A New INTERVIEW with OLLY MITCHELL on the 16th April 2004 by Rigsby |
| After phenomenal critical acclaim for their debut album 'The Repercussions Of A Badly Planned Suicide' and a year of hard touring, Johnny Truant head back to the studio to record the much anticipated follow-up. So, it seemed like a good time to catch up with vocalist Olly Mitchell once again and find out what’s going on…
Hi there Olly, good to talk to you again. Let’s not mess about, lets get straight down to the nitty gritty. Tell us about the new album! Hi there Rigsby, yeah, it’s been really exciting. Its been a really good couple of months because we’ve been able to take ourselves away from playing live and just really concentrate solely on writing material, which we’ve never had the option of doing. When we wrote ‘Repercussions…’ ('The Repercussions Of A Badly Planned Suicide' - the debut album) it was a lot of songs that we had written over a long period of time, as opposed to actually writing an album. We don’t so much think of ‘Repercussions…’ as an album but more of a collection of material that we had worked on over a huge amount of time. So we took ourselves away and we didn’t play any shows for quite a while, got a new rehearsal space and we sat in it for what seemed like forever and kind of thrashed it all out. We’ve shocked ourselves with it really, as it doesn’t sound anything like what we thought it was going to sound like and at times it doesn’t really sound like us, although I know it is.
Are all the songs new? The only song on there that people are going to be vaguely familiar with is “I The Exploder”, which we have been playing live for quite a while. It’s taken a few changes, we have re-worked it, re-written it and we have changed a lot of the drum parts, made parts of it a little faster.
That was a little bit different from your older material but not too far removed, so will that help dovetail the old material with the new? When we started writing the new record, what was really important to us was that we wanted people to know that we were standing on our own two feet – when you look around at what music has got like in the UK, everyone seems to be bunched and we have a lot of respect for other bands that we get put along side. Great friends like Beecher and Eden Maine – our contemporaries – This is the record that we want to be able to say that we are Johnny Truant, we are bringing just us to you and we’re not coming at you from a scene angle, we’re coming at you from a more musical angle. We don’t want to be an underground band, we don’t what to play toilets forever, we just want to be able to go out and do what we want to do and not do what others think we should be doing. The USA comparisons we find quite hard to chew on a lot of the time and the new material will correct the opinions of many of those people who make the comparisons. It’s very easy to say that we want to sound like Converge or want to sound like this or that, well we don’t want to sound like any of those bands, we want to sound like us and our influences are so broad its frustrating when the media do lazily labels.
I read recently someone who make the statement that you were the UK’s answer to Converge. Yeah, that was Kerrang! I think that comment has been the bane of our lives – the whole Converge thing really – they seem to be a band that a lot of people get compared to. I don’t know if it is just because they are fast and heavy. Personally I don’t think we have one song that sounds even remotely like a Converge song. The way we write our songs are just nothing like what they do. I used to be quite a big fan of them but I don’t actually listen to them much anymore. The fact of the matter is that there are two angles to it - it is one of the most flattering things for someone to say, don’t get me wrong. Converge have like spearheaded a whole new wave of metal and hardcore, they are the pioneers of that form of music – they have got to be in the top three of the bands that headed that movement and to be compared to them has got to be an honour. However it’s the same age old story that every band has - no band wants to be compared to anyone but that just isn’t going to happen as everyone finds something that they can compare with. With this record in particular, we are ready for the comparisons because we have been very influenced by the bands that we have toured with, which is why it’s been fun doing this record because we have learned so much since we did ‘Repercussions...’.
How far from being completed is the new album? We have just come out of the studio on Monday (12 April 04) with Adam D (from Killswitch Engaged), we’ve tracked drums and most of the guitar parts, there are still a few more guitar parts to lay down. We’ve nailed the bass and we’ve just got to do the vocal parts - there are a lot more backing vocals on this record. We realised that we weren’t taking advantage of having that in the band, so there’s a lot more vocal parts on the newer stuff, especially Stu (guitar). He’s doing a lot more vocals now which gives it a completely different feeling and it gives the sound so many new levels. So, we’re flying over to Massachusetts in June and we’re going to finish working the vocals and do some of the mixing – then we’ll be working on the mixes separately at another time. It’s a little difficult because Adam is a busy man and is touring with Killswitch and recording with a lot of bands at the moment.
