BLUNT is branching out and going global! To continue to give you guys the utmost cream of the crop when it comes to coverage, we had our UK chum Jake Owens write us some words and snap us some shots from the recent Bring Me The Horizon (hey, they’re on the cover!) show at The Koko in London. A band of Bring Me’s size? In a 1,500 capacity venue? Mayhem was bound to ensue. Enjoy!

Bring Me The Horizon
The Koko, London 07/05/2013
Review and Photos: Jake Owens

It’s been the better part of two years since Bring Me The Horizon set out on a headline tour of the UK, having last done the rounds playing some of the largest indoor venues in the country with some of the best bands in their genre: Parkway Drive, Architects and The Devil Wears Prada. Two years on and it’s all gotten a bit intimate. Tonight’s venue – The Koko – holds around 1,500 punters, and it’s absolutely crammed full of kids ready for their dose of one of Britain’s finest metal exports.
Opening with the lead single from their latest opus Sempiternal, “Shadow Moses”, before ploughing straight into “Chelsea Smile”, the Sheffield quintet were electric in the small room and spared no time whatsoever in getting the mass of punters leaping around, partaking in huge sing-alongs, mosh pits, walls of death, crowd surfs and virtually every other great thing that venue security really don’t like that much. Pleasingly, tonight’s set was lacking any of the band’s pre-Suicide Season tracks, which we found to be quite a relief as they’ve never really translated all that well in a live setting. The songs that they did play however were performed with real conviction and passion, and the guys seemed to really be enjoying themselves, especially frontman Oli Sykes who bounded about the stage with seemingly endless amounts of energy.
The high point of the night was when the boys launched into the fantastic single (again from the freshly released Sempiternal) “Sleepwalking”, which garnered a stupidly loud sing-along from the crowd and sent everyone into a bit of a frenzy before the night came to a close. The show was perhaps a bit short, with Bring Me’s set barely creeping over an hour in length, but it was an hour chock-full of their best music and it was performed impeccably, so perhaps we can let them off, eh? All in all, it was a great display from a band who are no doubt on the way to (even) bigger and better things.

Folk metal? Whatever. Chrigel Glanzmann of Swiss eight-piece Eluveitie doesn’t concern himself with genres or labels. For him, music is all about combining your passions into a single package. Only in this case, his passions include death metal, traditional Celtic music and Galuish history, the kinds of things you don’t expect to see on the resume of a metal musician. When he’s not writing music, Glanzmann spends large amounts of his free time buried under ancient literature and manuscript fragments, searching for the topic that will inspire their next album. Just don’t treat the songs as a history lesson; all Glanzmann wants is for you to rock up to a show and bang your bloody head off!
By Peter Zaluzny.

Eluveitie are coming to Australia soon, so you’re touring in a land you’ve never been to before, which must be pretty exciting.
Well we will see if it’s exciting or not [laughs]. But for sure it’s exciting. We’re really, really looking forward to it a lot.

Aside from playing the shows, are you planning to do anything else while you’re in Australia?
No, I mean we would if we had the time but unfortunately on tour usually there’s no time to do anything besides, you know, what you’re there for which means playing the shows then travelling to the next destination. So unfortunately there won’t be any time for sightseeing or anything like that.

Also Anna Murphy, your hurdy gurdy player, has been ill, which forced her to pull out of some shows this year. Is she on the mend?
Thank you very much for asking, and yeah she’s definitely doing better. I don’t think she’s perfectly fine but she’s doing a lot better. You know she’s been in hospital since January actually, but two days ago we had a show in Norway, which was the third show that she’d played with us since January which was great. A couple of weeks ago the doctor said, “Okay she should be ready to at least try to play a show,” so she did and I think she should be back on track pretty soon.

So she’ll be well enough for the Australian tour?
Definitely, yeah.

You’ve previously mentioned that you feel like your sound has matured with each album. Can you explain what you mean by that?
I think that’s basically a very natural process that pretty much happens to any band, or at least I think it should happen to every band [laughs]. On the one hand, the longer you play the longer you learn – you get better just playing live as a musician, but the more you play together, the better you become as a live band as well. Also the longer you tour together and work together, the better you work together. You just become more of a team, or more of a family or something, so you’re working together pretty smoothly. Usually there’s not much we need to talk about, pretty much everything’s clear to everybody because everybody knows everybody so well and knows how everybody works.

What about the people who work around the band like managers and so on. Have you been working with the same group of people for the past few years and have they matured with each album as well?
I definitely think so. I think it always depends on how you work as a group and how you work together. In our case on the one hand we work quite closely together with our manager for example, we give him quite a lot of work pretty much every day. But the other thing, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing in the band as a musician or if you’re working with the band as a manager or whatever, it’s always very important to us that we learn constantly, and that we try to get better in whatever we are doing. Of course that also includes, for example, management or merchandise or whatever, so in that sense I think pretty much everybody in the group around the band has evolved together.

You’re part of the new wave of folk metal but from what I’ve heard that title was just a joke. What’s the story behind that?
[Laughs] Yeah that’s correct, it originally was a joke and it was actually us that came up with that term. It was around the time we recorded our debut album and, well back then this kind of combination of traditional folk music with extreme metal was kind of a new thing. But, at least in Central Europe, it actually started to become a thing; there were more bands doing that so the music press actually came up with new descriptions for that kind of music every now and then. After a while there had been so many descriptions or labels for that kind of music, we actually thought, ‘Come on, this is becoming ridiculous.’ People were talking of folk metal, of pagan metal, of Celtic metal and Viking metal and whatever you want. We thought, ‘Come on, please, after all it’s just rock’n'roll, calm down’ you know [em>laughs], so actually because of that, really as a joke, we thought, ‘Let’s come up with another description.’ After a year or two the scene and the press actually started getting serious about it and started adopting that term for our band, so we thought, ‘Okay, that’s what we are doing, fine by us’ [laughs]. But originally as you said, it was a joke.

Did you know a lot about the folk metal scene at the time?
Actually no to be honest, without wanting to be rude, none of us [Eluveitie] listen to folk metal, not then and not today. When I formed the band there was no folk metal scene, it was hardly known. It wasn’t that I liked folk metal and thought, ‘Let’s form a folk metal band,’ it was basically the realisation of a long dream that I had to combine the two forms of music that I loved which were death metal and traditional Celtic folk music. Some years later this kind of combination kind of became, as I said, its own thing or a trend or something like that, but originally there was no intention to do this folk metal, I didn’t even really know what folk metal in that sense was.

So you were the trendsetters?
No I wouldn’t say that, it was a thing that started to emerge in diverse places. Of course there had been bands around like Skyclad and they did include metal and some folky stuff, and also there have been some former black metal bands in Scandinavia that started to focus more and more on their folk roots, indeed only lyrically but still. I think it was something that just started to emerge in different places.

Your lyrics are mostly historically influenced, so with so many periods of history that you could write about, what drew you to Celtic history and mythology?
Basically I would say it’s the place where we live and grew up. When you grow up here it’s something you already hear about in school, it’s kind of the early history of Switzerland, the early history of Switzerland is part of Celtic history. It just felt natural singing about our own culture, our roots and where we come from. It wasn’t something that I even thought about really, it was just clear.

