The release dates for the planned CD re-issues of "Unquestionable Presence" and "Elements" are still uncertain, unfortunately – but here’s another classic ATHEIST interview for your entertainment – this time with guitarist Rand Burkey, already done back in 2000 but considering the brilliance of these guys still interesting enough to get published. Enjoy!

How and when did you discover Heavy Metal?
"I was raised in a conservative family so I wasn’t really granted access to all forms of media in my early years. The first Heavy Metal album I actually heard and owned was BLACK SABBATH "Paranoid" on vinyl. I was about 15 years old and my friends’ dad gave it to me. My mother soon discovered the album in my room and declared that "Black Sabbath" was "the witches sunday". She immediately forced me to return the album to it’s original owner. At this point, I had already heard what would change my life forever."

Is there anything you grew up listening to that you really have enjoyed to the bone?
"Some of the bands I enjoyed while growing up were: IRON MAIDEN, JUDAS PRIEST, THE PLASMATICS, BLACK FLAG, KREATOR- I love KREATOR, VENOM, MERCYFUL FATE, HELSTAR, JAG PANZER, WRATCHCHILD, MOTLEY CRUE, VAN HALEN, AlDimeola and DEMON. At around the age of 16 I discovered bands like RUSH, YES, KING CRIMSON SPYRO GYRA, and Frank Zappa. In my earliest years I liked Elvis a lot."

As a guitar player what were your main influences also? If I’m right you started playing guitar as fully self taught…
"Yes, I am self taught. My main influences growing up were of course Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, Al DiMeola… basically all of the guys who were shredders."

As you probably know I’m shocked by your playing, the way you handle your flying V, how did you exactly develop that incredible playing?
"Well, my father played guitar- Country music, and he was right handed. He would let me play his guitar, which was right handed, but since I was naturally left handed I just flipped his guitar over and that’s how I started playing upside-down. I had only about a week of training but that teacher tried to teach me right handed. It was just the basic "E" and "A" string etudes which I found to be absolutely ridiculous and a waste of time.Now I just basically make geometrical and checker board patterns on the fret board, play them upside-down and inside-out and they just sound cool."

Before you joined ATHEIST in early ’88, you lived in California, what can you tell us about your musical past when you lived there? Did you play in bands there?
"I moved to California with a friend of mine- Frank Cunsolo of CRUMBBOX, when we were young, to be rockstars (laughs). I soon found out I wasn’t ready for L.A.. My mindset wasn’t ready for being serious yet and it was real hard to stay alive out there and it was very expensive. I’m from a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania with a population of about 5,000 people so moving from such a small town directly to one of the largest cities in the United States was pretty strange. I could go on forever about the city of Los Angeles, about the shooting, the gangs, all the wanna’ be rockers and meeting Gene Simmons, working at S.I.R rehearsal studios, but it take up the whole interview. It was cool, but too much, too fast, all the time."

How did you get in touch with ATHEIST? What did you think of their music which wasn’t yet so developed back then?
"I met ATHEIST- R.A.V.A.G.E. they were called back then, at a party in Sarasota, Florida. They were playing without a bass player but were tearing up the place and were playing alot of my favorite songs by METALLICA, IRON MAIDEN and so on…. and they had a very good drummer (Steve Flynn) so I enjoyed it very much. They didn’t have much style at the time and were a little bit behind in the times but something about them made me stay. Looking back in my mind, I remember what it was…It was Steve. I remember him just going insane, hair flying and just pounding the shit out of his kit. Of course there were a lot of girls there too! No one in the band had even heard of bands like CORROSION OF CONFORMITY, D.R.I., DIE KREUZEN, TROUBLE, JAG PANZER, DESTRUCTION, EXODUS, or KING CRIMSON. They were all listening to mainstream Metal at the time. I turned them all on to these bands and they ate it up. They were happy to hear this new music that I introduced them to and it really geared the band in a direction that would eventually be, what you have come to know as ATHEIST. After I joined, we started playing covers of some of those bands. The singer they had at the time (Steve Freid) had a very annoying voice. He kind of sounded like Mickey Mouse on acid screaming with a real high voice all the time. After their set, I went and talked with Kelly about music, it was instantanious. We started playing together immediately."

Do you remember how your audition for them went?
"Yes. I basically played a few riffs on a guitar for them, talked a little about music and the tech side of things, showed them what they were doing wrong and that was it. I would have to say that was my audition."

