Raising Hell with Sanctuary Stories, Shots & New Music - Hell’s Heroes VIII 2026 Interview

0:01 Hi, this is Lenny Releas from Sanctuary and you're listening to pipe Man on W four C Y Radio. Hi you love learnt. Here sensu W for se Wow. Where you young. Ro This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four C Y Radio. And I'm here with Lenny Rutleds from Sanctuary. Joseph Michael from Sanctuary. Nice, and you just played here at Hell's Heroes. And I think he kind of played baseball too, because somebody pitched something at Joseph and then he was like the awesome first baseman. He just grabbed it and pitched it off to you. Lenny.

0:52 Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I was amazed as the fact that he actually caught that and then he handed it to me and I took my first shot in many years. Yeah it was I didn't call out a beer, but not shots usually. It was a pretty iconic show. Your first shot in years, his first beer in five months, right, you know. Like we're degenerates. I feel more like Ozzie Smith than like Don Mattingly. Nice. There you go, And so how did it feel to be here at Hell's Heroes. Let's start there, like you guys, were having a fucking blast up there. Yeah, we were in a good time. It was hot up there, and uh we had it was just it was our first time in since twenty nineteen, so it was I was I was a bit nervous, but it worked. Everything worked out good.

1:41 What did it feel like though, being up there live for the first time since twenty nineteen, You guys were tight, Like I wouldn't have known. You haven't played since then. We have rehearsed quite a bit, so yeah, I mean it was kind of like, you know, riding a bike. It was not a big deal for the most part. And luckily, you know, a lot of times in some of the festival situations, you never know because you only have a certain amount of time to get ready and there's not really a sound check and all that, and so there's a little bit of anxiety there. But everything went well. I barely had to tune my guitar. I only had a too hopefully it was in tune.

2:22 And your voice, oh my god, Like I'm just gonna say something now, you've been compared to a lot of people. I saw priests at Hellfest last year and I love Halford. I think you blew away Halford. Well, I'm sure he would appreciate you saying. I love Rob. I met Rob once. He was a super chap, great singer, legend. I don't know if what you said is true. But by the way, Lenny Lenny up on stage, not only did he drink that shout out tequila, I don't know how he lost he. Also lost his speck.

3:02 Lost his stick on stage. It fell out. How do you lose your stick? I don't know, dude, I almost tripped on it. Yeah, we were reached down. It's just gone. What were we. Talking about about the stick and Halford? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure Halford would have appreciated my joke about the stick. I'm sure he would have. I don't know that he would have want that in the interview. I don't think Halferd cares. Have you've seen his Instagram? That dude is enjoying himself. Oh totally. I've actually interviewed him and he is the nicest good. His book that his recent book, I think it was called Confessions. It's awesome. I mean, I love Halford, Oh yeah, no doubt.

3:45 But he doesn't. He does not hold back. He tells, He tells the whole story and I applauded for that. Yeah, he's fearless. I love that. And you know what, I used to hang out with your cousin in his house in Tarzana An. Oh you went to his house. Yeah, oh so you saw like. Like Vivian lived with them, and you know, I was like, I don't know. Fifteen sixteen. I saw Wendy at the Bowling for Ranie a few months ago, and. Oh, I missed it this year. I usually do that every year, dude. It was It was actually the first time I really like saw her in person, Like I've talked to her on the phone, but I had my aunt had sent me a bunch of like family photos and I was able to send him to her Like that was cool.

4:30 Yeah, I usually do that every year. I missed it this year. One year I was there reviewing Jack Black and he tried to get me to sing, like he started singing me on nights a capanda like to sing. I'm like, that's your job at a show at Bowling for Iron. Oh god, dude, that is a that is a drunken, lunatic, adult, fucking nightmare of an event. Like the first time I went, they didn't check the PA and like they brought this doctor out who they they'd raised like a million dollars. Were you there? I was there. They raised a million dollars for fucking cancer research. And they brought this doctor from like m I t or wherever the fuck he was from, and he's like talking about like the medicine and the science, and they didn't.

5:17 Check the PA. So he just just fucking kept cutting out in the middle of it. And then everyone's like yeah, like and they they didn't stop. They kept going and they bowl that's it, and then uh, they're gonna love that. I said that. I had to do it to fix your fucking PA. Well, yeah, of course. I had to do a one minute interview one time at BOLFARRANI who was it? Can you guess who it was? He bowls like a three hundred, played in this band that had a little rage in it. It was, it was. There, it is. He got it. Really, I knew he would get it. I thought you were being metaphorically. No, no, really, His tour badger was at the red carpet and he goes, you have a hard one minute, and I did it. I finished it, like no, no.