Can you tell us a bit about your research process? Do you use primary and secondary sources in your research?
Before I start writing an album, I think about what the album should be about, for example we decided that the last one should be a concept album telling the story of the Gaulish wars. It’s only when this is clear that I start writing the music. Once the main topic is actually set, then it really depends on what the topic is, I mean, studying Celtic history and cultures is a personal passion and something I’ve been doing for many, many years. No matter if I need it for the band or not it’s just a personal preference. For many topics there isn’t that much research needed because if you’re dealing with something for many years, then you kind of know things. I have a lot of literature at home but it depends, so for example I started working on a concept for our next album, which will be on a topic that’s actually quite difficult to write about because on a scientific level we don’t know that much about it. Right now I’m dealing with a lot of scientific literature and I collect all the bits and fragments of historical literature on this topic that can be found.

Can you tell us what the topic for the next album is going to be?
Yeah roughly I can say it will be, let’s say, it will basically be on Celtic and Gaulish mythology, and especially a focus on some religious aspects of it. The mythology of different cultures like myths of how the earth came to be, of how humans came to be and also of how this particular culture came to be. It’s mythological stories about how the Gauls came to be. There are quite a lot of fragments on this topic but it’s all still pretty much patchwork if you want to say, because all we have today are basically fragments.

Obviously you can speak Gaulish because you sang in it on one of your albums, but can you read and speak any other ancient languages?
I wish, but no I can’t. I don’t think you can actually say that someone fluently speaks the Gaulish language because it’s a dead language, it’s more scientific work, it’s more dealing with the ancient language on a scientific level. By doing that it’s usually needed that you deal with some other languages such as Greek, Latin or earlier Gaulish, stuff like that. But you couldn’t actually claim that you can speak Gaulish because as I said, it’s a dead language.

A lot of what we know about these times comes from the Roman perspective. How do you go about finding those fragments from the Helvetii perspective.
What you are referring to are matters regarding our last album since it told the story of the Roman Empire against the Gauls and especially the Helvetian tribes. I think it’s pretty much always the same; if history has been told and especially if it’s the story of a war, it always sounds a little different if it’s the victorious party telling it than if it’s the other one. On the one hand there are a lot of historical facts that we can assume and improve scientifically today by archeological findings and stuff like that, which you can compare to what Caesar says in his writings. It pretty much gets you a clear picture of how things most likely were back then. But besides that there was a lot of questioning, there was a lot of reading between the lines, it was quite a bit of work and quite a bit of scientific work. I’ve actually worked together with scientists quite closely on that matter.

Do you use your music to question historical perspectives and historiography?
Yes and no. After all, Eluveitie is about music. Eluveitie is a metal band, end of story. I’m not a big fan of using music as a medium to transfer any kind of message, whatever it is, because I think if you go to a metal concert you go there to bang your bloody head off and not to get some kind of deep message. Eluveitie is about music, I’m not trying to give any message or question or something, but nevertheless, I’m writing the lyrics because it’s something that means a lot to me. The thing is, If you’re dealing with history it’s actually, in a way, inevitable that this kind of raises questions on how things are today, that’s just a natural thing. If you’re dealing with history, you’ll see parallels with things we are doing today and this of course raises questions, it’s a logical consequence of dealing with history. This might be part of it but it’s not the reason I write lyrics. Eluveitie is about music and that’s it.

Eluveitie Tour Dates

Thu May 23rd – The Zoo, Brisbane (18+)
Tickets: metropolistouring.com

Fri May 24th – Billboard, Melbourne (18+)
Tickets: metropolistouring.com

Sat May 25th – The Metro, Sydney (18+)
Tickets: metropolistouring.com

Welcome to the first installment of BLUNT TV! As well as reading interviews from your favourite bands and musos, you can now watch them courtesy of yours truly.

Having spent a boatload of time backstage at this year’s Soundwave Festival in Sydney, we figured what better way to kick off BLUNT TV than with an interview with Wade MacNeil, Laurent “Lags” Barnard and Stuart Gili-Ross from UK hardcore punk act Gallows. Watch the boys chat about kicking it as a four-piece, who they were stoked to see on this year’s festival, and why they’d still see Slayer even if a bunch of old ladies were cranking out the hits.

BLUNT TV: Gallows at Soundwave 2013 from BLUNT Magazine on Vimeo.

Ten years of waiting. Ten years of having to make do with records, DVDs and YouTube footage. It had taken Epica, the Dutch metal masterminds, ten years to reach our shores, but Sydney’s time had finally come and The Metro Theatre was welcoming the operatic sextet with unrestrained enthusiasm.
Opening act Metal (in name and genre) took to the stage with a catalogue that could have been derived entirely from Manowar’s classic Die For Metal. Straight up songs about battles, buccaneers and balls-out metal gradually warmed up the room, and by the midpoint the front rows had their beers raised in the name of metal. The band sustained their presence with impressive musicianship, shredding out solo after solo after solo.
Metal accurately represented the real metalhead, but with less spandex and more wailing. Despite their epic ambitions the band were held back by their inability to perform on a large stage. That’s not to say they didn’t deserve the spot, but their banter, antics and general performance seemed much better suited to a small, intimate gig. A relatively flat, bassless mix marred the set until the final song where things were finally kicked up a notch and the sound filled the room, showing the audience what Metal were really capable of.

Time teased the audience after Metal had finished, ticking by so slowly that it felt as though another decade had passed before the lights dimmed. An orchestral score gradually came to life, building up over five minutes to generate an atmosphere that discouraged any connection with the outside world. The room was dripping with anticipation, as the audience screamed “Epica, Epica, Epica,” to the opening notes of “Karma” from Requiem For The Indifferent. Epica welcomed Sydney into their universe.
Each member walked on stage and screamed in the faces of the ecstatic audience. Most of the diehard crowd were seeing Epica for the first time, and their excitement was infectious. The five boys, led by guitarist/screamer Mark Jansen, picked up their instruments, looked at one another and smashed into “Monopoly On Truth”. The floor responded, thrashing, headbanging and throwing their horns to the sky. But something was missing from the mix, something that Epica just couldn’t do without. Then her powerful voice exploded from nowhere, from a world beyond the stage. Simone Simons emerged from the shadows to a mighty roar from the crowd, her operatic vocals echoing throughout the room taking the music to gloriously powerful levels and starting the show with a mighty bang.

The set was filled with classics that included soaring operatic compositions, quiet moments of reflection and episodes of pure unbridled metal. The entire production was spectacular and rehearsed down to the tiniest detail, backed up by a visually stunning lighting rig that complemented the music and added to the dynamic performance. There was some brief banter between songs that brought the band down to earth, but their apology for arriving a decade late was quickly forgotten in light of the performance. Epica weren’t content with putting on a show, they wanted to put on a performance and in all respects, they succeeded.
Despite constant activity, frequent headbanging and even some antics between members, not a single note was missed. There was never a point where the audience were drawn out of the moment until the set was complete, which touched on everything that makes Epica’s music so emotionally engaging. The energy of the room grew with each song, encouraged by the band who split the room in two for a screaming war.
The final three songs began with some comedic banter from keboardist Coen Janssen. A mighty scream of support met his suggestion that the band should get naked. Guitarist Isaac Delahaye began running around the stage with a cape made from the Australian flag, while Janssen screamed “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!”
After closing with the ten minute epic “Consign To Oblivion”, Simons snapped the room back to reality with her final note, the last chord that resonated through the crowd.
People came to realise that they had witnessed something incredibly special that seamlessly shifted between an intense, powerful atmosphere, to one of quite positive, and sometimes sombre reflection. Epica threw reins around The Metro’s neck and guided it through an emotionally explosive journey with a perfect show that everyone in the audience felt a part of.