Then, you went to the Morrisound studios for the first time to record a brand new five song effort "Beyond", and as far as I’m concerned I think the band’s songwriting was different from the old stuff and the songs were more distinctive from each other and more involved I would say… what would you say about that period of time?
"Right before the name was changed to ATHEIST, and we recorded "Beyond", I was not in the band. Then after I joined, we began writing together. I brought my style of music into the band and the chemistry was real good. All the guys in the band had incredible ideas and input so I was basically in a perfect situation. Every idea I had was greeted with a logical, musical response. So, the reason for the difference in sound, was the chemistry between us all after I joined and started writing songs with them."

During 1988, you played a good amount of shows including opening slots for TESTAMENT, DEATH ANGEL (replacing RIGOR MORTIS at the last minute), NASTY SAVAGE and DEATH, what kind of memories do you have from those shows?
"We did? I remember having shitty equipment. My guitar cords were always crackling, my amp was always humming, and my hair was always in knots. I don’t know why, but I was always serious about playing music but I was sort of a sloppy mad scientist who couldn’t get organized. I remember opening for MORBID ANGEL and the guitarist was backstage drinking blood. I also remember one time we opened for DEATH and I made some flash pods with gunpowder and Roger forgot where I placed them on the stage so… when I stepped on the switch, they exploded and almost blew him up. The explosion tubes flew into the crowd. Luckily nobody was hurt. That’s why clubs don’t like to let bands use them. I also remember Kelly attempting to play a guitar solo when I broke a string at a show in Tampa. He was trying to kill time while I restrung my axe. That was really funny because on the video, you can see Kelly finish playing and get frustrated because I wasn’t ready yet. I’ll have to say that I can’t blame him. In the early years, I was cursed with guitar and amp problems. I mean, I could buy a brand new guitar cable and it wouldn’t work that night. One time for DEATH ANGEL in St. Petersburg, they were raising the lighting racks above the stage when they forgot to release one of the safety catches and it broke half way up sending the lights crashing down as we jumped from the stage for dear life. I remember meeting a lot of people in different cities and different bands and partying all night long with them. We probably smoked two tons of pot the whole time we’ve been together. It really was a fun and exciting part of my life and I can’t wait to do it again."

Your first album "Piece Of Time" was completed late ’88 at Morrisound Studios with Scott Burns as producer, what made you want to work with him at the time as he wasn’t so well known yet? I mean were you impressed by some of the previous stuff he has done for OBITUARY, WHIPLASH, AGENT STEEL or…?
"He came highly recommended. I didn’t know he did AGENT STEEL (he was an engineer at that time- Laurent). To be honest, it was the only studio around that was capable of handling a professional project of this type and we are very happy to have done it there because Scott was able to capture all of the subtle nuances that were essenitial to our music coming across the right way. That’s a hard thing to do when there is thirty things going on at one time. You have to turn this little thing up and this little thing up and before long everything is turned up and you have a mess. Scott taught me how to get all this stuff sorted out and able to be heard. I now have my own home recording studio and I use alot of the things that I learned from him and Mark Pinske all the time. It really saved me from having to go to school for it."

What was your state of mind in ’89 when you saw that the album was still unreleased- I remember that at every show you played in ’89 Kelly told the people that the album was on the point to be issued when in fact it was only released in early ’90 at least in Europe and took even more time for the States to be issued, I guess discouragement started to appear in the band…
"Yes. Kelly would know more about that than I would. I was never close to the business side of what went on. I would have to say that somebody did something wrong."

Don’t you think the fact that "Piece.." took so much time to be released- it was issued after the OBITUARY, M. ANGEL.. albums when in fact it was recorded at the same time, made some people think that you were followers of that Death Metal wave?
"I never thought about that. That does sound possible but I think it is very obvious that we aren’t followers of any of these bands because first of all, I don’t even know the name of any of their songs and I don’t even know what they sound like. I could probably, however, pick out OBITUARY. They do have an unmistakable sound. MORBID ANGEL is truly heavy but, we definately were not influenced by any other heavy bands. We just like heavy music and we express it in our very own way. I never really cared what anyone thought about me or our band. We just wrote music and got a kick out of listening to it. It sounds almost impossible for anyone to play like that. Our guitar, bass work and of course Steve really sets our music apart from others and as for "Elements", the guitars and bass do it again and of course, Josh is not your typical Death Metal drummer either. We really sound like we’re from outer space. That shit is wild! Wait till you hear the new ATHEIST album!"

