PipemanRadio Interviews INDEVTH About Playing at Download Festival XXI

0:00 Hi, you have then too censure see wow for you young Why up America, It's time for the Adventures of Hpeman on W four c Y dot com. West pomp Beach is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the light Man. This is the pipe in here on the Adventures Pipe n W four c Y Radio, and I'm here with our next guest. Super excited because we're gonna be playing Download, one of my favorite festivals in the whole world, and it's gonna be badre So let's welcome to the show in depth. How are you yah, dude? I do man, I'm good.

1:14 Are you doing good? Doing good? And so cool? Okay, So how does it feel to play Download? Like? What what kind of reaction is it that you have when you first find out you're playing down? We were all we were all absolutely like flabbergasted, mate, to be honest with you, like, it's not it's not the kind of it's not the kind of thing that you find out like on a random Tuesday when you're all at work and it's like ten a m. And you're all just like messaging, messaging each other frantically, like freaking the fuck out right. Yeah, I remember it I remember it very well that I was literally I went down. I literally I got the email and I was like, oh, fuck, this is no We're paying download? What the fun was going on here?

1:56 This is ridiculous. I thought he was joking, to be fair, but like, honestly, I think we're just so excited about him, and like I think we've always wanted to play download lights into your kids, and like, especially if coming from England as well, like do we download? It is such like a big thing over here. So it's just unlike an honor to be even considered, like to even play the fight we're playing not mind blowing. And so you know I'm from the States. It's not just in the UK. Like Download is respected throughout the world as like one of the greatest festival's, longest running ever. And you know, it's interesting because you know, it was something as being in radio that you know, somebody that goes and does coverage at different festivals. It's like, if I'm going to go outside the United States, what's the first festival I would want to pick to cover? And that festival was then you know, it was like that, and then I got spoiled because just the way it download operates in every way for me as a media person, for you guys, as the artists, for the people attending. You know, it's just like a well oiled machine that still has that old school kind of feeling towards how a music festival should be and how artists should be treated and how media should be treated,

3:29 and how we're all a team together for a common goal and that's what makes it such a great success. No, yeah, I can tell you exactly, man. Yeah, especially with all the bands. You can see like from the top to the bottom, and like everyone is there, like you know what, they're working hard just to make sure everyone's having a great time, you know what I mean, Like even like security guards, like everyone's great. Don't download and like I don't know how they put off every year because so many other festivals like don't put it off every year, you know what I mean. It's nice to like and especially like when you compare. It's like when you see the carme rate like the festivals like Download Festival, you mean, back to other festivals, it's mental like it just metal heads just look onto each other more seemingly, you know what I mean.

4:09 Everyone downloaded, just like everyone's clearly there's have a good time and it's always nice every years, yea, even as okay to your point with the criminal stuff. Okay, so here in the States you do festivals. If you walk out in me the area, take your stuff because it might not be there when you get back, you know. Yeah. And so first time I did Download, I'm saying across from this photographer and we were talking, we got friendly, and at one point he left the press then for like a while and left all his equipment sitting there, like thousands of dollars of equipment. And so when he came back, I was like, are you worried about somebody taking that? Because here in the States, people are scummed back sometimes you know that there were other media people would take. And you listen when you talk about photographers, videoographers that have that kind of equipment, they can't even afford that equipment. Okay, So so like to take it from them to me is really like, why would you do that to a fellow media person. Well, that's the attitude Download is like, they don't do that. It's like, oh no, we all watch out for each other here exactly, no tolerance or anything like that. And it's it's it's lovely to see like a community like that exists. I mean, just just for us, like considering the the scale of the festival itself, like I

5:41 mean we have we also have in the UK we have Bloodstock, but I do that one too. Yeah. Yeah, So that's that's kind of like the other equivalent insights I guess you would say, but that's for obviously, like you know, more death metal, black metal, power metal, you know, that's that's the real battle jacket f'st Yeah. Yeah. But like but even even just talking about like the scale of the festival itself, like I mean, I guess like in Europe, the equivalent you would have like healfest In in France and maybe like Whacken in Germany. Like that's kind of what download is for us in terms of like scale and starts. So really, I mean, like you know, download is like it is like the holy Grail for like metal festivals and stuff in the UK. So for us, it's like it is mind blowing to cover this much ground in the space of a year. And you know, because we've we've done we've done some good stuff over the course of the past year. But I would say to now be like air drop just like straight into the biggest metal festival in the UK. Unreal, Do you even have a clue how that happened? Well, we got the takeover things, so like we went through like there's there's like these these guys that takeover you run the tape over it download every year later on the Wednesday and tough like they just have a takeover and they sort of showcase like UK like the smaller bands that like not necessarily because like we didn't have a booking agent, you know what I mean, we run everything in the house. We're like so we're completely DIY sort of band. So

