No Consequence have been a band since 2005 and in the past four years they have established themselves as a ferocious live act, sharing stages with the likes of Skindred, The Arusha Accord, Devil Sold His Soul and Malefice. ‘In The Shadow Of Gods’, their debut album, was released through Basick Records on August 17th 2009. Lucy Pryor was at Hellfire Festival in Birmingham in November and got a chance to chat with the band.
Congratulations on being part of this years Hellfire. For anyone who hasn’t heard you before what can they expect from your performance this weekend?
Phil: thank you! Well lots of proper metal! Yeah real metal, none of the scene haircut stuff, metal for proper music fans. Sorted.
(All laugh as Dan and his scene haircut puts his head in his hands)
And you’ve lost one Tom the bassist and gained Tom the bassist! Is he/are you nervous about your debut performance at Hellfire this weekend?
Kaan: yeah he’s just an upgrade for the old guy!
Tom: I’m excited yeah it's gonna be cool.
Your new album ‘In The Shadow of Gods’ was released at the end of August this year, how do you feel it’s been received by fans and critics so far?
Kaan: Yeah I think it's gone down really well, we’ve had some really good reviews, obviously it’s not the most accessible kind of thing so it has been a bit mixed but everything so far has come back really good.
Phil: And we’ve been lucky that even the negative reviews have been positive in the way that they’ve been constructive, and it's got this it's got that so even if you’re not into it, its worth checking out. We’ve been really chuffed and really surprised as well since it’s the first time we’ve released something like that.
And what were your influences on the new album musically?
Kaan: personally or as a band?
Well both really?
Kaan: well I have to say Michael Jackson as got to be a big influence...
Haha I was waiting for the joke answer!
Kaan: this honestly isn’t a joke, I was very upset when he died, in fact I still am. Honestly it’s still a really ‘touchy’ subject
(Rest of the band laugh and groan at Kaans terrible joke)
Kaan: well you know it happened when I was young.
Haha moving swiftly on!!!
Kaan: influences, yeah I think Textures defiantly, vocally we’re just a little bit all over the place. I think Bono is a big influence.
(Everyone starts laughing again)
Phil: musically I think we take a lot from The Faceless, Born of Osiris, Architects, Sikth, Dillinger Escape Plan, really big list of bands. I think we’re lucky enough to be very eclectic in what we listen too. I think vocally, it’s very hard to say because we tend to write a tune what we want it to sound like.
Kaan: We kind of figure out a concept and then work from there rather than the other way round.
Phil: Plus the song changes so much during the writing process we have to wait till the final product so that gives us a lot of time to figure out what we want to say.
Also the artwork is gorgeous! You’re another artist that has worked with Top Two Studios, did you get an input with the artwork or did they have a listen and then come up with the illustrations?
Kaan: Very very talented guys. Basically when we came up with the title ‘In The Shadow Of Gods’, we didn’t want it to have a religious factor because we aren’t religious in that shape or form, we kind of wanted some sort of planet that had devastation with another sort of star or supernova looming over it. When we came up with that idea they were like we can do this or that with it and threw loads of things at it and before we knew it they had come up with all these ideas, like the throne.
Phil: They basically came up with three ideas and we liked a different element from each one and they managed to put them all together in one design and the result is just stunning. We never expected it.
The lyrics on the album are pretty deep! You blogged lyrics to The Fallen on your MySpace too. Part of the song says "Live life while you can. As time moves on, live life while you can, tomorrow holds no promise; it’s in your hands". To me that’s you sending a message to try and prevent someone from going down the wrong path after watching someone close to you slip away. What was the inspiration for that song?
Phil: That’s it in one yeah
Kaan: basically me and Phil in the last year lost 2 friends that were pretty close to us to lets say bad deaths, unnecessary deaths, young deaths as well. So we kind of wanted to write a song that represented them, try not to waste your life, live every day and try not to get stuck...
Well I did think that, it definitely comes through in the song but I didn’t want to upset anyone by mentioning it!
Kaan: No that’s excellent, that’s definitely what we wanted to put across
Phil: We’ve had messages from surprisingly and touchingly across the world across MySpace and stuff saying that its helped them get through things, and helped them think about things in a different way. We wrote it as quite a cathartic exercise and how other people have related to that is really really nice.
Phil (drummer): It sounds silly but I had a family member die this year and the lyrics to The Fallen I listened to them and it really helped too.
A couple of your songs talk about masks slipping (The Fallen and The Arrival of Predators), was that a comment from you on elements fakeness or false people you’ve encountered in the industry or was it from a personal experience?
Phil: The Arrival of Predators is almost like a fighting back song, talking about looking at people as they are and standing up for yourself. You could look at it in the way of telling a story of perhaps domestic abuse, but it’s more of a battle song and we’d never really written a battle song before. But we wanted it as a personal thing rather than Vikings marching across the hills going in to battle.
Actually the whole album had the vibe as if you were writing about someone who had betrayed you and was then rubbing it in your face, especially in the song ‘Shallow Be Thy Name, with the lyrics:
"One in a million,
But a million others just like you.
I’ll choke you with my Sword of silence.
A lie from the start.
One in a million,
But a million others just like you.
Like a beaten love struck lamb to the slaughter,
a million others just like you".
Kaan: No not really I wrote Shallow Be Thy Name as a sort of Saturday night cattle market song. Like "oh your one in a million I love you but there’s a million others like you", a sort of do you and dump you.
(All start laughing)
One for your girl fans out there then haha!
Kaan: No that’s not what I mean, not a personal thing, but that’s what I hate about the Saturday night culture, so many people do it.
Do you find writing about personal experience is easier or does it kick up painful past memories?
Phil: It's very difficult I think having 2 vocalists because unless we share the same personal experience it's hard to sing about someone else’s personal experience, so luckily Dan takes long enough to compose the tracks we can work on concepts, so we can write about something from a shared experience.
Kaan: and write ‘we’ songs rather than ’I’ songs if you know what I mean.
What do you think of Hellfire having to cancel the Friday date for this weekend?
Kaan: It’s a bit crap in the sense that we don’t know the reasons that they had to lose a day, as long as the rest of the weekend goes ahead.
Phil: I think the organisers have worked really hard to reschedule everything
Kaan: From what we’ve seen so far it looks really cool
Phil: I think the fact the organisers worked so hard to keep the Saturday and the Sunday going is testament to how much they love the music, and people still do love metal, people do still go out to shows.
For all your deep lyrics you do seem like a fun band, on your Facebook fan page and Twitter you are trying to get people to vote for guitarist Dan to win Kerrang's sexiest female of 2009? How’s that going, do you think he has a chance?
Dan: I don’t know any progress on that but I’m hoping for the best!
Kaan: He needs more votes
And what can we expect from you as a band in 2010? Have you got any more tours planned, I know you are doing a few dates this month with TesseracT?
Phil: Yeah we’re taking a bit of time over Christmas and the New Year to work on second album material, really sit down and get a direction for it, so after February really. I swore I wouldn’t pay for a Festival ticket unless we were playing it so I’ve missed out on a lot of festivals!