During 1990, you played again some nice local shows like one in May with NAPALM DEATH- their first U.S. show ever as they were recording "Harmony.." in Tampa, one in June with MORBID ANGEL and OBITUARY, another one in August as support for two of the most talented Bay Area acts at the time, DEATH ANGEL and FORBIDDEN and in September you headlined the "Day Of Death" festival in Waukesha, Wisconsin which turned out to be a poor festival with almost nobody standing in the hall, any memories of all those shows?
"I remember "Day Of Death". It featured a very nice place to play, a beautiful day, and a nice speaker system, but like you said, there were only about 20 people there. As far as the other shows you mentioned, I don’t remember. How do you keep track of all this stuff?! You know more about us than I do."

In August ’90, you also re-entered Morrisound studios with Scott to do a pre-production tape of your second album which featured six brand new songs, Were you satisfied by that recording?
"The purpose of the recording was to get a rough idea of what the songs would sound like. It sounded pretty good for a rough recording."

You finally come over to Europe for the first time in December ’90 for one show in Norway and two shows in Sweden supporting CANDLEMASS, but even if the shows themselves went really well with a very good receptive response from the audiences, the other side of things- hotels and stuff was far from good, what kind of memories do you have of that first trip?
"I enjoyed visiting Europe and I’m excited to return. Of course being in a different country for the first time took a while getting used to. They stuck us in this stupid fucking youth hostile which is the equivalent to the American Salvation Army which is where all the bums and homeless people live. Everyone showered in the same place and it had bunk beds stacked to the roof. I mean, we we not a large act but come on! I don’t know who was in charge of that deal but whoever it was, fuck you.We were extremely pissed about that. I guess they thought they were doing us a favor but fuck that. We were there as their guests and they should have put us up in a nice hotel. That’s what I was expecting. At first I didn’t like the food, but being an avid enjoyer of various types of cuisine, I quickly adapted. I have fond memories from Sweden of eating bread with cucumbers and tomatoes for breakfast. Every time I make a sandwich, I think of Germany. Alot of important events have gone down over there that we have only read about in the States so actually being there was kind of a nostalgic experience for me. Overall I enjoyed it alot. Why the hell does all the food over there have either eggs or french fries on it?! Man that’s wild. There must be alot of farms overe there. Maybe I’ll go over there and open up a chain of pizza shops and steakfood restaurants."

Two weeks later you were on the road opening for CANDLEMASS on their first real U.S. tour for about 28 dates all over the States including a date in London, Canada unfortunately everybody came to the same conclusion in a short period of time, that it wasn’t the appropriate tour for ATHEIST because the tour had poor turnouts, looking back do you think it helped the band or was it more like having your time lost on the road for nothing?
"It was mostly like wasted time but it was a rare chance for the fans who showed up to actualy see us live. Even though most of the people came for CANDLEMASS, it was worth it to perform for those who came for us."

As everybody knows, tragedy struck the band when Roger was killed outside New Orleans as the band were driving home from California after that tour, looking back what were and what are your feelings towards that whole sad thing?
"I remember the whole incident like a bad dream. After the crash, I really felt like it was a dream. Let me tell you about terrible…ya’ know, that’s just how life is. It just sucks sometimes. Here we are, happy to be finishing our first tour and so happy to have supported the album, excited to go back and make another, then like something out of a science fiction/ horror movie and for absolutely no reason at all, it’s taken away very gruesomely. I really miss Roger and his bass playing! What a fuckin’ senseless and unecessesary event. To anyone reading this; if your band is touring, make sure your driver has the ability to at least read and then make sure he has some advanced driving skills. the same thing happens to alot of bands."

When Roger died and you decided to carry on with the band, did you get the feeling that it will be extremely hard for you to find another extremely talented bass player like Roger was?
"Of course. Roger was without a doubt one of the most talented Heavy Metal bassists ever.I was surprised to find Choy. That was a total miracle. We are looking for him again. He seems to have vanished because we can’t find him. If anyone knows where to find him, please email me at: r.burkey@gte.net."

To this day I still don’t understand ten years after "U. Presence" was written how you could remember all the parts in live situations, thousands of different riffs, thousands of drums fills, thousands of time signatures and so on, honestly it still sounds inhuman to me after all those years…
"For us, it isn’t hard to remember. Each song is like a little puzzle. Once we start playing it, there seems to be a life of it’s own. That’s just the way we are. We are people who love a good challenge. Believe it or not, they are very easy for us to play…actually boring in some parts."

When you wrote that material for "U.P."- and even before when you wrote stuff like "I Deny", you were never scared that people could/ would not appreciate your complex material since you need to listen carefully more than a couple of times the music before starting to understand and appreciate fully what’s going on, something bands like WATCHTOWER for example had experienced earlier with people who didn’t want to take time to listen to real complex music…
"We didn’t really care. We were writing what we liked and came naturally. ATHEIST was made up of very complex people so, to us, it wasn’t complicated. We just kind of hoped it would sell and it didn’t. But like I said before, we weren’t doing it for money. Kill the average!"

Don’t you think that the real technical bands just had (have) no chance to made it in such a fucked up musical world?
"I didn’t really think about it back then. Realistically, "making it" generally means to write songs that appeal to a large group of people therefore selling alot of CD’s, making you popular and resulting in earning alot of money. In the case of ATHEIST, there isn’t much chance of selling millions of CD’s because there aren’t enough people who enjoy the music. If Death Metal was as popular to people as Rap music or Shania Twain, we would be Pop music. Unfortunately, most of the people in the world are satisfied with simple things. That’s the big scheme. DON’T THINK! Leaders of this world don’t want people thinking. That’s a whole different story. I feel that ATHEIST made it in our own way."

So how were the recording sessions for "Unquestionable.." with Scott Burns as producer for the second time?
"He has a nice personality, a lot of patience and he knows what he’s doing. So, it was fun and easy. I had some problems with my guitar sound at first but after some time, it was corrected."

How much is true concerning the rumor that sometimes, you had put your material like amplifiers at pawnbroker shops because you didn’t have any money and sometimes you had shows to play and you had to go to those shops to get back his material just in time to be able to play the shows?!
"Who told you about that? That’s funny! Yeah, we were young, broke, and trying to stay alive. One time I found a diamond ring at the beach and I was trying to sell it. It was worth $5,000.00. I gave it to this pawnbroker for a hundred dollars so I could get something to eat. I was starving. Kelly lived with different people for free and depended on a couple of girlfriends who would feed him and buy him Mountain Dew and cigarrettes to keep him alive and give him a place to sleep. Roger lived with his grandma and Steve lived at home with his family. Yeah, that’s the typical rockstar lifestyle. These days we own our own businesses or at least have good jobs. I own a flooring business and recording studio, Steve has some important executive job, has bought a new house and car, and Kelly owns a smoke shop where he sells water-bongs and pipes…oh oh er er I mean….tobacco pipes. By law that’s what you have to call them when you’re in the store so there are no references made to marijuana I mean seriously, who is going to pack this giant bong up with cigarette tobacco and take in a big fuckin’ lungfull of cigarrette smoke? That would be enough to give you cancer or death in one hit. And isn’t it funny that that’s legal and the weed isn’t?"

Following the recording, you started to be active again on the live front with Tony on bass, so how was Tony position in the band at this point? I mean I remember that you were confident about having him in the band despite the fact he was still a full CYNIC member at the time? How did you feel when you heard that he wanted to be involved in PESTILENCE and that he was ready to do the U.S. tour with them supporting DEATH when you expected him to be with you to do an upcoming tour at the same time?
"I was a little worried about him working with PESTILENCE I mean, we just lost Roger and were lucky enough to find Tony, let alone a bassist at all. It all worked out though."

So Darren McFarland entered the picture in October ’91, he played previously with a local Tampa act called BLACKOUT, tell us how you had him joining the band. The guy was amazing too but looking back were you entirely satisfied by his work?
"Darren is an awesome bassist but he was a little flaky…but we all are. He was quiet and that can be scary at times. I was not completely satisfied with his memory of the songs. I hear he is currently doing some work with Steve Morse."

By January ’92, you were on tour in the States and Canada for one month supporting labelmates C. CORPSE and with GORGUTS opening, unfortunately once again it seems it was the wrong tour for you to be part of since you had some big problems to get your music accepted by the audience notably in Toronto and Chicago where you had a part of the crowd yelling at you…
"Man, you know alot about us. You probably know the answers better than me. Yeah, wrong tour again. The only thing that ever went correctly for ATHEIST was us making music."