Do you have a release date targeted or is it too early for that yet? It’s looking like we should be able to put something out roughly around late August and then supporting it with touring fairly hard with a bunch of headline shows, heading into mainland Europe and we plan to go over to the States. We’re hoping the band is going to become a fulltime proposition off the back of the album.
Are all the songs fully written now? We’re still doing a bit of pre-production on some of the tracks. When you’re writing it you become encapsulated in it and it is very nice to take a step back from it – you can try too hard – it really nice to have someone else look at our songs and give us some options and criticise and try to find the errors. So there are a few bits and bobs that I am going to be working on, even though we’ve been in the studio working for five months, we are still going back into practice at the weekend and starting again so we can just get the vocal parts worked as much as we can.
How many songs are you planning to include? The record is going to have ten tracks on it, the length of the songs aren’t going to be as drastic as the ones on ‘Repercussions…’ - we’re fairly renowned for having quite long songs - and there are more songs but I am fairly sure overall it’s shorter than ‘Repercussions…’. The thing with albums now days is the length doesn’t really come into it – some of the best records and one of the records that has inspired me has been Every Time I Die. Like, that’s a band that have managed to completely encapsulate everything in their record and I think their record is just under half an hour long, but it is just the most perfect length record I have heard and it just hits you in the face and you just have to play it from the start again. There are songs on the new album that kick in at the Johnny Truant five minute mark, but what we have tried to do is push the intensity – we have done what we did with the longer songs, but pushed it into a shorter time making it even more intense.
Can you give us an idea of titles and subjects? The album is untitled at the moment, we’re leaving it untitled until we’re holding it in our hands, because we felt we couldn’t be truly honest with it until it’s finished. Some of the song titles are ‘The Bloodening’, ‘A Day In The Death’, ‘Acropolis Junction’ and ‘I Love You Even Though You’re A Zombie Now’. Everything is a new direction on this album, but you will be able to tell its Johnny Truant. The lyrics on the record are very different – I decided that I wanted to invent my own scenarios to write about, as opposed to trying to find scenarios, because I was quite sick of listening to people ranting out the same old stuff. I found myself clutching at straws to try and find topics and things that I really wanted to express. I looked inside at what interested me, so a lot of it I have sort of invented – there are a lot of questions, the idea is to make people feel awkward enough to ask the questions they never wish to ask. I do talk about some pretty nasty stuff, there are a lot of religious questions that go asked and unanswered, but I am just painting pictures for people that are horrific and I am just hoping that people will react – I want to put a situation in front of people and get them to talk about it. ‘The Bloodening’ – I think is one of the strongest tracks on the album – is inspired by the film ‘Kill Bill’ – we’ve been inspired a lot more by film than music this time round – there are questions about the fact that people are entertained by seriously horrific things, people choose to be entertained by watching people die, like is that right? – so what I decided when I was coming up with that sort of a concept was to take it even more to the extreme. I ask a weird question on there that was – if England went to war with the world - just England versus the world - and we decided to send the people that we didn’t respect like the paedophiles and murders, if we send them in to fight our war for us because we felt they were expendable – but they went away and won our war for us – would we welcome them back with open arms or what? The subjects I use are because I wanted people to feel absolutely horrified, because I wanted people to listen and if that’s the only way I can get them to listen, then I’ll do it. I don’t make any statements, I just say paint a situation and say what would you do, there are no right or wrong answers to it, but I think it makes for a more interesting record really.
Are you featuring any instrumentals like with 'Puparia' on the debut? At some point we are going to do a second part to Puparia, but we haven’t managed to finish it yet to a point we are happy with to record, so that is something we are still working on. Also, we didn’t want to slow the album down too much, we want it to sting you more. The instrumental is something that everyone seems to talk about on the first album, either in a positive or negative way – everyone seems to make a bloody hoo-ha about it. But this time around we thought that maybe an instrumental would take the flow out of where the record was coming from. There are a few interlude type pieces where it does break it down just a little bit, but not as specific as Puparia was.