6:08 I mean no offense to Tom I mean he's he's a I think he's kind of an amazing musician. I'm not sure if I agree with his politics all the time, and he sounds like a dick, but all right, whatever. I can't confirm nor deny. I don't know. You know the nicest guy I ever met at Bulli FERRANI was Onny Logan that dude is a class act. Well, I felt Jack Black was the coolest dude. I've never met Jack Black. He was exactly what you expect. He was funniest shit, and he was just the nicest guy. He wasn't dressed like that dinosaur. Was he nould weird? Why do you have a scenario with dinosaur at Bulferani.

6:51 I mean there's plenty of dinosaurs at Bullie. Geezer was there? Were you there when Geezer was there? I missed Geezer. I went home. I wasn't drinking that night. Oh well, see that's the problem. I'm not in binary as far as drinking is concerned. That makes any sense. You need to find that for me. Sometimes I drink sometimes I don't like I'm not like abstinate and I'm not an alcohol right, I mean that makes sense. So you're a non alcohol may really loves this conversation. I should take it. Do it so nobody's getting canceled tonight.

7:34 Here's more. This is what's more important. I heard the teaser for your new song, did seventeen hours ago? Did you hear it? And oh my god, it's bad ass. I always wonder what artists, when you're doing it this long, how you come up with new material painfully? Yeah, I mean I don't know how to. I don't know I want to say how we come up with it. I mean, I guess it just happens. It's you know, what it is is it's a collection of stuff that we kind of play over and over again or whatever and try and you know, fit into whatever puzzle and eventually we hit it out of the park.

8:19 Or something, you know. So so yeah, I mean, we we've been working on all kinds of new stuff and we have been for a while, and I'm pretty picky about it, and I think that, uh, what we just released was indicative of what a lot of the rest of what the rest of it's going to sound like. So well, then it's going to be badass, and everybody's got to get the album. Any hint of when the full thing will come out. We're gonna try. We're trying to finish it this year. Talking to some labels right now. Yeah, a few labels. Some people we talked to like more than others. And that's gonna be play a big partner who we go with.

9:04 And it is important, though, isn't it absolutely? You know, like, because if you're gonna partner with a label, you better be happy with it. You better be able to have your creativity. Because I'm a big believer, like the business people should do the business part and the artists should do the creativity part. I just heard an interview with I think it was Hetfield and talking about with Kill Them All and they spent all those years with those songs. They record it and then they weren't even allowed in the mixing room, and they would have done it differently had they work.

9:46 Sometimes that's better though, too, because as a musician sometimes. You get too far into it and it's too much in your head. And no objectivity. Yeah, like maybe the other person can see from the audience. You need a balance of that. And he's eating red fines there you go, do you want to join into because you were kicking ass out there. That's what powers all the fucking crazy drumming that he does it, Sugar, Yeah, on the Harry Styles, Sugar. I'm always amazed by drummers that can just keep going on.

10:28 And that's some hard ship man, that's some hard work back there. I drummed for nine years and I sucked. That's why I'm doing radio. Oh do you want more dream tickets? So, folks, we are back here, you know, and this is what life's like back here. What else can we expect from you guys? Now? Moving forward? Now you've done your first show and and you got a teaser for music. Are we going to go full force back into doing it all? You're gonna announce all these shows or what? Well, yeah, we're we have a tour in Europe, a couple of weeks in Europe, and then we also have South America coming up and.

11:08 Possibly Japan, and I'm sure there'll be more. There's a lot. It seems like there's a lot of interest right now and what's happening. So, uh, we're looking forward to it. Well, I was, I was seeing you out there tonight and like it was giving me flashbacks, like you guys were definitely tight. And I don't see a lot of bands from back then that can still like even what you're singing. That's why I said what I did, Like a lot of the singers can't still sing like that, you know, even though they did back then. Yeah, I mean even back then, there weren't a lot of singers like warl I mean there was maybe a few, right like. We'll we'll set to by the bar pretty high.