The band stopped around June ’92 after a string of local shows, so what have you done between this date and the reformation which occured early ’93?
"I attempted to form a few bands on my own. That’s when I realized that ATHEIST was a once in a lifetime chance. That was just like winning the lottery musically. I thought it would be easy putting together another band, but I was wrong. I tried four or five different bands and five drummers, four bassists, four singers, and about six guitarists before I went back with ATHEIST to create "Elements". I wrote alot of the stuff on "Elements" with a different band and then it was altered just a bit for ATHEIST. For example. The beginning of’ "Air" up until the brutal scream at the beginning was written by me in a different band. I wrote all of "Water" except for the latin sounding part, and a lot of the parts for the title track "Elements" in the same band. There were a couple other things too. Don’t get me wrong, in the other band, these songs did not sound anything like when ATHEIST played them. It’s hard to find people with skill to execute this crazy stuff properly. I’ve played with a lot of different people the same kind of material that’s used for ATHEIST but for some reason, it just comes to life when Kelly, Steve and I play it."

From what Kelly said at the time, the songs were written at a much faster pace than previously but personally even if the stuff was (and still is) way ahead of what was going on in Metal, the complexity that could be found in some songs of "Piece…" and on the whole "Unquestionable.." album was kinda gone…
"We were growing musically and we were heading for some themic structure. Even though we were capable of giving an identity to a song, the maturity wasn’t quite there yet. So…we grew. I think some of the crazy time change stuff was not done intentionally. It was just the way it came out at the beginning. There were no real ‘sing-a-long’ choruses or catchy top 40 parts to sell the records. Bands like OBITUARY and such have the standard song structure with verse and chorus type thing going on which adds to the chances of selling more records. That’s what most people like whether its Heavy Thrash or Country. They like that chorus. Take "Enter Sandman" for example. That’s why I think album sales were not as good as they should have been but then our bizarre sounding style at the time would not have been as apparent. Some people in the band might disagree with this but that’s my viewpoint."

For this album you used Mark Pinske, well known producer for his work he had done previously with people like Frank Zappa, Steve Vai, Alan Holdsworth etc, but I found that the production wasn’t as adequate for this album unlike it was the case with the previous recordings when you used Scott, does that mean that since people started to slag off Morrisound and Scott because some people were saying that all the recordings sounded the same there that maybe you wanted to distant yourselves from that?
"We wanted a different sound because we are a different kind of Metal band. We were just experimenting with our strange style of music to see what would happen if recorded this way and it really did, in my opinion and luckily, make us sound much unlike the other Death Metal recordings. We thought this would really set us apart from all the other Death Metal bands at the time and we were right. The album didn’t get as much notoriety as deserved, unfortunately, as we had hoped but I don’t care. I love it. Nothing against Scott, but he was a little upset with us for going there. He didn’t really have a right to be but he was anyway. Personally, I love the sound we got on "Elements". That is my favorite album. Mark is a big funny guy who was fun to work with."

The album was issued in October ’93 while you were already touring Europe with CEMETERY and BENEDICTION, were you the headliners for that first European tour?
"No. That would have been nice. We were second on the bill, we had alot of fun on that tour! The BENEDICTION guys were always a laugh. I mean these guys could drink all day and night long. Rue woke up with two black eyes one morning from fighting with someone in their band about a joint. I remember one night when we were all drunk and I started smashing stuff around on the bus and they were drunk and beating up innocent bystanders for no reason at all and they stopped all of their frivolties to focus on my behavior. I disagreed strongly with them and it just turned ugly. The next day they didn’t even remember what had happened. Those guys were crazy. I don’t know how they were able to play the following days after parting the night before. We would just bar hop all night long. We were singing karoake in some bar in Denmark one night after we were attacked in our tour bus by some other band about some dumb thing and there was bloodshed and bottles thrown and shit. It was truly an ugly event.That was pretty scary. It was like some angry mob after us. All in all, we had a hell of a fun time."

Do you think since "Elements" was somewhat much more accessible than the previous release, more people were interested in your music once again since it seems the European tour went really well for you judging by the fact that you even got encores during some dates…
"I’m not sure how to answer that but I think that is a correct assumption. It’s a lot better when people have access to your music for sure."