7:12 like it's hard getting these opportunities and like we just sort of applied for it. And I think out of like six hundred bands that like six got chosen and we were one of them. And we were just like didn't expect it at all because we're like we're up a new band really and it's like what what what the fuck? But yeah, man, like I don't even know. Yeah, I think we've just got lucky mate, if I'm being completely honest. Oh yeah, sometimes that's where it ticks right now. So now tell us a little bit about what we can expect from your set down with No. Honestly, bro, we're gonna like we're bringing Obviously, we've just released our new EP, Drowning, which came out in April, and that's just gone like it seemingly gone a lot down, a lot better than what we could ever have thought it has gone. So we're just going to play like I think we're just going to bring grounding to downloads at all, you know what I'm saying. Nice show, show everybody what we're about, because I think it's the first time a Union we've got to do this and play to like a crowd this big like we invented last week and that was insane as well, because there's the scale of the show, like it's so much bigger than what we were played before. So I just want to keep keep like keep smatching it and I hope, I hope you can stroll on the biggest show as possible. So yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was I was just going to say, like, in terms of the sound itself, like if anyone's not familiar with like the kind of music we play, it's it's super aggressive. It's super like frantic, like different times, different sort of tempos and stuff like it's it's it's super heavy. I think it

8:48 will go down well. For like, you know, the first day of the festival, everyone's kind of like you know, set up their tents, got on a few drinks in them, and stuff will be up for you know, hearing some heavy music and stuff. So I think it will go down well. And like I think, you know, again, like what with Sam said about like you know, the record doing well and stuff, I think it's also important to make light the fact that you know, we've we've we've worked with like you know, talented videographers and people who have taken you know, good like promo shots of us and stuff. So really it's kind of like they deserve some of the credit as well for kind of like making us look professional, maybe more professional than we really are, but like you know, at least at least at least giving us like you know, the appearance of a professional band, which I'm sure like the Takeover guys, you know, they took all that stuff into account, you know, so like the music videos and stuff, they look really clean, and you know, the social media aspect of it as well, like you know, we've been quite careful about how that looks, so so yeah, and I think there there are a lot of people who've been involved to the course of that who you know, who deserve credit and stuff for it helping us out.

10:05 We've got like a good we've got like a proper like good team behind us and stuff, which you're really grateful for. M hm for sure. Very cool. And you know, you guys are trying to look much I'm movement like this, like my background, we're trying to go into the pre Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna gloves on today. So that's basically hard. There you go. And to give I I to give our listeners a sense of your music, because it is I love the new music is like so brutal and it's the best compliment I could ever give you. So to give them kind of a sense if you were to pick one band that you would tour with that you would say you were most matched with that band tour. Who would see, there's a couple that jump to mine straight away for me, And that'll probably be like I could give you three, I couldn't give you what I'm at a toss up probably between like thrown ten, five, six and not loose. I'd say I feel like that's like a free because I feel like they're brutal and I feel like they'd absolutely slap us every night, and I feel like I'd enjoy watching set every single night because they just absolutely demolished. I mean yeah, and then again, you know, like that there's there's definitely like that, at least I've seen over the past, like

11:35 I want to say, maybe maybe like ten years or so, but like there's definitely been like a new wave of especially like American bands, but like not exclusively, but that just play like punishing quite like simplistic heavy music, and I think that's what like, that's what we're driving towards. Really, like, so you know, you've got like you're not loose, yeah, he got like yeah like that fans like throwing you know, they keep it simple, they keep it effective and heavy. So yeah, I mean like yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I think a lot of us as well, Like we come from you know, pretty like just like kind of metal routes. Really like me and Pat, we we've known each other for a long time. We've always enjoyed like old school American death or like White Chapel, Born of Asyrus, stuff like that. So from the kind of like rhythmic like breakdown kind of side of things like that was kind of where we cut our teeth, but like giving it like a more modern feel, I guess, like so you know you're talking about like knock loose and stuff like those guys are killing it right now and you know they're playing like really like stripped back like minimal metal, and it's it just works. It's like, yeah, not real, definitely. And I have to agree too, because it's like I think sometimes with metal, do you get all too complicated.

12:58 It's like a little much like to me, like metal should just be in your face brutality, marshable, and you know, not taken as seriously. Yea, even though taken seriously, I do believe it. I believe lyrics should be serious, you know. But when I say taking too seriously, it's like kind of you know, I don't know. The best way I could describe is corportizing music and metal, But like I kind of came from the last band I was in. I kind of come from like like Falls to the Wall, like play as many notes in the song as possible, kind of like technical death metal background, and like ironically that band, you know, I mean we took it pretty seriously. You know, we were really trying in that band, like you know, it's like like really like you know, have it up on the music on the like the musical side of things. But now I think, I mean, I'm playing substantially and you know, I'm on bass as well, so like I was always playing less notes than the guitar players, but I'm playing even fewer notes now, and I actually think that, you know, like this band's kind of going further. We're playing less notes and you know, it's like it's a lot more kind of stompy like like just straightforward metal, and it just seems to be really effective. Like crowds really love it. They love engaging with

