In 2012 I hadn't touched the guitar for at least a year. I was living in New York learning a new vocation. Inspiration and ideas started to return and I let German label "Rock it Up Records" know I'd have some new music soon and they tentatively agreed to work with me again. Then I received news of Michael Grant's death. It knocked the wind out of me. I didn't care if we were estranged friends or not. We wanted to work together again someday despite our turbulent relationship. I put the guitar away for several more months and just lost interest in music again.The guitar just reminded me that a door had been closed forever and words were left unsaid. it fucking stung.
I eventually started making instrumental and extreme metal records again and soon the time came to revisit my Traditional Heavy Metal roots. Make no mistake, when I create Traditional Heavy Metal I am free to use the name 'Onward' if I choose to do so. Instead of using the name, I called my new project 'Where Evil Follows' based on an Onward tune I actually wrote some lyrics to. The album was released on Moribund Records in 2015 and did very well. More than one reviewer and several fans just called it Onward mk.2.
More "would be" Onward Power Metal soon arrived in a new project, 'Necrytis'. We briefly considered calling it Onward, but the music was a bit too strange. Pure Steel Records did market Necrytis as a logical continuation of Onward similar to what Moribund Records did with Where Evil Follows. With hundreds of thousands of Heavy Metal albums coming out each year, it's hard to get noticed by using new project names. I knew calling a project Onward, I could lure some listeners back and get some priority in the Metal press. More people talking, more albums selling. I didn't want to do that......yet. I'm a musician and sometimes you have to make career decisions. I would make them when the time was right.
In 2020, Onward bassist and beloved friend of 30 years, Chris Payette, passed away unexpectedly. This was torment. I called him a week prior and everything was going great with him. That's two Onward guys gone and I was haunted. I started writing and recording tons of music. It was the only thing I could do to escape reality. I didn't know what the music was for. I was just hammering out one song after another and before I knew it, I had enough material for an album.
I started the search for a vocalist with no luck until I received a message from Attika vocalist, Robert Van War. Robert offered to guest on a song or two. Van War had never heard of Onward and was only aware of my time with Shrapnel Records decades ago. I listened to his vocals on the Attika album "Metal Lands" and they were very different than the vocalists I had worked with. They were kinda gruff with a Bobby Blitz (Overkill) kind of sound. I knew they would be perfect for this new, speedier and abrasive music. I asked him to do the album and he agreed. I also decided this was an Onward album. I'm done fucking around with project names.
Cruz Del Sur Music signed the new Onward immediately. I had mixed the album with severe tinnitus and was deaf in one ear (it's since been corrected). I became obsessed with having the guitars front and center and took it too far. The album was cold and digital and Cruz Del Sur asked if I could fix it. I couldn't. I record on an old Fostex 6 track and it's a process of "mix, burn, delete" as you go. A very stone age process. Enrico (Cruz Del Sur president) was very fair and gracious in letting me transfer the album to Moribund Records and Alone Records.
I'm the worst at jumping to the WRONG conclusions about things and posted my "nervous breakdown" regarding the album on Social Media. It was wrong, I was not thinking clearly. My personal life was in crisis mode and things were not well in the Knapp camp. Fortunately, I got through this difficult time.
The new Onward album "Of Epoch and Inferno" was released and well received overall. Of course the haters came out with "no Michael Grant = no Onward".
Luckily there was more enthusiasm for the new Onward than there were keyboard warriors talking about me disrespecting a "legacy". No one in Onward is "legacy". Legacy is Jimmy Page, Bruce Dickinson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Jeff Beck, Dio, Slayer, etc. Selling a few thousand albums and doing a few tours isn't a legacy. Cult, but not legacy. For fuck's sake.
Onward 2023 are ready to begin the next album and I know the direction the music will take. Join me or not. Onward is back for good. Don't forget the words of the infamous “Angry Metal Guy”:
