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Ahead of the release of their first album in over a decade, ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons’, the indie icons talk to NME about touring with Arctic Monkeys, their mysterious missing mentor, and the importance of keeping rock young and dumb
The post The Hives: “There’s nothing more depressing than adult rock music” appeared first on NME.
“We throw away a lot of stuff that probably would be kind of commercially successful, because we think it doesn’t feel right,” says The Hives‘ Pelle Almqvist with the same cavalier bravado that you see from him on stage. “We give it to other people like, ‘This song has too much of a chorus, fuck that! Throw away all your hits and then see how fucking good your record is!”
His fellow punk-as-fuck bandmate guitarist Nicholaus Arson agrees: “We’re better than that! That’s how you stay a perpetual teenager. You’ve gotta make bad decisions all the time!”
We meet the Swedish garage rock veterans in their dressing room at London’s Emirates Stadium. They’re hours away from opening for Arctic Monkeys on their huge stadium tour for ‘The Car‘, and it’s just a couple of days since we saw them tear the roof off the much more humble 600-capacity The Garage in Islington – their first return to the venue in 22 years. “It was a very sweaty affair, as they tend to be,” recalls Almqvist. “It’s too much firepower for a venue that small. It’s almost like the core nuclear reactor is over-heating.”
Still, as you may have witnessed if you were among the ma-hoo-sive crowd they pulled to The Other Stage at Glastonbury 2023, garage rock on a stadium scale is The Hives’ grand one-size-fits-all approach to playing. “It’s the only thing we know how to do,” says the frontman with his world-renowned humility. “Luckily, it’s a pretty good thing to know. This tour is oscillating wildly between 70,000 people and 700. It’s a particular set of circumstances, but luckily we’re pretty good at both.”
The ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’ hitmakers are certainly on fire at the moment, and they’ve plenty of reason to be. Their shows are explosive, there’s a renewed hunger for the band, and they’re about to drop their first album in 11 years with ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons‘ (due August 11) – named in honour of the loss of their (yes, fictitious) founder and mentor who passed in mysterious circumstances.
We sat down with The Hives to get to the bottom of this, as well as talk about inspiring the Monkeys and keeping the rock’n’roll flame alive.
Pelle Almqvist: “They told us that the first week or month that they started the band, they saw The Hives and The Strokes and that was the thing that really started it off for them. We toured with them in South America about 10 years ago and had a great time, so I’m really happy they wanted us back. It’s a really great tour to be on; it’s really fun. I think Arctic Monkeys are fucking amazing. They’re the only good really popular band – and that’s not easy to do.”
Pelle: “I guess there’s a certain type of person that would only go to things in a very big place. That’s part of the experience; they maybe don’t like The Rolling Stones that much but they go and see the show because it’s a spectacle with a lot of people. AC/DC, hats off, they’re the world’s best band and they’re a stadium band.
“It’s just about being massively popular and then you figure it out. It’s hard to start a stadium band – you have to gradually become one.”
Pelle: “There’s a lot of money in it if you have a show that’s minimal.”
Nicholaus Arson: “The pay-to-play stadium circuit… that’s pretty big.”
Pelle: “Yeah, that’s expensive – just rent it and make it just guestlist.”
Nicholaus: “What we’re looking at here at these shows is just fans. They’re music fans. We toured with AC/DC, and that’s almost three generations [of fans] by now.”
Pelle: “It’s true for all bands like AC/DC or Iron Maiden – when you’ve been around for a while you have to pick up youngsters. We had a lot of bands that we liked or were friends with and they would never get new fans. It would just be the same ones with a few dropped off and the ones who remained cared a little bit less.”
Nicholaus: “Your band and music dies along with your fans. A band that attracts new fans will live on forever. You gotta have some kind of regrowth. The shows and the crowds are always re-energised by younger fans. If we’re projecting energy, they’ll react to that.”
Pelle: “There are a lot of teenage girls, which are great for a rock crowd because they’re the loudest thing in the world – 50,000 teenage girls is such a loud sound.”
Nicholaus: “It’s only rivalled by Formula One racing, which is super fucking loud.”
Pelle: “We notice, but then stuff just happens around us. It’s cool, I guess! You always hear, ‘Rock is back, rock is dead, rock is this, rock is that’. It’s funny that it’s now considered a ‘historical event’ and all that shit. Meet Me In The Bathroom is basically a history book about shit I did when I was an adult! I think that’s cool, and it was cool when it happened.
“For us in the middle of it, it was hard to realise how cool it was until after the fact. You have to remember how fucking terrible it was before that.”
Nicholaus: “We never look back or reminisce about anything, really. We once tried to celebrate our 10th anniversary but we missed it by a year. That’s the only time we tried to look back, otherwise we’ve been constantly moving forwards – or at least trying to make new records, even though it’s been a lame-ass situation over the last 10 years or so.”
Pelle: “That’s where you’re right. That stuff, the ‘garage rock revival’ thing, was not the start for us. We’d been around and played with hardcore bands, we played with indie-pop bands, we’d play anything just to get a show. What we were doing was separate to all of it, then something happened and we were like, ‘This stuff’s actually good’ – The Strokes, The White Stripes, all of it. It was cool but for us it already existed before it got popular.”
Pelle: “Thank you very much – that’s the nicest thing the NME has ever said about us!”
Nicholaus: “That’s gotta be a five out of five!”
Pelle: “Maybe a greatest hits by a really shitty band! Even if they’re all shit, then at least they’re getting better! But thank you, maybe that’s why this one took us 10 years…”
Pelle: “Not enough! Flailing wildly at each other, trying to make something happen. And missing Randy Fitzsimmons, and therefore missing songs. You can’t make a greatest hits without the songs. We’ve been playing fucking phenomenally, but there’s nothing to play!”
Nicholaus: “Since we couldn’t make records, we were still touring to a fair extent so we could pretend we were busy doing something important, which I guess we were, but not as important as making new records. That’s crucial. If you’re going to feel like you’re a band who is doing shit, you’ve gotta make records.”
Pelle: “It didn’t feel good. We weren’t fans of the situation. If you’re a fan of The Hives and you were angry at us, we were also angry! We hope it never happens again.”
Pelle: “It was about finding the songs. When we got the songs through this mess of Randy Fitzsimmons dying and decided on what to do, it just four or five weeks of studio time and then a year of finishing it.”
Nicholaus: “It was pretty quick to the point where it was almost surreal and we were like, ‘This is actually becoming a record’. The pieces fell into place.”
Pelle: “Back to the ‘greatest hits’ thing; we’ve always been of the opinion that there’s a lot of fucking great rock music out there. In order to make a record to make sense then you have to add to that. It’s hard to just jam and do something with your left hand and then think that it’s fit for public consumption.”
Pelle: “Well don’t put it out! Just listen to your own record if it’s so fucking fun!”
Nicholaus: “For us, you have to do it to a point where you like it. If you’re trying to do something that will please other people then it’ll be super hard otherwise.”
Pelle: “Sometimes it’s not a good time making something that sounds like a good time. Our thing isn’t the original rock’n’roll in that style of music, but it’s that feeling: just making your brain explode with endorphins.”
Nicholaus: “Like being electrocuted, it’s supposed to be a physical reaction. It’s not tears of sadness.”
Pelle: “It’s not music that’s about how we are as people or me baring my soul about my divorce. Some people make art to understand themselves better, but the thing about The Hives is that we think this music needs to exist. It’s functional: partying, getting people to scream and jump up and down at shows, that endorphin rush is out life’s purpose.”
Pelle: “Yes, I think it should be. There’s nothing more depressing than adult rock music. ‘Oh great! You took away the one thing about it that was fun! Now it’s rock without energy!’ I really like Dire Straits, that’s my image of an adult rock situation, but I don’t think that’s what we should be doing.”
Nicholaus: “There has to be some bad choices in there. It has to be a kid trying to figure shit out, trying to have fun, or just reacting to stuff.”
Pelle: “A lot of energy but no direction – that’s rock’n’roll!”
