EMQ’s With Siege Perilous
EMQ’s With Siege Perilous
Hi everyone! Welcome to another EMQs interview, this time with USA Heavy Metallers, Siege Perilous. Huge thanks to their Vocalist, Shaughnessy McDaniel for taking part.
What is your name, what do you play and can you tell us a little bit about the history of the band?
My name is Shaughnessy McDaniel and I’m the vocalist for Siege Perilous. The band started in 2021 after a few key events. The first one was seeing an absolutely incredible show in Denver at the Marquis featuring Seven Kingdoms, Aether Realm (who we get the pleasure of opening for at Mile High Power Festival in August), as well as the incomparable Unleash the Archers. I had been out of the Metal scene for a few years and the show really inspired me to do something that I swore to myself at a much younger age I would never try to do again which is to start a metal band.
The next day I hit up Mark Girard and Scott Hancock and basically said “Hey, do you want to do something really stupid and start a band?” They both said yes. I have known Mark for years through Eric (our bass player who joined much later) and I knew Scott exclusively through our LARP (Live Action Roleplaying Game). Originally, we really thought we would just do some covers, kind of goof around but very quickly we all started having ideas for original songs, especially since we had some really fun settings, characters, and storylines from our LARP to draw on for our tracks, which is where most of our first EP / Demo, “Betrayal of the Dracolich”, came from. We had a few personnel shifts, I for example was originally on rhythm guitar but our first vocalist left and so I stepped in which is for the best, at least for our guitar section because I’m a very middling guitarist (but may be a decent vocalist, I’ll let you decide). Last year we added Eric Fischer on Bass and Cody Martinez on guitar, so Scott wasn’t trying to pull double duty on leads and rhythm, and we hit the studio and dropped the tracks for “Creation’s Call” which brings us more or less up to today.
How did you come up with your band name?
The band name was Scott’s idea (there were some other decent ones, but that one was definitely the best when we made the list and took the vote). The Siege Perilous in Arthurian legend is the seat that can only be sat upon by the Knight who successfully retrieves the Holy Grail. It does pop up elsewhere in popular culture. A lot of people think we named ourselves after the Kamelot album of the same name, which isn’t a bad assumption as we do love Kamelot and pull a lot of ideas from there, but it comes more directly from Le Morte d’Arthur.
The Siege Perilous is also a prominent device in the Marvel universe which I believe (and more knowledgeable people may need to correct me) exists as a gateway to the multiverse. Some people also think it’s just about a dangerous siege. I love that if you do know the lore then it gives people a little extra buy-in to what we’re doing as I assure you, we are that nerdy (see aforementioned comments about LARPing) but I think without it it’s also clear what we are going for: Medieval Fantasy Power Metal.
What Country / Region are you from and what is the Metal / Rock scene like there?
We are from the Denver area in Colorado. The Metal scene is really great I know it’s not as large as in other countries and even other regions within the US, but there are a lot of great bands and we really work together really well to try to build up the Colorado scene. For example, I’ve known and worked with Oak, Ash, and Thorn for a long time and I’m working with Soren Bray from Celestial Wizard trying to build up the first annual Mile High Power Festival but also already figuring out what we can do together for Mile High Power Festival 2025. I think it’s a scene that really knows that high tides raise all ships, and the most important thing is for people to get awareness of all the great local bands and to try to get them and their friends to shows so that things grow.
I know there were times where our scene was more cutthroat and competitive (hence why in my early 20’s I told myself never again and that was reinforced by the experience of some of my other friends who played in bands in the early to mid-2010’s) but the scene today is really friendly, supportive, and welcoming and that’s in no small part I believe due to the efforts of people like Cierra White from Oak, Ash, and Thorn and Soren from Celestial Wizard, along with promoters like Zack Beecroft and Swinging Noose Productions, who have really fostered a great environment in which we get to play, get to learn, and get to grow as musicians.
What is your latest release?
Our latest release is “Oathsworn” which is one of the singles off of our upcoming “Creation’s Call” EP. Oathsworn is a story taken from our LARP which tells the story of a group of heroes who go up against such a cataclysmic evil that the only way to defeat it is to travel back in time and prevent its rise. It’s a very classic comic book-type story that I think translated really well into a song. It has a great narrative, great energy and threads that are heavy and fun at the same time. For the single we put together a great lyric video that does a great job of telling the story with some great visuals to pair with the lyrics.
