| |
Andy (Pep-Rock): Hi, for the purpose of the interview could you please tell us your names and what you do in the band? |
| Will: Hey,I’m Will Simpson, I play guitar and sing. |
| Fim: What do I call myself, yeah my names Fim because everyone knows me as that and I’m the drummer. |
| Naoto: Naoto, Bass. |
James: I’m James and I play guitar. |
| |
| Dave (Pep-Rock): How’s the tour with Hidden In Plain View going so far? |
| James: So far so good, it’s the second date into the tour and last night was absolutely wicked so onwards and upward I think. I think it’s going to be a good one, I mean the guys in Hidden In Plain View are really cool. It’s pretty cramped conditions but so far so good. |
| Will: I hope they said the same about us. |
| |
| Andy (Pep-Rock): How did last night go then and how did the HIPV fans react to you guys? |
| James: They seemed to like, we seemed to get a good reaction from most of the fans there and yeah they seemed to like it we got a good reaction on the whole. |
| Will: Yeah I think a lot of the time when people don’t know who you are then it’s like ‘who the fuck are you then’ and they want you to prove that your actually worth listening to and I think we did it. I mean when Hidden In Plain View were on, the crowd were singing along to every word but it was still quite a quiet crowd, so I’m sure there will be other crowds on this tour who will be a bit more lively but I felt we did a good job and hopefully this’ll be a good tour. |
| |
| Dave (Pep-Rock): You guys have got a new EP out, would you like to tell us about it? |
| Will: Yeah its called ‘Made To Wreck’, it’s four tracks, some old and some new. We thought that we done half the album and we were trying to pick some tunes for our first time and first release so we want to represent us in as many ways as possible. We wanted some light, some heavy, that’s the whole thing really. It’s a package of different areas of what we do and hopefully a good introduction to the band and definitely the strongest thing we’ve done so far so hopefully the album will just go on for there. |
| |
| Andy (Pep-Rock): What’s the best and the worst reactions you’ve received for crowds when touring with different bands? |
| Fim: Well I think the worst reaction is when you don’t get one really. It’s a really strange thing really when a crowd just stand there really because they don’t go mad and they don’t slack you off, they’re just quiet. That can be quite off putting when you’re trying to perform to people because you want some kind of reaction so you can feed off it and it helps you perform better. |
| James: The most intimidating experience was when we supported for Biffy Clyro because they have such a hardcore following you knew the hardcore Biffy Clyro were going to either love you or hate you. |
Will: We did get quite a lot of shit for their fans but its nice to here that some of the people who were slacking us off back then are starting come around now. Whereas I think the best responses was when we were on tour with Fightstar or The Mascara Story, we seemed to go down quite well on both those tours especially with The Mascara Story as we were both two new bands on the scene and it was cool. |
| |
| Dave (Pep-Rock): So you guys have been touring a lot this year with different bands, how have you found the touring experience? |
| Fim: Naoto hates it. |
| James: Especially when he doesn’t have a bed. |
| Naoto: Yeah I like to sleep. |
| James: Once you get into it then it can be really fun after about 3 days in but it’s hard especially on weeks like this week when we haven’t got a day off. |
| Will: Yeah it also depends about what your favourite thing about being in a band is, like for me it’s playing live, I do this to play live so I love touring. At the same time though after watching a band like Hidden In Plain View last night, you long for that time when you’re going to be playing and the crowd will sing along all your words and know all your tunes but its rewarding when every tour that we do we see more people coming back to see us and that’s what makes it worth doing this. |
| |
| Andy (Pep-Rock): Whenever you guys appear in the music press, it always seems as though they can’t mention you guys without referring to Fightstar. Does that annoy you guys? |
| Will: Sometimes, I’m not going to say all the time because we accepted it and we’ve said in a few interviews that it can be a double-edged sword. There’s benefits to it and there’s disadvantages to it but it grates on us when people just are lazy in their journalism when they start talking about Busted because then it’s just ridiculous and like come on man you didn’t even need to mention that. We’ve accepted it though and if it means that people are going to come along to our shows and give us a chance then great but if it means that people are not gonna show up in the first place, then that’s bullshit. |
| James: Yeah we got a bit of shit from people last night shouting out ‘Busted’ and stuff like that but it’s nice in the end if we can shut them up and one of the guys who was doing that last night ending up buying our EP after our set so yeah we’re trying to convert. |
| |
| Dave (Pep-Rock): When do you see your debut album coming out? |
| Will: We’ve been doing a lot recently and we’ll be going back into the studio soon and we’ve had a few problems in recording that were out of our hands but we’re hoping to nail it by the end of October. Then we’ll hopefully get it out early next year so buy it when it comes out. |
| James: Yeah buy it. |
| Fim: Buy lots. Buy a copy for every room in your house. |
| |
Andy (Pep-Rock): What are you guys up to for the rest of the year? |
| Will: Well we actually have two tours lined up with My Awesome Compilation and also another tour with Hundred Reasons which I’m really really excited about. We’ve played over 100 shows now and I think paid some dues now so I think we deserve to be getting these kind of tours now so I’m hoping we make the best of them and yeah the end of this year should be fun. |
| |
| Dave (Pep-Rock): Do you guys having last comments or closing statements? |
| Fim: If anyone would like to donate anything to the cause then please do, like clean socks, trousers, pants, no actually that’s a bit desperate isn’t it. |
| Will: If anyone out there would like to fly us out to Japan for a tour then, no only joking. If anyone out there is reading this thinking what bullshit about Fightstar or Busted then forget about it, as it’s irrelevant. Just have a listen to the EP and come down and see us and put all preconceptions aside and we don’t blow you away then fine but if we do then great and give it a chance at least. Also look out for our album next year. |
| Andy (Pep-Rock): Great, thanks. |
| |
| To find out more about Brigade - Click Here |
