Joe Stump Joe Stump's Tower of Babel If I knew absolutely nothing about Joe Stump's Tower of Babel, how would you describe the band's music to me? Classic European hard rock, of course extremely inspired by Deep Purple and Rainbow. I mean the new record "Days of Thunder" is pretty much a Blackmore fest. You know, so if you love Deep Purple and Rainbow, we're kind of heavy it up a little and putting a little bit of a modern twist on it then this record's going to be right up your alley. I'd have to agree with that. Your new record comes out on July 4th. It's your sophomore album. It's called Days of Thunder. It's being released through Silver Lining Music. It's the follow-up to your 2017 album, "Lake of Fire". Before we get to the new album, let's go back a little bit to how Joe Stump's Tower of Babel was originally formed. I believe in 2014. Well, I was working with this singer, Csaba Zvekan, who's a European guy. He lives in Switzerland and he had this band called Raven Lord and he asked me if I wanted to play in the Raven Lord thing and I checked them out. I didn't record any music with them or anything like that, but later on I did a bunch of solos on like their second record. I was like yeah okay I'm game and we did some rehearsing and a few small European festivals. And then he goes, "Well, I'm doing this other thing called Exorcism." And this was like once again, I didn't write anything. And he goes, "Are you interested?" And I'm like, "Sure, why not?" So, I started develop like this partnership with him. And at the time, he was fine. The Exorcism thing was kind of Tony Martin Black Sabbath like, that kind of vibe, like on the doomy side. And then I'm like, well, I'm doing this Rainbow inspired thing Tower of Babel. Are you interested in possibly coming on board with that? And he said yes. So this was this was our third record and third different project together. And he recruited all the players who are still in the band now and they are all killer players. So that really worked out good. But then what he did was he all of a sudden had registered all the publishing under his name. Even though I wrote all the music and he even registered an instrumental track that I solely wrote under his name and then he proceeded to get the whole record taken down on all platforms, claiming he was going to sue the record company. It was a small label at the time, Lion Music, and so we had a big falling out with him and that was a bit of a disaster and then luckily we got rid of him and now I believe he's a politician in Switzerland which is good, just keep doing what you're doing and just leave us alone. I didn't know if he was going to continue with the band or not but I was the one that named the band cuz the band's named Tower of Babel. The band's actually named after a very famous old Rainbow bootleg which is the recorded rehearsals of the Dio - Cozy Powell era and it's a 3 CD rehearsal set, rehearsal recording of them before their first tour. And that's how I came up with the name of the band since it's all so Rainbow inspired. So, with all the mess that kind of happened after the release of the first album, wouldn't it have been easier to go with a different name or was it really that important to you to have that Rainbow title that you had with the first album? We had already done some shows under that, so we were fine with continuing because he didn't have the name trademarked or anything like that, it was just the mess with him and that's all behind us now. So we kept the name and everything. Everybody's glad about that cuz the first record was out for quite a while. It's not like it just came out and then disappeared. In fact, I remember one of the best reviews of the record was from KNAC. When did you decide to kind of get the boys back together and start writing and recording this album? Well, I wrote all the stuff like years ago really, I kind of finished all the guitars on the record because when I write stuff I like put everything together. It's not like I just write a riff and expect anybody to write another section. Hey, I need a bridge section. What do you got? No, I write like the whole thing, arrange it, pretty much record it, and then present the finished product to the band. I let the singer write the lyrics and the melody lines, but it's extremely clear like this is where the vocal comes in. This is the verse, this is the pre chorus, etc. So I had the whole recorded, between everybody's schedule everybody doing stuff, by the time we finished the record, mixed and mastered it and then finally found a home for it. It was a period of several years plus you had that whole pandemic action which kind of put everybody out of commission for like almost two years as well. How did you find your current singer Joe Amore? Joey. Oh, he's awesome. They call him the French Dio. All the guys are European except for me, so he's from France and he played in a band called Nightmare that had a bit of a reputation in Europe. And he's currently sings in this other band, KingCrown. And he, like Maestro Mistheria who plays keys, is in the Vivaldi Metal Project and he also plays keys with Bruce Dickinson's new Mandrake Project. Joe had sang on the Vivaldi Metal Project and The Maestro sent me a YouTube link of him singing and he goes, "What do you think about getting this guy?" And I was like, and I think he at the time he was doing a Dio Tribute show. So, he was singing something like "Holy Diver" or something and