Who have been your greatest influences?
This is always such a wonderful and difficult question to answer. I know that across the band Iron Maiden has been a huge influence on our style. Dio would have to be placed in that category as well, but it would be difficult for any Power Metal band to leave one or both of those people off the list. I also think that Manowar and Sabaton have a huge influence on our sound and our methods of storytelling. I would also be remiss if I didn’t add some of the other major influences on me personally which would include Hammerfall, Avantasia / EdGuy, Helloween and Dream Evil.
What first got you into music?
Another great but difficult question! My wonderful mother was always a very musically inclined person. Her family were almost all musicians but not very many of them were decent human beings. As a result, I kind of resisted getting too into the performance side as a teenager. That being said I still took lessons in piano, guitar, and a couple of years of trumpet so I had a background, I just didn’t think of it as being something that would be such a big part of my life. I loved heavy metal since I was first really exposed to it when I was 16 (I had heard a lot of Nu-Metal and didn’t care for it much before then, but that was my first exposure to NWOBHM and Power Metal), but didn’t think I was a good enough musician to play such technical music.
I ended up in a few really interesting projects including a Blues Brothers tribute band out of St. Andrews in 2006 and then when I came back to the States and graduated me and my friends Andy and Ryan formed The Stubby Shillelaghs, a Celtic Folk band with a lot of energy and attitude, and it did shockingly well with hundreds of thousands of streams and a lot of longevity, we still play a few times a year but have slowed down a bit in the last few years which gave me time to really be able to get Siege going which has been great. So yeah, my history with music is eclectic, diverse, and always takes me in unexpected directions and I love that.
If you could collaborate with a current band or musician who would it be?
There are so many bands I’d like to collaborate with. Obviously Iron Maiden or Sabaton would be epic dream level status but there are a lot of newer bands that I would love to work with. I’m mildly obsessed with Twilight Force (Heart of Wintervale might be a top 5 album for me) and there are a lot of US / Canadian Power Metal bands I’d love to work with as well, especially AfterTime, Seven Kingdoms, and Unleash the Archers. Wind Rose would be a great collaboration as well.
If you could play any festival in the world, which would you choose and why?
I mean I think it would have to be Wacken. Wacken is the festival I’ve always wanted to go to, it’s where all the big bands play, and it seems like the kind of positive environment where a newer band could really grow and learn a lot. That being said, I think there are a lot of great festivals building here in the US including Legions of Metal in Chicago, Mad with Power in Wisconsin, and of course the festival we are playing, Mile High Power Festival which we are insanely excited about.
What’s the weirdest gift you have ever received from a fan?
So, a friend / fan of ours is well… he’s cheeky. He has this habit of hiding small, squishy, silicone (I think) phalluses with silly cartoon faces everywhere he goes. Sure enough he snuck one into our merch box as we were leaving a gig. Next show I’m trying to help dig through and find the right size t-shirt for a fan and not only do I find it, but it flies out of the box at the poor woman trying to buy a shirt from me. Fortunately, metal fans have a good sense of humour and aren’t too deterred by a flying phallus.
If you had one message for your fans, what would it be?
Mostly that I’m so thankful that you’re out there. Making and releasing music is really challenging, especially in this genre of music and there were definitely sometimes where it felt like we were releasing music to nobody and just dumping things into a black hole. But then the fans show up, they stream the songs, they leave comments, they talk to you at shows or online or wherever and you know that in at least a small way to somebody that the work you do matters and that’s such a huge part of why we do it. Just super grateful for all of the love and support we’ve received from a small but amazing group of people from all around the world.
If you could bring one rock star back from the dead, who would it be?
Ronnie James Dio. The world has always needed Dio, got to have him for a while, and needs him again.
What do you enjoy the most about being a musician? And what do you hate?
I love interacting with fans whether that’s during a show or after or online. Just creating that connection is I think the best part of it. I don’t know that I would say there’s any part of it that I hate and maybe that’s because I’m early in my career as a metal musician. There are a lot of aspects of modern music marketing that I find a bit tedious. Managing various social media accounts, having to try to promote your art using algorithms that are ever-changing on platforms that are ever-changing and never knowing how or why people aren’t responding to those things. But even to that end, social media is a great way to touch base with fans, let them see behind the scenes of what you’re doing and keep them informed so even the part that I dislike has a part that I really do like.
If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?
