Canadian rockers SVEN GALI returned in 2023 in a big way with a new album and more live shows. The band who released 2 albums in the 90s – Under The Influence (1992) and Inwire (1995), returned to recording with the (2020) EP ‘3′, before Bombs And Battlescars. SVEN GALI also recently recorded a show at Toronto’s El Macombo for a live album. I spoke to frontman David Wanless about SVEN GALI’s return, influences, and the new album. *Check out the links at the end for more on SVEN GALI..

It’s been some time, I guess, since the second album, so what kind of got the ball going on making a new album?

Well, what happened was, we took a long break for a while, and then one day, I got a call from Dan, the drummer, to come and jam with him at his house. He, and I, wasn’t really doing anything, so I took the invitation up to go to his place, and we had some other players there, and we just hung out, had a great afternoon. And then on the ride home, I was thinking, ‘well that was a good time’. And a couple days later, he called me and said ‘is there something you want to go farther with this?’ And we just talked to Andy and Shawn and stuff, and we thought we’d get together and play. And right off the bat it hit, and we started just jamming right away, and never looked back. So, since then, we’ve done some videos, we put out three, an EP three, and now Bombs and Battle Scars.

It’s the same, pretty much the same guys from when you left off in the 90s?

Same guys, except for, as you know, Dee passed away, and now we have, Dan from Varga who is playing drums, and then Shawn from Varga playing guitar.

Going back and revisiting the first two albums, the first album obviously is in that 80s hard rock- metal feel, and then the second album had more of the 90s alternative stuff, and I find that on this new album, is kind of a good mix of that stuff.

You know, you have your first 20 years of your life to write your first record, as they say. And we were young guys, and that’s what we were listening to, and that’s what we were into. But during the course of that, and being more experienced in travels and our musical tastes started to experiment different ways. And with the change in music, we decided the same thing. We were writing for ourselves. And Inwire came out, and I know some people thought – ‘they just totally bailed from what they were’, but all we were doing was growing as people and musicians, and now, but we still like what we did. So, now, this many years later, we started writing again, and we found influence from both time periods, and, then the birth of Bombs And Battlescars.

Now, the new songs on this album, aside from the cover, are they all newly written, or is there stuff that’s kind of hung around for years?

There’s some new stuff on there, but there’s stuff that we’ve had in the can before everything went south on us. Wehad a bunch of stuff that was ready to be written and recorded for the third record, a full-length record, so there’s some of those ideas, and then there’s a bunch of new stuff on there also. So there is a blend.

Can you tell me about a couple of songs, some of the influences on the new songs – lyrically or musically, how they kind of came about?

Well, the one that we just wrote, I think it’s, probably the last one was ‘Coming Home’. And Andy just presented that riff, and the song kind of laid out. And I was driving around for a long time just listening to that riff and trying to get some inspiration on where and what direction vocally, melodically to go. And one night I was sitting on the couch, and I was watching a movie, and some ideas started coming, and I just started jotting them down, and the next morning, I woke up, and I started putting melody to it, and then it all came together.

You’ve got a lot of heavy stuff on here, like ‘Monster’, obviously, ‘One Gun’… And the Triumph cover, I was a Triumph fan myself, so.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

That one you did with Andy Curran producing?

Yeah we did ‘Monster’, I think, with Andy, and I think there was another one. It was a good time; he was a great guy. We’ve always been big fans of Coney Hatch, all of our young lives. We used to see them at Uncle Sam’s in Niagara Falls back in the day. And, and, uh, so, he became a friend. And when Dee was having a struggle with his cancer, we did a benefit for him, and Andy came out. And then when it came time to do some recording, his name popped up, and we thought we’d give him a call, and he was very receptive, and we’ve had a great relationship since then. And played a couple shows with him also.

When you guys started out in the late 80s, what sort of bands were you into?

Oh, in the late 80s, man, we were into Queensryche and going as far back as Boston. I was a big fan of the music of the period at that time. When Ratt came out, I saw them at Massey Hall back in the early 80s. And bands like that; they’re great. The Scorpions, obviously, we were big Scorpions fans. And Black Sabbath, and stuff like that. So that’s kind of where we were back then, and since then, our music has just gone all over the place; you can walk into my house and you can hear anything. Who knows where you’re going to listen to when you walk in.

You guys did a lot of clubs around Ontario. What were some of the highlights during that period?

Yeah, we played every place we could, and anybody that’d take us, we set up. And we went back and forth across the country so many times. And, and then we got to the point where we said ‘okay, you know what? either we gotta do something or we gotta make that decision, or how far are we going to go, or what are we waiting for?’ So we went to the tour bus, a one-way ride to Los Angeles. He dropped us off; we had gigs planned down there. He dropped us off at our first gig, and then we just started playing in, in Hollywood. And then from there we got looked at by BMG, RCA back here, and it just went smooth as that. We played some shows, and then we got interest, and we just packed up and flew home and started recording the first record. Yeah.