14:30 it because you know, it just does the job. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, and to your point, Okay, so think about crowds like at shows. You know those really specific death metal bands are really specific black metal bands. They have their core culdish following m but they don't it doesn't kind of go beyond there, like because it's such a niche. It's what I think. You know, it's like because you're such in a box that that's where you get a box of people that follow it exactly, man, And that's the thing that you've got to, like especially just sort of like really push and try and make it sustainable as a like we've you've got to kind of so somewhat cater to people, you know what I mean. But at the same time, like the reason we make music, like what we do is we just want to make people fucking move. So yeah, it's one hundred percent like we are our music for the lives of the live setting on I would say, don't get me wrong, Like we do love our music. We love writing music. That is like the principal reason when we do it. But yeah, you know exactly what you mean.

15:41 We just want to see people have fun, move and bring it to as many people as we can. And I know what you mean because like I love I love genres of black metal and stuff like that, Like I do love that metal, and like I love like really obscure punk fans from like the seventies and shit. Like I know you're saying, it's never ever gonna it's never really ever going to get that further than that what you already is already is. So it's kind of exactly and you know you brought up fun and that's earth Day comes to mind. And going back to where I'm saying, taken too seriously, Man, if you're not having fun in this business, this is the wrong business to be in because there's too not fun. Ship that at least when you're playing and writing and doing that ship it should be fun because otherwise what's the point. And you can always tell, like, see, those are the bands that last, the ones that are up on stage and you can totally tell they're having a blast. You know, Yeah, they're the opinion of what I'm saying of not taking themselves too seriously. Yeah, definitely. Like one of my like one of my all time favorite bands is The Black Dahlia Murder And they're in a genre which you know is like gate keeps really heavily, you know, like death metal guys of probably like die hard death metal guys would probably say like, oh, you know, like the Black the Black Dahlia Murderer. You know, they're playing kind of like a poserized version of death metal. But like, but

17:12 they're so sick at what they do. You know. They they have, or rather they have before Trevor died. They have this ironclad like two year released window they would release an album every two years without fail, and it's just such fun music, especially you know, watching them perform at live and stuff like that. They never took themselves like way seriously or anything like that, and you can just really feel it. It kind of like comes out the pause of the music. So I mean, similarly, the kind of genre that we're playing, like, it's not quite like I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's like in the in like the pure hardcore realm, because there are definitely bands who, you know, like they'd stylize themselves like, oh yeah, no, we are like hardcore. I'd say we're more kind of on the more like modern metal core spectrum. But we're not.

18:00 You know, we're not trying to we're not necessarily reinventing the wheel. We're not stepping on anyone's toes, just kind of doing what we want to do. And that's the way it should only be, right, you know, because yeah, listen, I think that's the way you get noticed is being you and so being what other people think you should do. M hm, exactly exactly, man. And we just want to have we just want to find and just like I don't think we know all of our shows seem to be really fun on women's so it's going on this exactly. See there you go. There it is. Tell everybody how they can connect to you guys on socials, how they can get the new album, how they can get your merch check out all your tour dates besides download and all that good stuff. So you can go into our Instagram which is in depth with a v of course underscore and that's the same across every single platform. You can stream it, our newp drownding on Spotify, Apple Music, everything. You can get all of our videos or on YouTube. Yeah, and if you want come to a show, our tour dates on there too, So yeah, nice. Is there anything else you want to tell the rest it's about that you have upcoming or that we didn't talk about that they need to know.

19:11 Well, we've got loads of shows coming up in the next couple of months and stuff. But we recently we just announced the show with the Underworld with Jeff Harkings and activists, which is going to be amazing. We're doing doing so much it. We're now to tour with cut Short at the end of the year. We've got loads of one off shows. If you're in the UK or Ireland you can probably catch us, but not you're report in the US soon unfortunately, because we are broke boys. But if anyone wants, if anyone wants to pay us, pay us to come out to Europe, well we'll do it in a harbit. There you go. Yeah, some US festival, so hopefully, I mean yeah, same same same deal, same deal. Pay us to come out, Well we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll come. Need that sun honestly. Yeah. Yeah, so very exciting download. That's gonna be the beginning of it. And then they're all gonna want you after, you know, the powers that be see your live show it down load what happens to mate? Yeah, there it is.

20:18 And the music. Everybody's got to check out your new music. It is badass, brutal, and I mean, just like you said, it's it's fun too. You know, it's heavy, it's brutal, but it's fun. You are, you're gentlemen. I appreciate it. Well, we appreciate you bringing us music because we need it most now in the world. We live in music's best therapy and we need a lot of it. So over that, thanks for being on the adventures pipe Man, You're welcome. You for having us appreciate it. Thank you for listening through the adventures of Patement on w for CUI Radio.