I would love to go back to a time when musicians were adequately compensated for their music directly. Spotify is great for getting people to discover your music, but the royalties are so paltry. Even fairly conservatively, recording an album with a good engineer will cost you at least $10,000 which means you’d break even at about 5 million streams. That seems pretty crazy, even in the old iTunes days where people would pay $0.99 for a track that would only mean having to sell 10,000 singles or 1,000 copies of your album, which seems a lot more reasonable. Crowdfunding sites have helped a lot whether that’s one-offs like Kickstarter or ongoing platforms like Patreon, but it would be nice if there was a chance that even if you had to use crowdfunding money to get your first project off the ground that there would be a chance it could generate enough money to fund the second project, for example.
Name one of your all-time favourite albums?
“Dragonslayer” by Dream Evil is an absolute all-time favourite. I love that it tells a great story in a 3-act structure but that each individual song stands on its own. I feel like each track on that album is iconic and it’s such a great listen from start to finish. Would love to see Fredrik Nordström do a remaster and vinyl re-release of that like he did with Hammerfall’s “Crimson Thunder”, which also deserves an honourable mention here.
What’s best? Vinyl, Cassettes, CD’s or Downloads?
I love Vinyl. Primarily not because of the sound quality (which I do enjoy) but really because listening to songs on Vinyl helps me savour the music more. Just the act of taking it out, setting up the turntable, looking through the liner notes, flipping the album, etc. really gets me into a place to really take the music in. I use streaming services, of course, and I grew up on CD’s (which I also still quite like for a similar reason) but I really like vinyl.
What’s the best gig that you have played to date?
The last gig we played might have been a favourite of mine. We’ve played larger gigs this one was maybe 40 or 50 people but absolutely all of them were bought in to what we were doing. They were headbanging, moshing, and just really getting into the music. It also helps that I think it was our best performance to-date. My feeling is always that I will take a dozen people who are really feeling what I’m doing than 1,000 people who don’t care at all.
If you weren’t a musician, what else would you be doing?
Well I already do a lot outside of music. By day I teach history at a local high school. They’ve been very supportive of my music they even gave my band a full page in the yearbook last year! But I also LARP which can be a time commitment of its own as well as play in my other band, The Stubby Shillelaghs. Combine that with spending time with my wife and my 4 month-old baby boy and I stay pretty busy even when I’m not working on Siege Perilous.
Which five people would you invite to a dinner party?
Bruce Dickinson, Kevin Feige, George Lucas, Francesco Cavalieri, and Dwayne Johnson. Two of those, fairly obvious. Kevin Feige and George Lucas are both incredibly world-builders with interesting blind spots to certain aspects of story and it would be fun to pick their brains. The Rock would be because I’m just curious what he’s like as a person and I feel like he would be a good bridge between our two very different metal musicians and the filmmakers of this dinner party.
What’s next for the band?
So, we have one more single release happening in July which is aptly “Across the Rubicon,” a song about Julius Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic. Then in August probably our biggest month yet as we drop the full EP, “Creation’s Call” and the next day open up for an amazing line-up of bands including Seven Spires and Aether Realm at Mile High Power Festival. And in the meantime, lest someone suggest that we are resting on our laurels, we are continuing to write our full album, a concept album with what are shaping up to be some amazing tracks, which we are hoping to get into the studio and record sometime next year. It’s great having momentum but daunting to think sometimes about all of the work ahead.
What Social Media / Website links do you use to get your music out to people?
Official Website: http://www.siegemetal.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/siegeband
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCFl9yBUwiRm6KeMG2hFrFw
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siegeperilousmetal/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/siegemetal
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7LbZQwXnTZE0nv3s8aDaSQ
Time for a very British question now. As an alternative to the humble sandwich, is the correct name for a round piece of bread common in the UK either a Bap, a Barm (or Barm Cake), a Batch, a Bun, a Cob, a Muffin, a Roll or a Tea Cake?
As a man who lived in Scotland, it’s a Bap for sure. I like to have mine with some Tesco Scottish Breakfast Tea and a chocolate McVittie’s Digestive if you wanted to know the whole line-up.
Thank you for your time. Is there anything else that you would like to add?
Just that I appreciate the opportunity to come here and talk about what we’ve been doing. It’s been such a labour of love and it means so much that people are finally noticing what we’re doing and talking about it.
Disclaimer: This interview is solely the property of Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