Nicholaus: “Just The Hives’ energy. Whenever we play these songs, I feel like we’re industry leaders in the field. Fast-paced, energetic, rock’n’roll and punk. It’s a good feeling, and from having been away for so long, it was what we ended up doing from sheer excitement. You want to come back with a bang, you don’t want to come back with ‘adult rock’.”
Pelle: “Imagine ‘The Hives have been away from 10 years and now they’ve matured’. It was important to go the opposite way. This has to be fucking stupid and childish, even worse than we’ve been before! The punk songs on this album are almost worse than our first record. ‘The Bomb’ and ‘Trapdoor Solution’ are almost like us reaching the ceiling of it.
“‘What Did I Ever Do To You’ was almost born out of the frustration of not making a Hives album. We bought this thing out of The Yellow Pages which was a prototype this guy made of an organ connected to a guitar connected to a vocal mic. It was a one-man band contraption and fucking ridiculous. The patent came with it, and that song back out trying to make some ‘other’ kind of music.”
Nicholaus: “Whenever we wrote something on that and it sounded cool, we thought it sounded like a pop-py version of the band Sucide. Whether it’s The Stooges, Kraftwerk or early hip-hop, what it has in common is a beat and someone singing over the top of it for two or three minutes.”
Pelle: “A lot of the music we like is very minimalist, and that’s so hard to do. Ever line has to be correct for it to work.”
Nicholaus: “It’s more than a shadow, he was like the core of our band. He was crucial to us even meeting each other in the first place. Some people might say ‘mentor’, and I guess that’s true as well, but he was also just another member of the band, really.”
Pelle: “And one with very, very clear opinions, which was good. Having someone with a producer mentality was helpful.”
Nicholaus: “And he wrote all the songs, which was very important.”
Nicholaus: “We don’t know the circumstances, we just know that he was gone. We saw an obituary for him, but we don’t even know if he’s dead or not. We know that there was a grave, we dug up the grave and he was not in it. Instead there were tapes and suits. I don’t want to call it a sign of life, but it’s definitely someone faking their own death. Someone has a good sense of humour, apart from the fact that he might be dead! If it’s true, it’s fucking sad, but at this point it feels pretty decent.”
Pelle: “Not wait another 10 years.”
Nicholaus: “You never know. Every Hives record almost feels like the last we’re going to make, just because so much work goes into it. Then we just go off touring like crazy, but that’s the only way we know how to do it.”
Pelle: “We’re both still here! I was swinging the mic, then Nicholaus stepped on the cable. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not. As a total experience, I would say that it’s positive. People seem to love the fact that I bled a little. I’ll gladly give them that if it helps. Way worse things have happened.”
Pelle: “I once fell off stage in Switzerland, passed out, then finished the show. It gives you a chance to show that you don’t give a fuck and nothing can stop you. I actually appreciate the challenge. Getting hurt on stage is like, ‘This is my opportunity to not give a fucking fuck about it and just do it anyway’.”
Nicholaus: “That’s what makes a rock band real to you anyway. If Dave Grohl falls off stage and comes back and finishes the show with a broken leg or if people are throwing beers and they keep playing, that’s what rock bands should be doing.”
Pelle: “I can think of worse things. I’ve always thought that it’s a question of making one perfect album and then split up or just keep going forever. Those are the only two dignified ways. You’re either Sex Pistols or The Rolling Stones.”
Nicholaus: “We don’t want to be a novelty act going around playing our old records. You wanna make great records which are to par with what you’ve put out in the par. You want to beat the five out of fives.”
The Hives release ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons’ on August 11, before a 2024 UK and Ireland tour. Visit here for tickets and more information.
The post The Hives: “There’s nothing more depressing than adult rock music” appeared first on NME.
Ahead of the release of their first album in over a decade, ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons’, the indie icons talk to NME about touring with Arctic Monkeys, their mysterious missing mentor, and the importance of keeping rock young and dumb
The post The Hives: “There’s nothing more depressing than adult rock music” appeared first on NME.
“We throw away a lot of stuff that probably would be kind of commercially successful, because we think it doesn’t feel right,” says The Hives‘ Pelle Almqvist with the same cavalier bravado that you see from him on stage. “We give it to other people like, ‘This song has too much of a chorus, fuck that! Throw away all your hits and then see how fucking good your record is!”
His fellow punk-as-fuck bandmate guitarist Nicholaus Arson agrees: “We’re better than that! That’s how you stay a perpetual teenager. You’ve gotta make bad decisions all the time!”
We meet the Swedish garage rock veterans in their dressing room at London’s Emirates Stadium. They’re hours away from opening for Arctic Monkeys on their huge stadium tour for ‘The Car‘, and it’s just a couple of days since we saw them tear the roof off the much more humble 600-capacity The Garage in Islington – their first return to the venue in 22 years. “It was a very sweaty affair, as they tend to be,” recalls Almqvist. “It’s too much firepower for a venue that small. It’s almost like the core nuclear reactor is over-heating.”
Still, as you may have witnessed if you were among the ma-hoo-sive crowd they pulled to The Other Stage at Glastonbury 2023, garage rock on a stadium scale is The Hives’ grand one-size-fits-all approach to playing. “It’s the only thing we know how to do,” says the frontman with his world-renowned humility. “Luckily, it’s a pretty good thing to know. This tour is oscillating wildly between 70,000 people and 700. It’s a particular set of circumstances, but luckily we’re pretty good at both.”
The ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’ hitmakers are certainly on fire at the moment, and they’ve plenty of reason to be. Their shows are explosive, there’s a renewed hunger for the band, and they’re about to drop their first album in 11 years with ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons‘ (due August 11) – named in honour of the loss of their (yes, fictitious) founder and mentor who passed in mysterious circumstances.
We sat down with The Hives to get to the bottom of this, as well as talk about inspiring the Monkeys and keeping the rock’n’roll flame alive.
Pelle Almqvist: “They told us that the first week or month that they started the band, they saw The Hives and The Strokes and that was the thing that really started it off for them. We toured with them in South America about 10 years ago and had a great time, so I’m really happy they wanted us back. It’s a really great tour to be on; it’s really fun. I think Arctic Monkeys are fucking amazing. They’re the only good really popular band – and that’s not easy to do.”
Pelle: “I guess there’s a certain type of person that would only go to things in a very big place. That’s part of the experience; they maybe don’t like The Rolling Stones that much but they go and see the show because it’s a spectacle with a lot of people. AC/DC, hats off, they’re the world’s best band and they’re a stadium band.
“It’s just about being massively popular and then you figure it out. It’s hard to start a stadium band – you have to gradually become one.”
Pelle: “There’s a lot of money in it if you have a show that’s minimal.”
Nicholaus Arson: “The pay-to-play stadium circuit… that’s pretty big.”
Pelle: “Yeah, that’s expensive – just rent it and make it just guestlist.”
Nicholaus: “What we’re looking at here at these shows is just fans. They’re music fans. We toured with AC/DC, and that’s almost three generations [of fans] by now.”
Pelle: “It’s true for all bands like AC/DC or Iron Maiden – when you’ve been around for a while you have to pick up youngsters. We had a lot of bands that we liked or were friends with and they would never get new fans. It would just be the same ones with a few dropped off and the ones who remained cared a little bit less.”
Nicholaus: “Your band and music dies along with your fans. A band that attracts new fans will live on forever. You gotta have some kind of regrowth. The shows and the crowds are always re-energised by younger fans. If we’re projecting energy, they’ll react to that.”
Pelle: “There are a lot of teenage girls, which are great for a rock crowd because they’re the loudest thing in the world – 50,000 teenage girls is such a loud sound.”
Nicholaus: “It’s only rivalled by Formula One racing, which is super fucking loud.”
Pelle: “We notice, but then stuff just happens around us. It’s cool, I guess! You always hear, ‘Rock is back, rock is dead, rock is this, rock is that’. It’s funny that it’s now considered a ‘historical event’ and all that shit. Meet Me In The Bathroom is basically a history book about shit I did when I was an adult! I think that’s cool, and it was cool when it happened.
