Interview

Praying Mantis Experiences "Katharsis"

As has been said so many times before, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal continues to be a great source of old school heavy metal music, which took the musicianship of their forebears and the attitude of punk and brought hard rock back to the streets. As one might expect, London was one of the key scenes in this nationwide movement and while one may immediately point to Iron Maiden as the capital's premier act, anyone in the know will immediately tell you of the quality of Praying Mantis.

Praying Mantis began life in the mid seventies but began to get noticed a few years later when the NWOBHM kicked into full gear. In 1981, the band unleashed their debut full lenghth, "Time Tells No Lies," which reached number sixteen in the British album charts. Unfortunately, the band broke up the next year but would reunite the next decade and release a string of albums before going their separate ways again. Not to be held down, Praying Mantis returned once more in 2008 and the next year released, "Sanctuary" through Frontiers Music, whom the band are still signed to today.

Fast forward to the present day and Praying Mantis has once again released a stunning collection of frenetic energy and lush melodies in the form of "Katharsis." To find out more about the record, we spoke with guitarist, founder and original vocalist Tino Troy, who shed light on everything regarding the album, as well as the origins and influences of the band, the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and much more. You can watch the conversation in full below.

Diamond Oz: The new album, "Katharsis" is out now. It’s a really solid album and people are really picking up on Jaycee's vocals. This lineup has been together for a few years now, since "Legacy." Would you say that this is the strongest Praying Mantis lineup?

Tino Troy: Definitely, because we've been together for the last three albums and everything's just sort of gelled and you can see the transition between each album is just getting better and better, whereas normally it's hard to better your previous album. In the old days, bands had to work. They did an album and then went straight out on tour with it and wrote their albums on the road, which meant you’d get some sub-standard albums with only two or three good tracks. Whereas this way, we’ve actually been able to hone it and polish it. The reviews have been fantastic.

Oz: And rightly so. Obviously you’ve done the two music videos, but the one that stands out to me the most is "Cry For The Nations." That’s so energetic and powerful and it’s like the perfect song to show people who ask what Praying Mantis are like.

Tino: It's a bit of an all round song as well because you get sort of like, light and shade in the song, with the slow intro that sort of lulls you into a false sense of security and then we’re away! Funnily enough that song is like a modern day update of "Children Of The Earth," which is a track that stands out to a lot of fans, they always sing along to it at the gigs. "Children Of The Earth" was a song that was about all these ecological issues that were happening fifty years ago. Chris wrote that song in 1974 and it's taken us nigh on fifty years to start doing something about it and this sort of a modern version, "Let’s get our s.h.i.t. together and go for it!"

Oz: And of course the album is called, "Katharsis." It’s quite notable that you’ve used the original Greek spelling of the word.

Tino: It is. Well, funnily enough, we were searching for a title and I've got thousands of them, when I'm dead all these lists of song titles and lyrics and stuff like that will probably come out and it'll go for fortunes! But Rainer Kalwitz, the artist who did this, also did the "Sanctuary" album in a very similar fashion, that statue of liberty with the spikes coming out with the skull showing and this was a transition of that basically. So we asked, "What’s the name of this art?" and he replied, "Katharsis," so we all thought, "Oooh! We like that!" It went with all the one word titles of the albums we’ve had previously, since "Sanctuary" really.

So the title works really well and it actually means purgation of the soul through one’s emotions and that shows on this album, through the whole thing from Corona virus to the decimation of the planet and everything. So yeah, that stuck with us and we thought, "We'll keep it with a K as well," which is also the German spelling, so we kept it true to his artwork. It also makes for a nice question for an interview! We've had that about three times now!

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