BLUNT is branching out and going global! To continue to give you guys the utmost cream of the crop when it comes to coverage, we had our UK chums Emily Bielby and Jake Owens write us some words and snap us some shots from the recent Born Of Osiris show at The Underworld in London. With the deathcore six-piece set to make the voyage Down Under this May with Upon A Burning Body (and our own A Breach Of Silence and Feed Her To The Sharks), here’s a taste of what you can expect. Enjoy!

Born Of Osiris
The Underworld, London 02/03/2013
Review: Emily Bielby | Photos: Jake Owens

The Underworld in London has to be one of the best live venues for heavy music: it is pretty much a sweatbox once things get heated and by the end of tonight, even the walls were dripping.
The crowd was whipped into a frenzy awaiting Born Of Osiris‘ appearance on stage, and not long after they arrived, the pulsing throng looked as mad as the sextet themselves. They were welcomed by a pit already in full form and didn’t waste any time introducing their first track of the night, “Empires Erased”.
As the Yanks continued to create a punishing wall of noise with heavier tracks “Ascension” and “Two Worlds Of Design”, the vocals became more throaty and guttural and for fans who had the brutal pleasure of being at the front, the next half hour or so looked set to cause destruction (or certain death).
The band lived up to their ferocity live thanks to the earthshaking riffs of guitarists Lee McKinney and Lee Evans along with the thrashing drum beats executed by Cameron Losch, which kept the rawness intact throughout their set. Bonus marks were awarded to vocalist Ronnie Canizaro for switching from growls to torturous screaming almost instantaneously as they went on to play “Open Arms To Damnation”, “Singularity” and fan favourite “Recreate”, which was evidently a crowd-pleaser. We had an extra helping of hardened rock when we were treated to the vocal stylings of Canizaro and an over enthusiastic Joe Buras on keys as the they went off for an encore and returned to sing “Now Arise” together.
They inflicted a set of eleven solid tracks all of which demonstrated visceral energy, savage breakdowns and some sonically ripe aggression. If it’s banging heads that whets your appetite, then look no further than Born Of Osiris.

When it comes to death metal veterans, it’s hard to find a band who’ve been doing it for as long as Obituary. The Florida five-piece pioneered the genre, taking the hugely popular thrash metal scene to deeper, darker more aggressive places. As well as working on a new album, Obituary recently decided to go back to where it all began by going on tour with songs from their first three albums. They’ll be bringing the classics to Australia in a few weeks time, but getting those tracks up to scratch hasn’t been easy according to frontman John Tardy.
By Peter Zaluzny.

In a few weeks you’ll be heading back to Australia, only this time you’re going to play a classic set from your first three albums. What made you want to do this tour?
We had some promoters who came to us with the idea while we were doing that European run. We hadn’t put a new album out in a while, and we’d done quite a bit of touring for the last album that we did do. So once they asked if we’d be interested in doing something like that, we sat back, we thought about it, like maybe we should do the whole Slowly We Rot record or something like that… After we started listening to the [early stuff], we thought let’s just do the first three albums, and it really worked out well. It was funny watching us sit down and listening to the albums because some of the songs, we haven’t played them for years, and some of them we’ve never even played live before. So it was a re-learning process for us to start with, but once we got going on it, it was a lot of fun.

Was it difficult playing some of those songs you hadn’t played in a while?
It was hilarious actually! Me and Donald [Tardy, drums] sat down and said, ‘Let’s put Slowly Rot on.’ It’s not like we sit around listening to all our albums all the time, so we put that thing in, we hadn’t listened to it for years, and we’re sitting there thinking, ‘I don’t even remember this song!’ [laughs]. Some of them were in different tuning so Trevor [Peres, guitar] had to sit there and kind of pick out some of the notes. It was a challenge, but it was cool.

How did you determine what songs you were going to play?
Me and Donald pretty much sat down, put the first record on and listened to it. After every song we were like, ‘Okay, we gotta play that one, and we gotta play that one’ and we pretty much wound up having almost every song off the first three albums, which was a little bit too much to do. We kinda had to go back and scratch some off the list. There were tough decisions, but I think we wound up being able to play like six songs off each album so it covers them pretty well. We took a lot of time to put the set together, to really make the songs flow, starting and stopping, and getting through the set nice and smooth. It’s pretty much the same set we do every night.

When some bands do these classic shows, they’re drawing a line in the sand and giving the fans a last hurrah with the early tunes. Will this be the last time we hear some of these tracks from Obituary?
[Pause] Well, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought that far ahead. We did some shows in the States with it and then we did a pretty good tour through Europe, so we’ll be doing some more shows like this. But once the new album comes out, I think we’ll want to play a lot of it when we get back on the road. We’ll mix it up a little bit and move things around; we usually try to put a set list together with something off every album. You can never make everybody happy, everybody always comes up to you after and says, ‘How come you didn’t play this and how come you didn’t play that’, but it’s a good problem to have when you have as much music as we have out there. It makes it challenging for us, but we try to cover a little bit of everything.

When you decided to do the classic shows, did you consider asking some of your former members like Allen West and Frank Watkins to join you?
No.

You’ve got Terry Butler playing bass these days, but he’s not really a new guy anymore. In some respects he’s been with you guys since the beginning. Is that what made him such a natural fit when a new bassist was needed?
We’ve known Terry for so long. We’ve known him since before we were probably playing music, and we knew him when we were kinda starting up. We’ve known him for so long that it’s hard to imagine him not being in the band at this time. It’s been so ideal for us, so great, he’s so cool. It’s funny cause we’ll be sitting there doing an interview or sitting around and somebody asks a question about Obituary, and he’ll more than likely know the answer faster than me or Donald would, even though he wasn’t in the band at the time. He’s like an encyclopedia of music, so it’s always good to have him around. Someone will ask, ‘Do you remember this one band?’ and he’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s so and so’ and he’ll know every name, every album and stuff. It’s crazy man, he’s really into it.

When he plays the older tunes does he retain the classic sound? Or has he brought his own distinct sound into the mix.
He’s got a bit of a different style, he uses a little bit of distortion on his bass that Frank never used, so he’s got his own sound but he just plays very steady, very straightforward and very tight so you know performance-wise it’s awesome. Like I said, he’s really just like a brother of ours with how long we’ve known him, so it’s been awesome.

Next year you’ve got a bit of a double anniversary happening. It’s been 30 years since the band formed and it’s the 25th anniversary of Slowly We Rot. Is there a celebration on the cards?
Well now that you mention it, sure, I’ll start celebrating right now [laughs]. Sooner or later those types of celebrations don’t sound so good anymore [laughs], well the numbers anyway, but it’s cool. When the first album came out I don’t think we really expected to do a second album, we really didn’t even expect to do the first album. So the fact that it’s been this many years, this many albums and this many tours and the whole nine yards, and we’re still doing what we do, it’s pretty cool. We really don’t have anything planned right now but we’ve got plenty of time to work on that, think about it, and maybe do something.