11:51 You know the thing about Okay, so like you know you have Jeff Tate, Dickinson, do there's a couple other guys. What made world different was? I mean he sounded like he was out of his mind, but would always tell When I met Lenny, I'm like, yeah, like the refuge TONI is like, reminds me of an early Queen's Reck record, but the singer is on LSD. And he confirmed that that might be a reality. Was it was it? I can't fully confirm that, but that might that that was true? Actually wait, I mean Sanctuary is just a little more maniacal than your traditional like American power metal, right like like Jeff Tay is more controlled.

12:34 So Queen's Reck was more of the Beatles than we were the Stones you. Know, that's a pretty good analogy, right there. I take that. But did you ever get pulled over in Montana with a bunch of hash and heroin? We did, No, there was no heroin, but there was there was. Pulled story. I want to hear that story. I want to hear that story right now, right now. It makes make some Boermouth news right now. Okay, Well, it's kind of a long story. I'll try to condense it. So we were we were on our way to I think it was Milwaukee Metalfest. I don't remember the year it was. It was before nineteen ninety, it was probably eighty nine or something like that. And as we were on our way there in Montana, we ended up stopping somewhere and someone someone misinterpreted us as I don't know, drug dealers or something because we all had long hair.

13:43 We were there to eat, like at a Denny's or something like. That, because you can only be a drug well rock dealer if you have a. Long hair, right exactly. Yeah, you know, and there's and there's a group of us, so of course we have to be you know, we we were kind of a gang. I guess. Well, anyway, as we're as we leave some establishment like Denny's or pancake House or whatever it was. As we're driving down nine ninety toward Milwaukee in Montana, we see a bunch of flashing lights behind us and in front of us, and we're like, hey, what's going on? I mean, what could this be? And it turned mirror right, yeah, I think so. Yeah, And so our driver who person who was driving at the time. We're in a van and there's probably six or seven of us in the van, and we see all this happening behind us, and eventually, you know, cops are all around us and you know, pulling us over. So we decided, you know, obviously we're going to stop. We didn't think they were after us, but it turns out they were because they closed the freeway going both directions, right, so as they're they're really have police coming down one uh one direction and another direction behind us, and they closed down the freeway as they pulled us over, and the cars all stopped in

15:13 formation where they opened up all their doors. Once they stopped and they got us to stop, they had shotguns pointed at us. I've had that. But then the coming the other direction there was the cars were crossing the center line, and they were getting out of their cars and heading toward us like it was some sort of a special ops combat mission, you know, as we're all in the van, scared to death, literally probably peeing ourselves, going what the fuck's going on right now? They're being surrounded by all these I think it was state patrol or cops or whatever. But at some point they had some guy. Once we finally got stopped, they had some guy that come up, came up to the vehicle and he had a shotgun.

16:07 And he pointed it to the windows. And told us we had to get the fuck out of the van or he was going to kill us. And we're we're freaked. Out, right, He's like literally pointing a shotgun at us, and there's some guy in back with a bullhorn saying don't move, and the other guy's telling us to move, and we're like, well, what do we do? What do we fucking do here? Right? And there's traffic stopped, there's there's a I think there's a helicopter. Even the pavement. Well we got there, yeah, Once they finally got us out of the vehicle slowly, then they put us face down on the pavement. E nineties closed, we're laying across it. They have a shotgun to each one of our spines, which was really weird, and you know, we think they're gonna just freaking off us and take us in the woods or whatever. So that what they did was they they went through the whole all all of our stuff, search everything with dogs and all that.

17:02 We didn't have any one. One dude had a bud. That was it. That was it? Oh bud? Yeah. Well, they thought they had the biggest drug drug bust ever in Montana, right, so they I mean there was if you counted all the cop cars there there there must there was, like there had to be thirty cop cars there, and the freeway stop that's backed up both directions. I believe there was a helicopter there and there there was news stations there. The whole deal. It was. I mean, it was the most messed up day ever. But I guess the silver lining is that they didn't find anything because there wasn't anything to find because we weren't drug dealers. We were band headed to Milwaukee, but since we had long hair, apparently we were drug dealers.

17:48 But anyway, they, like I said, they found a bud. They took us into Billings, Montana had us. We had to go out in front of a judge. The judge find us for the bud and sent us on our way, and they told us never to come back. Wow, the next show should be in Montana. That's what you you know, just you should go back to Montana, just like Ozzy went back to the Alamo and found out he didn't really piss on it. Yeah right that what? Yeah you didn't see that, you're blowing my mind. Yeah, Jack and Ozzy went and it found out. It was It wasn't, so he was bad from Texas or forever for no reason, and he thought he really did it.

