White Wizzard Frontman Wasn’t Initially Thrilled With ‘Out of Control’

Calling from a pub in Los Angeles, White Wizzard lead singer Wyatt Anderson seemed stoked to hear that one of his songs was played recently on BBC Radio 1. "Wow! That's news," Anderson said. "Excellent. We're going over [to England] to play our record label's Christmas party soon. This is going to be our first trip out of the States as a band. Everybody's excited. People ask me if I'm excited. No, I'm not. I'm just bouncing of the walls."

In 2010, things are gearing to pick up for the California-based traditional metal band, as its record, 'Over the Top,' is scheduled for a March 9 release in the U.S. After a winter tour with Korpiklaani, Tyr and Swashbuckle, White Wizzard will head back to the U.K. to play Hammer Fest and travel to Germany for the Keep It True Festival. "It's an honor to be asked to play," Anderson said.

Anderson and the rest of his band -- bassist Jon Leon, guitarists Erik Kluiber and Chad Bryan, and drummer Giovanni Durst -- will be touring in support of 'Over the Top,' which was produced in Tempe, Ariz. by knob-turner Ralph Patlan in three weeks.

"We're fairly excited about it," Anderson said. "This is the first album with this lineup. The old lineup recorded the EP [2009's 'High Speed GTO'] to begin with. This lineup has been together for about eight months.

"I actually recorded three of the songs the first week I came out here," added Anderson, who is originally from Florida. "Recording the album was a really, really enjoyable experience. Ralph is very understanding as far as time restraints go. He's gotten great ideas to go along with what we had. He was very easy to work with. In the guitar players, he pushed them and myself, as well, to do absolutely the best we could. If he felt that something could have been done better, he would have stopped us in the middle of it and said, 'Hey, look, you can do that better. Try again.' Sure enough, the more he pushed, the better it got. We believe we got a very great album out of this."

Of all the songs on the album, Anderson is most looking forward to fans hearing 'Out of Control,' a song, ironically, he wasn't thrilled about at first.

"That would have been my last pick [for my favorite] when I recorded the demos for it," Anderson said. "That would have been my last song. But after we had it recorded, that became my favorite song. The demos were fairly rough. There wasn't any polish on them. The ideas where there but they weren't exactly focused. Once we got in the studio and started throwing Ralph's ideas in with it to help us out, it became an entirely new song. It was great. It evolved basically just from a bass and drum track to what it is now."