Interview – Heart Of A Coward
Heart Of A Coward are having a short break from writing their third album as they are currently on tour with SikTh. We were lucky enough to have twenty minutes out of their day to catch up with bassist, Vishal “V” Khetia and drummer, Chris “Noddy” Mansbridge.
BL: Thanks for taking the time out to talk to Birmingham Live today as you appear to be pretty busy!
V: We are as we’ve just come back from Wagamamas and we’re all stuffed and a bit sleepy now!
BL: The 1st date of the tour with SixTh was a sold out gig in your home town of Milton Keynes, how was that for you?
V: Sweaty, very, very sweaty as there’s no ventilation in that room! It was a really cool show.
N: It’s always good to play hometown shows.
BL: How did the shows you played local to Milton Keynes when you first started Heart of Coward compare to the shows which you are playing now?
V: We used to play pubs. They all seem to vary, sometimes we play smaller venues. There are a number of venues and cities on this tour which we’ve never played before, we’ve played Portsmouth on this tour and sold out the Wedgewood Rooms.
BL: What things did you do to get enable Heart of Coward to start to play outside of your local area?
V: We made friends with other bands who were a similar level of band to us, but in different parts of the country. Our guitarist Steve was previously in a band who were based in Brighton, and we had friends in Wales along with other bands we knew who dotted around the country, so we made our own tour up and toured with bands from outside Milton Keynes. We would create a 6 day tour, and each of us had our car and would drive to the venues and make more contacts as we travelled around the country. We’ve also been very lucky and enjoy what we’re doing. When we started I was 19 and it was just awesome to play my guitar live, we never expected to come this far.
N: Don’t be an arsehole — that’s the best advice ever! We’ve been lucky with our Management. I’ve been playing gigs since I was 12 or 13 so it’s natural to keep doing it and there’s something telling me to keep doing it — it’s fun. It beats sitting on your arse doing nothing all the time.
BL: Have you been to Birmingham in the past and are you looking forward to this show?
V: Yes we’ve been a few times. We headlined the Asylum on our Severance Tour in November, and the show was sold out and it was a really cool show. We’ve also played at the Academy 3 with Bleed from Within and also with Thy Art is Murder. We’ve been here a couple of times before and really love playing in Birmingham. We’re looking forward to the show tonight; it should be really fun.
N: Yes it’s always good to come to Birmingham.
BL: How do smaller venues, like the Academy 2/3, compare to the Festivals which you’ve played over the past year?
V: The shows are different as the vibe is different. At Festivals there is no specific age range as you get really young people, but on this tour the crowd are from an older age group.
N: The Festivals in Europe are different too as they are rushed you very often don’t get a sound check and the sound will be hit and miss. I prefer the club shows.
BL: Do you have any plans to play any Festivals next year?
V: We do have plans to play at Festivals, but can’t release any details yet as they haven’t been announced.
BL: How do the UK crowds compare to the European crowds?
V: There’s not a major difference as the crowds in Europe still go off equally as crazy as in the UK, but it’s always good to play in the UK as we get the crowd singing back the song to us.
N: We played in Italy, not at a Festival, and it was the first time we had been there and no-one knew who we were and it was mental! The crowd were singing our lyrics back to us which was nuts! We’d also never been to Switzerland but went a couple of weeks ago, and that was a really cool gig.
BL: When you’re performing do you notice things going on in the crowd or the pit, and do any of the things that you notice concern you?
V: Yes definitely. We’ve played shows where people have been kicked in the face, pushed about, broken limbs and general fighting. The whole point of a show, especially on an alternative scene is to bring everyone together who likes alternative music, that’s where you meet people, not go out on a Friday night to get kicked. If you’re going to have a brawl, then fuck off!
N: We’re not prepared to play if we see anything going on. Jamie normally notices as I can’t see, but if I see any crowd killing, I would probably stop playing until that person is ejected; it’s not welcome at all. Everyone should look after each other. I miss the old jump around mosh pits, push and shove. I shouldn’t have to shield my beer and watch while a Nike trainer sails past me! If you’re going to hit someone you should go outside in the car park.
BL: When you’re on the road, who chooses the playlist that you listen to and what kind of music have you been listening to this tour?
V: All sorts really. I’m obsessed with Radiohead, so I always play them. I also love Hip-Hop. It just varies as we all have varied tastes.
N: Everyone plays their thing. Jamie will play Thrash Metal; I’ll play something a bit more chilled like London Grammar. I like Radiohead. Steve likes Stoner Rock, Sabbath and old school stuff. We do tend to try and phase out the metal as we’re around it all the time and it gets boring.