You mentioned that Adam Dutkiewicz (Killswitch Engage guitarist) has been working with you on the album. What’s his part in it, how much of an influence will he have on the finished result and how did his involvement come about? He is producing and recording it. He has had an influence on this record simply because we have so much respect for him and before we started this recording we had demoed the songs to him, so he was able to listen and see where we were going wrong or spot the weaker areas of the songs and allowed us to make those parts more positive. There have been moments when we have disagreed with him as well and where we have stood our ground on it and we’ve said no, we want it like this. The main reason for getting him in, was because the other records he has done have sounded great, it’s as simple as that. I met him when we did the Kerrang! Weekender, he approached us after watching the set and we got chatting and he mentioned then that he would be really interested in working with us, and I was going to say the exact same thing to him and it flourished from there really. It’s nice to work with someone who really likes what you are doing and the fun he has injected into it, although it been quite stressful, he allowed us to see it through a different light. Adam does a lot of the recording live and manages to capture the energy in a band and we can use that and overdub that with additional tracks and it enables you to capture a lot more rawness of the band - which has put me more at ease - and makes it a more natural process.
Is the situation with Undergroove the same, will the new album to be released on that label? What is the scope for this release - is there interest from other labels or interest from outside of the UK We are still working very closely with Undergroove, there is still a lot that is up in the air. We are talking with other people but Undergroove is the label that has supported us and we wouldn’t be here without them and we are very happy with them. There has been a lot of interest from other countries – there is a lot of interest from the USA which is why we are eager to get out there. I think that more UK bands should take the plunge and go out there, because they have a thousand hardcore bands that all do and speak in the same way and they are really gagging for an English band to fly the Iron Maiden banner and say we’re from England - fuck you - we’re the reason why your doing this in the first place. But Undergroove is where this record is coming from and will always be a massive part of this record and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
How did things go with the first album, ‘Repercussions…’? It was well received by the majority of the press, but were you happy with the take-up, the interest it gathered and the support and promotion it was given? We were as chuffed as hell with how well it was received by the press. At that point we never knew we would be doing this, so everything was a real bonus to us and we were a very young band and the reviews were very positive about the record. The problem with the press in the UK is, that when you’re a new band you get a feature or review but none of them follow up on it, which is what makes it difficult for British bands. They get the initial buzz and then they don’t get the support later on because there is just too much coming in from America, who get over supported by the same press. But in general, I can’t say anything but ‘thank you’ for all those that have shown support. It’s been amazing - being in Kerrang! is something we always thought about when we first started out. They supported us from the start along with Metal Hammer and of course Rock Sound and people like yourself, who have always been keen to help us out - it’s been great and now it’s just time for us to shine through and take it to the next level. On the support and promotion, Undergroove have been fantastic too and what people fail to believe or understand is that Undergroove is just run by one guy. People are under the illusion that Undergroove has this big office in the centre of London, but they have nothing of the sort, it’s a guy who puts his heart and soul into working with music he likes. Darren Sadler who runs it, comes home from a days work and then will do Undergroove, but the support has been unbelievable. The album has sold really steadily because we were able to tour the album so hard last year. The position we were in last year was that we were all holding down full time jobs, so I don’t know how we managed it, but we were touring every month but we just knuckled down and worked it out. But it is touring that makes a lot of difference, you have got to work hard and we’re proud that we did that.
What are the plans to tour for the new record and have you managed to get any opportunities to tour outside of the UK? We are going to support it even harder and hopefully going full time will allow us to do that and also we’re a little more established as being a band that will go out and tour. We have a fantastic agent in Ross who has been taking us from strength to strength and having him there working for us, getting us into situations where we can play in front of the right people and be out there all the time and be totally supportive, has been great. The UK and Europe are looking like they will be September, we may be doing Europe before we do our headlining shows – it should all be announced officially over the next few weeks. This time, we will be making sure we take the time to play the places that we haven’t played before. For instance we are doing four shows in Scotland – we’ll be doing Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen. We love playing up there, the people up there are fantastic, the shows are always well run and we have a great time.
Are you looking forward to playing the new material? Definitely, we’ve played one show with the new material - we played a home town show in Brighton the other day, which was awesome, where we played three of the new songs. The last set based on the ‘Repercussions…’ material was at the Mean Fiddler with Sikth in February.
Do you get a little tired of playing the old stuff and how are you going to amalgamate new with old in a live environment? We got to the point five months ago, when I was very against playing any new songs because we didn’t want to give anything away too soon. What we wanted to do with this record was take the band on another tour and release the new material at the same time. So, instead of doing it in dribs and drabs with us playing bits and bobs of new songs, we decided to keep the set strictly to the ‘Repercussions…’ with the exception of “I The Exploder” and then, when the new record drops we will concentrate on the new material, which I think will suit it better. We will still be playing some of the old stuff - I think a lot of people would be a bit pissed off if we didn’t - the stronger tracks from the old album will be floating tracks that we can alternate. And that should be really exciting and it’s something I am really looking forward to doing, as playing them along side the new stuff should give them something else. But, we will be concentrating on the new songs live. We have been playing ‘Repercussions…’ live for a long time and we would like to concentrate on playing the new material, making sure people get to hear that live and see the new side of the band.