These days it’s quite popular for bands to get behind the idea of reissues. Do you have any material floating around that could be used for something like that?
No there’s not, I know that because pretty much every song we’ve ever written has been released on an album. There’s not really any hidden music around or anything like that. We’ve kind of been kicking around the possibility of re-recording some of the old songs, kind of like we did with Slowly We Rot that one time. You listen back to some of those albums and you wish you could redo them with some of the stuff you know now. A lot of the time you write songs, but you don’t play them enough [before recording]; it’s not like you’ve had three tours and five or six years of playing the songs. Then you listen back and think, ‘Man I could destroy that fill I just did on that album.’ You always look back and wish you could make a better sound, like you listen to the snare drum and think, ‘What the hell happened to that?’ We sometimes think about maybe going back and re-recording some songs just for the hell of it. But we don’t really have anything planned at the moment, we’ve just been elbow deep in the new album that we’re working on.

On that note, there’s been lots of talk about the new album over the past few years and supposedly it’ll be released this year. What’s the progress report on that?
Yeah, it probably wont be this year [laughs]. Last year we took several months off just to sit back and write the album, but I think we spent more time out in the boat going fishing than writing. But we’re okay with that, we really don’t care, we’re working at our own pace and we’ll get it done when we get it done. But I can tell you that we’ve got a significant amount done, there’s three songs that are ready to record at any given time, but talking to the guys, and this is kind of what I hit on earlier, we really want to give ourselves the opportunity to get the songs and just play them over and over again. We like to invite some friends over, have a few beers and just let them sit and listen to the new songs. It puts a little bit of pressure on you, and we just want to give ourselves the opportunity to play the songs a significant amount of times, really work it out, really feel it and really get the tempo where we want it. We’re taking our time, we’re having a lot of fun with it and we really love the new stuff we’ve been doing. So it’ll be recorded this year, but will probably be released more like the beginning of next year.

Has working at your own pace had a particular effect on the band and the music?
I think it’s a good thing for the music because we find that we’ll write a few songs, then four or five months might go by, and then we come back and start to write new songs again. It gives you four or five months with different things to think about, so I think you wind up having songs that have a lot of different feeling, and they sound a lot different from each other. I think you’re more likely to have songs that sound a little bit more similar if you start writing them all at the same time, you know? If you give yourself the time in between those things, where we take off, go on tour and come back three months later to try and write some new music, you’ve had a lot of things that have happened since then. For us it seems to work out good that way. We know we’re not in any hurry, we’ll get it done when we get it done, and that’s the way it’s gonna be [laughs].

So after 30 years, do you ever think about taking a break and hanging up the mic?
Well we do that, we’ve done that, we’ve done it three times or so. I think before Frozen In Time, it’d been six or seven years since we did an album. Before Back From The Dead there was four or five years, so there’s been several times that we did that. It always seems like we come back after a lot of touring and we plan to have maybe a few months off. That earlier one where we had seven years, that wasn’t planned to be seven years but it was just one of those things where we sat back and a year went by, then two years went by and there just wasn’t a lot happening. Even the whole death metal scene kinda took a dive down, it wasn’t like people were calling us every week saying, ‘Hey do you guys wanna do this?’ or ‘Do you wanna do that?’ We all got busy doing other things and I think that’s important. It’s healthy for the band to take that step back, so we’re not afraid to take time off. If we feel like doing an album, whether it’s this year, next year or four or five years in between, that’s just the way it works out and we seem to work pretty good like that.

What makes you want to keep coming back after each break?
[Laughs] We have fun man! We just get together and we have a ball. That last tour we did in Europe, that was one of the best tours that I’ve ever done. We had such a blast with the current line-up. Everything was just so smooth, we finally got things oiled down. We really know what we like, we really know what we need, and it doesn’t take us a lot of effort to get tours together and to make things happen; it’s not a big process for us nowadays. It leaves you open to have a good time, have good shows and the fans have really been respondent, so that’s a bonus on top.

I guess at the end of the day, someone needs to show these new death metal kids where it all began.
[Laughs] At the end of the day yeah, the older guys have to come up and slap somebody down.

Obituary will be whipping out the classics in Sydney and Melbourne this May, with a set taken from Slowly We Rot, Cause Of Death and The End Complete. Check out the dates below!

Obituary Tour Dates

Fri May 3rd – The Espy, Melbourne (18+)
with Denouncement Pyre and King Parrot
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Sat May 4th – Manning Bar, Sydney (18+)
with Daemon Foetal Harvest and Sanctium
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Boston post-hardcore party boys Vanna are bringing their chaotic live show to Australia in May for a string of shows with Norma Jean followed by a tour of intimate headline gigs in support of their new album, The Few And Far Between. With this being their first time in the Great Southern Land and all, we thought it was about time we had a good chin-wag with frontman Davey Muise about what Australia has in store for him, and what the Vanna lads have in store for us…
By Daniel Furnari.

So you’re on tour with The Acacia Strain and Every Time I Die right now, how’s it all going?
Fucking insane dude! It’s been literally the best tour we’ve ever done; the crowds have been great, the bands are awesome. We were already friends with all these bands before we started the tour. We did a couple of tours with Hundredth, we did Warped Tour with Every Time I Die… It’s been such an awesome tour for us and we’re super grateful that we could even be a part of it. Right now I’m in Austin, Texas, I just had my hands tattooed, and we’re chilling on our day off.

Your Aussie fans were stoked to hear that you’d finally be heading over here. What‘s kept you away for so long?
We’ve been wanting to go there since we started the band! But you know it’s really expensive to get there, and contrary to what everyone believes, we don’t really get to pick where we want to go [laughs]. We have to get offered. No promoter had brought us out until now, but we finally got one! So we have the Norma Jean tour, but we’re also doing a headliner right after that. What happened was, we got the headline tour, we were kind of nervous, but we thought, you know, we’ve never been there and we wanna go, even if not that many kids come out to the shows we’ll have a really good time. So we booked it, it was gonna be a 10-day tour, and then as soon as we’d booked it, Norma Jean hit us up saying, “We’re gonna be in Australia the week before you, why don’t you guys do the support on our tour before your headliner?” so now we get to spend double the time there and it’s gonna be amazing, especially as none of us have ever been there, even outside of touring. We’re all “Australia Virgins”!

What are you hoping to get up to while you’re here?
Dude have you seen your fuckin’ continent?! It’s incredible! My friend just moved there and she said there’s like a million beaches, and jungles to walk through and woods and everything, and the food is incredible. I just can’t wait to soak it all up. One downside though is that all the girls there are apparently so beautiful, with these amazing voices, but I’m married now, and Sean is engaged. Meanwhile all the single guys in the band will be able to meet anyone they want! I’m bummed out! [Laughs].

Are you very familiar with the dudes from Norma Jean?
Well yeah, Cory [Putman, Norma Jean vocalist/guitarist] is my homie, we’re real cool with each other, but we’ve never toured with Norma Jean before actually, which is strange because we fit really well with those guys, so we’re definitely looking forward to becoming good buds with them on the tour. They’re a killer band and definitely a big influence on us so we’re very blessed to be coming out with those guys.