he was destroying it. So, I'm like, "Okay, I'm sold. No problem." Well, let's talk about the new album "Days of Thunder". You have a single out now. It's the album's title track. Tell me a little bit about the song. A lot of the record is like, you know, a Rainbow and Purple thing. This is a little bit like heavier, a bit more of a metal track because the I like the record kind of walks the line between hard rock and metal and "Days of Thunder" is a bit more of a metal track even though it's still got the Rainbow vibe. Almost sounds like it's something you'd hear on like an early Dio record like "Dream Evil" or something around that period. Was it my choice for the first single? No, I mean the record company really liked it, so I'm like, "Okay, no problem." They're like, "Okay, well the this should be the first single." I'm like, "Okay, if you guys feel strongly about it, you're in charge of the whole promotion. I just write the stuff so okay, cool with me." And then they had that whole concept with the motorcycle, because that was the drummer, Mark Cross's idea, the whole thing with the bike sound before the track starts. So what song would you have picked as the first single? That's a good question. Probably the tune that's the next single, I don't know if I'm allowed to say, it's supposed to be a surprise, but probably I would have picked that, but "Days of Thunder" is cool and it seems to be doing okay biz-wise and you get an idea what the band what the band's about. So like classic European style, you know, hard rock and metal. If I were to pick a single, I would pick "Alone in the Desert". That song really stood out to me. I like it. It's got a little bit of everything that you talked about that the band is about. Yes, that is not the next single. What am I thinking on "Alone in the Desert"? I'm thinking of one of those epic kind of long lengthy eastern tinged Rainbow tracks like "Stargazer" or "Gates of Babylon", that kind of thing. I thought that was very cool. It's almost got like that verse part which is almost kind of... even though they're not an influence on me at all, when the vocal comes in it's almost a little Zeppelinish. That kind of vibe to it. I saw Led Zeppelin when I was a kid. I'm from New York, so I saw Led Zeppelin as a kid. Madison Square Garden 1977. So, it's not like I don't like Led Zeppelin, but they're just not a heavy influence on me, but that almost brings to mind one of those badass 70s Zeppelin kind of stop time type riff things. A couple other tracks that I enjoyed previewing the album. I liked the way that "Black Knight's Prelude" leads into "Trust Me". I feel like it could have been kind of like one longer song. I think we originally had it like that, something to do with the sequencing of the record, forced it onto another track. So, I thought the very same thing. We're on the same wavelength, but I thought the same thing, but I think it was more of a sequencing of the record and how the stuff lays out digitally as well. Fair enough. Normally I ask bands how they ended up signing to their record label. This is being released through Silver Lining Music. You already have a deal with Alcatrazz, so I assume it was just a slam dunk for you to get this band on the label. Yeah, like Alcatrazz. It's ironic, but Alcatrazz is no longer with Silver Lining. We had like an amicable split now, Alcatrazz is over with Brave Words Records now. Silver Lining they signed Tower of Babel and they also signed me to a solo deal as well. I'm going to be doing an instrumental record for them as well. I have something like 14 instrumental records with all that guitar nonsense. Is it for everybody? Certainly not, you know, it's definitely an acquired taste, if someone loves guitar.... after hearing one of my solo records, you might not want to hear guitar ever again or at least for a while. But yeah, so I got the Tower of Babel thing and the solo deal on Silver Lining. They're a great label. I did three records with them with Alcatrazz. So awesome company. Since you brought up your solo records, they're pretty much what I would have called growing up in the 80s and 90s, virtuoso style, instrumental music or shred, if you will. Do you think the art of the shred guitar is kind of a dying art these days? That is a very good question. I think that there's always one thing about that, that kind of virtuastic instrumental thing is there's always going to be a niche audience for it. Because outside of metal music a lot of people don't even buy albums anymore. Mainly singles are sold where like that the instrumental guitar thing is where people are still actually purchasing hard product and still listening and buying buying entire records. So there's always going to be a niche audience. I've been fortunate like I've been doing it since 1993. If I had done my first record two years earlier, I might have that many more fans because 1993 was when the grunge movement started. And in a way it also helped me because it's like this guy's making this kind of record at the height of the grunge movement. What? Is he out of his mind? But then there were people that were like starved for that kind of record that no one was making anymore. So I kind of found my niche audience through that as well. A lot of your earlier solo albums were on the Leviathan Records label, which is David Chastain's label, also considered a virtuoso shred guitar player. Besides your albums, did you guys ever work on music together? No. But