Interview – Northlane
Northlane had a pretty roller coaster 2014, with the shock departure of vocalist Adrian Fitipaldes and the arrival of his replacement Marcus Bridge. We caught up with guitarist Josh Smith before their supporting set for Parkway Drive at Nottingham’s Rock City.
In one of the most unusual starts to an interview ever we sat down with Josh as the recent Sydney Café siege unfolded on the dressing room TV.
J: I had a bit of a freak out last night when I heard about this as my dad works just down the road in the middle of Sydney. I just had to call the family and make sure everyone is ok.
BL: ..and everyone at home is ok?
J: Yeah, I don’t personally know anyone that’s involved but it’s not the kind of thing that you want to happen when you’re on the other side of the world. It’s so weird watching this shit on the news when it’s so close to home and I’m so far away!
BL: Sure you don’t mind talking to us today?
J: Not at all.
BL: OK, let’s talk about something more positive, how’s the current tour going for you guys?
J: Really well man, it’s been really refreshing to have Marcus in the band and he’s been doing really well. We’ve been having a great time especially in the UK; it’s been great to us as it always is. All the dates in the UK so far have gone fantastic, when we got to London it was almost like we were going back home [laughs] it was sic.
BL: You Aussies seem to be doing really well here at the moment, we were talking to the guys from Thy Art Is Murder recently and they were also saying it feels like a home from home.
J: Our mates! It’s cool to see, as an Australian band, you have to work so hard to get anywhere and Thy Art are from the same part of Sydney as we are and we’ve known some of those guys since we were really young, and to see them killing it as well it’s a really great feeling.
BL: …and with [I Killed The] Prom Queen and Aversions Crown doing so well, you’re in good company.
J: Aversions are another group of boys that are doing us proud, it’s cool man, it means the barrier to exit from our country isn’t there any more and if it wasn’t for bands like Parkway Drive and I Killed The Prom Queen we wouldn’t have these opportunities. They were there back in the day, paving the way for bands like us and we’ll never forget that.
BL: Have you toured with all the guys on tonight’s line up before?
J: I’d never met the guys from Heaven Shall Burn before. The first time we came to Europe Carnifex were main support and we were on second out of like seven bands. Parkway we’ve toured with twice back home but never overseas…
…oh shit. [As the BBC news report showed a stream of hostages pouring from the Sydney Café]
Let’s keep going.
BL: I see you guys will be heading out on tour in the new year in the US and Canada?
J: Yeah, Canada is great for us man, it’s almost as receptive as the UK and we’ve got some really close friends there. It’s the first place we ever went overseas on tour so it holds a very special place in our hearts.
BL: You mentioned earlier about Marcus joining the band, when Adrian left was that a shock or was that something that had been coming for a while?
J: After it happened it wasn’t a shock, after it happened we were like “Ah, should have seen it coming”. You know, it is what it is. We were put into this situation where we had to find a new vocalist, it was his decision, he made it for whatever reasons he had to and I’m not going to really go over that, but we’re out the other side of it now and I’ve never been more relieved. It’s cool because we’ve always been a band that’s been about constant evolution, in our sound and constantly moving forward. From a creative perspective, I’m not going to say it’s a great thing losing Adrian from our circle of friends to go away with, but it is cool to have something new to work with. It’s strange how it all worked out, there are a lot of bands that would never recover from that and we’ve made it through the other side, we’ve got a stiff upper lip and we’re never just going to throw in the towel because we’ve worked too fucking hard for it!
BL: …and the new single Rot sound great.
J: Thanks man!
BL: Love what you guys have done with that. Is that another Will Putney one?
