Frome has a rich musical history. How has the local scene influenced your sound, and what does it mean to be a band from this town?
It’s been a struggle to avoid the basket weaving, singer song writer disposition of Frome. We’ve bucked the trend, avoided being a cover band or tribute act and are attempting to blaze a trail to nowhere via our flavour of rock.
Your music blends elements of hard rock and prog. How do you approach combining these genres while keeping your own unique sound?
We wear our influences on our sleeve and unashamedly look to them for inspiration. However, we’ve never set out to be anyone other than ourselves. Our main focus is on melody, harmony and good stories. If it sounds good, we’ll keep it, if not, we either bin it or refine it.
Can you tell us about the creative process behind your music?
Up until recently Matt and Stu have been the main driving forces behind the song writing.
Matt will typically come up with a theme, lyrical ideas and a rough harmony. This will then be worked up into a demo with Stu, often going through a number of iterations to ensure we develop ideas throughout a piece, check for staleness and add in the seasoning offered by Sturge and Alex. Finally, we ask ourselves how we can ‘make it more heavy’
Sturge has written the majority of our most recent track, Skin Walker and it’s been great to have additional input and influence in our output.
Frome is close to iconic venues like the Cheese and Grain. What has been your most memorable gig experience in your hometown or nearby?
With the Cheese and Grains funding heavily linked to community projects, it’s a bit of pity that we and other local acts haven’t had the opportunity to play there yet, but we very much look forward to building relationships with them.
In lieu of such lofty achievements as playing the Cheeser, we’ve had an incredibly warm welcome at our favourite local venue, the legendary 23 Bath St on numerous occasions. We love Elfin and her team who seem to shun the cover band / tribute scene in favour of grass roots original music, and we love them for it.
How do you think the UK rock scene has evolved in recent years, and where do you see yourselves fitting into it?
We’re too old to comment. If anything, the rock scene seems to be on it’s knees with an abundance of acts, ambivalent promotors and lack of venues for bands to play.
We’ve had the privilege of playing with some great locals acts who have some incredible music. The talent is there but the infrastructure for bands to refine their skills and showcase their works seems wanting.
Who would you say are the biggest influences on your music, both from the rock world and outside of it?
Matt’s main focus is on telling stories and he draws influence from the likes of Dave Grohl, Billy Idol and Rage Against the Machine. If there’s a story to tell, Matt will want to ensure he does it justice, investigating emotions, topics of the day, historical events and fables. He loves a good protest song.
Stu is heavily influenced by the likes of Iron Maiden, Metallica, Dire Straits, Deep Purple etc. It doesn’t stop there though; Stu has a major focus on harmony and how a chord progression can support a melody and borrows techniques from the Jazz world to try to give a different spin on the music created.
Sturge says he fucking loves Motown.
Alex was balls deep in the Students Union at the time of writing and so was unavailable for comment. Probably Rick Astley though.
Lyrically, what are some of the central themes in your music, and how do they reflect your personal experiences or worldview?
Matt is the lyricist although he is always open to feedback and ideas from the rest of the band. He loves to write about social justice and empowerment.
He was devastated when Taylor Hawkins died and the song ‘Silence’ was written about how he felt afterwards. ‘Shields’ was written about some of the incredibly strong women that members of the band know and is almost a tribute to the unending strength that they possess despite often awful circumstances. George Floyd was the inspiration behind ‘Breathe’ as a response to his shock around that situation and then it morphed into a protest song about injustice and abuse of power.
Matt tends to write about his experiences and how they affect him, there is a lot of pain in his lyrics due to his own mental health problems and he has experienced loss and grief like a lot of us have and although he has never experienced racism he used the opportunity to learn more about his personal privilege when writing ‘Breathe’.
How important is live performance to your band’s identity, and what’s your approach to translating your complex sound to the stage?
It is hugely important to us. If it ain’t live, we ain’t doin’ it.
The songs are written with differing guitar parts that are impossible to replicate perfectly in a live setting with only one guitarist. We compensate for that by boiling the music down to it’s core ingredients and then enhancing those for a live setting.
Being a band from a smaller town like Frome, what are some of the challenges and advantages you’ve experienced in terms of exposure and growth?
It has been incredibly challenging to find gigs locally despite emailing the shit out of local promoters and venues.
We have a set of about an hour at the time of writing and so it is unfeasible for us to do a full night on our own. We have begun to host our own nights though, sharing with some of our known local bands and we all do an hour or so each.
We would be perfect to open gigs for some of the bigger tribute acts that come to town but for some reason it just hasn’t happened.
Now that we are getting going though, we will be pushing further afield, especially to Bristol which has a great rock and metal scene.
Prog rock often involves storytelling and conceptual albums. Have you ever thought about doing a concept album, and if so, what kind of story would you want to tell?
No because it is taking too long to write our first bloody EP!
But if we were, it would be about a transvestite beaming down from the planet transexual and something to do with warping time or some such. Unless it’s already been done of course…
What can fans expect from you in the near future?
Hits baby! Big choruses, sing along melodies, outrageous flared trousers, silly shirts heavy rhythms and shows… lots of shows
Are there any upcoming tours, new music, or exciting collaborations on the horizon?
No tours as yet, but we have a couple of festivals locked in for 2025, and we have a number of shows booked into the winter of 2024.
We’ll have a crack at Metal to the Masses again in 2025 and we’ll also be working on new material and releasing as many tracks as we can.
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