There are a lot of pressures that come with stepping in to replace a lead singer. What difficulties did you face when you joined the band and took over that position three years ago?
The biggest thing for everyone was that when a vocalist leaves a band, everyone has doubts about the new vocalist and how good he’s gonna be. A lot of kids like to talk shit on the internet; I mean that’s what the internet is for! [Laughs]. But I started calling kids out on Twitter and other social networking sites and saying, “Yo, here’s the deal: before you say I suck, come out to a show”. We even started putting those kids on the guest lists! And we said, “If you dig it, come kick it with us at the merch table. If you don’t dig it, go home and tell everyone you saw it, and tell them it sucked! But at least come to a show.” Because that was the biggest thing, no one actually knew, they hadn’t seen us. What we wanted everyone to know was that Chris [Preece], the old singer, was leaving the band of his own choice, and that he was my friend. We’re bros – I hung out with him last night! But he just didn’t want to be in the band anymore and he asked me to be the replacement. When people complain about a new member, I always wonder: if you like the band, don’t you trust them enough to get someone good to replace the person that’s leaving? But we did so many tours when I joined, and I think I won a lot of people over. We’re a whole different level of band than we were before. The band has changed for the better but we’re still Vanna, and the band is what we make it. Good riddance to anyone who doesn’t like the change, we have a slew of new dudes and girls who wanna party and have a good time with us.

I believe Chris also brought you up onstage and introduced you to the crowd at some of his last shows?
I actually did his whole last tour with them! I came up onstage at all of those shows and did “Trashmouth” with him, and then he’d tell the audience that he was leaving the band, and introduce me, and I’d do two more songs by myself. I was in a local band from Boston, and my band was fairly well known in that area. We did a lot of touring and stuff, so some kids knew me already. But those were some really cool moments that me and Chris got to share when he passed the torch on to me. I think the way we handled it was so different to the way any other band has handled a singer leaving.

Did you ever feel any pressure to sound like Chris when you sang his songs live?
I didn’t really feel that pressure, I mean, I don’t really sound like Chris, although I don’t NOT sound like Chris either. We have kind of similar voices, but I do me and I’m not gonna imitate anyone else. And the band knew that when they chose me, they wanted me ‘cos they liked my sound. I feel like if I tried to sound like him people would have called me a copycat anyway, so I made sure that I made my own stamp on the band. Fuck sounding like other people! It’s the same when I look at local bands. If anyone ever started a band and wanted to sound like me, I’d tell them not to. There’s already a “me”, so sound like you! You’ll probably be better and cooler!

Your new record shows the band really coming into their own sonically. It’s a very raw, fast and furious sound. Was this a conscious decision you guys made in terms of where you wanted to be musically? Or do you just see this as a natural progression for the band.
I think it’s a bit of both. It’s hard to please everyone when you write, but I’ve found that when we choose our live set we play the fastest, riffiest songs off each record, and that’s what kids like. We’ve rotated four records’ worth of material in and out of the set and we’ve found kids want to hear the hard, fast Vanna, and that’s what we want to play, that fast punk rock shit! So it was kind of like, ‘Let’s write a record where we will want to play every song live’. I love our previous record And They Came Baring Bones, it’s my baby, but we don’t play every song live. If you are a band and you can’t pull off every song live, there’s no point to what you’re doing. So The Few And Far Between is a natural progression but also a decision to write some real bangers!

In some songs on the previous album there seems to be a hint of a Southern influence creeping in, and it’s noticeable on the new record too. For a band from Boston, where does that Southern sound come from?
I can definitely see how someone who’s not from the area might construe it as Southern because Southern rock is so riffy and rock’n'roll-y, but to me our sound is just rock’n'roll in general, and Boston is a great hotbed for that kind of music. In the Northeast, it’s a hard place to grow up. Bands are definitely a product of their environment, so we definitely have the attitude of the Northeast, but that being said, we all grew up on our parents’ music. Stuff like Black Sabbath, and Zeppelin and The Who. I think rock’n’roll as a general sound is just ingrained in all of us, so we definitely do also enjoy a lot of Southern rock bands who get really riffy. But then there are bands like Every Time I Die for example, they have that sound too but they’re from New York! I think at the time that Vanna came out, there weren’t a lot of bands from our area playing cool, dissonant rock’n’roll. It was mostly the age of that really tough-guy hardcore, or on the other side there was the super indie post-hardcore. So I think Vanna just wanted to write the kind of music that no one from that area was playing.

For this record you chose to work with Jay Maas, who produced The Honest Hearts, the first EP you sang on for this band. What made you decide to work with Jay again?
Jay is the dude, man! I’ve known him since I was 15 years old. When we were gonna record that EP, the other guys didn’t know Jay but I said, ‘Let’s go to him’ and everyone bonded and became good friends. With this record we knew it would be really fast, hard and heavy, but also we wanted to record it at home. We had been gone for 10 months of the year so we wanted to get back home, and going with Jay was a no-brainer. He’s just like one of us. He’s the brains behind Defeater, and those guys are just killing it right now. It just made sense to record with him. I told him where we were coming from on the new record and he put his everything into it, I’m telling you. I’m so thankful that he did too.

Lastly, since it’s your first time here, what can Aussie punters expect from a Vanna show?
Dude, expect anything. Anything can happen. The other night a trashcan was circulating the crowd and kids were getting inside of it and throwing themselves around. I try to climb anything I can, and Joel our guitarist likes to climb shit too, sometimes he doesn’t feel like playing anymore and throws his guitar into the crowd and lets them play it. We want school, work, any bullshit that drags you down during the week, to fade away. All we want is for you to have half an hour with us where you just lose your shit. I don’t care if you mosh, I don’t care if you hang from the ceiling, whatever it takes for you to lose your fuckin’ mind and stop worrying about your problems or girlfriends or boyfriends. Even if you don’t even know the band. Even if there are kids in Australia who don’t really know our music but are keen to find out what we do and who are, just come to a show. I don’t care if you buy a CD or a T-shirt, that stuff is nice too, but please just come to a show and get wild with us, because that’s all that matters. We’re also gonna be doing a couple of house shows in between the bigger shows so it’s gonna get crazy! And I hear Australia goes hard. I hear you guys are wild, so I don’t wanna be disappointed!

Vanna will be tearing it up across Australia supporting Norma Jean from May 2-7, and then doing it all again on their own headline tour from May 8–19. Dates below!

Vanna Tour Dates

Thu May 2nd – The Hi-Fi, Brisbane (18+)
with Norma Jean and Safe Hands
Tickets: taperjeanmusic.com

Fri May 3rd – The Hi-Fi, Sydney
with Norma Jean and Safe Hands
Tickets: taperjeanmusic.com

Sun May 5th – The Corner Hotel, Melbourne (18+)
with Norma Jean and Safe Hands
Tickets: taperjeanmusic.com

Tue May 7th – Fowlers Live, Adelaide
with Norma Jean and Safe Hands
Tickets: taperjeanmusic.com

Wed May 8th – Karova Lounge, Ballarat (18+)
with Storm The Sky, Sierra, A Call To Anguish and Eyes Wide Open
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Thu May 9th – The Barwon Club Hotel, Geelong (18+)
with Storm The Sky, Sierra, Empires Fall and Exposures
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Fri May 10th – Beez Neez, Frankston (18+)
with Storm The Sky
Tickets: moshtix.com.au

Sat May 11th – Bang, Melbourne (18+)
with Storm The Sky and Sierra
Tickets: Available at the door