“For us in the middle of it, it was hard to realise how cool it was until after the fact. You have to remember how fucking terrible it was before that.”
Nicholaus: “We never look back or reminisce about anything, really. We once tried to celebrate our 10th anniversary but we missed it by a year. That’s the only time we tried to look back, otherwise we’ve been constantly moving forwards – or at least trying to make new records, even though it’s been a lame-ass situation over the last 10 years or so.”
Pelle: “That’s where you’re right. That stuff, the ‘garage rock revival’ thing, was not the start for us. We’d been around and played with hardcore bands, we played with indie-pop bands, we’d play anything just to get a show. What we were doing was separate to all of it, then something happened and we were like, ‘This stuff’s actually good’ – The Strokes, The White Stripes, all of it. It was cool but for us it already existed before it got popular.”
Pelle: “Thank you very much – that’s the nicest thing the NME has ever said about us!”
Nicholaus: “That’s gotta be a five out of five!”
Pelle: “Maybe a greatest hits by a really shitty band! Even if they’re all shit, then at least they’re getting better! But thank you, maybe that’s why this one took us 10 years…”
Pelle: “Not enough! Flailing wildly at each other, trying to make something happen. And missing Randy Fitzsimmons, and therefore missing songs. You can’t make a greatest hits without the songs. We’ve been playing fucking phenomenally, but there’s nothing to play!”
Nicholaus: “Since we couldn’t make records, we were still touring to a fair extent so we could pretend we were busy doing something important, which I guess we were, but not as important as making new records. That’s crucial. If you’re going to feel like you’re a band who is doing shit, you’ve gotta make records.”
Pelle: “It didn’t feel good. We weren’t fans of the situation. If you’re a fan of The Hives and you were angry at us, we were also angry! We hope it never happens again.”
Pelle: “It was about finding the songs. When we got the songs through this mess of Randy Fitzsimmons dying and decided on what to do, it just four or five weeks of studio time and then a year of finishing it.”
Nicholaus: “It was pretty quick to the point where it was almost surreal and we were like, ‘This is actually becoming a record’. The pieces fell into place.”
Pelle: “Back to the ‘greatest hits’ thing; we’ve always been of the opinion that there’s a lot of fucking great rock music out there. In order to make a record to make sense then you have to add to that. It’s hard to just jam and do something with your left hand and then think that it’s fit for public consumption.”
Pelle: “Well don’t put it out! Just listen to your own record if it’s so fucking fun!”
Nicholaus: “For us, you have to do it to a point where you like it. If you’re trying to do something that will please other people then it’ll be super hard otherwise.”
Pelle: “Sometimes it’s not a good time making something that sounds like a good time. Our thing isn’t the original rock’n’roll in that style of music, but it’s that feeling: just making your brain explode with endorphins.”
Nicholaus: “Like being electrocuted, it’s supposed to be a physical reaction. It’s not tears of sadness.”
Pelle: “It’s not music that’s about how we are as people or me baring my soul about my divorce. Some people make art to understand themselves better, but the thing about The Hives is that we think this music needs to exist. It’s functional: partying, getting people to scream and jump up and down at shows, that endorphin rush is out life’s purpose.”
Pelle: “Yes, I think it should be. There’s nothing more depressing than adult rock music. ‘Oh great! You took away the one thing about it that was fun! Now it’s rock without energy!’ I really like Dire Straits, that’s my image of an adult rock situation, but I don’t think that’s what we should be doing.”
Nicholaus: “There has to be some bad choices in there. It has to be a kid trying to figure shit out, trying to have fun, or just reacting to stuff.”
Pelle: “A lot of energy but no direction – that’s rock’n’roll!”
Nicholaus: “Just The Hives’ energy. Whenever we play these songs, I feel like we’re industry leaders in the field. Fast-paced, energetic, rock’n’roll and punk. It’s a good feeling, and from having been away for so long, it was what we ended up doing from sheer excitement. You want to come back with a bang, you don’t want to come back with ‘adult rock’.”
Pelle: “Imagine ‘The Hives have been away from 10 years and now they’ve matured’. It was important to go the opposite way. This has to be fucking stupid and childish, even worse than we’ve been before! The punk songs on this album are almost worse than our first record. ‘The Bomb’ and ‘Trapdoor Solution’ are almost like us reaching the ceiling of it.
“‘What Did I Ever Do To You’ was almost born out of the frustration of not making a Hives album. We bought this thing out of The Yellow Pages which was a prototype this guy made of an organ connected to a guitar connected to a vocal mic. It was a one-man band contraption and fucking ridiculous. The patent came with it, and that song back out trying to make some ‘other’ kind of music.”
Nicholaus: “Whenever we wrote something on that and it sounded cool, we thought it sounded like a pop-py version of the band Sucide. Whether it’s The Stooges, Kraftwerk or early hip-hop, what it has in common is a beat and someone singing over the top of it for two or three minutes.”
Pelle: “A lot of the music we like is very minimalist, and that’s so hard to do. Ever line has to be correct for it to work.”
Nicholaus: “It’s more than a shadow, he was like the core of our band. He was crucial to us even meeting each other in the first place. Some people might say ‘mentor’, and I guess that’s true as well, but he was also just another member of the band, really.”
Pelle: “And one with very, very clear opinions, which was good. Having someone with a producer mentality was helpful.”
Nicholaus: “And he wrote all the songs, which was very important.”
Nicholaus: “We don’t know the circumstances, we just know that he was gone. We saw an obituary for him, but we don’t even know if he’s dead or not. We know that there was a grave, we dug up the grave and he was not in it. Instead there were tapes and suits. I don’t want to call it a sign of life, but it’s definitely someone faking their own death. Someone has a good sense of humour, apart from the fact that he might be dead! If it’s true, it’s fucking sad, but at this point it feels pretty decent.”
Pelle: “Not wait another 10 years.”
Nicholaus: “You never know. Every Hives record almost feels like the last we’re going to make, just because so much work goes into it. Then we just go off touring like crazy, but that’s the only way we know how to do it.”
Pelle: “We’re both still here! I was swinging the mic, then Nicholaus stepped on the cable. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not. As a total experience, I would say that it’s positive. People seem to love the fact that I bled a little. I’ll gladly give them that if it helps. Way worse things have happened.”
Pelle: “I once fell off stage in Switzerland, passed out, then finished the show. It gives you a chance to show that you don’t give a fuck and nothing can stop you. I actually appreciate the challenge. Getting hurt on stage is like, ‘This is my opportunity to not give a fucking fuck about it and just do it anyway’.”
Nicholaus: “That’s what makes a rock band real to you anyway. If Dave Grohl falls off stage and comes back and finishes the show with a broken leg or if people are throwing beers and they keep playing, that’s what rock bands should be doing.”
Pelle: “I can think of worse things. I’ve always thought that it’s a question of making one perfect album and then split up or just keep going forever. Those are the only two dignified ways. You’re either Sex Pistols or The Rolling Stones.”
Nicholaus: “We don’t want to be a novelty act going around playing our old records. You wanna make great records which are to par with what you’ve put out in the par. You want to beat the five out of fives.”
The Hives release ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons’ on August 11, before a 2024 UK and Ireland tour. Visit here for tickets and more information.
The post The Hives: “There’s nothing more depressing than adult rock music” appeared first on NME.
Brett Anderson and Mat Osman recall a host of their earliest musical memories
The post Suede talk NME through their ‘Firsts’ appeared first on NME.
Suede‘s career may span over three decades, but two of the band’s founding members Brett Anderson and Mat Osman still fondly recall their respective early forays into music.
Those early memories form the basis of the latest instalment in our Firsts video series, in which the Suede pair look back on a host of their musical first times during a sit-down at The Social in central London. Anderson, for instance, remembers falling in love with the Sex Pistols as a youngster, recalling how the pioneering punks “were the first band that felt like they were my band” and musically were “as far away as I could get from my parents'” music taste at the time.