The first album came out in 92!? And by that time the scene was starting to change, did that have much of an impact on you guys?

You know, it was a really tough time, because we were kind of almost there when things were. We had so many songs in the can, and we just decided that we gotta stick to our guns and just do what we do. We’ve written this record, let’s just put it out. And fortunately we just caught the tail end of everything. But it was funny how things changed and how things are circling back again now.

And you guys get a lot of gigs now, are you starting to play more now?

Yeah, we had a great couple years actually. We’re pretty selective on where we’ve played. Yeah. We played with The Headstones and Bush in Ottawa, that festival, which was great. We’ve done a couple of our own big shows here. We played the big show, the Burlington Music Festival, We played that, and we opened for Coney Hatch and Lee Aaron there. That was last spring, in June.

Do you, with all these releases coming out, do you keep a lot of them yourself and do you keep your own collection? Have you kept everything over the years?

You know what, I am the absolute worst at keeping anything, because, people come over to my place and through the years they always leave with something. And, so Andy is the collector for the band, he kind of is the vault. So he has, one or two or three of everything. And, my house, it’s a revolving door of stuff leaving and coming back.

Is there a bit of a goal once this album picks up a bit? Is there plans for another album or is there stuff in the vaults that you guys might want to put out?

We still have a ton of songs and a ton of ideas that we’re ready to work on. We just finished a video a couple nights ago for a new song, which you’ll hopefully see before the video for ‘Life Inside’ will be coming out soon also. We’ve done two more in the last two months. And then we’ve got some other plans for actually a new record. It’s going to be a little different, and we’ve put some things together for it now and I can’t say too much about it until it’s really 100% confirmed. But I think people are going to really like what we’ve got in the can right now. So we’re still alive, still kicking, and we’re looking forward to surprising people with something that may be out by Christmas.

Cool. Are there things in the vaults as far as any live recordings, things like that?

Yeah. So, we just played the El Macombo on Friday the 13th (September).

You recorded that, didn’t you?

Yeah, that was recorded for our live album And we’re looking for, again, spring for the live record to come out. It’s being mixed right now and it’s getting printed in China where Andy is. And the artwork is pretty much there. So now it’s just package it all up, get things printed and then get it out.

How much of the new album do you guys put into the show?

The new record we had, on our headlining show we have, generally I think ‘Spellbound’, ‘Monster’, ‘Coming Home’. There was probably, I’d say maybe half to three quarters of the new record is playing, but a lot of people want to hear the old stuff too, so we slam it all in there. Yeah.

I kind of like older bands that are still doing something new. It gives you something other than just getting a ‘hits’ show every time. In the years between after you guys broke up, have you done anything else as far as any side projects or anything?

You know what, I jammed around with some guys in cover bands just for the love of music and just hanging out with those guys. And that was fun. But for the most part, I just focused on family and just stuff like that. But we’re all big music fans at my house. My kids love music, my wife also, we like to go see concerts together and it’s a lot of good times. So, music is still very important.

Can give me a few favorite singers, songwriters from your youth?

From my youth….I’m a big fan of Geoff Tate. His writing and vocal ability. And I met him in Toronto because Kelly, the guitar player of Queensryche, produced InWire for us. I was a big fan of Blind Melon. Christian from Blind Melon played mandolin on our stuff. But, before that, you can’t discount all the bands from Zeppelin to, you know…I get something from everybody. I just pull from all over and enjoy all the different styles and genres of music.

Can I ask you a few of your, kind of almost underrated favorite Canadian albums that, other than the obvious? Some, it’s like Canadian records?

I’m a big fan of Coney Hatch. Their record, in my youth, it was great. I like I Mother Earth. Hmm. Everything from Bryan Adams, he’s such a great songwriter…Loverboy, what they did back in the day, uh, you know, Headpins, I mean, there’s so many great bands with so many great records in Canada. Canada is such an amazing country for music. There’s so many great stars that came out of here – from Justin Bieber to Celine Dion, like, just keep popping them off.

So, what do you guys got coming up other than the live album? Any shows in the near future?

No, we’re done right now for; Andy’s gone back, and we’ve done what we set out to do. We played a couple shows on the East Coast. We got a couple shows, we got the El Macombo done and another show in the area here. And now Bombs and Battle Scars is released in Europe and the United States. So, it’s available everywhere right now. I saw it on Walmart the other night.

Well, you know you’re there then.

Yeah, it’s funny, I’m doing a lot of PR stuff around the world. And then getting ready for what holds in the spring. We’re looking to, for some shows out West, obviously. We haven’t been out there yet, we get a lot of requests to go out there and then we’d like to dive into Europe again and do some festivals.

LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/SvenGaliCanada/

https://www.dekoentertainment.com/sven-gali

Bombs & Battlescars (2023)

*live photos of Sven Gali courtesy of Donald Gadziola, from El Macombo, 2024.