I worked with David for decades and decades. And he really taught me quite a bit about the music business. He's a great friend and I remember reading an article on him in Kerrang. That is how I first got exposed to him and then I ran to the import record store to buy the European release of "CJSS World Gone Mad" and then I was buying just about everything he did, all his instrumental variations. "Within The Heat" and his Chastain band "Seventh Of Never", and all those great records and all, "Praise the Loud", CJSS and all those records. And then I got to work with him at the label. And became very good friends with him. I actually only met him in person once. He lives in Atlanta now. He used to live in Cincinnati for a while, but he's from Georgia. In fact, I was playing down in Atlanta with Alcatrazz and I asked him to come out to the show, but he was like I ain't leaving the house. But it was a great pleasure to work with David for so many years. I'm really quite fortunate. Are you going to be taking Tower of Babel on the road or doing some festival appearances this year? Right now we're looking into what our touring options are. I'm kind of busy. Alcatrazz has a European tour, first Scandinavian then Europe towards the end of the year and the keyboard player Maestro Mistheria got a fairly full schedule because I believe Bruce Dickinson and the Mandrake Project are going out in the States in the fall. So now we're looking at our touring options when everybody's calendar is clear and stuff. All the guys are European, so it's all going to be over there. I'm the only American. Like, two guys are, you know, the bass player and and The Maestro are Italian. Mark Cross, the drummer, he's from the UK, but he lives in Greece. And of course the French Dio who lives over where the Cannes film festival is near in France. And the European markets a little more receptive to this style of music. The US rock and roll, it's kind of a a tough gig over here, right? Oh, yeah. It's no picnic. I love playing in the States. I love touring in the States. We were out with Alcatrazz with Lilian Axe and the legendary Girlschool, kind of a diverse package. That went pretty good. In L.A. we did the show at the Belasco, I had never heard of it. It was a very nice venue, kind of like in that downtown area, L.A., that business district where there's not that much stuff going on. There's a lot of stuff going on right now. So, artificial intelligence seems to be infiltrating the music industry from songwriting to full actual AI bands. Have you tried out any artificial intelligence technology in your songwriting? No. No. I like all the advancements in technology guitar-wise, I'm still putting a mic in front of a Marshall when I record, like if it ain't broke, don't fix it, that's the only amplifier for me. So nah, as I like to say, I'm old school cuz I'm old. And AI is limited because it can only pull from what is known and not create something new. I managed to come up with things organically on my own. Some of my old Reign of Terror records Silver Lining is going to reissue like three of my Joe Stump's Reign of Terror records. I believe AI was part of doing the artwork cuz they could do something pretty badass and fancy on something that made more sense budget-wise. So that's about as far as it goes which is fine for me. Doing the artwork I don't care as long as they don't touch on the music. I asked AI to come up with some questions that I could ask Joe Stump. I only asked him for one. We'll see how kind of silly it is or how robotic it is and how unhuman it might be. So here's the question. As a professor at Berkeley College of Music, how do you balance teaching with your career as a performer and recording artist? And what's the most rewarding part of mentoring young guitarists? I think they did a nice job, you know, AI, that's a very good question. I love playing. I love recording. I love touring. I love giving lessons. I love doing like metal master classes or guitar clinics, I love it all. It's great having granted at Berkeley, now it's a bit more diverse. You know, years ago, it used to be more like just about everybody that studied with me was aspired to be a metal virtuoso. I'm the shred specialist there. But now you have somebody that's like more in the engineering program, but they just like metal. Or you have somebody that's in film scoring and they just love metal. So, you mentioned your Reign of Terror project. They're going to be some re-releases coming. That's actually how I first discovered you, your "Conquer and Divide" album that came out in 2002, Michael Viscera on vocals. I didn't realize there were three albums because there's only one available today looking back on it. So, why don't you tell me a little bit about, what we can expect from Rain of Terror going forward. The first Reign of Terror record was with singer Brian Sarvela who sadly passed away like many years ago, but he was an excellent singer, super high range and it was kind of a cross between like maybe Rising Force and some of the Impellitteri material. "Light in the Sky" is the name of the first record. Second record was a little bit more maybe, you know, cross between Rising Force and like Rainbowish or Purplish. And the singer was this guy Brian Troch. And Brian had like a thicker, heavier voice. Kind of like John Bush from Armoured Saint, when he did with Anthrax. Brian was on that second record called "Second Coming". The third record is "Sacred Ground" and that was the first record with Mike Vescera. I met Mike when he asked me if I wanted to come down and play on one of his solo records. He's from Connecticut, I'm from New York. So we got that whole North East thing going on together. We started to work together, we did a couple records together. It was a lot of fun. And "Sacred Ground" really is a very very cool record. It wasn't the greatest review, but I remember Martin Popoff, I believe, said it sounded like 70s Rainbow, 80s Malmsteen, and 90s Stratovarius. And it kind of does, you know what I mean? I never claimed to be reinventing the wheel. So, when can we expect that back catalog to come back out? It's going to be on the digital platforms fairly soon. And then there's talks at some point I'm going to record when they do print up some physical product of those, I'm going to be adding some because I'm still in contact with Brian Troch that sang on the second record and even though I don't talk to him frequently I'm sure Mike would be up for doing a track or two if we're reissued on the "Sacred Ground" reissue. I could talk to him about that. So, it probably going to do some additional bonus track action on the printed CD versions or vinyl versions of those records, but it should be up like I'm adding like one newer version of this tune called "Paganini's Purgatory", which is one of those guitar nonsense things. I wasn't crazy about the way it came out, so I'm doing a new version of that. So, that's on my to-do list. All those records should be out fairly soon. Besides Alcatrazz, have you ever auditioned for or received offers for any other established bands throughout your career? No, never. You know, no one's apparently interested. I mean, the Alcatrazz thing was quite a good fit. I always felt I would have been a good fit in Dio, because two of my heroes are Blackmore and Gary Moore. And Goldie was very heavily Blackmore inspired and Vivian Campbell was very heavily Gary Moore inspired. So, you know, I would have been a deadly comment but add a little up the shred game and then add that vibe to it. I would have been perfect. You mentioned Alcatrazz going over to Scandinavia towards the end of this year. Are you guys working on a follow-up to "Take No Prisoners", which came out in 2023? Yes, there'll be a new Alcatrazz record coming out next year. Plus we did a re-record of "Island in the Sun". The classic "No Parole" track. There might be some more re-records getting released in the future. I'm supposed to keep that under wraps but then there's going to be a brand new Alcatrazz studio record but not till 2026 cuz we did obviously in 2020 "Take No Prisoners" and then the following year was "V" and then... no no "Born Innocent" in 2020, then "V", then "Take No Prisoners". So that's three since 2020. And you have a new vocalist in Alcatrazz Giles Levery. Correct. Yeah. Giles is a killer. He sings with Warlord who are like a pretty big deal over in Europe and have a huge cult following and stuff. And Jimmy Waldo plays in Warlord with him. Giles sang on the new Jack Star record, "Out of the Darkness II". "Out of the Darkness" was a classic metal record back then. The original one with Rhett Forester and Jack Star. I wore that record out. I love that record, cuz I was always a huge fan of these underground... like David Chastain, Jack Star, these more underground guys where you really had to hunt to get their stuff. I have to say as a fan "Take No Prisoners" was a fantastic album. I'm pretty sure I rated it for KNAC and I gave it a five out of five. Doogie White fantastic on vocals. I was kind of sad to see him go, but obviously shit happens, right? Yeah. Exactly, two former Rainbow singers. So, you know, it was cool for me cuz two guys that played with Blackmore, Schenker, and Yngwie, three of my heroes. So I was counting my blessings on that end, and it was cool that I got to tour with them. But Giles, he kills it. His range is kind of like similar to like Graham in his prime, because when we play all the old "No Parole" stuff, he nails it live. He's got a serious metal approach. So, probably new records going to be on the heavy side, but there'll of course be plenty of that Baroque style fret frying and all that nonsense, because I write a lot of the tunes or most on the last two records, I wrote a bunch on Born Innocent as well. Are you working on any other music projects in between Alcatrazz and Tower of Babel? I was on sabbatical from the college from January to May and sabbatical is awesome because you don't go to work from January till the end of May and you get paid the whole time. I've been at the college since '93 so I should really be on like my third sabbatical but like a moron I've been working my ass off. So, I did a new solo record during my sabbatical, so that'll be out. I'm not sure exactly when, because I got so much stuff coming out that Silver Lining will probably hold it back till 2026, so I did that and now it's going to be onto the new Alcatrazz and now that's done. Well, those are all the questions I have for you today. Joe Stump's Tower of Babel. The album is "Days of Thunder". It comes out July 4th through Silver Lining Music. Fantastic record. I wish you the best of luck with it. And I want to thank you for taking the time to tell me more about it today. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure and an honor to be on KNAC. © George Dionne, The Rock Is George Podcast, KNAC Pure Rock - July 10, 2025