Your digital EP has sold over 30,000 downloads. Did you ever imagine you’d sell that many copies in this time?
Seriously, we genuinely had no reason to believe we would be doing this many sales and have the numbers still going up now! We recorded the EP and put it online expecting to do maybe 200 sales and thats no exaggeration. We didnt do any promo for the EP either, all we did was put a countdown timer on the top of our myspace page... that was about it!
Apparently 90% of that has been purchased by American audiences, despite you never touring over there. How did you go about promoting your EP over there?
We didnt promote it at all. The only advertisement we had on the release was the fact that Danny Worsnop (Asking Alexandria) did guest vocals on the 5th track ‘Wake the Dead’.
Do you think that the fact that the EP was digital as opposed to a hard copy made it easier to sell?
Yeah I do think it has made it easier to sell... the fact that the EP can be bought just by clicking on a link does help. Though weirdly, people are starting to actually contact the band asking for hard copies of the EP and the reason we didn't do it in the first place is purely because we didn't think we would sell any and would have ended up being a loss for the band.
The metalcore/post-hardcore genres have taken a massive leap in popularity over the past couple of years. What would you say that you bring to the scene that’s original and different to everyone else?
Well we are all very heavily influenced by the hardcore scene obviously... The clear difference that we bring to the genre is the fact that we still use solos. I think the fact that influences for some of the members include bands like Metallica and Bullet for My Valentine as well really helps towards finding a different sound whilst still being linked to some of our favourite bands.
You come from York, which is obviously the hometown of Glamour Of The Kill, whom you have shared stages with in the past? Would you say they were a big influence on you?
Yeah when we first started out they helped us out with a few hometown shows and it helped alot to build our local status and have people take us a little more seriously. They used to be a big influence when we first started out but I suppose with a couple of line up changes to our band, it helped to introduce a much heavier sound for our band. If you listen to our EP, That was heavily influenced by Glamour, and their guitarist (Mike Kingswood) actually gave us a couple of great ideas for the EP. I actually used to guitar tech for them a couple of years ago, didn't do a very good job... but I thank them for all the fun I had on tours with them!
You worked with Danny Worsnop from Asking Alexandria on your track “Wake The Dead”. How did that collaboration come about?
It was weird, but very simple and happened so quick. We got back from doing a string of shows across the UK and my scream was absolutely ruined. We needed the EP finishing ASAP for promo and remembered the the Asking boys had come back from the US for a while. I rang up Danny who doesnt live too far away from me and asked him to help out with the screaming, which he was totally up for. I went to pick him up, brought him into the studio and he managed to get the screaming down for the whole EP in one day! We then realised after that although having his vocals on your CD could be a ginormous boost for any metal band that you can't have someone doing the whole CD, because people may think he's in our band, which sadly he isn't haha! I put all the screams on once my voice came back, but we kept his screams in ‘Wake the Dead’ because we knew it would benefit us majorly!
And you losing your voice also meant that Spencer ended up joining to take over doing screaming vocals. How did you meet him and know that he was right for the band?
Yeah I kept losing my voice at shows which meant we had to do something about it. We knew Spencer through Joe Lancaster, and Joe always went on about how good his screaming was... we tried a lot of people out but when Spencer tried out, we didnt need time after his audition to think about it... he was in!
You’ve said before that the lyrics to your older songs are “a little self indulgent, even cringe worthy”. What sort of things were you writing about?
We were just writing lyrics about girls and stuff... Not good haha. We were trying to capture the whole pop metal thing and keeping the lyrics light, but it didn't do us any favours clearly because as soon as we released our 2 new singles with heavier influence, people are starting to like it even more!
Your newer songs seem to revolve around horror films etc, a topic that usually seems to be associated with psychobilly bands. Are you influenced by any bands of that genre, or are you all personally interested in horror?
Yeah I suppose were just interested in it so much that we want to link it into our songs. Well to be fair, I like to write about the experience and actions of one person, how they might act and what they might do or might be feeling when something bad has happened. I suppose if it's weird, it's interesting.
Are you looking to record a debut album anytime soon?
We will release our album this year. We aren't with a label at the moment but that won't be stopping us. We own it to the thousands of people that have already bought our EP. Too many bands leave years in between releases and we don't want to lose any sort of hype we may have.
You toured a lot in the UK last year, are you planning to spend just as much time touring this year?
We do plan to be busy, so long as people will come and share it with us. We've done the right thing in building up a fan base before going out and playing 100 shows to no one though. The band and our manager and working hard to fill as many dates as posslble because all we wanna do is play!
Will you be putting together a headline tour, or planning to support bigger bands to get your name out there and your songs heard by different audiences?
Yeah a headline tour will be put together soon. It is probably within the bands best interests to be our on support tours with bigger bands though... it's the only way to reach out to new people and we aren't at a point where we can sell out big venues (yet haha!) so we should be out there winning over new people. We are about to release a music video soon too which should help to spread the word! Bring on 2011!
