Friday, 13 May 2005
Anger Management
Still Remains, 3 Inches Of Blood and Trivium are the three new bands being promoted on this year’s Roadrage Tour. All three took time out to chat to uk-fusion about themselves, the tour and their up-coming appearances at Download
Part 1: Zach (keyboards), Still Remains
 Before Still Remains, you were in a band called Shades Of Amber with T.J. (vocals) and Jordan (guitar) weren’t you? How did Still Remains come about?
Yes, I played drums then. When Shades of Amber broke up, T.J. and Jordan kept doing Still Remains. I went off and did a different band called Joust, a pop band pretty much. Then, about a year into both bands, we ended up doing a song together because we were still friends and it was a lot of fun and it sounded great, and we were just like ‘OK, let’s do another song’.
You’ve just released Of Love & Lunacy, your first album as Still Remains, so tell me a bit about it. It’s a concept album of sorts isn’t it? I’ve heard the title is representative of the two very different emotions that run through the songs.
A lot of that has to do with T.J.’s lyrics, both coming from some being out of extreme love and some more out of desperation. The two are very separate, but end up coming together at certain points and sharing a lot of common traits. And we reflected on that and tried to capture that mood: an energetic, upbeat sound and yet once again with that desperation. T.J. comes in with the lyrics and the vocals, but the music’s the rest of the band. Me and Jordan write a lot of the riffs, but it’s a group effort.
I always hear your frontman called T.J. Does he have a real name?
Er, I think Thomas. Thomas James? (Looks to bandmates) Er, John? (Help from bandmates) Jerald. Thomas Jerald – you learn something new every day.
How have you found England and the tour so far?
It’s the first time here for four of us I think and it’s great, we love it. We’re getting the lingo, and I like some of your pop bands like Blur and Pulp. They treat the bands better here [than the States], and the response to this tour’s been amazing, we’re all so thrilled, and hoping to be back as soon as we can.
The album seems to be doing great. There’s a lot of kids coming out and singing along. We’ve got a new guitar player/singer, Mike Church. He joined the band right about the time of recording and did a lot of the singing on the record, but now he’s playing guitar too. We’re definitely glad to have him as a full-time member.
Part 2: Jamie (vocals), 3 Inches Of Blood
 Unlike the others, this isn’t your first visit to Oxford is it?
No, we came over about a year and a half ago, in October 2003 [touring with The Darkness]. We actually played the same club [Oxford Zodiac] on one of the off days, with a band called Murder One. I’m surprised how many people know the band, and the level of enthusiasm.
I heard Justin Hawkins joined you on stage during that tour.
Yeah, I’d be hard pressed to remember which actual show it was. It was one near the end any way. He came out and did the chorus to ‘Deadly Sinners’ with us on stage. I just got down on one knee and offered him my microphone like a sword or something, then him and Cam (3IOB’s other vocalist) did the matching highs.
Apparently he had some trouble hitting the high notes. That’s saying something.
Yeah, he’s got quite the lungs on him, that’s for sure; but he had his own set to worry about. He was probably restraining himself.
Do you have any secrets yourself? You don’t stick your testicles in a vice before the gig, do you?
No, no. I just have three or four beers before I go on stage. That’s about as much as my vocal warm up involves. Cam does a couple of lines of King Diamond to practice, but that’s about it. We don’t have any crazy vocal exercises or training or anything like that, we just belt it out.
Your style – what’s sometimes called ‘battle metal’ – is quite rare these days isn’t it?
Yeah, we’re quite old school, power metal even, and we sing about these fantasy themes.
You sing about orcs and goblins, you mean?
I don’t like listening to bands that sing about their bad day or their feelings, failed relationships and stuff. I’d rather have a musical experience that goes like a good book, than a political diatribe or somebody telling you what you should think. We’re coming from music as an escapist form. Rather than dwelling on normal every day crap that people write about, we like to make it fun.
When you say a good book, are you in to Lord Of The Rings, Dungeons & Dragons and all that fantasy stuff?
Oh yeah, guilty as charged. Look I picked up a new 20-sided dice yesterday in Stoke the other day. (Pulls it out his pocket and rolls it across the table) We haven’t been able to get a campaign going on the bus. It’s only two of us that play, and the others think we’re nerds. I played a little bit when I was younger, but Cam and I just started playing again about a year and a half ago. It’s funny, because it took in a fantasy-themed metal band to get us back to D&D, rather than the other way round. Back in Vancouver we play with members of Goatsblood – our drummer’s their drummer too, and their singer is our dungeon master – and these grind/math-core bands called Javelin Rain and Hospital.
Part 3: Matt (vocals), Trivium
 Although this is actually your second album, you’re all younger than me (19-22). That’s scary. Still, it’s obvious you have a lot of older influences and I’ve heard you’ve been playing some covers in your set. Will you be doing that tonight?
Depends. If the audience are good we will, but every show in the UK’s been amazing, so probably. We’ve got some Misfits, Metallica, Maiden, Pantera and Sepultura.
Do a lot the crowd recognise these songs?
They all do. Every night we have tons of people singing along. Incredible. Our audience is really young here, but all the young people know all the words.
What’s it like being on the same label as bands like (formerly) Sepultura and Machine Head?
Oh yeah, some of my favourite bands in the world are like Machine Head, Fear Factory, Killswitch Engage. I grew up listening to all these bands, Sepultura, Soulfly, Machine Head, Slipknot. I think it’s absolutely incredible being on this label.
You’ve played with a lot of these now yourselves, haven’t you?
I’ve played with Fear Factory, toured with Machine Head. Not Slipknot.
But you are at Download, right?
Well, I don’t know too much about it. I knew more about Dynamo, which is legendary, but I hear there’s going to be a lot of people there [Download]. We’re playing the third [Napster] stage, same day as Slayer and Slipknot.
How does this UK tour compare to the US?
The audiences are way more intense. The other night in Manchester we had crowd surfing and stage-diving the whole night, and there was no barricade. This kid got up on stage and grabbed the mic, fell into my face and cut my lip open. I was bleeding all over the stage, all down my chin. I’ve never bled that much on stage, the audience loved it though.
Do you stage dive yourself?
I used to. I put my guitar down during ‘(Like Light To The) Flies’, and jump out and sing with them; but it just took out too much if I stopped playing guitar.
You’ve been headlining all the shows in England
At first we were rotating, we were on first in Wolverhampton; but a lot of the fans already had our record, and some of them we leaving afterwards so we switched it. This way works out better for everyone. We’re not headlining, we’re just playing third.
The album’s doing well, I hear.
Yeah, we’re on about 10,000 sales here. In the States, we’re at about 24,000 in eight weeks. Our goal is 100,000 by the end of the year.
And the next one platinum?
Hopefully yeah. We’ve got a lot of stuff written. I’m thinking of resurrecting two of our really old songs, ‘My Hatred’ and ‘Storm’, from our demo, which came out before Ember (to Inferno, the band’s full debut) and we’re writing new stuff. It’s really technical.
Have you played any of these yet? Or is it mostly just stuff off Ascendancy?
Not yet. It’s all off Ascendancy. Speaking of Ascendancy, there’s been a high demand here for ‘Dying In Your Arms’, our very clean song. The US didn’t really like it, but there’s been a high demand. I think we might try to soundcheck it, and see what’s going on with that.
Nothing off Ember, because our set’s not long enough. If we come back with a longer set, headlining we’ll definitely play Ember songs. I love those, and there’s a high demand for them too, but they’re not in our regular set.
With thanks to Zach, Jamie, Matt and Kirsten Lane.
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