Anderson and Osman also name the first CDs they ever bought (it’s no surprise to hear that Anderson quickly got his hands on a copy of ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’), the first jobs they had and the first bands they were ever a part of. Forget Suede: how about ‘Suave and Elegant’, the name of Anderson’s first band?
As for their memories of their first live performances, Anderson says of their rough-around-the-edges results: “Those early gigs, inevitably you’re rubbish. But I think there’s something quite lovely about not being able to do it, overcoming it and becoming resilient. For the first three years [of Suede], we just weren’t very good live! And that ended up becoming a strength.”
Check back at NME soon for more Firsts interviews with some of music and entertainment’s biggest names. For now, though, you can revisit our recent Firsts interviews with the likes of Peter Crouch, Liam Gallagher, Interpol, Lucy Dacus, Måneskin and Pabllo Vittar.
This week sees the release of new project called ‘Suede30’ – celebrating three decades of their acclaimed self-titled debut.
Arriving on July 7 will be special limited edition 30th anniversary releases – offering up their 1993 self-titled debut in a newly mixed and mastered format. Containing the fan favourites and era classics ‘Animal Nitrate’, ‘So Young’, ‘The Drowners’ and ‘Metal Mickey’, the LP hit Number One upon first release, selling over 100,000 copies in its first week and becoming the fastest-selling debut album ever in the UK at that time before going on to win the Mercury Music Prize.
The band will be celebrating this album and their acclaimed 2022 album ‘Autofiction‘ as they wrap up touring at the end of the year. See the full list of dates below and buy your tickets here.
DECEMBER
9 – Eastbourne, Winter Gardens
10 – Lincoln, Engine Shed
11 – Portsmouth, Guildhall
13 – Wolverhampton, The Halls
15 – London, O2 Academy Brixton
16 – London, O2 Academy Brixton
The post Suede talk NME through their ‘Firsts’ appeared first on NME.
The Japanese rockers on working with Makoto Shinkai for ‘Suzume’, the influence of Radiohead and Oasis, hitting the road again, and where they go from here
The post Radwimps: “We don’t want to be a band you can define with one word” appeared first on NME.
When we meet Radwimps at a hotel near Hyde Park, the Japanese rockers are still on a massive natural high. The night before, they played a sold-out show at London’s iconic Roundhouse, their first UK gig in well over seven years. It’s a long overdue return that feels even sweeter for the trio – lead singer and guitarist Yojiro Noda, guitarist Akira Kuwahara and bassist Yusuke Takeda – because they originally planned this world tour for 2020. Then, of course, COVID-19 intervened and the band found themselves grounded.
Of course, Radwimps are also riding high thanks to their third collaboration with visionary film director Makoto Shinkai. Alongside composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, they created the soundtrack to Suzume, Shinkai’s animated coming-of-age tale that opened in November and became the fourth highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. The soundtrack album, which doubles as Radwimps’ 13th studio LP, recently won the Best Music trophy at the prestigious Japan Academy Film Prize.
Having formed 22 years ago during their first year at high school, Radwimps are clearly a tight-knit unit. But it’s Noda – the band’s songwriter and lead singer – who really takes the lead today. In a wide-ranging interview, he discusses being influenced by Britpop legends Oasis, the thrill of finally being able to tour again, and the “weird rock lovers” status that Radwimps take pride in maintaining.
Noda: “For me, Oasis and Radiohead are two big artists that gave us influences – especially Oasis. When I was around 13-14 and just starting to play guitar, their music gave me so many influences. You know, [it was] how they touched people’s hearts and feelings with their melodies and chord progressions.”
“Exactly. Like, I can sing most of Oasis’s songs: ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, ‘Live Forever’, ‘Whatever’, ‘Slide Away’. All those Oasis songs from that era, I used to sing a lot.”
“It was a huge shock for us. Because, like, we planned that tour for more than a year and a half – I think maybe from 2018? We’d had so many conversations with the promoters and like, three or four months before the world tour [was due to start], COVID happened and it all vanished. It was really depressing. We weren’t sure what to do at that moment – like most artists [felt]. Yeah, it was really tough to get over it and move forward.”
“Yeah. We were supposed to have this tour when we were 34, and [now] we’re turning 38 almost. That’s a huge difference for us. But yeah, we’re so honoured and happy to be here. Finally!”
“I think it was in 2020, around March, that [Shinkai] first texted me the whole script. He just sent it to me and said nothing in particular like: ‘Would you please make some music for it?’ He just wanted to see how I felt. So, I texted him back [with] how I felt. But you know, since I first received that script, I knew I wanted to make music for it.
“That particular time was when the whole COVID thing went [off] and the world tour was cancelled and stuff. So we were just [stuck] at our houses and studios and we had a whole bunch of time. It was a good time to focus on something other than the tour, so we just started working on the theme song for Suzume.”
“Well, [with] the past two movies as well, we didn’t have anything visually [either]. Because with animation, it takes two and a half years to make. It’s a lot of work. So it’s only the script that we have to build the [musical] creation form.”
“Wow, I’m so happy to hear that. So, since he gave us the script really at the beginning of the creation of his animation, he kind of got some ideas from the music that I made. And he kind of, like, [would] recreate and rewrite the script as well. So, we were sort of going back and forth with ideas. It’s a really pure system of creation: it takes a lot of time, but it’s really worth it.”
“Well, last night was actually one of the greatest moments – to play in the UK in front of 3,000 people, a sold-out show. We never expected that to happen when we started the band when we were 15. Actually, we’re living in a dream right now with this European tour and the North American tour. it’s all way beyond what we expected.”
“Weird band, maybe. Weird rock lovers. Because last night, there were a lot of audience [members] who only knew the songs from the animated movies. But obviously, [those] aren’t the only songs we have. And like, we have this enormous energy as a rock band [with] all the solos and stuff. And last night, I could feel that the audience, you know, got surprised and shocked by those kinds of songs. But we always want to be creating some new styles and stuff. We don’t want to be a band that you can define with one word.”
Suzume is out now.
The post Radwimps: “We don’t want to be a band you can define with one word” appeared first on NME.
The Japanese rockers on working with Makoto Shinkai for ‘Suzume’, the influence of Radiohead and Oasis, hitting the road again, and where they go from here
The post Radwimps: “We don’t want to be a band you can define with one word” appeared first on NME.
When we meet Radwimps at a hotel near Hyde Park, the Japanese rockers are still on a massive natural high. The night before, they played a sold-out show at London’s iconic Roundhouse, their first UK gig in well over seven years. It’s a long overdue return that feels even sweeter for the trio – lead singer and guitarist Yojiro Noda, guitarist Akira Kuwahara and bassist Yusuke Takeda – because they originally planned this world tour for 2020. Then, of course, COVID-19 intervened and the band found themselves grounded.
Of course, Radwimps are also riding high thanks to their third collaboration with visionary film director Makoto Shinkai. Alongside composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, they created the soundtrack to Suzume, Shinkai’s animated coming-of-age tale that opened in November and became the fourth highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. The soundtrack album, which doubles as Radwimps’ 13th studio LP, recently won the Best Music trophy at the prestigious Japan Academy Film Prize.
Having formed 22 years ago during their first year at high school, Radwimps are clearly a tight-knit unit. But it’s Noda – the band’s songwriter and lead singer – who really takes the lead today. In a wide-ranging interview, he discusses being influenced by Britpop legends Oasis, the thrill of finally being able to tour again, and the “weird rock lovers” status that Radwimps take pride in maintaining.
Noda: “For me, Oasis and Radiohead are two big artists that gave us influences – especially Oasis. When I was around 13-14 and just starting to play guitar, their music gave me so many influences. You know, [it was] how they touched people’s hearts and feelings with their melodies and chord progressions.”
“Exactly. Like, I can sing most of Oasis’s songs: ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, ‘Live Forever’, ‘Whatever’, ‘Slide Away’. All those Oasis songs from that era, I used to sing a lot.”