BL: There are just four dates left on the tour, have there been any unusual or memorable experiences that have happened so far?
V: There have been some cool shows. Glasgow was amazing as we had never played to such a big crowd in Glasgow. It’s also good to visit new places, we played the Anson Rooms in Bristol and that was really big, 900 people, and a cool gig. We played in front of people who had never heard us before and it was great playing new stuff to SixTh fans. Although there was one guy in the crowd who was sticking his middle finger up for the whole set!
N:Manchester was good last night too.
BL: The video for Distance featuring Justin Hill from SixTh came out a couple of weeks ago, what’s the reaction been like when you’ve played it live?
V: Really good, especially in the UK as we started playing it on the EU tour. Justin comes on every night and does the guest vocal, and every night he’s smashed it and that has really helped get everyone going.
N: People were looking forward to hearing it live.
BL: You’re currently in the process of writing your new album. What can we expect from your third album and is it the same kind of thing as Severance?
V: We will take aspects of Severance, but it will be a bit different. I would rather do that than the same album again and again. We’re still in the early stage and we’ve got shitloads of demos so we need to compile it and see what we want to use and what we want to change.
N: It’s definitely not going to be Hope and Hindrance or Severance; we want to do something a bit different this time.
BL: With all the different artists that you listen to away from metal, the writing process must be quite good?
V: Yes, it does work. No one apart from Jamie really listens to metal properly, so when we come up with a riff, we use influences from all sorts of bands. It helps that Carl Ayres shits out riffs!
N: Yeah, he pulls them out of his arse.
BL: Are you still finding time while you’re on tour to write songs or is it purely tour based?
V: No, it’s purely tour based, we can’t write songs when we’re on tour as our brains are fucked. We can barely get through a show!
N: I don’t even know what’s going on!
BL: So when you get back will it be straight back to writing?
V: Yes it will but we all work full time so we have to find a way to write around our work.
BL: How has the band musically developed over the last 5 years?
V: I think we’ve developed and what we write depends on what train of mind we’re in. When we wrote Severance we were in a dark place. We don’t tend to write as proper musicians we just write how we’re feeling. Severance has been our darkest record.
N: We’ve matured. We wrote Severance in the Winter and it was depressing and we were fed up with everything. The new stuff does have a bit more pace and is a bit more positive.
BL: When I was preparing for this interview, I noticed that everything on your Big Cartel site is sold out and you cannot buy a single thing which is pretty impressive!
V: Everything is sold out at the moment. We’re working on restocking everything and opening a new store; that should be done in a few months. We have new designs of merch on tour
N: Impressive? No! We’ve just changed Management companies so we’re looking to move our store to somewhere else and for a 3rd party to manage the store. At the moment we will probably close the Big Cartel. We have new merch coming soon and new designs available soon. You can also buy our merch from Impericon.
BL: Do you as a band have a big input into merch?
V: Definitely. We explain a concept of what we want on a shirt and then get a designer to draw it for us.
BL: So once the tour has finished will you be writing when you can?
V: Yes. We are a good way in with writing for the next album so we don’t have to do the whole thing when we get back. We found out about this tour in March and decided to crack on with the album to try and get as much done as possible before the tour.
N: Yes, we’ll set a couple of days a week aside, and lock ourselves away in a bedroom.
BL: If you could tour anywhere in the world with two other bands, who would you choose and why?
V: It’s a bit of a difficult one isn’t it?
N: There’s a lot of bands. I’d want to do a world tour with my mates’ bands, it would be a well good laugh, so it would probably be Tesseract and Monuments.
V: That would be jokes, it would just be with mates. Although, I’d really, really, really want to tour with Johnny Depp, that would be awesome to play Las Vegas and shit like that and re-enact some of the scenes from, what’s that film…
N: Pirates of the Caribbean?
V: (laughs), no not Pirates of the Caribbean, you know that film where he’s fucked all the time.
N: erm, Pirates of the Caribbean
(Laughter breaks out)
N: What a random, random thing to say
BL: Johnny Depp, Tesseract, Monuments and Heart of a Coward — that sounds like a good tour!
V: Yes!
BL: That was my last question so thank you very much for giving us some time, good luck with the rest of the tour and look forward to catching you guys in Birmingham.
V: Cool man, no worries!
N: Thanks man.
Interview: Dan Wilson
Photograph: Steve Kilmister