in love, everybody having a great time. I’m not trying to deliver some sort of cosmic message, what I’m trying to do is shake my arse, and throw myself round, sing some cool shit, and I give you my soul, you give me your money! I wanna love everyone - I think what I want is, people need someone sometimes to stand up, but I can’t do that right now and so I’m the misfit guy, who just got picked on and is still kicking them back and saying, f*** you, still, I didn’t turn into Bon Jovi!
There’s like, the politically aware band, the hedonist band, the whingey "life hurts me" band, and what I love about Warrior Soul is you transcend those boundaries, you have the attitude and yet you feel and you say f*** you, and you don’t get sliced into focus group categories, or a single facet.
KORY: I just write about, whatever I f***ing feel like, so yeah! But transcending the boundaries, yeah, (laughs) you can write that one down.
Thank you very much, Kory Clarke.
So, Kory would still NOT get up onto his goddamn pedestal, where he belongs by right but from which so many of his peers, his partners in grime, have fallen so hard, and so permanently. But then, Warrior Soul has never been about preaching and leading in the first place – they take away our excuses for living the half-life, the safe-life, exactly by not being superhuman/subhuman cartoon cliches. In an age where our very identity is a commodity licensed back to us (via a smartcard) from the state, we all need to hear this more than ever, rather than handing off onto selected heroes to numb us into complacency, and make all our desires into a niche market.
The songs Warrior Soul pushed into our consciousness, songs like Superpower Dreamland, The Losers, The Wasteland, are more relevant now than ever, and if that seems at odds with most of radio’s sugary daytime airwave Prozac, or the "one issue band" that died off when we outgrew that issue (Zack De la Rocha, I'm talking to you - the internet machine being the greatest freedom tool yet invented - so, duh) then that is exactly why Warrior Soul are a band we need more now than ever.
And a little while after that brief chat, this amazing rock n’ roll band played one of the finest rock shows I’ve ever seen, proving that in the end, the best way to mess the "powers that be" is to simply be human, be yourself, and not give up.
