C.O.S:  First, the question I'm sure you're getting asked all over
the place: what happened with Karl and Andy, why'd they leave?

Barry:  Well, there's no shit to throw around or anything, they just 
didn't wanna do it anymore.

C.O.S:  That's it?

Barry:  That's it, they just didn't want to do it anymore, they wanted
to do different things, go to college, settle down, get married,
have kids, you know, that sort of stuff...do different things with 
their life, and Bolt Thrower just wasn't part of it...they didn't
think they wanted to do it anymore, they weren't into it as much,
so the best thing to do is--go!  Y'know, get out and leave it to
the people who really wanna do it.

C.O.S:  That's too bad.  So was there any hard feelings at all, or...

Barry:  No, not at all, I mean, I still speak to Karl and Whale once a
week, y'know, go out for drinks and everything, so there's no problem
there, I mean I spent a third of my life with 'em...not like I'm not
in a band with 'em and I'm not gonna talk to them.

C.O.S:  Right, I would think.  Um, didn't you cancel some shows in
the US last summer?  Like weren't you supposed to play the Milwaukee
Metalfest and that...

Barry:  Yeah, but I mean that was like a...fuckin' shithole place...

C.O.S:  Yeah it was, I know (laugh)!  It's a stupid deal too...

Barry:  (laughs) Let's face it, we're not gonna travel all the way
through the night, get there at eight o' clock in the morning just to
play two songs at twelve o' clock at night.  I mean so really, we 
were well within our right to say no.

C.O.S:  How'd Martin van Drunen hook up with you guys?

Barry:  He's been a close friend of the band for many years, so when
the gap became available in Bolt Thrower, he was the first choice 
really, because we're very close with Martin, ever since we'd
been to Europe, the first-ever dates we'd done in Europe was with
Pestilence, so we just remained friends ever since...and he said
yes straight away.

C.O.S:  That's great, 'cause he's another one of my favorite vocalists.

Barry:  Yeah, everyone's saying well hell, I really love Martin, and 
the work he's doing, and I really love Bolt Thrower, I mean you two
guys gettin' together'll be ace.  And they're right!

C.O.S:  Whatever happened to his band SUBMISSION?

Barry:  He's left them now.

C.O.S:  They never even got anything out, did they?

Barry:  Uh, no, no.

C.O.S:  Who's the new drummer?

Barry:  It's Martin Kearns.  We call him Kiddy.

C.O.S:  "Kiddy"??

Barry:  Yeah, because he's only 17 years old.  But he doesn't look
17, he looks like 22, 23.  He's a big lad, 6-foot-2.  He's a real
nice kid.  He's going to add that little bit of youth to the band 
that we needed, seeing as we're all approaching thirty!  We'll 
probably need that little bit of youthfulness put back in, so
that's pretty good, and we've got the new blood, of the two new 
members, so it's looking pretty good for Bolt Thrower.

C.O.S:  So how are they working out, good?

Barry:  Yeah, Martin's doing very well on the drums, he's obviously
got a new style to learn because he was playing in more of a hardcore
sort of band before.  But he's pretty good on the old double-bass, as
he WHACKS the kit, which I like, y'know, he's a big lad.  It's so good
to play with a drummer who does whack 'em 'cause Whale tended to be
a bit light on the double bass sometimes.  He lacks the power sometimes
live, if he tended to be "tickling 'em" one night as we'd say, he just
didn't get that THUD, wereas Martin is really whacking 'em when he
plays, so it's good!

C.O.S:  Overall, does it sound a lot different, or...?

Barry:  Yeah it does, actually, 'cause we now have that...it's more
in your face, I don't know why, it seems to be a lot tighter with
Martin on the drums.  

C.O.S:  I mean as far as the vocals, too?

Barry:  Well the vocals, I mean to tell you the truth, we haven't done
a practice with Martin yet!

C.O.S:  Really.

Barry:  No.

C.O.S:  Hm.

Barry:  He's coming over next week to start rehearlsals.  But Martin
knows all the songs very well, 'cause one of his favourite bands has 
been Bolt-Thrower through the years, so there's no problems with learning
the stuff or anything.

C.O.S:  Right, right.  So, you're touring Europe soon, aren't you?

Barry:  Yeah, we tour Europe on the 2nd of February, which is very
close.

C.O.S:  For how long?

Barry:  Eh, for five weeks, with Asphyx, Martin's old band, and
Cemetery.

C.O.S:  Oh wow, that'll be great.  Are you gonna be coming to the US
anytime soon??

Barry:  We want to!  We want to come over in April, but only as a 
support tour.  We've had too much hassle in the USA with headlining,
we just don't really wanna get involved.  We just wanna turn up, play,
that's it, and we wanna support someone this time around.

C.O.S:  Yeah, I saw you guys on the Warmaster tour.