Sun May 12th – Wrangler Studios, Melbourne (AA)
with Storm The Sky, Sierra, Save The Clock, Driven To The Verge and Left For Wolves
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Wed May 15th – The Basement, Canberra (18+)
with Storm The Sky and Sierra
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Thu May 16th – Annandale Hotel, Sydney (18+)
with Storm The Sky, Sierra
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Fri May 17th – The Entrance Leagues Club, Bateau Bay (18+)
with Storm The Sky, Sierra
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Sat May 18th – Crowbar, Brisbane (18+)
with Storm The Sky, Sierra, Bayharbour and Wanderer
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Sun May 19th – Expressive Ground, Gold Coast (AA)
with Storm The Sky, Sierra and Dethrone The King
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Ten years ago, Mark Jansen left Dutch outfit After Forever and started to look for musicians who shared his passion for sweeping scores, roaring riffs and tantalising tales. He was looking for people who wanted to help him create something epic. Today, he’s fronting Epica, a group of symphonic metal masterminds who are celebrating their ten year anniversary with a grandiose show of gargantuan proportions before heading to Australia for the first time. With this momentous occasion on the horizon, Jansen led us through the history of the band and all of the elements that have gone into crafting the opus that is Epica.
By Peter Zaluzny.

Epica has just had their tenth anniversary, how does it feel to reach the ten year milestone?
It’s a big achievement I think, because it’s hard for many bands to stay together for so long, but I think the reason we’re still together is we always kept a good vibe in the band. It’s also very important to keep the fun aspect; it should be fun to stay on the road and be together. We also take a rest every time we feel it’s needed and I think this way bands can stay together forever. It’s also very important that everybody in the band feels important. You see some bands where it’s one guy, a kind of boss, who’s bossing everybody around, and sooner or later some people get disappointed or they don’t feel comfortable in the band anymore, and you see these bands breaking up. [Making everyone feel important] is our strength, and that’s why we can keep on going for the next twenty, uh [laughs], I’ll say ten years.

Say twenty years, aim high!
[Laughs].

So when you initially formed the band, does that mean as well as looking for musical ability you also looked for people that could all work together and share all duties?
Yes exactly. We always look for team players. Obviously having people who know how to play their instruments is also very important, but even more important is the personal aspect. When you don’t like somebody, even though they’re a very good musician, they’d never get into our band because it’s very dangerous when there are people who can plant a bomb in the band. I think in our band, we have people with a wide range of qualities, even beyond the stage where there are a lot of things that have to be done. We’ve never worked with a typical manager, we have a kind of manager but he’s also more of a team player – he’s not a guy telling everybody what to do, he’s just covering a part of the work that we don’t have time for, or don’t have the knowledge for. Everybody in the band has certain tasks and responsibilities and it works really well for us like this. It feels like you’re being your own boss instead of having a schedule that somebody else made and doing what somebody else wants you to do. For me personally that wouldn’t work because I started the band ten years ago to see something of the world, to make music in a nice way and have fun with it, and even after ten years that’s still the most important thing.

Has this hands on approach made reaching the ten year milestone even more rewarding?
Yes I think so, it’s more rewarding for ourselves because we are basically self made. In the Netherlands there are some bands coming up with a big team behind them and a big money machine, and they’re doing all the TV and all the radio programs one after the other. Then that band becomes a hype, and you often see that after one year, nobody remembers that band anymore, they’re suddenly very big and then suddenly [pop noise] they’re gone. Epica don’t have that. We built our band steadily, we had to do it ourselves, we often didn’t have the support of the big radio and TV channels, but now finally we also get to play on some of these programs and it’s a big reward for us. We did it our way, we did it step by step, and also we know for sure that one day people won’t just start slagging us because our fan base is very solid and they’ve supported us for ten years already. They haven’t let us fall from one day to another and that’s a big difference between us and some more mainstream acts in the Netherlands. That’s also the fun of making metal music, it’s a world of its own and you get a lot of really warm feelings from the fans because they really believe in us and what we do. We make the [type of] music that’s the most rewarding to make.

At this stage in your career, do you feel like Epica’s sound has been defined or is it still evolving?
I think even today it’s still evolving. On every album we find some new influences, some new ways, and we never stop without trying some new stuff. I think that’s also important, otherwise it can get boring and if one day we get the feeling that it starts getting boring, then we won’t release an album until we get excited again. There are already too many albums that get released that make you feel like there’s something missing, and we want to avoid that. You need to keep trying to evolve otherwise you lose the fun for yourself but also the fans will be disappointed after a while because they expect you to come up with something new and not a repeat of something you did before.

The lyrics in particular seem to keep evolving. Each Epica album deals with different themes or tells specific stories, why do you take this approach to lyric writing?
Lyrics are as important to us as the music, even though I know and realise that only ten percent of the people who listen to music are also really interested in the lyrics. The music is way more important for most people than the lyrics, but even so, if you care about the lyrics as much as the music then the ten percent who care about the lyrics are really happy that you put so much time and effort into them. With every album we all sit down and start the lyrics as a team and we often work together with Amanda Somerville, who is a singer in Avantasia. She’s from the USA, and as we are not native English speakers, we have some [language] mistakes here and there, so she helps us out with that. When I read lyrics from some bands I see horrible mistakes and think “shit you should’ve done that too” [laughs]. Of course not everybody can afford somebody like Amanda to help them out with lyrics but I think it’s very important that lyrics are on the right level. It’s always a pity when some big mistakes occur in lyrics. Sometimes we write a story like you mentioned, when songs share themes so we try to connect them and make it a bit more interesting. Personally, when I listen to other albums and there’s some kind of story, it makes me want to discover what the story is dealing with and what kind of connection the songs have. The more things you can discover the more interesting albums can often get, and I think that’s the basic idea behind storytelling.

When you sit down to write the music do the lyrics come first? Or do they emerge from the music itself.
99% of the time the music comes first, then the music gives us the idea of where the lyrics should go. First we just write music, we let it flow, we have no limitations, no boundaries, it just has to sound like Epica. After that, we sit down and write the lyrics, and whatever feeling we get from the music is the direction we go with the lyrics. For us, it’s a great way of working. I know some other artists work the other way around and everybody has their own preferences, but for us, this works the best.

On the note of making it sound like Epica, when you write a new album how do you inject new elements into your music without breaking the core Epica sound?
We just do it. We just act on intuition. There’s also our producer from Gate Studios in Germany [Sascha Paeth], when we have written some new songs we go to him, and we present him the new songs. We never tell him who wrote which song, so he has a completely objective opinion. He also gives brutally honest opinions, so when we’ve written a song that doesn’t really sound like Epica, he will tell us. For us, this guy is very important; he’s like a seventh band member and he’s worked with us since the beginning. He’s the one who will tell us if a song is a bridge too far, if it doesn’t fit in our style, and if we’d better drop it, and we listen to him. 99% of the time, not always [laughs].

At the end of last year your guitarist Isaac said the band already had an album’s worth of ideas and structures, but nothing had entered pre-production. Have you moved into the next stages with this new material?
Not yet. All our time is dedicated to the retrospect show: all these rehearsals, all these preparations are very time consuming. After the ten year anniversary show we finally have time to slow down a bit, sit down and start work on the new songs. We’ve recorded most of the tracks in our personal home studios, but there’s still a lot of work left to be done.