J: That was an interesting one because we were supposed to fly Will over to do it and he had some complications back home and couldn’t come out in the end and a very good friend of ours was supposed to assist him on the engineering side and ended up engineering the whole thing, we did it with Will on Skype constantly. But, you know what, it kinda worked out for the best, we had three days booked in to record that song and we took eight! So if Will had come over it could have been an expensive disaster! [laughs] So it all worked out for the best, and there is a story behind that song too, we had decided to record that song in May when Adrian was still in the band, we’d decided to record it before we did this tour with Parkway. We hadn’t written it and when Adrian left he hadn’t done anything for the new record, not long after his departure we decided on the song we were going to use and two weeks out we were like “it’s not the right song, we need to change it” and that was about the time that Marcus came to our attention and started jamming with us and so we picked a new song and the first thing that that Marcus did with us was demo vocals on it. Then a week before recording we were like “you know what, this isn’t the right song either” we had thirty seconds of Rot written at that stage and even though we knew it wasn’t finished it just felt like the right song and then the night before recording started the music was finished, and that’s why we took so long because we kept changing little things here and there until we were happy with it, and I’m glad we did because to us we felt like our whole career was riding on that song. If we’d released a dud of a track — goodbye!
BL: Did Marcus get involved creatively in Rot?
J: What’s sort of been happening is that I’ve been writing about seventy five percent of the lyrics for the new record, so Marcus was twenty five and the whole melodies and phrasing is the inverse of that. So together we’re kind of co-writing all of the lyrics and vocal stuff. The phrasing and placing of vocals is equally as important as the lyrics and Marcus has slotted in real well. That track was a little more hectic because he was so new to the band, we told him he was in two weeks before we hit the studio and then he was straight out here. On this tour we’ve been writing on the bus and gelling really well and we’re super happy with the new material that we have for the new record.
BL: That’s great to hear. Some people have said that Rot is pretty heavy, is that a direction we can expect for the new record?
J: What we took away from Singularity was that there were a lot of really cool parts in it but the record was more or less like a punch in the face, Rot to me has more dynamic in it that pretty much anything we’ve done before and I think you can expect a lot of that. You can expect more breadth of dynamic across the record, there will be softer songs there might be heavier songs, there’ll be songs that stay somewhere in between and move between the two. What kind of happened was that we did a tour in Australia with Karnivool and the majority of their fans hated us, but that band taught us the importance of dynamic in music and the fact that to have a huge impact on a crowd doesn’t mean that you have to write the heaviest music on Earth it just has to be written the right way and you’ll definitely hear that new flavour in the new record.
BL: While we’re talking about the sound of the new record, I have to mention your Gear Gods video and I have to ask; how much of your rig is about the live sound and how much is about geeking out on gear?
J: [laughs] It’s all about the sound. Look, if I had it my way and I had a dedicated tech that I could rely on to get everything done and I had no limits to what we could use it would be totally different. The reason that I built them like that is so that they can be portable in a bunch of pelican cases and we can fly them anywhere. With the racks, we keep one in Europe, one in the US and one at home. They can be used without the racks too, we’ve got looms at homes that are just power snakes that we can plug into them without live cabs if we have to, like if we have to do a fly-in. I’ve built them in a way that we have the best of analogue and digital in a form that works really well for touring. It looks like a bit of a disaster in the practice room but that’s just because that whole thing’s a shit fight, we play more cricket than music in there! There’s a good spot outside for a pitch [laughs].
BL: Do you enjoy getting involved in the technical side of things?
J: Yeah man, that’s like my other job at home. Not so much anymore but I do set-ups and pedal boards for a couple of bands.
BL: I can see it’s pretty impressive kit!
J: It took a long time! [laughs] We’ve never really had any failures, but even when we did it wasn’t a problem because the way it’s built is all in bays. Dude if I had it my way though I’d have like three amps and three isolation cabinets and two fridge size racks full of shit, but you have to live within your means! [laughs]
BL: You guys announced Download this morning, that’s pretty big?
J: Very excited about that, excited about being back in this part of the world with the nicer weather!
BL: Before that though is the tour with August Burns Red?
J: Yeah and I can tell you that straight after that we’ll be back in the studio to work on the new record, I’m not sure if that’ll be out before download but there’s a fair chance there’ll be some new music.
BL: It sounds like you’re keeping pretty busy; will you at least get a break for Christmas?
J: Yeah, we get two weeks. Though to be fair we did just have four months off to write and stuff and luckily the whole singer thing happened then. I’ve had time at home and now I’m ready to get stuck back into it.
BL: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us, good luck for tonight and with the new record.
J: Pleasure to meet you dude, any time, have a good one!
Northlane now move on to their tour of the US and Canada supporting August Burns Red, you can find the dates over on August Burns Red’s site.
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