Blackhole :  Interview

Tonight at Rio’s in Leeds (05/11/09), I found out a punk bands secret for warming up for a gig. The answer is: Peggle. "Were those missed calls from you? Sorry, our whole band is addicted to this game, Peggle." Yep, that’s Richard Carter, the front man behind one of the best rock albums to have come out of 2009; Dead Hearts.

Straight away he was genuine and accommodating, seemingly unfazed about the success the band have had with their debut album. I talked with him and guitarist Nick Mitchell about what it means to be in a punk band in 2009, touring with CKY and releasing an album that has received only glowing reviews.

4or The Record: Blackhole, I didn’t want to mention this but there’s been an unjust comparison to Gallows with you guys, obviously with Richard being Frank’s brother (singer of Gallows). How do you react to this when you are different musically and stylistically?

Richard Carter: At first I got really defensive about it and, every time we get an interview or a review back, we’d read it and the first line was always about my brothers, not about our band. I wanted nothing to do with it. They gave us a stepping stone and if people can’t look past that then they’re missing out. If people come and see us and they’re like, fair play but I don’t like your band then it’s not a problem, but if people are like I don’t like your band because of your brothers’ then you’re fucking stupid.

4TR: Exactly. So where do your influences come from?

Nick Mitchell: Just a lot of classic rock bands. Our music’s quite based on riffs and there’s always a central part of each song that has a big riff. For bands like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, that’s what it was all about, but that’s not to say we don’t listen to modern music as well, we listen to everything.

RC: Our band has the widest tastes in music. Our drummer only listens to bands that have riffs, our bassist, not so much now but he used to just listen to Death Metal. Nick is just into everything, Dre pretty much just listens to pop and I only really listen to rap. We’re pulling influences from everywhere.

4TR: Do you think listening to rap helps you lyrically? Does that change it?

RC: It does yeah. It’s really weird because when I was younger I didn’t like rap music at all, and more recently I’ve been getting more into it and lyrically, rappers are the smartest people. You listen to a rapper like Slim Shady for example; when he is Slim Shady, he’s crap. When he is Marshall Mathers and he’s really angry, all of his stuff is amazing and it’s really smart how he says stuff. You’re listening to someone tell a story in a really smart way and I get a lot of inspiration from that. We’re not a band that’s all about going out and getting drunk and starting fights, literally all of our songs are personal influences.  Listening to rap helps so much, because you hear different ways of putting yourself across. 

4TR: Going back to what you said about your music being riff-based, do you feel that’s what sets you apart? It must feel pretty good when you realise you’ve made an awesome riff.

RC: Every now and then we’ll be at practice and Dre will have an idea and play it to everyone, then Nick will add something over the top, then Alex will play a drum beat over it, and its like Fuck, we’ve got a song!

RC: So many bands now will want to write music because they’ve seen another band doing something. It’ll be about the hair and about the image, how you look and what guitars and amps you’re playing, not about what you’re actually putting across. We listen to AC/DC, some of their riffs are amazing, but with modern punk and hardcore, it’s just not there. It’s just the same chord progression in every song. We mix it up with the riffs.

NM: I don’t want to make a blanket statement that all punk and hardcore is shit but…

4TR: There’s a lot of copycatting. 

NM: Yeah exactly.

RC: A lot of young bands will have an idea, and that will be it.

4TR: Yeah, and not really a whole vision.

RC: Yeah, and with our band, we knew what we wanted to write and we wanted to write something different. We all share the same thing, to write what we wanted, not what everyone else wanted. I don’t think a lot of bands really do that. You said you had The Ghost Of A Thousand on this (my series of features on current punk music, which has featured Tom Lacey of TGOAT)? They are incredible. Their first album is so good. They’ve gone onto their second album and yeah, there is a difference in the songs, but that’s a natural progression, which I think a lot of punk bands are scared to do. If they pushed the boat out there they could have fans that turn round and say that doesn’t sound like the first album, whereas with Ghost as the example, they’ve pushed it out on the second album and its amazing. There’s no point holding yourself back.

4TR: Well one thing I said when I met Tom (Lacey), their second album has the attitude of every note counts, rather than a slurry punk grunge, and he agreed that that was maybe in the same vein as the success of current punk music. With you guys it’s similar so would you agree with this?

RC: Yeah totally. An example of that for us is we wrote the 2nd track on our album called If Only, but you won’t hear us play that song live, because we don’t feel like it’s locked in enough to get our point across live.

NM: There is a time and a place for the kind of noisy, ambient music.

RC: And that time and place for a punk band is the album.

4TR: Not the first few headline tours where you’re trying to get the fans and play the better songs?

NM: If you’ve got an hour and half headline set you can afford to be more indulgent, but if not you just need to play as many songs as you can.

4TR: Where do you think the best punk music is coming from at the moment?

NM: I’m going to be biased and say the UK. 5 years ago it was all about American bands, no one really gave a shit in this country about UK bands. Recently I think it has been flipped on it’s head a bit and there is The Ghost Of A Thousand, Gallows, Us, The Plight, Spy Catchers...

