The scrupulous listener will be able to detect that little extra spark and energy as they listen through the track list on the boisterous, bombastic and badass new album from David Reece.
Coming out on Valentine’s Day on German metal label El Puerto, Cacophony of Souls is the latest release for the American-born, Italy-residing veteran vocalist/songwriter/bandleader, and is the first he has done in many years with long-time friend, guitar whiz Andy Susemihl. The reunion added an extra creative ‘umph’ to the project, as evidence by the intensity and spirited nature of every song on the album.
Cacophony of Souls would actually qualify as Reece’s fourth studio album. Recording under just his last name, he released Universal Language in 2009, Compromise in 2013, and Resilient Heart in 2018. He has also released two recent albums under the band Sainted Sinners – a self titled album in 2017 and Back With A Vengeance also in 2018. Finding there was a Welsh band called Reece complicated the business side of the music business, so he now will release solo material under his full name.
Reece’s career could be described as that of a solid working musician/vocalist/songwriter, as his time and talents have been solicited for various bands, solo projects and collaborations over the past three decades. He has done four albums for his former band Bangalore Choir, two consecutive albums for Bonfire this past decade, and also the projects Stream, Sircle of Silence, Tango Down, EZ Livin’ and Wicked Sensation.
Arguably, he is best known for recording one well-regarded album for German metal masters Accept, Eat the Heat, which came out in 1989. Even though his tenure in the band was short, it introduced the majesty of European metal music to him, and conversely, his voice and songwriting prowess were in turn introduced to legions of European metal fans, labels, promoters and musicians. Essentially, Reece never left the continent, and soon developed a sound that resolutely and seamlessly merges the best of American blues-based hard rock with the mighty musicality and sonic heaviness of German metal, as expressed by the likes of Bonfire, Primal Fear, and legendary former Accept frontman, Udo Dirkschneider and his solo band U.D.O.
Among his many collaborators over the years, and someone who he considers also to be a close pal, is guitarist Susemihl, who, early in his career played with U.D.O and German stalwarts Sinner, as well as working with Reece in Bangalore Choir. He has also built a solid following in his own right, prodigiously releasing a series of solo records, as well as becoming an in-demand studio musician and producer.
“Andy and I have known each other since 1988. We were the two knucklehead black sheep guys. I was the new guy in Accept, replacing a legend, and was literally next door to him while he was doing the U.D.O. Mean Machine record. Everybody was unsure of us, so we ended up bonding over that, and getting shit-faced together in the pub after the recording sessions were over,” Reece said wistfulness entering his voice.
“I can remember vividly going to see a U.D.O. show while I was new to Accept and ending up on Udo Dirkschneider’s bus. Udo is there sitting in a corner smoking a cigarette and drinking wine quietly to himself and me and Andy are having an all-star wrestling match in the aisle, jumping off couches and slamming each other, while everybody else is screaming at us to stop because they’re worried we might break Andy’s hand or something. So, we have always been good friends and respectful of one another. He kind of went his own way after a while and I went my way, but I always knew I needed him back because he is one of the most underrated guitar players in the world. The guy is fabulous.”
Susemihl’s pedigree and recording experiences have allowed him to become a bit of a guitar chameleon, wherein he is able to channel the likes of Tony Iommi on some of the tracks on Cacophony of Souls, and then seamlessly whip our a lead run that would make Michael Schenker proud, all the while tastefully keeping to his own tone and vibe.
“Michael Schenker is a heavy influence in his life, being German of course. But I also hear a little bit of Gary Moore in Andy’s playing, and then most of it is just Andy’s own unique voice as a player. He just has a way of phrasing with his melodies that’s really good. And he has truly grown as a musician and writer too over the years,” Reece explained.
“If you listen to my first solo album, Universal Language, Andy and I wrote that together with a couple of outside writers on it. But compared to what we’re producing now, he has grown light years sonically with his playing. Plus, he also has a pretty prolific solo career. He is the lead singer of his own band, so he sings really well. He is just an all around great player. I mean, he is the producer, the mixer, and the arranger on Cacophony of Souls – he’s the boss. I am the leader of the band, but he runs the board in the studio.
“He will be brutally honest about my ideas and about my singing. He will tell me, ‘you’re not selling me on the song, Reece. I am not buying it.’ We will then heckle each other, and then I will go back into the vocal room all pissed off and nail it. And it’s all because he wants the best out of me.”
As previously mentioned, he and Reece had lost touch for a bit, before reconvening recently when Reece opened for U.D.O. on some tour dates in Europe on Dirkschneider’s Steel Factory tour. That re-vitalized friendship proved also to be a catalyst for the excellent music crafted for Cacophony of Souls.