Have you planned any of the themes for the next album yet?
When we have all the [musical] ideas worked out, then we’ll start working on the lyrics. That’s really the final part, or the finishing touch.

On the last album you focused a lot on the tensions that the world is currently experiencing. In most respects these tensions haven’t improved, so will those themes influence any future releases?
We don’t know yet, we have some ideas, but we’re not sure yet. I can’t say yes or no because it could still change. Obviously I’m still disappointed with how the world is evolving, sooner or later something will happen, a change in the money structure for example. Something will happen because it cannot go on like this. Also, sooner or later we will run out of oil, and we need alternatives to make things work and keep the economy going, but even when we find alternatives for oil… While the current system had some advantages, we also know now what the disadvantages are, and hopefully we can learn from both the advantages and the disadvantages and use them in a positive way to change for the better. That’s what humanity has always tried over the years, they try to throw away the things that don’t work and use the things that bring us further along. It’s hard because we all know that there’s a small group of people controlling all the money, and when the power exists for only a small group of people, things get really tricky and dangerous. I hope this is one of the things that will change soon because it’s very unhealthy when a small group of people control everything, the government, corporations… They don’t have enough reflection to know if what they’re doing is good. It’s important that things are good for all people, and that’s definitely not the case nowadays.

With the retrospective show coming up, how have the preparations been going?
We’ve had two band rehearsals already and those went really well. Today we are going to a TV program in Amsterdam, so today we have no rehearsal, but tomorrow we start rehearsals with the choir, and by Saturday we should be completely ready for the show [laughs].

You’re also going to be broadcasting the show online. It’s such a pivotal moment in Epica’s history and fans around the world have been asking if it’s going to be recorded for a live DVD. Is it?
I hope so, but we chose not to promise anything because the last time we promised a DVD it didn’t happen because the record company went bankrupt. We shot a DVD, there was a lot of people at the show and it was great, then we couldn’t use the material which was really disappointing. Another time we wanted to make a DVD and it didn’t happen again, so this time we agreed that we’re not going to mention any DVD. We’re going to record it with HD cameras and if it’s possible to use this material, and of course we really hope it is, then we will release a DVD. But we don’t want to promise anything and not be able to deliver.

Then once that’s done you’re heading down to Australia! Will the shows here continue with the tenth anniversary theme? Obviously without the same production scale, but will we be hearing older songs and rarities from the Epica back catalogue?
Yeah, we always think it’s very important to have songs from the older albums as well. When I go to a concert I also like to hear the old songs because often the old songs are the ones that are most dear to you because you listened to them when you were young. We will never keep old songs out of our setlist. Even though we’ve played them already so many times it never gets boring because you feel the energy of the crowd and the energy’s always different. A song is never the same twice because of the energy of the crowd and a diverse setlist is best. We always try to fit in some songs that we didn’t do on the tour before, so we keep it interesting for ourselves and for the fans who’ve seen us more than once. We always try to have some surprises, but obviously it’s not possible to have a set that’s only surprises because you have to please as many people as possible. Our fans want to hear certain songs for sure, but there are some songs you just cannot skip.

Well thank you so much for your time Mark, if there’s anything you want to say to the Australian fans, go go for it.
[Laughs] My last words are: finally we’re coming to Australia for the first time. Finally we can experience what the Australian fans have been telling us already for many years, that we should come over because the crowds are really fantastic. I believe it so you guys have to be fantastic, because I have really high expectations about the audience. Even though I’ve never been there myself I’ve heard really good stories from Floor from Alter Forever and now Nightwish. She was there recently and she said it was really amazing for her, so now I really cannot wait anymore. Let’s see if it’s all true, because I cannot wait to experience it myself.

Catch the Dutch symphonic metallers at a show near you when they pass through our fine country!

Epica Tour Dates

Wed Apr 17th – The Hi-Fi, Brisbane (18+)
with Gorefield
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Fri Apr 19th – The Metro, Sydney (AA)
with Metal
Tickets: ticketek.com.au

Sun Apr 21st – Billboard The Venue, Melbourne (18+)
with Eyefear
Tickets: metropolistouring.com

Tue Apr 23rd – The Capitol, Perth (18+)
with Voyager
Tickets: metropolistouring.com

Some might say it’s not easy saving rock’n’roll. Others say it never really needed saving at all, but it’s all in a day’s work for The Gaslight Anthem. This intrepid troupe of sincere songwriters have been enrapturing audiences the world over since their arrival on the scene six years ago. Fast forward to 2013 and their latest release Handwritten now stands out as a rock masterpiece of the new age. We caught up with guitarist and lead crooner Brian Fallon to get the lowdown on the band’s upcoming Australian tour and whether or not they’re still punk.
By Daniel Furnari.

The last time The Gaslight Anthem came to Australia was for Soundwave 2011. What was it like playing a festival that’s very “metal” when your band has much more of a rock’n’roll vibe?
It’s weird sometimes, it’s all dependent on the audience though. You know, if they’re open to something different, which most people are nowadays… but sometimes they’re not, and it’s a little weird. If they’re open to it, then it’s not so bad, and it can be okay.

Can you tell us about some of the best and worst experiences of that tour?
A lot of the festival tours, the best parts are hanging out with the other bands that you’re friends with. We were with the Social Distortion and H20 guys a lot. But it’s also whoever you meet along the way. You’re all doing the same thing, you’re on the same path, you take the same flights, and you get to know each other which is really cool. The worst experiences though… there were some really early flights, and I really hate those. This is gonna sound ridiculous, but I get paranoid. You’re done with the show and then you go straight back to the hotel room or wherever you’re staying, and then you get up really early and you get straight on a plane to go to another show, and that’s a great way to really mess up your voice. So for me there’s this lingering panic of, “What’s gonna happen if I can’t sing tomorrow?” and that freaks me out a little. Guitar players and drummers worry about their hands, I worry about my voice. I’m not sure why, cos I’ve never really had a problem, but at the same time you know that everybody’s relying on you.

The size of the venues you’ll be playing on the upcoming Aussie tour is a strong indication of the growth of your fanbase here since your last visit. How does it feel to see your music continuing to reach so many more people on the other side of the globe?
It’s so cool, because it’s the kind of the thing you can never really get your head around. How did somebody figure out about our band, and then go in the store and buy it on the opposite side of the world? It’s really weird how you can write a song in your bedroom and then somebody on the other side of the world likes it enough that they buy it and they actually come to see you play. It’s so bizarre.

What are you planning to get up to in your down-time while you’re here?
I like surfing, so I might try and catch a bit of time for surfing, ‘cos I learned that in Australia in Byron Bay. I think the food is really good too, it’s pretty similar to our food so that’s why I really like it, because every time we travel, there’s this period of adjustment, of not feeling too good for a few days. Even in Europe where I go all the time, the food is so thick that you end up feeling like you weigh an extra hundred pounds.

Your live performances are a little different now that you’ve begun bringing Ian Perkins from your side project The Horrible Crowes on the road with you as a third guitarist. What does this add to your shows?
Well, it sounds better! [Laughs] Now it’s not so much just me and Alex [Rosamilia, guitar] going for broke. We have another guy to hold things down and play the other parts on the record that we haven’t been able to do live before. The cool thing with Ian is that, when he started playing with us about a year ago, he was able to write his own parts and even helped us out with that in the studio. Before that, It would always seem that I would play my parts and then have to double them or write another part over the top to thicken it up, and I would be asking myself, “Why am I doing this?” and Alex basically refuses to play chords, so Ian came in and really added something to it. Plus, it’s another guy that we can vibe with on stage.