RC: You have got bands like Sharks too that are taking it back to old punk, where it’s not just fast and in your face, and where it’s just awesome music.

NM: That is not to say that American bands aren’t releasing good albums; the new Every Time I Die album is awesome. But I am a firm believer that people from the UK should support UK bands. 

4TR: There is no good supporting another scene when your own scene is failing.

NM: Well exactly yeah, and eventually bands won’t be able to afford to tour. I’m not going to sit and moan about money because it’s boring but it’s tough enough for punk bands to tour in this country if they are quite big, so yeah support UK bands!

RC: At the minute, I’m a Christmas temp at HMV working in the stockroom, putting stickers on DVDs, that’s what I do. This is our outlet. Like Dre, our guitarist is still at university, he’s missing lectures and work all this week to be on tour, and his manager and lecturers were like you cant have any more time off, so luckily the next few dates we have got in December are spaced out by a week each!

NM: We are not under any illusions, we’re just a bunch of kids and nine times out of ten, the people coming to see us play are going to be older than us. We are just a bunch of kids that have recorded an album and get to go on tour, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

4TR: Well that’s what I find amazing, because when I met Tom Lacey from Ghost I was almost star-struck that I had met him. When I was talking to him saying how amazing the albums were, he had the attitude that you’ve got, like we’re just a bunch of kids, so for a band that are still working your day jobs I don’t think you always realise what you’ve created straight away.

NM: Yeah, you are always your own worst critic but I think that’s a good thing to be honest.

RC: We got the masters for our album in May, and for the first 3 months I listened to our album every single day, and every time I listen to it I’m thinking, what do I need to do on the next one, what do I need to do to make our songs better? All of us have done it, we are so proud of what we have made but at the same time we are like we all need to up our game. I think the best thing about current UK punk bands, none of the smaller ones have had anything major happen where they’ve changed how they are and who they are, and that’s what I think is one of the best things about punk bands in the UK at the minute, all the bands are down to earth.

4TR: Yeah, not egotistical or anything.

NM: Oh dude don’t even talk to us about that shit! (referring to touring with CKY)

4TR: Richard mentioned CKY were like that.

NM: Fuck that band man, seriously!

RC: We are not a band that go out of our way to down-talk anyone. We met CKY, and I really thought it would be an awesome tour, we were stoked but on the first day none of them spoke to us. We’re a young band coming on tour with you, you’ve been a band for ten years, and they really hold an attitude that they don’t need to try with anyone anymore. When we toured with Every Time I Die, on the first night we were all bricking it! We were with three American bands that all knew each other, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Drop Dead, Gorgeous and Every Time I Die. We didn’t know what to do or who we could speak to, we walked into the backstage room and all three bands were there and I didn’t want to be in there, I had to walk outside and just set up the merch because I didn’t know if I was offending anyone or anything. Then while we’re playing, I got in the crowd and was running around, and there was Andy and their drummer at the time Mike, and I was so shocked that this massive band that we’d been listening to for years were stood in the crowd watching us! After our set Andy came up to us and said "You guys are awesome". Every time they come over to the UK we still hang out with them. They are such a massive band, but they haven’t lost it. If a band is good, they stay nice guys.

4TR: I know you were saying you are your own worst critics, but Dead Hearts has got to be one of the better releases I’ve heard this year.  Do you feel like UK punk is doing something new at the moment, or do you think the press is just paying more attention to it.

NM: I think it is a bit of both. I don’t think our album is necessarily reinventing the wheel but that’s not to say it’s a bad album, we are all really proud of it.

RC: It’s not that the press are picking up on things, it’s just more bands are actually trying to do something different.

4TR: How have you felt about the response and the feedback since you released Dead Hearts? I haven’t seen a bad review.

NM: Really, really good. We couldn’t have hoped for anything better. We haven’t seen any bad reviews either, maybe our management is just hiding them from us! All the major press gave us a positive review which is nice, but we’ve had kids at shows and people online saying how much they like it, that’s more important to us. It means the world to us that people appreciate that we’ve put everything into this.

RC: Music forums have the harshest critics, everyone hates everything. But on a bunch of forums we’ve had good reviews and it means a lot to us as we’ve been a band coming up to four years now, when Me, Nick and Andreas were practising, and then in four years to have released an album and pretty much just had positive reviews is the best thing ever.

4TR: You did the September tour, how have the crowds been? Obviously part of the tour was pre-album release. 

RC: The first day was before the album, the second day was the day of the album release. The first show was Offset Festival and it was really, really good. Norwich we played to 40 people, Cardiff we played 160 people, the next night we played to 70 people, and then in Plymouth we played to 14, it’s so up and down.

4TR: What’s your plans for your next single?

NM: We were talking about doing Witches for the next single, but that’s all gone a bit quiet, so you know as much as I do!

Blackhole’s debut album Dead Hearts is out now.

Words: Luke Griffin

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