Since 2009, I have been following Holy Grail like a freak stalker of sorts. From the release of their debut EP Improper Burial to their latest full length album Ride the Void, Holy Grail has honed their craft and continued to blow me away. They have become a force to be reckoned with and they continue to win over new fans the old school way: word of mouth and relentless touring.
Fresh off the heals of this summer’s Metal Alliance tour with Anthrax, Exodus, Municipal Waste, and Shadows Fall, I had the chance to catch up with Holy Grail singer James Paul Luna from his home in California. It was great to catch up with him once again as we discussed the latest album Ride the Void, his love of rare and obscure metal bands, and his excitement about Holy Grail’s summer headlining tour of the US. Kick back and read on Fartheads!
Hey Luna, thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview brother.
No worries man. How are you?
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I’m great dude. I was so glad to catch up with you guys in Charlotte on the Metal Alliance tour. What a great show that was.
Yeah. That was a lot of fun.
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Before we get started, I had to ask you about your thoughts on Jeff Hanneman’s recent passing.
It’s crazy. I still can’t process it. I never got to meet Jeff but it felt like we were close to a lot of people in that family of the Big 4 and the Bay Area thrash scene. It was just really a shocker to everyone.
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Man, when I first saw the news online, I thought it was an Onion article or something.
Yeah. Well, somebody texted me today saying that Jim Gillette died today and I was like, “What?” Someone posted that he died in a Jet Ski accident but I couldn’t find anything about that anywhere [laughs].
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Well, regardless, I feel like all my heroes are dying more and more so I have to say 
kudos to the younger bands like Holy Grail for keeping this shit alive. Us old dudes are counting on you.
[laughs] Well, we’re not that much younger any more. We’re getting up there.
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Ride the Void is the first album to feature your new guitarist Alex Lee. How did the writing process differ from the last one being that you’ve got a new guitarist in the fold?
The only real difference is that we had more input and more to choose from. It opened a lot more possibilities and in terms of solos, we got killer solos on all the songs. The interchange between Eli and Alex and the way they play off of each other is really fun. With Alex coming from Bonded By Blood which was more of a thrash band, it really added a whole other spectrum.
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While you were working on this album, did you at any point look back on Crisis in Utopia and say, “I wish I would’ve done this or that differently?”
We thought that about Crisis In Utopia from the get go. We never thought that Crisis In Utopia was where we wanted it to be so we tried to do that with Ride the Void. Nothing ever feels perfect but it just felt like a better place to be in because we hit more of the points that we wanted to get across. We just felt a lot more comfortable with our finished product versus the first record where we had to approve mixes and masters while we were on tour. Everything just got so rushed and pushed behind deadline. This time around it was just so much smoother. Matt Hyde (producer) really helped bring it all together and to keep everything on schedule.
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So you feel like you guys had a bit more control over Ride the Void?
Yeah. More control and more time to actually work on it and focus on it all.
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It seems to me that you guys are honing your craft and just becoming a better band with each passing tour. How much did all the touring and world experiences that you guys got from all the touring you guys did bleed into the songwriting for Ride the Void?
I’d say all of it. Every band we play with, whether we know it or not, subconsciously have an effect on us. On a song like “Crosswinds” which has a kind of punk type of crossover inspiration to it could be directly linked to us touring with Toxic Holocaust and Crumbums. Eli was listening to a lot of Amon Amarth when he came up the riff for “Ride the Void.” We just digested a lot of stuff and like you said, our chops got better we just honed our craft a little more just being on tour so much. We were really excited to go in and record some new stuff. I think this record is proof of that.
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The Metal Alliance Tour was the first tour for you guys to get out there supporting Ride the Void. How did it feel to finally get out there and play some new material for the fans?
It was very cool and on this tour most of the people hadn’t heard of us before. It was awesome to see the response from the crowds and how they would come and buy the CD afterwards. Seeing people who had never heard of us being so stoked about our band was really awesome.
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So the one question a lot of my readers who are Holy Grail fans ask me is, “Dude, will you ask Luna if they’re ever going to release “For all Eternity?”
[laughs] Well, we have a few songs from those sessions and I’m thinking about doing maybe a 12” someday of the whole Sorcerer sessions. It’s the same sessions that “Fight to Kill” and “Immortal Man” from Improper Burial came from. People really liked that raw, self-produced stuff. We recorded it at the same place that we did all our recordings with Chris Rakestraw and Tyler (Mehal; drummer) mixed them. They sound awesome and someday I’m going to try and release them. I don’t know when but we’ll release it eventually. Specifically I’m not really allowed to say whether we’re going to or not but it’ll happen [laughs].
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Speaking of singles, I never got to thank you guys for sending me a copy of the Seasons Bleeding 7” for Christmas where you did an amazing cover of “No Presents for Christmas” by King Diamond and “Kill the King” by Rainbow.
Oh yeah. Glad you liked it man.
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Did you ever get any feedback from either party about your covers?
