The Punk Archive: So are you excited to be back?
Harry: Yeah, it’s been a long time man, we've not played shows for a while. We did our first show last night in Bridgend which was sold out, which we're stoked about. All the other ones we're doing are sold out, except the London…which will sell out, won't it boys!
Paul: Better had…!
The Punk Archive: The recent set of shows you've announced are quite small and intimate shows. Why did you decide to go with that approach?
Kevin: We feel like we've just been doing the same thing for years now man. We recorded Monster and put it out in Summer 2012, so by the time the new record comes out we'll have been doing it for two years. I think people wanted to see the band in a different setting and take a different vibe on it in general. So, instead of going back and playing the same venues we did last time around, we thought we'd scale it right down and try to give people a new experience…so that's exactly what we've been doing. If last night's anything to go by then it's really paid off for us, because last night was amazing, man, like a really really good show.
Paul: We didn't want to try any new material out in a cavernous venue, as well, so if it went down badly, hardly anybody will have seen it… No, as Harry said last night was our first show for a while and it was good to see the new material we showcased going down so well.
The Punk Archive: So what's next? You've got a new album out soon…
Harry: Yeah, the whole album is written, we're just recording it in April. Then we've got Sonisphere Festival, which should be fun. We're looking to do a big support tour and then maybe another headline tour. We're talking to a few bands. We're not going to not do anything.
The Punk Archive: Can you give us any preview into what that album's sounding like?
Kevin: Bit darker, as Harry would say. A bit more mature, but still with the Yashin ‘thing’.
Harry: It's just Yashin evolved. It's evolved again how we needed it to evolve.
Kevin: We spent a long time on this album, man. We worked with six different producers demoing just to get the sound that we want. We're very proud of this stuff that we've put pen to paper on so far…
Paul: There's been a few errors…
Kevin: Yeah definitely, but we had to get it right.
Paul: Our manager said to us that this was a big album for us, so instead of just rushing things, take some time…
Kevin: In hindsight, it's definitely going to pay off. Definitely.
The Punk Archive: Did you have that perfect view of what you wanted, or have you just naturally realised as you hit it…?
Harry: I think this is the hardest we've ever pushed ourselves to write an album, by far. The way that we got told to look at it was that we needed to release our best stuff, and if we didn't, we'd be letting ourselves down. It's a really important album for us: this is the album that's going to make Yashin either go up, or just go down to the bottom, with no point doing it any more. We're just at that awkward point. For us, we've written the best we can write at this time in our lives. We're all stoked with it, and happy with every part of it.
Kevin: The beauty of our demoing process is looking at the songs retrospectively, as opposed to just going in and recording it first time. It's been good to have that reflective process going on, coming away and looking at the song, analysing it, wondering what could be better with it, then fixing it. We're at the stage now where the songs are as good as they can be before recording them. Whatever happens after that is down to the fates, man!
The Punk Archive: Fingers crossed! So who comes up with the ideas for the videos?
Harry: We have initial ideas, but we've been working with a company called Sitcom Soldiers for a long time, and they always deliver, they're always really good with their ideas, we're always really happy with the videos they make. We have the initial ideas, and with the lyrics it's quite obvious what the video could have been about, but yeah, they brought it to the table, and we were like “let's shoot it!”
Kevin: The original idea was to have Harry essentially dragging himself along the ground and then bury himself. We thought it was quite clichéd, though, and came up with the idea of the band burying Harry but he's not actually dead… then the wings and shit at the end, he's a demon, which was really really cool.
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