Many have called your new record Handwritten your best release yet. What do you think separates this one from your previous records?
I definitely think having Brendan O’Brien there as a producer separated it for sure, because he took the elements that we were going for and focused them. I was worried about topping our previous releases for a while; you don’t want something that’s in your past to be your best effort, nobody wants to think that they’ve done their best work already, even if it’s true.

Are there any particular moments on the record that you listen back to now and see that they came about as a result of working with Brendan?
Definitely. I think there’s probably one in every song. I haven’t really listened to the record in about a year, but when I hear one of the songs pop up on the radio I always think about the parts and how we recorded them, I don’t just listen to the song as a whole. I’m always reminded of those moments that wouldn’t have been there if Brendan hadn’t said something. His influence is all over it. For example, in the song “Keepsake”, the whole bridge was an entirely different thing before, and Brendan pretty much said, “I don’t like that bridge, why don’t we write something that sounds like it belongs in the song?”. We had this artsy bridge that sounded like a different song entirely, so every time I hear that song I remember that conversation and I remember having to come up with something on the spot. I’m glad he said that though ‘cos the other version was kind of weird!

For Handwritten you actually left your old label SideOneDummy and signed to Mercury Records, which was a big career move for the band. What differences have you noticed since moving from an indie label to a major label?
Well, you don’t have to try so hard to get things done! We used to have to beg, borrow and steal to get certain things done a lot of the time. With the radio and TV there always seems to be a priority list of artists, and if you don’t have enough pull sometimes it’s really difficult to do that. It’s a struggle with indie labels, they really try but sometimes for all their efforts they don’t get anywhere. Not all the time though, I mean sometimes they get everywhere! But you sometimes see guys work really hard and it doesn’t go through and that sucks for everyone. This time it just coasted right through, which is really different for us, because it used to be really difficult.

In your early years you were known as a punk rock band but now your music seems to be associated more with terms like “rock’n’roll” – when a comparison between your early work and your new work sounds very much like the same band. What do you think changed the public’s perception of your musical style?
I think it was the media actually, the way we were presented by them. I think the way people wrote about us, and the influences they compared us to, that’s what changed how people perceived the band. No one in a major music magazine is gonna care about Fugazi or some punk band that the majority of people have never heard of yet was directly influential on our band. Instead they compare us to the Tom Pettys and the Bruce Springsteens of the world, because that’s easier to digest. But it was a weird shift; it just kind of changed one day. In the beginning there were a lot of comparisons to Against Me!, but that just kind of disappeared one day. Nobody mentions Hot Water Music anymore, but we wouldn’t be a band without them or The Bouncing Souls… Yet there probably would still be a Gaslight Anthem if we’d never heard The Rolling Stones, not meaning any disrespect to them obviously. But the music we grew up on was punk rock music.

Have there been any comparisons that you’ve felt were a real compliment?
I read something the other day when someone sent us a link to a Pearl Jam forum and someone had said that the sincerity of the band reminded them of Pearl Jam. Not the sound, just the fact that it seemed so heartfelt. I thought it was really nice that someone would say that because I consider them to be one of the most heartfelt bands. But comparisons do get annoying sometimes, you know, sometimes we’ll read someone saying, “Oh, it’s just like this, mixed with that”, and I’m just like “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” [Laughs]

Speaking of Pearl Jam, what was it like having Eddie Vedder perform on stage with you last year in Florida?
Oh man it was a trip! We weren’t sure what was going on all day. There were rumours that he might show up, but we didn’t know. There was no preparation, we were just wondering if we would show up. So I kept watching the side of the stage to see if he was there, and I would see guys that looked kind of like him and I’d get excited! But I’d never met him properly before so I didn’t know what to expect, but then there he was, this little short guy about my height with a beard standing sidestage. We knew it had to be him, so we just went for it. Afterwards we got to hang out with him which was great. It’s funny though, that kind of stuff really does just happen, people just show up. It’s one of the mysteries of those rock’n'roll deities, they just appear like that!

One last thing before we go, NME Magazine wrote an article last year entitled “Why The Gaslight Anthem Are The Saviours of American Rock’n’Roll”. Do you feel that there are certain pressures or expectations that come with a title like that?
No, that stuff’s horseshit man! [Laughs] No one really pays attention to that kind of stuff in the band, we’re all like “whatever”. I dunno, it just seems a little ridiculous!

The Gaslight Anthem’s Australian tour kicks off in May – get yourself to a show if you know what’s good for you!

The Gaslight Anthem Tour Dates

Fri May 10th – The Tivoli, Brisbane (18+) – SOLD OUT
Tickets: ticketek.com.au

Sun May 12th – Enmore Theatre, Sydney (AA)
Tickets: ticketek.com.au

Tue May 14th – The Palace, Melbourne (18+)
Tickets: ticketek.com.au

Wed May 15th – The Palace, Melbourne (18+) – SOLD OUT
Tickets: ticketek.com.au

Fri May 17th – HQ, Adelaide (18+)
Tickets: oztix.com.au

Sun May 19th – Metro City, Perth (18+)
Tickets: oztix.com.au

BLUNT is branching out and going global! To continue to give you guys the utmost cream of the crop when it comes to coverage, we had our UK chums Emily Bielby and Jake Owens write us some words and snap us some shots from the recent Thy Art Is Murder show at The Barfly in London. These deathcore louts from Sydney sure look like they showed ‘em how it’s done. Enjoy!

Thy Art Is Murder
The Barfly, London 24/02/2013
Review: Emily Bielby | Photos: Jake Owens

Walking into The Barfly, on what could only be one of the coldest Sundays to note, we didn’t expect a huge crowd, and although there wasn’t a queue of screaming fans lined up outside, we could sense the anticipation almost immediately.
Having already caught up with the guys after sound check, we were slightly apprehensive of their set due to vocalist CJ McMahon being almost unable to talk from intolerance to the cold British weather. We actually feared that he wouldn’t be making an appearance on stage that evening, but having a delayed start they appeared ready and raring to take The Barfly by storm.
They kicked things off with a track called “Reign Of Darkness” with MacMahon launching into a ferocious roar with aggression tailing off each vocal. the palpitated riffs and astounding rhythm section kept things adventurous as they went on to play “Soldiers Of Immortality”. There was a sizable crowd and with their first note, a mosh pit had erupted with a few over-enthusiastic members causing chaos at the front, but it wasn’t as packed out as we thought it would be.
The band kept things tight and nothing was missed as they dished up two more ferocious offerings to ensure a severe limitation of head movement for many punters in the morning.
Guitarists Andy Marsh and Tom Brown delivered a fine set of somewhat infectious riffs while drummer Lee Stanton attacked his kit like his life depended on it. Bass lines were kept heavy as MacMahon spat out demands to the crowd to form more circle pits and couldn’t help but join in the madness himself as he grabbed hold of the nearest thing to swing himself off. The crowd interaction was kept to a minimum but it was enough to work them up into a chaotic state.
Their set drew to an end, and although it was a short set of only four tracks, full respect went out to both the band and MacMahon. If his voice wasn’t already broken, it definitely was after their set tonight.