No [laughs]. I tried to mention to them and tweet both camps about it and I never got a response. Maybe now that we’re bit more in with the Dio camp I can send them a copy of it and see what they think.
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Since we’re talking about covers, have you ever thought about doing a covers album kind of like your recent tour partners Anthrax did?
I have. I love doing covers but it’s hard to get five guys to learn a song in general since we embarrassingly enough rarely rehearse [laughs]. We have been talking about some covers just for fun though like maybe doing some UFO and Scorpions stuff.
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After all this touring, what’s up next for you guys?
We’re doing a headlining run through US and Canada starting on June 19th that will be us and maybe some local openers in each city so that will be rad.
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I’m so pumped about this and there is an Atlanta date right?
Absolutely man. We’re looking forward to getting back to Atlanta again. It’s been a while!
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Ok Luna. Time once again to loosen things up here. If you could have dinner with any musician alive or dead, who would it be?
Man, the first person that comes to my mind is George Harrison. That would be an interesting time. I saw that documentary that came out on him not too long ago and that just seemed so profound, down to earth, and awesome.
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Oh the one that Martin Scorcesse put out?
Yeah, that one. It was insanely great. Any time to be able chat with that guy would be amazing. George Harrison was also my first concert. When I was 5, my dad flew the two of us to Japan to see Eric Clapton and George Harrison at the Tokyo Thunderdome.
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At five years old? Holy shit that is insane dude.
[laughs] The only thing that I remember was that everyone was entirely silent during the songs but then in between the songs, it was like this soft clap that was projected like thousands of times. It was like the loudest soft clap ever []laughs]. It just sounded like a million fluttering butterflies.
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Do you feel like that concert helped to point you in the direction of being a musician?
I think it did. My dad has always been fanatical about music. His favorite band is the Beatles so that’s what we grew up listening to all the time. We listened to the Beatles, Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, that kind of stuff. I really took hold of all of that 60’s and 70’s garage rock stuff. My dad had all these 45’s and I had this little Fisher Price 45’ player. I would just listen to Zeppelin and Sabbath and just think, “What is this music? This is amazing!”
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There’s something so cool about digging through your parent’s records and finding something that just clicks with you. It’s like finding a really cool gem or something.
Oh I know! Towards the end of high school I got really obsessed with collecting vinyl and it was that same kind of rush. Like you go into this record store and you see a cool cover. You don’t know what it is but you just go, “Man, I just need to buy that right now!” because of the song titles and the cover. I feel like that’s kind of lost these days and people can just get it. I wasn’t involved in a heavy tape trading circuit but I can only imagine the days of tape trading where you’d write to a dude in the back of a magazine that would send you a demo tape of some power metal band or like Metallica’s No Life Til’ Leather tape. That would’ve been amazing.
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Speaking of collecting stuff, I know you’re a big collector of obscure metal bands. What is something you can tip me off to that I should check out?
Well, there are some bands that are so obscure that they don’t have a lot of material but I like this band called Black Rose. There are a lot of Black Roses out there but they have this 12” called Red Light Lady and they’re amazing. It’s kind of like Deep Purple meets Girl. It’s really cool. It’s poppy and heavy and it sounds almost Swedish from the late 70’s, early 80’s. Warrior is another cool band. Have you ever heard Bleakhouse?
Oh man. Bleak House is a definite must because they have a song called “Rainbow Warrior” where the whole intro riff is exactly, verbatim, “Sanitarium” by Metallica [laughs]. Like, Metallica totally ripped it off. This is like 1980 or 81. This band is awesome. They have a song called “Chase the Wind” and when we wrote our song “Chase the Wind” it was kind of like our homage to them. You should check them out.
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Luna, in your opinion, what is one metal record that nobody should be without?
One metal record that everyone should own? Oh man, that’s hard. I feel so on the spot with that one [laughs]. For me, it changes constantly. I keep having these epiphanies where I’ll say, “This is the greatest metal record ever” but for me, it’s probably either Stained Class by Judas Priest, In Trance by the Scorpions, or Don’t Break the Oath by Merciful Fate. I know a lot of people will go for like Sad Wings of Destiny or even go Painkiller or Screaming for Vengeance but I just love Stained Class. I don’t know why but I always keep going back to that record.
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I know that going on stage for a lot of performers can take a lot out of them. How do you prepare to go on stage every night and get into that zone?
I don’t know man. I just get quick into it and just go [laughs]. The only thing I can really relate it to, and I’m not comparing myself to Alice Cooper by any means, but he has said that he’s Vince Furnier until he gets on stage and then he turns around and faces the audience and then he’s Alice Cooper. I can kind of relate to that. You really just don’t realize it. It’s just something that happens. I just get up there and do it. I just go apeshit and I just want to exert as much energy as possible. I want to give 110% so I just save all my energy all day, every day until I’m up on stage. I just live for performing. I love performing for people and I love singing the music we’re playing. I’m just real passionate about it.
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Is it hard to come down from that high every night? Especially on this last tour where 
you were just hitting really hard for 25 minutes and it’s over like that.