Following that tour, you did a local show in St Petersburg, FL in October 24th ’93 that went really well which was if I’m correct the very last show the band did, right? So what happened exactly after that- I’ve read that an internal dispute over financial matters led to the split of Tony and Marcell, while you were arrested following a felony charge at around the same time had prevented him from leaving the country in the near future when you had a new European tour planned for November ’93 with WARGASM and AGRESSOR…
"Correct, correct, and hmmm, how the hell do you know all this stuff?! Yeah I was arrested…the charge was "threatening to discharge a distructive device". I got drunk on tequilla one night and threatened to blow up a gas station and the court house. That looks real good on my criminal record. Unfortunately that is a felony punishable by five years in prison. I would have to say that I got pretty lucky with that. I only got a bunch of fines and probation. BUT I was not allowed to leave the country. I wasn’t really gonna blow anything up, I was just drunk and mad because the cops pulled me over and they told me not drive my car. They could have arrested me, but they didn’t. They just told me to sit there in my car until I was sober. Well, while I was sitting there, I was listening to N.I.N. on my car stereo and the battery went dead. Then the tequilla started kicking in real hard and I got mad. Somehow I thought it was the police’s fault and I called 911 and told them to give me a jumpstart for my car. They hung up on me. That’s when I became furious and began making threats. Soon thereafter, I was surrounded by about 20 cop cars and arrested. Anyway, I got tired of not getting any money for our music- shows and albums sales, and said "Fuck it!" I have bills to pay, I’ve got a house, car payments etc…Do they expect me to live in the street and go play whenever they ask me to?!"

What do you think really lacked for ATHEIST to achieve a proper career just like DEATH, MORBID ANGEL, SAVATAGE and some other Florida bands have achieved?
"A little more label interest and maybe a little difference in the song writing."

In the whole ATHEIST career, what’s your favorite album and songs?
"That’s a tough one. My favorite album is "Elements". But I love the explosive energy of all the songs. "Unholy War" is a shredder. "The Formative Years" is another good one. I really like playing the solos in most of the songs. They really fit the part ya’ know?! "Mother Man" is another fun one to play. I love the vocals on "Elements"! "Air" is an awesome song. I really love the guitar solo in "Water" too. That’s a really groovin’ song."

What have you done after ATHEIST stopped? I heard that at one time you were playing guitar/ singing in a new band?
"I have tried out every so-called "musician" in the area and it is hopeless. I just purchased a Roland VS1680 digital recorder, some drums and built a recording studio and I am recording some of my own stuff. It’s coming out very good. I played with Midnight from CRIMSON GLORY for a while but that was short lived. He almost died recently from drinking and he won’t stop. Most of my time right now is spent working on the new ATHEIST record and that doesn’t leave much spare time for much else. I will be free in a couple of months and I will be back to my personal stuff so if any bass players, drummers,vocalists, or guitarist are reading this and would like to create some music with me, please e-mail me at: r.burkey@gte.net. Where I live, there aren’t many real musicians."

Is there any chance now since the records will be available again at least in the States that you’ll reform the band at least for one show or maybe an album?
"We have currently had some offers to re-group ATHEIST and so we did! We are waiting for the right deal to come along. Steve has been rehearsing the old stuff as well as working with the new and Kelly and I have been working hard on the new material."

Have you followed what was going on in the Metal scene during the last six years or so? If so how do you find the actual Metal scene comparing to what you have lived during the early eighties? Do you think the word Metal still has the same impact in people’s minds like it had back then?
"No, I have not been following the Metal scene. I never really have. To tell you the truth, since the arrival of Napster, I have been strolling down memory lane downloading some of the old bands that I mentioned earlier."

Anything that you would like to add that maybe wasn’t covered?
"The pyramids in Egypt, China, and Mexico; the Bermuda Triangle, Easter Island, and the Galapagos Islands are among the sites that share a geometric relationship. In the year 2001 the earth reaches an extreme point in a cycle of approximately 26,000 years. The open magnetic field lines at the north pole of the earth will be pointing towards the sun, receiving a peak amount of particles. The sun’s 11-year cycle of activity will also influence earth’s weather more strongly during this time…the earth’s magnetic field is continually bathed in a hot, magnetized, supersonic collisionless plasma capable of conducting electrical current and carrying a large amount of kinetic and electrical energy. Because of the polarity of the earth’s field, [the magnetic force on a particle] will deflect solar wind ions to the right and electrons to the left as they approach the earth. This will also influence our creativity by allowing us to pull our minds deeper into an alpha state at will! Jump from delta frequencies to beta frequencies in one-hundreth of a second which is now an important catalyst in the creation of the new ATHEIST release…’the crosswinds of forever become me…’ "

Latest news: Rand is currently working on new material for his solo project. Demos are available directly from Rand or MP3.com – the vocals are being performed by Midnight, formerly of CRIMSON GLORY!

www.randburkey.com

www.atheist-music.com

Interview: Laurent Ramadier
Intro: Frank Stöver

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