Barry:  Yeah, I mean that was a good tour for us, it was a real good
tour, but last time around...it's a real band-splitter, America is,
it's one of the worst places to tour in the whole world.  There's too
much stress and strain.  I mean over here [Barry was at the Earache
NY office when this interview was conducted--TJ], people send half a
deposit off to the agent, they phone up the agent and say 'have you
received the deposit' and they say no, the venue says 'we've sent it,
we're not giving you that much, we've already sent half of it off,'
and...ah, it's just a fucking nightmare.  So if we do a support tour,
it'll be a lot easier.

C.O.S:  Okay...last year, or was it the year before, when Gorefest and
Unleashed released live albums, I always thought how cool it would
be if Bolt-Thrower would do a live album!  Now you did the limited-
edition thing with the ...For Victory CD--what made you decide to
do that?

Barry:  Well it's like a testament to the old band, really.  It shows
that we haven't pratted around with it, we haven't gone in and spent
a lot of money on it, it's just--we had it lying around, y'know, it
was an 8-track tape, we recorded it one time, just done it 
ourselves...just on an old 8-track that we've got, we got like a 
demo studio at home where we write stuff, we took it out on the road 
with us, we had about three or four English dates to do so we just
took it out with us.  And when we played Manchester the PA was
good enough to use to record off, y'know.  So we done a quick 
8-track once and we never thought we'd ever us it, it was just 
something that the band wanted, y'know, have a live tape, you can
say oh, this is us live in Manchester.  So obviously there was no
crowd there (laughs), y'know Manchester in England we don't really
play to many more than about 150 people anyway.  So it was just one of
those things, but it was purely just to record the music, y'know,
for ourselves.  So when Earache said 'fuckin hell, we need something
to go with this album, do you wanna put something, y'know like
another song on the CD in with it,' I says well, how 'bout some live
stuff, they said 'well, you can't record it now because you haven't
got the band,' I said yeah but I've got this 8-track lying around at
the house.  Why don't we just go in and mix it properly, from the
studio?  And they went 'oh yeah, okay!'  So we went in, just two
days, mixed it, and...it came out very raw, very live, but also 
like--fuckin, in your face, the only thing it's lacking is probably
little a bit of atmosphere, because the crowd is very much like, 
"HEY." "OI." And you got one bloke going...

C.O.S:  clap clap.

Barry:  Yeah, there you got one bloke doing that and it's funny, you
know!  'Cause we left everything in, we didn't like add in the crowd,
we didn't do anything like that.  We could've if we wanted to, but
that wouldn't have been right!  That wasn't how it was recorded.
And basically it's just a testament to Bolt-Thrower, that was it,
that was us.  It's actually longer than the album, the live stuff.
So it's a good product for someone to have, hopefully people will 
tape-trade it around.

C.O.S:  The only thing that bummed me out about it was that there was
no Real of Chaos songs on it.

Barry:  Yeah, but at that time, we were advertising the IVth Crusade
album, it was done on that tour.  There was some on the actual live
tape but we didn't mix them.  The Realm of Chaos album, we haven't
played them songs for years, we just don't play them anymore really.

C.O.S:  Uh, that's kinda too bad, that one's one of my favourites.

Barry:  Yeah, "Eternal War" and "World Eater," well we usually play
"World Eater."  It was okay in the late 80s, when we were playing
that sort of stuff.  The fast blast beats were in.  But now when you
play it, you just sound like a dated band...you don't really wanna 
play it onstage, we just progressed.  When we play it live, people
really get into the slower riffs, y'know "World Eater" the slow
riffs.  Then when it goes fast they just stand there and 'well,
I can't wait for this bit to finish so I can get into the next
bit.'  That's why we dropped 'em.

C.O.S:  What have you done as, like, MTV videos?

Barry:  Uh, we did a "Cenotaph" one, and we did a "IVth Crusade" one,
which was really shit, both were shit actually, but the "IVth Crusade"
was REALLY shit, just like some live footage just thrown together.
This time, we're gonna do two songs off the ...For Victory album,
proper video, you know, full production and everything.  So that'll
be a good one, "For Victory," and then we're doing "Forever Fallen,"
off the album, which is like a faster song, which is something we
haven't done really on a live video, a fast one to show different
styles...

C.O.S:  Okay, Bolt-Thrower's sound has remained pretty constant over all
the years, whereas a lot of bands like (a short list of bands who shall
remain nameless--TJ) have changed direction.  Do you have any comments
on that?

Barry:  Well what they do, you'd have to talk to them, but as far as
Bolt-Thrower is concerned, we aren't going to change, we don't want
to change, we've our own style and we're good at what we do--why
change, you know?  We're original in our own style.  If you want
a Bolt-Thrower album, but a Bolt-Thrower album.

