The Punk Archive: Are you excited to be playing today?
Josh: Yeah, definitely. We're quite late on as well, so should be pissed…
The Punk Archive: Do you play better when you're pissed?
Josh: I didn't mean us, I meant everyone watching us. They tend to listen better pissed! Mosh better!
The Punk Archive: So you've just come back from Australia… I mean, wow.
Tim: I know, man, we didn't want to be back here. Even today [a bright sunny day], it's cold. It's an incredible country. It was incredible, such a good experience.
The Punk Archive: For a band who, you know, just a group of guys from Milton Keynes, it must have really blown your minds…
Tim: You put it really well, I never really thought of it like that….
The Punk Archive: (Laughing) sorry, I didn't mean it to be condescending at all!
Tim: No, no you're not at all! You're absolutely right!
Josh: The funny thing was that Tesseract, our friends from Milton Keynes, were playing two bands after us, so every day, we would see them. In Australia.
Tim: It's kinda weird going to the other side of the planet and seeing someone you see regularly anyway!
The Punk Archive: So what were the responses like to you over there?
Tim: It was sick. I couldn't have imagined it to be anything like it was going to be. 11.30 on the dot, everyone was there, and the whole room was packed. Well, I say room…
Josh: Some were hangars, or warehouses and things. A couple of thousand were there at 11.30 every day…
Tim: Screaming the lyrics, pits, circle pits, crowd surfers… it felt like we were at home. It's funny, going all that way and still being so well received…
The Punk Archive: So where do you go from here? Obviously that was such a massive tour, can you top it?
Tim: In the months coming up, we've got a tour with Korn…
Josh:…Which again, is another ridiculous…
Tim: Not as good a location, but touring with Korn…
Josh: And then, main stage at Reading and Leeds.
The Punk Archive: So how long have you guys been a band now?
Tim: Two years.
The Punk Archive: And you've probably begun to break through since Warped Tour…?
Tim: Before that I'd say. I think we were in our prime around Warped Tour. To be honest, it was as soon as we started playing our first shows.
Josh: The whole thing's been a rush. Every single week, it's like “oh, that was the best thing ever”, but then the next week is like, “no, that was the best thing ever”. It's been happening every week over the last two years.
The Punk Archive: So how would you describe your live show?
Josh: We try and bring a lot of energy.
Tim: We try, even when we're tired. It's hard for us not to be energetic, because we still get into it so much. It's still not a job for us, it's still a hobbie, and still something we get up and try and do every day.
Josh: Even if you're feeling rough, you hear the intro coming in and that's it…
Tim: There's been plenty of times we've been hanging, not knowing how we were going to do it…then the intro comes in! Afterwards, it's like “how did we do that?!” No matter how fucked you are, or what's wrong with you, for that half an hour or forty-five minutes, you smash it. Maybe not to the extent you'd like to…
Josh: I think some of my best shows have been on massive hangovers! I find that maybe you try a little bit harder!
The Punk Archive: It must have been harder to play in Australia with the heat?
Josh: It was hot, really really hot. I was pretty thankful we had covers for most of it.
Tim: I'm just hot blooded anyway, so I'm always hot. To go onstage already hot, then get twice, if not three times as hot…!
The Punk Archive: I think one of the things that’s really struck me about you guys is how plugged into your local scene you still are, you still care about your local venues and so on. I saw there was one at risk of being shut down…?
Tim: They're going to be really happy with this, it's the third time we've been asked this in an interview!
Josh: Keep Kiln Farm alive!
The Punk Archive: It is brilliant that you guys are still interested in that, though.
Josh: Well, yeah. Otherwise we've have nowhere to go on Friday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights!
Tim: I was going to say: it's where we hang out. Even though a lot of people would put you on a pedestal when you're in a bigger band, doing lots of successful things, we still like chilling out at home. We still like going to see everyone. Without the local scene, I don't think a band would even exist. Without a local scene, who would be in a band? No-one, because there's no reason to be in a band.
Josh: We were lucky. We had The Pits, which was a wicked venue, and we had bands like Capdown. We all grew up from there.
The Punk Archive: You're still normal guys, aren't you: it's just you're in a band.
Tim: Yeah, people don't expect that. We've still got our feet on the ground.
Josh: We love being in a band, we love meeting other bands, and we'll always try and represent other bands we play with and hang out with.
The Punk Archive: It's refreshing to hear. Some of the really big bands sometimes don't seem to have time for that, they seem a little cold? How are you going to really manage to keep your feet planted?
Tim: For me, there's one person who does that, and it's J. His enthusiasm and energy for anything that we do just keeps me going. We're all excitable, and we enjoy what we do, but he just puts it into perspective. He feels he's been given such a massive chance: he's not from this scene, but he's just taken it.
]
The Punk Archive: The mix of the rap/grime style with the rock/metal isn't a new thing, but you're doing it well…Are you going to continue down that road?
Tim: I think if anything it's just going to get more diverse. With the new stuff we're working on, it's going in all different directions, and we're kinda adding to the plate instead of taking stuff off. You can probably expect a lot more vocal styles and more: more extreme Hacktivist in every way. We started the band wanting to do something different, striving to do something different, wanting people to say they've never fucking heard that before.
No comments:
Post a Comment