According to their bio, Slough Feg left the cultural wasteland of Central Pennsylvania about a decade ago and moved West in

order to resurrect American heavy metal. Whether it was manifest destiny or never-ending sunshine that drew them there, the band -- formerly Lord Weird Slough Feg -- have built themselves a home and a dedicated following in California. While their bio got the facts a bit skewed, Mike Scalzi was happy to give Noisecreep the real story.

"it's not true that I came out here to resurrect the metal scene. That wasn't really on my mind. I just wanted the band to be more successful and just live on the West Coast and experience life," he explained. "Although I can say that perhaps we have helped resurrect metal in a sense, whether we meant to originally or not. By the time we were out here for a couple years, we were definitely trying to resurrect metal. I think it really came back though because people were sick of lame '90s music. Let's face it, the '90s really sucked, and music was shite. A lot of it still is, but the '90s was the true cultural wasteland."

Happily for Slough Feg and their like-minded defenders of the faith Hammers of Misfortune, the Gates of Slumber and Christian Mistress, traditional heavy metal has been making a massive comeback, spurred on by both label interest and fans grateful for a return to the ways of old.

"We've been getting more attention in the last few years because metal is back, but we're also sort of outsiders in the metal scene I think. Larger labels seem sort of scared to touch us because they fear we're too 'out there.' I guess that can be said of Hammers of Misfortune as well -- although they just signed to Metal Blade. Both bands have had the reputation of being a little too oddball for mainstream metal. That's good, it allows for a dedicated following.

"Of course I'd like to see more success, better tours, bigger recording budgets (boobs, blow, the whole nine yards). I don't know what more attention really amounts to these days though. Is there material success in store for any of the bands you mentioned? I don't think so. So really in the end, you're doing for yourself and the love of music. And there's no shortage of that in Slough Feg; we love what we do, and especially love to do live. We still really enjoy playing."

Armed with a killer new record out on underground giants Profound Lore, Slough Feg will surely have plenty of opportunities to do just that. What's on the docket, boys?

"Who knows, we work pretty spontaneously. Hopefully [South by Southwest] in Texas and some other stuff in America this spring. Maybe some shows in the Midwest and/or Northwest. Then in the summer we go to Europe; festival in Germany, Portugal and some stuff in U.K. hopefully. All stuff we've done before, but should be fun. For now we'll demo some new songs in our studio. I have some new stuff involving an organ we have down there, one of those big church things I'm trying to write some spooky Vincent Price metal on. We'll see ... perhaps the Vincent Price concept album! Or maybe Christopher Lee."

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