“It was a huge shock for us. Because, like, we planned that tour for more than a year and a half – I think maybe from 2018? We’d had so many conversations with the promoters and like, three or four months before the world tour [was due to start], COVID happened and it all vanished. It was really depressing. We weren’t sure what to do at that moment – like most artists [felt]. Yeah, it was really tough to get over it and move forward.”
“Yeah. We were supposed to have this tour when we were 34, and [now] we’re turning 38 almost. That’s a huge difference for us. But yeah, we’re so honoured and happy to be here. Finally!”
“I think it was in 2020, around March, that [Shinkai] first texted me the whole script. He just sent it to me and said nothing in particular like: ‘Would you please make some music for it?’ He just wanted to see how I felt. So, I texted him back [with] how I felt. But you know, since I first received that script, I knew I wanted to make music for it.
“That particular time was when the whole COVID thing went [off] and the world tour was cancelled and stuff. So we were just [stuck] at our houses and studios and we had a whole bunch of time. It was a good time to focus on something other than the tour, so we just started working on the theme song for Suzume.”
“Well, [with] the past two movies as well, we didn’t have anything visually [either]. Because with animation, it takes two and a half years to make. It’s a lot of work. So it’s only the script that we have to build the [musical] creation form.”
“Wow, I’m so happy to hear that. So, since he gave us the script really at the beginning of the creation of his animation, he kind of got some ideas from the music that I made. And he kind of, like, [would] recreate and rewrite the script as well. So, we were sort of going back and forth with ideas. It’s a really pure system of creation: it takes a lot of time, but it’s really worth it.”
“Well, last night was actually one of the greatest moments – to play in the UK in front of 3,000 people, a sold-out show. We never expected that to happen when we started the band when we were 15. Actually, we’re living in a dream right now with this European tour and the North American tour. it’s all way beyond what we expected.”
“Weird band, maybe. Weird rock lovers. Because last night, there were a lot of audience [members] who only knew the songs from the animated movies. But obviously, [those] aren’t the only songs we have. And like, we have this enormous energy as a rock band [with] all the solos and stuff. And last night, I could feel that the audience, you know, got surprised and shocked by those kinds of songs. But we always want to be creating some new styles and stuff. We don’t want to be a band that you can define with one word.”
Suzume is out now.
The post Radwimps: “We don’t want to be a band you can define with one word” appeared first on NME.
The Chief on his new album, working with Johnny Marr and The Cure’s Robert Smith, his thoughts on the AI-generated Oasis album, Britpop reunions, The 1975 and more
The post Noel Gallagher: “The world is a beautiful place – it’s just inhabited by c**ts” appeared first on NME.
We’re invited by Noel Gallagher to interview him in his new HQ of his own Lone Star studios in north London – decorated with trinkets and memorabilia from his decorated career and eventful travels with Oasis and his High Flying Birds. Asked about his most treasured items, he shows us photos of his attendance at his beloved Man City’s “many Premier League triumphs”, some “rare as rocking horse shit” 12 inch singles, and a curious Russian doll containing ever-smaller versions of himself (and one Liam; “I don’t know who that fucker is,” he shrugs).
“The life-size cardboard cut-out of Pep Guardiola would be a personal favourite,” says Gallagher. “He’s coming on tour, just to oversee the tactical plan.
He’s just arrived from rehearsals for said tour, which, along with the football, kept him from the weekend’s celebrations of the coronation of King Charles. No, he wasn’t invited. “I’ve never met a royal,” shrugs Gallagher. “Morrissey? He counts as a royal, I suppose – and [Echo & The Bunnymen’s] Ian McCulloch, he’s royalty.”
Given the tens of millions albums sold and having helped to shape music for at least one generation, have any royal honours ever been offered his way?
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” he laughs at the idea of Sir Noel. “I’d have thought that I get the gong, you can pretty much say that they’ve been devalued. I wouldn’t mind being the Duke of Manchester. If there’s any of that shit knocking about, that would be good. I went to a party at some fucking posh gaffe on New Year’s Eve, and it was at a stately home. This guy said to me, ‘Where do I recognise you from?’ And I said, ‘I’m the Duke of Manchester!’ His wife said, ‘He fucking wrote ‘Wonderwall’, you idiot’.”
He has questions, mind. “What would it give me the right to do? Without question, Johnny Marr is being fucking elevated alongside me. We would be The Dukes Of Manchester. Write that down – that’s a fucking premise for a TV series, that. Two Mancunians driving around Manchester, solving local crime in a fucking Gregg’s bakery van.”
It was Noel’s Manchester adventures and the mix of home comforts and memories that shaped his fourth album with the High Flying Birds, ‘Council Skies’ – his best work since the demise of Oasis. For the latest in NME’s In Conversation series, we sat down with Gallagher to talk about never really looking back, working with Marr and The Cure‘s Robert Smith, his thoughts on the AI-generated Oasis album, Britpop reunions, and The 1975. Watch it in full above, and read it below.
Noel: “Well, that was slightly misinterpreted by a journalist (it’s not like you lot to do that, of course). I was just talking about the track ‘Council Skies’, and the guy thought I was talking about the album.
“The song is about trying to find young love on a council estate, something of which I can speak with fairly heavy authority, but you’d have to take the album on a track-by-track basis, really. If there’s one overriding word to describe it, it’s ‘reflective’. All the dreams I had growing up underneath the council skies sparked off a lot of things for me, but it was written in that god-awful period in lockdown. In isolation in those nine months where there was nothing to do, nowhere to go and no one to see. Everybody dealt with it personally differently. I came on to my own personal life, asking ‘How have I got here?’ It’s reflective more than anything about childhood.”
“I hate nostalgia. I don’t like steering people towards how they should listen to a record; it’s up to them. I never liked it when I was growing up when people would say, ‘This record is about this or that’. I’m not arsed if it’s about your mum – I don’t give a fuck. People should take from it what they will. It does flow as an album, which is a rarity. It would be nice if people listened to it as an album. I think proper fans will. You can download separate tracks if you have to be a c**t.”
“I was in that headspace of going into the studio with nothing and seeing what happened. David Holmes [producer] unlocked that particular door for me and it was fucking great. With this album, if I hadn’t been isolated for all that time then maybe I’d have carried on with David. We always spoke of how we were going to do another record, the lockdown thing happened, he went off and did something else and I started writing at home.”
“I take each song as it comes. ‘Pretty Boy’ was the first thing that was written and finished. When it came out, even fans were going, ‘There’s a drum machine on it… again’. It’s a bit of an anomaly on the record because there’s nothing else like it. ‘Think Of A Number’ has got a Bowie feel to it, and if I had my time again I’d have that as the opening track. Every album that I make tends to be flawed in some way. This is almost perfect, but the biggest flaw here is that the opening track ‘I’m Not Giving Up Tonight’ should be the closing track and ‘Think Of A Number’ should be the opener – but I didn’t think it was strong enough until it was too late. What a dick, but there you go – I’m allowed to be a dick when it’s my own music.
“I’ve written a lot of fucking songs. It’s just a fun thing to do. I’m really lucky to know so many great musicians where I can just say to them, ‘Can you play guitar like Robert Fripp?’ They’ll be like, ‘…no’ and I’ll say, ‘Well you fucking better learn’. I take each song as it comes. Oasis wasn’t like that – there was an overall sound, everybody had their own set role in the band and you did your thing, but with this it’s a little bit different.”
“Well I don’t like the sound of ‘Morning Glory’ at all. The only album that is perfect would be ‘Definitely Maybe’. ‘Be Here Now’, the songs are too long. ‘Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants’, not enough good songs and a lot of filler on that. ‘Heathen Chemistry’ had a couple of good tunes: ‘Little By Little’ and ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’, the rest of it is a bit ‘meh’. ‘Don’t Believe The Truth’ is pretty good, ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ kind of tails off towards the end. They’re all flawed in some way.
“My solo records… The first one [self-titled] – ‘Stop The Clocks’, no chance, not having that. Second one [‘Chasing Yesterday’] – ‘The Mexican’, yeah, dreadful. ‘Who Built The Moon?’ – yeah, sonically it could do with a bit more work. With this one, yeah, the tracklisting is slightly skewed.