“The album Resilient Heart was released in November of 2018 and my lineup at the time went out to tour with U.D.O, in February and March of 2019, and a bunch of shows after that. Ironically, the two guitar players I had decided to leave the band after the tour. I guess they weren’t cut out for it. But I still continued with a couple of other guys throughout the summer of 2019, so I really didn’t take a break. We were already kind of underway on a new album, because after the tour, early 2020 was the right time for another album,” Reece explained.
“The song Cacophony of Souls was written about three years ago, musically. I was going to put that on Resilient Heart, but it got shelved, although right now I don’t remember why. I always loved that track, but I just didn’t have a solo piece. The two guitar players left the band and by that time I had started doing some work again with Andy Susemihl over parts of last year. Andy came to the Stuttgart show and I ran into him in the catering area after my set, and we were overlooking the stage and he had this look on his face. And I asked him what was up, and he said, ‘I need to be out there with you.’ And I said that we definitely needed to get back together in a big way.
“I guess timing is everything, because not long after that, the other two guys walked out and now there was a wide open door for Andy. When both guys left, I called him and said, ‘hey, I want to make another album.’ And we did. We have this weird telepathy. If I come up with a title for song, he will come up with riffs. He will then sing a sort of blah blah melody over it and I will scribble some words to that and in a matter of minutes, we’ve got a song. And that’s how it came together. It all happened really fast and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.”
Besides being able to recreate his past compositional connection with Susemihl, Cacophony of Souls also sees Reece’s steady-as-she-goes bassist Malte Frederik Burkert contributing significantly to the songwriting process, making the album truly like a collaborative ‘band’ album.
“I have done four or five albums with Malte and a lot of shows throughout Europe. When we play in the Hamburg area I normally stay over at his house and will crash there after shows. One night I was really jet lagged, because I live in Italy and have to fly in, and I was laying down and Malte is a night owl, so he was still up strumming a guitar and just said to me ‘I would like to be part of the songwriting process on some album sometime, rather than just playing bass to what you guys have written.’ At the same time, I am still kind of half asleep and wishing he would shut up but then he starts playing this riff and I wake right up. Well, it was something he had written and was just fooling around with, and it evolved into the song Collective Anaesthesia on this album, which is a great track,” Reece said.
“Then I asked him what else he had, and he’s like, ‘well, I’ve got this one.’ And that turned into A Perfect World. So, now I’ve got this amazing bonus that my bass player is actually a great writer. He is younger than me and he came up with bands like Megadeth and Pantera, that really heavy thrash stuff, which is cool because that energy kind of invigorated Andy and me.”
Reece actually dusted off an older composition for inclusion on Cacophony of Souls, Chasing the Shadows, and did such a bang up job of revitalizing it that it became the powerful lead-off track on the album.
“Andy and I wrote that song probably 10 or 15 years ago. And we were so excited about it at the time, so we gave it to the label I was with at the time and they were like, ‘yeah, yeah, whatever,’ because they were more of a pop thinking operation, I guess. They put it in the running order but then didn’t put it on the CD. So, Andy was livid, he thought it was insane that it was left off because it was such a great track. I guess I was a little more blasé about it at the time. For this album I revisited it with him after we started talking about and he said we needed to record it with my drummer Andrea Gianangelli and with Malte on it because Andy played bass on it originally,” he explained.
“I am actually writing a storyboard for a video about that song right now. The concept is of me laying in a bed having nightmares. And I’ve got Nosferatu and all these crazy monsters and stuff in it. As a side note, and this is going to sound crazy, but I am also a believer in Sasquatch [aka Bigfoot]. I am a firm believer and am fascinated by all the sightings and stuff. I study it now, and I am really amused by it.
“So, the song is about stuff like that. I had a couple of experiences as a kid that terrified me. But the song is also about the demons that we have inside us. You think of how spooky shadows can be and how elusive and how they follow you around but can also appear out of nowhere. I like all that stuff. How many times have you been in a room and something kind of wisps by you, like a shadow – when you’re alone it’s pretty frightening. There’s a lot of scary stuff out there, man. Actually, I would love to write songs for horror movies at some point. My manager, Giles Lavery, he is really into the B and C horror movies – the really goofy, gory stuff. He has a brain full of knowledge about that stuff and he is saying the same thing.”
In support of Cacophony of Souls, Reece already has a bunch of tour dates planned, starting in mid-March with a collection of shows planned for Germany, and then spending most of April in the U.K. before returning in May to hit Spain, Belgium, Holland and more of Germany.
For more information, visit Reece on Facebook or https://www.davidreeceofficial.info.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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