As you have mentioned you’ve done quite a lot of touring since the last album was released, are there any favourite memories or bands that you’ve managed to tour with – any dreams realised? We have had some amazing times. We had an incredible time on tour with Raging Speedhorn and we made some of the closest friends we’ve ever made. Also, touring with Hondo Maclean and ISIS - those three bands were awesome, particularly the Speedhorn and Hondo Maclean shows were a real riot. Raging Speedhorn were just so accommodating - we were partying every night, we were on the buses there with them and we just had a fantastic time of it. The Hondo Maclean guys are just some of the coolest people I have ever met, they just have absolute hearts of gold and they can certainly put back a few pints as well! The touring thing - it’s been a great year, it really has - we have had a lot of fun and that is the most important thing, because at the end of the day we are not doing this for a pay cheque, were doing it because we love it and because we have fun. We are not doing it to please you or to please anyone else were doing it to please ourselves.
The whole rock n roll thing is a dream, but have you guys found it like that? I mean, are you all still working? I don’t think were really in a position to say we’re living a rock n roll dream, because we don’t sniff cocaine to excess or anything like that (lol). At the moment we are in a position where we are all about to do the band full time and that to us is amazing, it’s as near to the rock n roll dream as you can come. It about being in a position where you can turn around and say ‘I am a professional musician’, we have got here off our own back and we have worked f**king hard for it. We didn’t get pushed into this band, we did it ourselves and now through the hard work, we should be able to work it full time, although we are all still working now and in the lead up to September. We just want to be able to go and play our music and we are not looking for a lot of money. I mean it would be lovely if someone was to grace us with a million pound cheque or whatever - fine - but we are quite happy to turn up to a show and just have enough money to stay on the road and a case of beer every night and rock hard and have fun doing it.
Many of the bands we talked about last time - bands that were growingly influential in the UK scene - have since split – bands like Mahumodo, Earthtone9 and Matter to name a few. It seems so hard for a band to keep everything together for a prolonged period of time, when it seems so difficult to make a living out of it. How do you guys keep focused and inspired? I think it was a crime what happened to Earthtone9, I would like to think that a lot of it was just bad timing and it just didn’t happen for them when it really should have done. They worked very hard - they were a great example to so many UK bands - they went out there and they toured f**king hard and they earned a lot of respect which they deserved. When the crunch came and they were looking to take it to the next level, for whatever reasons, they just couldn’t make it. I really do think it’s hard for bands in the UK, I don’t doubt that, because the USA is just so strong. We’re not expecting to get a lot of money, we just need enough money to live out the day and it’s down to the sacrifices you are prepared to make, to make it work. Believe me, living at home when you’re 23 is f**king hard, but at the same time I’m not going to be there, we’ll be away a lot of the time. My biggest inspiration is that I will never have to talk about ‘what if’ I hadn’t done it. I know that I have put in my heart and soul and give it my all, I would rather fail than never know if I could have achieved it. Everyday I feel great about doing this - a year ago I would have said we were lucky to be doing it - now I don’t think we are. I think we have worked hard and deserve to be where we are. And I don’t think that’s an arrogant statement, because if you were to talk to a lot of the bands that we grown up with and have played along side, I think they would say we deserve to succeed. It’s not as easy as people think, especially when you’re playing music in the extremity that we are, it isn’t the most popular form of music in the world.
And at the same time its keeping momentum, isn’t it? …At the same time it’s taking a challenge. You challenge yourself and that is exactly what we have done with this new record. We could have just gone into the studio and recorded another ‘Repercussions…’ and that would have been fine, but that’s not what we wanted to do. We set ourselves a challenge, bringing new levels to the band and bringing a new direction into it and combining it with where we were coming from originally. That’s been exciting and has kept us on our toes, and now we are at the next phase of taking that direction to the public and see how they find it. And when we have done that we will set ourselves new challenges and start again, and record another record and keep doing that until we are either dead or the greatest band on the planet!
Well, we wish you all the best Olly and thank you very much. We’ll wrap it up now unless there is anything else you wish to add? No, not really, other than that was awesome, thanks. Thanks so much for the chat and for your time and everything. Cheers.
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