“There are great moments on them all, but they’re not perfect by any means. If you ever did make the fucking most perfect album and accepted that it was perfect, it’s over. What’s the point after that?”
“What’s the point? Could you imagine the outrage? I’d rather push on and try new things.”
“Sadly, we’ve never sat down to write a song. We’ve talked about it for a while. For the three tracks that he plays on, I had the idea that Johnny would be able to play something great on it – I could just hear it and knew it. With ‘Pretty Boy’, it’s so linear and gets to that point where it just motors along. I knew it needed something. I didn’t get loads of people to try it, I was going to ask Johnny to do it from the off.
“It’s a funny thing with Johnny. He doesn’t get you to send him the track, he turns up, plugs his gear in, puts his guitar on, stands in front of the speakers and says, ‘Right, let’s hear it’. As he’s hearing it for the first time, he plays it. I wouldn’t tell him what to play, I wouldn’t be so cheeky.”
“Yeah, but he’s the G.O.A.T.! He elevates my songs. Sometimes it’s really subtle and sometimes it’s really great. I’m so privileged to have his phone number. I say, ‘If you keep picking up the phone then I’m going to keep phoning you’ – but he’s into it.”
“Because the song sounds like The Cure I was like, ‘Does Robert Smith do remixes?’ I got hold of his email, the first line was, ‘Hi Robert, it’s Noel Gallagher’. I thought at that point he’d go, ‘Fuck that c**t’. He emailed back with ‘Send me the track’, I did and fuck me – if I thought it sounded like The Cure when it went, it certainly did when it came back!
“It wasn’t until I played it to a few people when someone said, ‘That’s one of Oasis, one of The Smiths and one of The Cure on the same fucking track’ and I was like, ‘That’s far out! What a mad idea!’ I’d never met him but I’ve been such an admirer of his tunes since ‘Boys Don’t Cry’.
“When I eventually met him, I told him I remember buying their singles album ‘Standing On The Beach, Staring At The Sea’ at HMV in Manchester. When I told people they were like, ‘You like The Cure?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, just because you like The Cure doesn’t mean you have to fucking wear lipstick!’ Do you know what I mean? But I have subsequently met him and he’s a very funny man. He’s very funny on email too, actually.”
“He sends all his emails in shouty capitals and when I got the first one I was like, ‘Oh wow’. I didn’t have my glasses on at the time – sorry to break your hearts girls, but I do wear glasses – and I thought he was telling me to fuck off. I could just see shouty capitals and I was like, ‘Oh I didn’t realise he was that vehemently against the idea’.”
“I didn’t know that, but good luck to them! Blur never split up, did they? Pulp never split up, they just went and did other things, which is the adult way of doing it. Sadly my fucking band were very far from adult about it. It was a bit more crash and burn.”
“Inevitably, it will happen. There’s never really been a serious offer about ‘The Big O’ getting back together, but there you go.”
“These fucking idiots have clearly got too much time on their hands and too much money that they can afford the technology to fucking piss around doing that for a laugh. I’m saving up for the technology myself, then I’m just gonna dial it in to some computer and fucking churn it out when I’m 73. I’ll have 140 albums to go after I’m fucking dead to keep my kids in choc ices and fucking weed. People kept sending my stuff like Ringo Starr singing ‘She’s Electric’. There’s not enough hours in the day. Do we need Freddie Mercury singing ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’? Does anybody give a shit?
“People are like, ‘Yeah, but it’s interesting, isn’t it?’ Who the fuck is it interesting to?”
“Well you are – I’m not. Fucking hell. ‘Oasis: The Lost Tapes’. Really? Is that what you think it sounds like? You can AI the singer’s voice and his tambourine playing. Afraid you can’t AI what I do. As soon as you fucking can, I’m done, I’m finished, I’m retiring – I’ll just stick it into a fucking algorithm.”
“Mate, it’s the fucking future, and the past, all at the same time.”
“In terms of musical notes, no, but in terms of musical spirit, yeah. Kasabian had the same spirit as Oasis. When we first met them, it was like meeting your younger sister’s crazy boyfriends. I recognised something in their spirit. Tom and Serge reminded us of us. I went to see Young Fathers recently at The Roundhouse, and it fucking blew me away, man. It was like T-Rex meets Frank Sidebottom – and that is a huge compliment. It was like being a young lad again. I love Young Fathers. They couldn’t be musically any further from Oasis but the vibe in the gig was fucking insane.
“Oasis’ influence, I think, was for people to fucking start a band in the first place. I do meet loads of guys who say that and that’s great. There are a lot of them around, it’s just a pity guitar music has become marginalised. You’ve either got to be rock, or that fucking [The] 1975. At the BRITs, The 1975 won Best Rock or some fucking shit.
“I was watching it with my kids, two teenage lads, thinking, ‘Is it me being a grumpy old man, or is this shit?’ They were both going, ‘Oh no, this is fucking shit’. The 1975, Best Rock Band? Someone needs to re-define that immediately, because that is… I don’t know what that is, but it’s certainly not fucking rock. Whatever rock is, that’s not it.”
“No. I think the last line of ‘Think Of A Number’ is perfect for the ending of an album: ‘Let’s drink to the future, I hope it comes round again’. Did I find any answers? No, but I will find them, though. I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. Although the world is a shit place now and England in general is a fucking… What has happened to this country? I have no idea. Well I do have an idea: Brexit happened. A lot of people fell under some kind of mass hypnosis, but it’s shit England, now. It was going downhill for a bit, but actually fuck all works.”
“Eventually, I will find the answer. The answer is: the world is a great place, it’s just inhabited by cunts, and it’s the internet’s fault. That’s just the way it is.”
‘Council Skies’ is out now. Gallagher is currently on tour in the US with Garbage before returning for a run of UK and European dates and a headline tour in the winter. Visit here for tickets and more information.
The post Noel Gallagher: “The world is a beautiful place – it’s just inhabited by c**ts” appeared first on NME.
Biffy Clyro Simon Neil and former Oceansize man Mike Vernart tell NME how they formed their new metal outfit, what it’s like to take Dave Lombardo to Gregg’s, and how the horror of the world can only be reflected in the most extreme terms
The post Empire State Bastard: “We’re going for extremity at all costs” appeared first on NME.
Empire State Bastard. That’s one hell of a name. What else would fit? The Eiffel Dickhead? The Great Wall Of Twats? No. Nothing else captures their monolithic sense of doom and dread. “About 12 years ago I think I was talking about the Empire State Building and it just came out wrong,” frontman Simon Neil tells NME. “I was like, ‘That’s the greatest name in the history of the world!’ It just made perfect sense. It’s all arse-backwards the way we did this. We needed to make music that fit the name, and we weren’t in a rush to do it.”
The Biffy Clyro frontman first let word slip of the “extreme” metal side-project slip in an interview with NME back in 2020, but little did we know that he and Biffy live guitarist and former Oceansize member Mike Vernart had been plotting this madcap idea on the back of tour buses for over a decade.
Now, when we meet them at Camden’s iconic sweatbox The Black Heart, our ears are still ringing from their brutal debut London show at Underworld around the corner the night before – featuring Bitch Falcon’s Naomi Macleod on bass and Slayer legend Dave Lombardo on drums, no less. Not only that, but there’s a bewildering album of art-metal adventure coming up. Good things truly come to those who wait.
“No one was expecting this,” Neil continues. “We didn’t have to do this, we could have rushed it out eight years ago or spent a month just making some noisy shit. If you’re going to do something, do it properly. Put your head in it.”
Watch our full In Conversation video with the band above and read the interview below, as Neil and Vernart talk us through how this came to be, what it’s like to take Dave Lombardo to Greggs, and how the horror of the world can only be reflected in the most extreme terms.
Neil: “It’s been a long time coming. We’ve been playing music together for over two decades, so play our first shows as a new band is so fucking weird.”