C.O.S:  You don't have to worry about which one's THE GOOD ONE.

Barry:  Yeah.  If people like Bolt-Thrower, and we have a very
hard-core fan base who always buy our albums...they just love it,
they know--'fuckin, I can't wait for the new Bolt-Thrower, because
I know I can rely it's gonna be like they always write 'em, but
better!'...and at the moment, we are increasing--every album is 
getting better and better and better, so hopefully we can keep
progressing.  And we have reached five albums...if we can make six,
seven, eight, then--fucking hell, we must be doing something right,
and we're not gonna change it.

C.O.S:  Great!  Let's see, what's next...OH!  Why didn't you 
continue the "World Eater" and "Cenotaph" and "Embers" series
on the new album?

Barry:  (sounding suprised) Wow, you're the first one that ever
fucking picked up on it!!

C.O.S:  Really?

Barry:  (laughing)  Everyone else is saying 'why...why do you have 
the same riff on three albums?'

C.O.S:  It's a series, I used to play all three in succession on my
college radio show and it sounded so fucking cool!!

Barry:  Yeah, well you're the only one that ever picked up on it,
everyone else said, 'yeah, you record this album, and then you've 
got the same riff on it.  Was that intentional?'  And I think, well
OF COURSE IT FUCKING WAS, YA TWAT! (laughs) It's a trilogy, it
was gonna go on for every album, and the reason we didn't do it
for this album was because NO ONE picked up on it, no one at all,
they just thought we had the same riff on every album.

C.O.S:  (I'm laughing like a fucking idiot at this point)  Well you
coulda done it just for me then!

Barry:  I couldn't believe it, we were like 'how thick ARE people?'
...so we just didn't bother on this one...we always intended to
do y'know ever single album, fade it in and carry it on, but it lost
all its appeal when we found out no one knew what was up! (laughs)

C.O.S:  That's too bad.  'Cause when I saw you live, you ran 
"World Eater" and "Cenotaph" together.

Barry:  That's right, we used to run all three.

C.O.S:  If we could go back to the Realm of Chaos album, what was the
connection with Games Workshop all about?

Barry:  Well, Games Workshop actually approached us [before] we signed
the contract with Vinyl Solution, our first record label...they said
they'd be interested in having us on their sort of label, they didn't
actually have a label, but they wanted to make one to tie into their
products, and they wanted to put out an animation sort of thing with
us doing the soundtrack and all this sort of stuff.  It was all like
good ideas and everything.  But the guy who wanted us to do all this
was a fan of ours and he actually owned the company, but he sold it,
and soon after we'd done the cover with Earache, because Earache 
came in and said 'no, we wanna put you out,' which we thought was
better for the band as a whole, so we worked in joint collaboration 
with Games Workshop and Earache.  And soon after that album was released,
the managing director sold the company, he was the one who used to like
us, he sold the company and then fuckin hell, we were dealing with
accountants, not people.  Then it was, 'oh no, you can't use this 
artwork, it's gonna cost you this much,' and all this bullshit.
So we just thought well fuck it, this isn't how it's supposed to be,
seeya.  We didn't work with them ever again.

C.O.S:  Yeah I was wondering about the whole 'Realm of Chaos' concept,
I mean you named the album after the games, and you had all the 
artwork...

Barry:  Well a lot of the titles were already wrote because we were into
that sort of stuff anyway.  That's how they picked up on us, because
we did a John Peel session and we had a song called "Realm of Chaos."

C.O.S:  ...and some of the other songs are based on that too, 
"Plague Bearer," "World Eater," all that stuff...

Barry:  Oh yeah.  A lot of these things were already wrote you see,
and we did a Peel Session, and this is what this chap heard, who
actually was the managing director, he heard all this and he said
'fucking hell, this band are into our sort of stuff!  We can use
this', you know, that's why they got in touch.  So it wasn't like
we wrote anything around their stuff, it was already done.  Karl
and Whale and Gavin were all avid players of Warhammer 40000, which is
a concept that they have...

C.O.S:  Yeah, I have the book!

Barry:  So they were very much into that already and they used to play
these fancy-role-games.  So it was a very good step for Bolt-Thrower
because it was what three of the band wanted to do anyways.

C.O.S:  Now just to clarify, a bolt-thrower is a weapon, isn't it??

Barry:  It is, it's a mideival weapon of war, yeah.

C.O.S:  Okay, I was just wondering.  Um, geez, that's about it, you
got anything else you wanna talk about?

Barry:  Mmmmmm, nope!  I've done enough talking today, I think! (laughs)
What I will say is if people haven't heard Bolt-Thrower for a bit, go
into your record shop, check it out, just give it a listen-to, see
what you think, if you like it, buy it!

C.O.S:  Okay, thanks a lot!

Barry:  Yeah, no problem.  Seeya!