Yeah, it can be. When we had off days or like in Orlando, Shadows Fall and Exodus didn’t play so we got a 45 minute set. It was awesome but we were fucking winded ½ way through the set [laughs]. We’re so used to giving every ounce of energy we have for those 25 minutes that we could possibly exert and then we’re done. Try and double that almost and I was like, “Oh my God what’s going on? My leg is cramping my neck is fucked up!” [laughs] We had also had the longest party day the day before with Anthrax’s crew, Exodus, Municipal Waste and it was just retarded. We were drinking all day and the next day we were so hungover and had to play a 45 minutes set.
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So did you kind of take that experience as a preview of what’s to come with your headlining tour coming up? Like did you say, “Ok, we need to fucking pace ourselves”?
[laughs] Well, the whole run back to California with Exodus after the Metal Alliance tour we kind of figured out how to do it. We have done a headlining tour before and once you get a couple of shows under your belt you get used to it but if you’re used to doing 25 minutes every night and then all of the sudden you throw in a 45 minute set out of nowhere, you just have change things up. Sorry to trail off like that but to answer your question, yeah it takes some time to come down [laughs].
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That’s alright man. You pretty much answered the question of what I was going to ask about how you were going to prepare for Holy Grail’s headlining tour.
[laughs] I think I’m going to have to start doing some cardio while wearing one of those helmets with the beer funnels on it. I’ll have to train to drink while running like 10 miles or something [laughs].
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So what can Holy Grail fans expect from this upcoming headlining tour?
Well, we’re going to try and put on a real show. People are going to be coming out to see us and we really want to make it worth their while as much as possible. We’ll be playing at least an hour every night and we’re even thinking of asking fans to choose the set list. That might be kind of fun. We’re definitely going to make it for the fans and make it a really fun show. We’ll see what we can pull out. It’s going to be different from any other tour we’ve done and I think it’s going to be awesome. We are super excited about it.
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I always picture Holy Grail as a band that would kick ass on an arena stage. I’m sure you’ve envisioned what Holy Grail’s arena stage set would look like. What would it look like?
[laughs] Man, my stage set up is different than what the rest of the guys envision I think. Mine is always like we’re playing in a castle and there’s fucking mechanical dragons shooting fire. Alex and Eli each come out of a dragon’s head playing a solo and then fly out into the audience. It would be so awesome [laughs]. There should also be at one point everyone on a motorcycle while playing a song. It would be amazing man.
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Dude, let’s make this happen. Rent out an arena for just one night and we can raid Dio’s prop house.
[laughs] That would be so amazing. So awesome.
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I mean, I know it’s kinda small on this tour but I could like dress up like Godzilla or something and just walk out on stage.
[laughs] Oh man that would be so rad [laughs].
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One of the things that I have been really hung up on asking other musicians about these days is bands charging their fans to meet them. What’s your opinion on that?
Well, I guess it gets to a certain point where there are so many people who are trying to meet you that you have to limit it or something? I feel like a lot of bands that do maybe don’t really warrant that. It’s kind of awkward. I just don’t feel right charging someone to meet me. I’m sure in 20 years I’m going to be like, “Aw yeah I’ll do a fucking meet & greet for 20 dollars” or something like that but I just don’t see it. I guess everyone’s doing it so it’s common practice now but I don’t think that’s a reason to do it.
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Luna, finish this sentence. If I wasn’t a musician I would be ______________.
I would be a vegan chef.
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Speaking of being vegan, how hard is to be a vegan on the road in a touring band?
Well, it’s hard to do it on a budget and I’ve found ways to do it. This tour, I really wanted to explore and go out and enjoy myself so I worked a lot and saved a lot of money before the tour and just went out to a bunch of more posh restaurants. I never really get to explore that but otherwise; I just find the nearest Thai food and just get vegetables and tofu every day. Usually that’s not too expensive but this time I really tried to get out and venture. This tour I went overboard on my expenses but I had planned on it. I’m very thankful I went for it because it was a great experience.
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So aside from the headlining tour, what else is in store for Holy Grail for the rest of the year?
We’re just going to see how this headlining tour goes and see what we may scoop up in the future. We have a few things that we’re waiting to hear about. This shit just takes forever. There’s a lot of things going on and it’s just hard to figure out what things we want to do. After this tour I think we’re going to try and get a support slot on a bigger package tour in the US and then try and get to Europe as soon as possible after that.
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Well what about that White Wizard Legacy tour that you’re going to be doing that will last like six months long?
[laughs] I think that will help get like a lot of the true metal fans back ya know? [laughs]
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Dude, I still get messages every now and then from people saying, “You said you were going to release dates for that tour.” I’m like, hello… APRIL FOOLS Y’ALL.
[laughs] It’s so funny. It’s so amazing that people believed that [laughs].
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Luna, thanks for taking the time to do this brother. It’s always great to catch up with you and I’m looking forward to catching up again in Atlanta. I’ll bring another case of Sweetwater with me and maybe even some vegan cookies.
[laughs] No way! Man that would be awesome. Thanks so much Don!
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