Vernart: “We’re in a heavy metal afterglow right now. I’m picking through the rubbish trying to work out what just happened. When you’re in it, it’s just hard to fathom – but it definitely feel like it went well. This has been an imaginary band for over a decade now, so we’ve been talking about it since long before we had any songs.”
Neil: “The crowd were so receptive, and it was interesting to be at a gig where no one has any expectations. It just felt like people gave us their trust and let us take them on this hideously horrific musical journey.”
Neil: “‘Extreme’ is the word. We’re going for extremity at all costs, even if it’s not brutality – it’s got to be extremely weird. Because we play together in Biffy, there’s no point in us doing another project that doesn’t feel miles apart. That’s a pet hate of mine, when people leave their full-time band to do another thing and it’s just a slightly different version of what they’re doing anyway. What’s the fucking point?”
Vernart: “Do you remember when Jon Bon Jovi did ‘Blades Of Glory’ as a solo artist? It just sounded like a Bon Jovi song! He’s really sold himself short there.”
Neil: “It could have sounded like Napalm Death!”
Neil: “If he didn’t have as much money they’d be looking for some extreme metal.”
Vernart: “We’re setting a trend now. Everyone’s gonna come out with a mad metal album.”
Neil: “I don’t think he’ll be covering any of these.”
Vernart: “We can’t even play them, never mind any bugger else!”
Neil: “The way Mike writes the music is so complex. Getting to know the music is a real different headspace to any way we’ve worked before. When I’m writing songs, they’re a bit more logical. There’s always an endpoint of always wanting to reach a certain emotion or feeling. Whereas this is just about scraping through dirt. We’re only three shows in, but we’re finding how to represent that. Last night felt like the one show out of the three where it completely clicked.”
Neil: “We couldn’t have made this music, this album or this band even 10 years ago when we started talking about it. Our experiences in the meantime have given us the knowledge and the expertise to do it. It’s got the heart and soul of a younger project in that we’re just diving headfirst into it and not asking many questions, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do this vocally. I’m learning to scream with a bit of stamina for a change.
“It’s really hard because when you’re in the moment, that’s the only thing that matters. That’s why this band means so much to us already, because every second feels so fucking important. We don’t have this huge run of gigs or years planned ahead. It’s got this kind of liberation to it. There’s no grand plan, and that’s what we’re finding the most exciting.”
Vernart: “I remember when Simon first told me that this band was happening, because he’d mentioned it in an interview after it had previously just been a drunken chat at the back of a bus. I said, ‘What does it sound like?’ and he replied, ‘Heavy and vital’. It’s taken us this long to have this in the back of our minds, to work out what that actually means.”
Neil: “Absolutely. I’ve put all of my nihilism and misanthropy into this record. The anger needs to be real. When the pandemic happened, there was so much to be angry about over that period. Even since then, I keep having this optimistic point of view that there’s going to be a right sharp turn of goodness and growth and everyone’s going to see the light. I just needed to unleash something. This isn’t a political band, but there’s so much to be fucking angry about. You see the people running the country who just don’t give a shit, you see local neighbourhoods falling apart, and maybe I’ve connected to my hometown since I stopped touring so intensely after the pandemic. Maybe I feel more of a responsibility to my community.
“When Mike sent the music, we discussed a lot of our frustration at everything, the decisions that were being made to take us down this really horrific path that, unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any way out of. Mike puts it quite eloquently, where the thought of making any kind of emotional music with that kind of mindset would actually break us inside. We needed to give ourselves this piss and bile to let us deal with it and discuss these things in ways that don’t make us fall apart. We needed strength from the music rather than vulnerability because we get to do that with other things we do.”
Vernart: “It’s primarily the idea that in this day and age you don’t have to look very far to look for inspiration, if you’re looking to vent your frustration and anger. We’re blessed that we’ve got the gift to do that, but it’s just fucking mortifying what the UK citizens are put through. There’s just some weird collective dream state where everybody is just pretending that it’s fine, and it’s really, really not.”
Neil: “Most of it is trust. Mike would send me something and I’d want to make something in return that would make him laugh and smile, and vice versa. Because the music wasn’t created with four of us in a room, it was very much just us trying to mirror and challenge each other.
“We’ve been so close for so long, but with the fact that this is our first interaction creatively meant we had to push each other and take this somewhere that it wasn’t meant to go. Original conversations were a bit more Dillinger [Escape Plan], then it ended up a bit more Fantômas, then it got a bit quirkier like Cardiacs, but things just didn’t settle until this batch of songs came along.”
Vernart: “It’s just that thing of trying to get your mate a bit excited. It’s just about blowing each other’s minds. If we don’t like it, then nobody else will. It’s just really fun to make it, but that’s not to say it’s just some t-shirt we’re wearing this week – we really like music like this. The concern for me is that people will just think we’re having a laugh, but fucking hell…”
Neil: “There’s no doubt when you see us or hear us that is a part of who we are. Metal was my first great love, where I found the group of people who liked the same things as me where no one else did.”
Vernart: “It’s my absolute centre of gravity. When in doubt, put Black Sabbath on, put Slayer on, put Iron Maiden on. Let’s sort the heads from the fucking haircuts.”
![Empire State Bastard - Harvest [Video]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/S5Xjku-dYJ8/hqdefault.jpg)
And what could do that more than recruiting Dave Lombardo? Was that nerve-wracking, like asking Gordan Ramsay to make you a sandwich?
Neil: “I know! I’m going to make dinner tonight but I might as well just check with Marco Pierre White! But it was exactly that. Mike said, ‘We need someone who can play like Dave Lombardo’. We spoke for about two weeks and then just one day during the pandemic we were like, ‘Shall we just fucking get Dave Lombardo’s address and email him?’ Within 24 hours he got back and was like, ‘This is fucking great – what are you thinking?’ We’d never even met him, but ended up with this on-the-phone relationship for about a year or so.
“He really understood what we were trying to do with this album and band. He’s so busy and gets approached for a lot of things, but as soon as he came back and said, ‘This is special, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna play with you and make this record’ – that’s when we went, ‘Right, this is fucking happening’. We had to shift into gear, because if Dave Lombardo says it’s a good bunch of songs then you know you’re onto something! We’ve been doing this for two decades, but he makes us want to do it for another two decades. We’re still not quite used to it though, are we?
Vernart: “No, not at all. It’s one thing being on stage, that’s hard enough in itself, but you wanna try going to Greggs with him. He’s like, ‘What is this stuff?’”
Neil: “Mike had him in every fucking supermarket in Todmorden where we were rehearsing – Lidl, Aldi, Morrissons – looking for fucking Brylcreem!”
Vernart: “Yeah, he was like, ‘Wow, this place has everything!’ He came out with an organ-grinder.”
Neil: “You can buy a bridal gown and some haggis. Welcome to Britain. He did wonder why there wasn’t much fresh fruit and vegetables and we had to explain: ‘Those days are gone, Dave’.”
Vernart: “She’s the glue in this organisation. She’s absolutely marvellous. She carries herself so well and she’s such a bad-ass player, man: so heavy, so loud, so brutal.”
Neil: “Mike’s known Naomi for a while and knew that she was just the perfect person to play these songs. We can be a bit flappy, but she has this stoicism that brought us down when we were getting nervous and adrenalised. Turns out that after the show she was shitting herself as well! She also brings soul to the music, which is why I think this music is special. If you don’t listen to much extreme music then you might struggle to find the soul in it, but this record and the music we play is jam-packed with it. We’re very lucky.”
So, what’s next?
Neil: “This is not a one statement band. We feel like we’ve just started to express ourselves. We’re doing a bunch of festivals, we’ll hopefully do a longer run later in the year, but you’ll be seeing a lot more of us. This is going to be a living, breathing organism that will exist for a while. The last we want to do is squeeze it too hard because it takes a lot out of us. We want it to always matter. This shouldn’t be an ‘on-the-treadmill’ sort of band. It now feels like part of our vernacular.”
Vernart: “We’re already getting on with the second album.”