18:39 I mean, whoever, their pr agent was fucking genius. Now see, that's an amazing story. So I want to know too, what made you pick this guy to like because that was some pretty big shoes to fill. How the story I'll get so you gotta we all got to watch you who. Do When basically we had a tour booked with Ice Earth, and I called John Schaeffer to tell him that, Hey, obviously you know we're not we're not getting any traction on you know, World passed Away and you know we pretty much thought we were just gonna drop off with that tour.

19:26 But when I was. Talking to John said, hey, you know, just wait a bit, see if you know, something comes up. See if you guys find somebody, you know, if it works out. And I called him to tell him, hey, you know, we'll probably dropping off, and he said, hey, you know, I got this guy. I know this guy that's in a band with. Uh every story is I know a guy. Yeah, and he's like, well, Jake, Jake, the guitar player for Ice Earth. And he said, you know he's he's he's doing stuff with Jake and maybe you should check him out. And so he told who it was. I didn't know who weather Fall was at the time, and I listened to it. We were on our way somewhere where I was having you know, I had a long drive, and so I listened to it. I was like, you know what, this guy could probably pull it off. Yeah, So I got his contact information and we started talking and yeah, that's that's there.

20:22 We are now at Hell's Heroes. Yep, yep, for sure. It was a long time ago. That was twenty eighteen. Yeah, yeah, that was when the world didn't go crazy yet. That was before the world went crazy. Yes, yeah, yeah, and certain people we know. Yeah. So is there anything else you want to share with the listeners you got coming up or you want to know and especially let them know how to buy your merch because I don't let people listen to my show unless they buy the band merch. That's the only way you get to the next shit. I'm going to hand that part over to Joseph, but you know, I wanted to ready know that we're I mean, we're working on a lot of stuff and there's gonna be more tours and more shows, and I mean we're definitely out there and come check it out. A lot of I mean a lot of people I think are skeptical when they come see us, we definitely changed their mind because we're we're knocking it out of the park right now.

21:17 So and I'm here to say, yes you are, because I told you guys off there. I'm saying now and hopefully my last interview doesn't listen to this interview, but you had the best crowd of all of Hell's heroes so far. Nice. Nice. Where do we get merged shows? Well, I mean, you can't get any fucking merch here because it's all sold out. Let me just flex a little on that's cool as shit. You can go to our website at www. That sanctuaryofficial dot com and order a bunch of shit. It may or may not be sold out. But the most important.

22:00 Thing, so hurry, run, don't walk. The most important fucking thing is that you sign up on our mailing list so you hear about all the shenanigans that are going on. You see the New York accident. Just start to fucking come out anyway. Oh, I'll join you with that sanctuaryofficial dot com. You go there, you give us your fucking email address. Promise we won't stalk you. Only when important things are happening. We'll email you. And that's all I can say. We may or may not come to your town in twenty twenty six because we have a full schedule in internationally, but when the time for the new record nears, we will announce something a tour in the United States.

22:47 I love it, I love it. I hope to see a lot more of you guys. I was so happy to catch your set today, and I also the last thing I want to do is I want. That's a nice shase. Pay some respects to your cousin. Yeah, you know, because I think he was here with you. But you know, my condolence is because it's probably still fresh. I know how that feels. Yeah, yeah, he was him, and I you know, I spent a lot of time kind of creating this dream before before anybody else. You know, it was just me and him back in the day. And you know a lot of people don't know Sean Bose was my cousin.

23:28 So we grew up together, and we grew up together, you know, talking about starting a band, and we had it all figured out. We knew what the name was going to be, and we knew what it was going to be like for the most part. You know, they obviously things change, but but yeah, yeah, it was it was that was a that was something that I was always proud of that we said. We would do it and we did it and you did yep, and he's here with you and we'll be here with you and uh yeah, I and I know the feeling because like twenty twenty four, my best bro since thirteen, that we went to all the shows together and stuff, he passed away out of nowhere, just like your cousin. So you know, I feel for you. But I'm glad you're carrying on this legacy because you guys are badass and you killed it here at Hell's Heroes.

24:19 Thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Appreciate it. Thank you. Hey, this is Joseph Michael from the band Sanctuary. You're listening to the Pipe Main on W four CY Radio. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man. I'm w for CUI Radio.