Neil: “We played three new songs last night! When the floodgates are open, you’ve gotta go with it. You don’t wanna try and damn that up because there are plenty of times when it does run dry. Not to blow smoke on Mike’s balls, but he’s a really incredible guitar player. I’m really aware that when Mike plays with Biffy, he’s playing very within his skillset. To see him fly free, that’s a privilege to be a part of. I cannot write music or guitar riffs the way that Mike does. That’s really exciting after 20 odd years – to find a new way to write songs.”
Neil: “Well believe it or not, I did just spend two weeks working on Tippie Toes. We do have an album’s worth of material, we just need to edit it. I don’t want to be flippant with music and would never put it out because it’s almost ready. Tippie Toes is going to have a purpose and be special. Marmaduke Duke is already special and will complete that, which John and I are a bit scared of. Once that’s done, it’s over and the Duke is dead. But, I don’t want to distract from this. This has got a bit of momentum for us, emotionally, spiritually and physically. Biffy is also always at the top of my list, that’s who I am. I need to make time for my four wives.”
News of Empire State Bastard’s debut album is expected shortly. Check out their upcoming tour dates below and visit here for tickets and more information.
JUNE
9 – UK, Download Festival
15 – UK, Leeds Brudenell Social Club
16 – UK, Cambridge Mash
18 – France, Hellfest
21-25 – UK, Glastonbury, Earache Takeover
JULY
7 – UK, 2000trees Festival
21 – Norway, Malakoff Rockfestival
AUGUST
2-5 – Germany, Wacken Open Air
17 – UK, ArcTanGent
The post Empire State Bastard: “We’re going for extremity at all costs” appeared first on NME.
Frontman Noah Sebastian discusses the Virginia four-piece’s long-awaited breakthrough, going viral and their position as a gateway band
The post Bad Omens: “The goal with this band is to expand people’s musical horizons” appeared first on NME.
Bad Omens are finally enjoying their breakthrough moment. Since the release of their third album ‘The Death of Peace of Mind’ in February 2022, the Richmond, Virginia metalcore band’s reach has expanded at a breathtaking rate and resulted in a consistently huge turnout at their live shows.
Having recently completed sold-out runs across North America, the UK and Europe, Bad Omens’ rapid rise was encapsulated during the first of three dates at The Dome in London in early March. Their fans demonstrated as much enthusiasm on the night for the band’s old material as their newer and arguably more popular songs, proving that Bad Omens’ recent success is built off a history their fans are truly invested in.
This response may have felt like a long time coming for the band, but Bad Omens feel that it’s just right. “Hard work translates and it’s brought us to where we are,” vocalist Noah Sebastian tells NME. “We wouldn’t have been able to seize this moment that we’re having right now had we not had that experience and learned those lessons.”
For the latest instalment of our In Conversation interview series, Sebastian breaks down the writing of Bad Omens’ 2022 viral hit ‘Just Pretend’, the band’s strong work ethic and their mission to change the live music industry for the better.
The band’s third studio album marked a new stage for Sebastian as a vocalist. “I feel like I really came into my own over the last year and a half,” he explains. “During the pandemic, [I] really wanted to improve my voice because I’m always very hyper-critical of myself. [It was] a combination of that and getting in better shape and being healthier, sleeping better, eating better.”
The resulting vocal progression then informed the album. “Because of what I’ve been able to do with my vocals, that’s why this record is so vocal-focused. The production is built around nuances in the vocal takes, and the lyrics, the subject matter and the emotion that you can deliver in a vocal,” he says.
That work ethic is shared by the rest of the band, who are rounded out by guitarist Joakim “Jolly” Karlsson, bassist Nick Ruffilo and drummer Nick Folio. “We’re all very hard on ourselves and it pays off,” Sebastian says. “We try to split the difference, and also have fun and be relaxed, but we take the band so seriously.”
Despite how seriously they take the band, there’s still room for humour — especially during the creative process. Take, for example, ‘The Death of Peace of Mind’ track ‘Just Pretend’. “I was just goofing around, joking, being petty almost,” Sebastian recalls about initially writing the song in January 2019 as a response to the pressure the band were feeling to aim for radio play. “It started as this ironic, butt-rock song. Even the way I was singing in the demo, I was doing this exaggerated bravado. It sounded like Shinedown or Godsmack.”
But the chorus stood out, so Sebastian continued working on it until it became a song that Bad Omens could release. It’s hard to imagine that ‘Just Pretend’ started as anything other than earnest, given how its sparser verses build to an emotional release in the chorus that is powered by Sebastian’s desperate vocals. ‘Just Pretend’ has now racked up over 65 million Spotify streams and, somewhat ironically, become an international radio hit.
“Releasing a song that was written to poke fun at how easy it is to make radio rock, that is now number one on the radio rock charts, is the most ironic, full-circle moment this band will probably ever have,” Sebastian adds with a smirk.
‘Just Pretend’’s viral reach has also infiltrated TikTok, where the hashtag #badomensband currently has over 76 million views while the song itself has been used in over 73,000 videos. “I feel like it transcends genre, rock or metal [in] a way that even people that don’t particularly listen to that type of music very often really like it,” Sebastian says of the song. “That’s always been the goal with this band, to expand the musical horizons of people both in and out of rock. I want people that don’t listen to rock and metal to get into it because of our band, and I want people that only listen to that to get into other genres because of our band.”
‘The Death of Peace of Mind’ is a good place to start in either direction. The album melds together dark pop sensibilities with elements of heavy music, building a synth-laden atmosphere that’s grounded by fast drums and loud guitars. “We’re so experimental at this point that there’s songs I would say are industrial songs with rock influences,” Sebastian explains.
While some artists may write rock music with influences from other genres mixed in, Sebastian says of Bad Omens’ approach: “We almost start with those elements to the point that throwing in guitars or live drums is like us adding rock after the fact.”
Metalcore is attracting an increasing audience at the same time that artists within the genre are trying to expand the sound. Bands like Architects and Spiritbox have already been pushing the boundaries of heavy music, while Sleep Token’s experimental sound has led to TikTok fame.
“Every now and then I check in on the metalcore Reddit threads, and they’re always arguing over what can and can’t be put in [the metalcore threads] as far as Bad Omens and Sleep Token go,” Sebastian says. “And I love that it seems the only thing they talk about is how they can’t talk about us in there!” To him, though, the genre is a lot broader than many listeners may think. “It feels like a spectrum that people are now trying to narrow down and be gatekeep-y on.”
Sebastian then draws a comparison to the debate surrounding whether Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ was a country song or not. “It reminds me of that, where it’s so different but still also rooted in the only genre that has breakdowns and heavy guitars that people are just confused and don’t know how to act,” he says. “They want to label it, but I don’t think it needs to be that complicated. I think people can just listen to it and enjoy it, and [there] doesn’t need to be a discourse at all times about what type of music it is.”
An increasing number of artists have spoken out recently against the manner in which music venues continue to take a cut of merch sales. Back in December, Bad Omens tweeted: “Artists still don’t get a cut from bar sales even if the venue gives cocktails cute little names after your songs, but still take 15-20% of touring artists’ gross merch sales every night.” They then voiced support for Architects drummer Dan Searle after he posted in February: “Hey @bands when are we gonna go on strike and get rid of these insane venue merch cuts? Or maybe we don’t play until we get a cut of the bar? Can we just get this done asap please?”
Speaking on the subject to NME, Sebastian says: “I do think we could use our newfound platform as a band with a lot of awareness to help make things better for smaller bands that are starting out that are struggling financially, that don’t even know about some of these practices. Or know that they can say no, or that they can negotiate and don’t know when to ask for more.”
Having gone through this experience themselves, Bad Omens understand the importance of speaking up about these issues. “I think that there should be more conversations about it so it’s a little more fair and not so just heavy-handed into the suits’ pocket, so to speak,” Sebastian says. “I think everyone deserves a bigger slice of the pie.”
The post Bad Omens: “The goal with this band is to expand people’s musical horizons” appeared first on NME.
