PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
When did Shadows Lie Within begin & what made you choose the name?
We began in 2009 when we met at college in 2009, but we were originally called Dead on Impact. We changed it as an American band had already taken the name. We basically started out as we were the only metal heads in the college, so me (nick- vocals), Gav (guitar) and Danny) guitar had our first jam session playing trivium and killswitch engage.
I started off as a guitarist so we were all rocking 6 strings, but I decided to try and play bass and sing, and eventually found out that I couldn’t do both at the same time, so dropped bass and stuck with the singing. By the time we had our first gig we our full 5 piece, using Tom Smith (guitar – in search of sunrise, who also played bass for us for a couple of gigs) on drums and James Suddes on bass. We played 2 originals, being Dead on Impact and Next Time, and 2 covers bodies (drowning Pool) and my last serenade (Killswitch Engage) the latter we tend to play every gig, it’s a great song to get everyone moving!!!
Ken, out current drummer came into the band a couple of months later, and we are currently looking for a permanent bass player, so if anyone is interested, get in touch!
How would you describe your band in 2011? What has changed since you started out?
Well we have all grown as musicians in my opinion. Our new material is far more technical then what we were first writing, as we have started messing around with time signatures, and scales. Overall we put far more thought into structure of our music. Since we started out the biggest changes have been in the line up, having gone through 3 drummers and 4 bass players. Obviously I’m going to be bias, but the standard of our music has vastly improved, and hopefully will keep getting better and better!
Where do you see yourself/the band in 5 years time?
Well hopefully we will still be going, touring the world and spreading our music to as many people as possible!
What is your most memorable gig/studio experience?
It’s quite hard to pick for me, as I love gigging. There is no feeling better then getting on stage and rocking out!! I suppose it would have to be chilling out with purified in blood. They are really cool guys, and bought us pizza on their expensive, so cheers for that guys!! Recording is always great; we recorded with Craig Reynolds (viatrophy, The Haarp machine drummer) in reading and went down in a caravan for 5 days, so it was mint to chill out for 5 days with the boys!! Gav must have been knackered though as he did the drum guide tracks, guitar and bass on the new EP, so he didn’t get much chilling time!
Can you give us a track by track overview of your ‘Ranks of the Damned’ EP
Shadows Of My Memory
We wrote shadows a while ago, and thought it was an awesome song! Really happy with the production on this one, we’ve always liked having sub drops in songs, but think some bands really overuse them, but it’s just right in this!! This song is fairly fast, so thought it was a good opener!
Ranks of the Damned
We re-wrote this song, but didn’t really set out to. I always liked the intro to it, so we decided to re use that and built the song around it. The outro if mint! Reminds me of Sylosis, which can’t be a bad thing!
Untitled
Untitled is by far my favourite track, mainly because of the breakdown in it. We’ve had this song for about 4 months, and by the time we had recorded it I still hadn’t thought of a name, so untitled stuck. This song never fails to get people moving!
Now is Not Forever
This song is very slow for us, so it made sense to finish the EP with this. When we recorded it, we hadn’t actually played it as a band, so I was a little nervous to how it would come out, but my god I’m very happy how it has!
It’s the only song so far that the lyrics are about a specific thing that’s happened, but I won’t go into too much detail there! It’s basically about those people in your life who use you, and you sticking to fingers up and saying ‘fuck you! I’ll be stronger now because of what you’ve done!’ which I think everyone can relate to in a way.
Did you have any influences for the EP, who/what are they and how did they influence you?
Well we all listen to a wide variety of music, but personally I listen to a lot of The Black Daliah Murder and Caliban, and Gav and Danny listen to a lot of Periphery, As I Lay Dying, And Threat Signal, which I think has shown in the EP. I’d say our main influences are Killswitch Engage and As I Lay Dying,
Do you have a particular writing process for songs or is it different for each song that you come up with?
Generally what happens is Danny and Gav will get together and write the guitar riffs for each song, and I’m always writing lyrics, so when we meet up in practice we will compile the stuff together and Ken will come up with the drums. Then we restructure the song, so it flows better. When we first started out our songs we mostly a mix bag of different riffs stuck together, but we really think about how each section will go into the next, and so on.
What is your favourite track & why?
Untitled is my favourite by far, mainly because of the guitar work and drums before the breakdown, plus the outro kicks ass!! We’ve put a lot of work into our outros this time around.
What is your favourite song/album at the moment?
Personally for me my favourite album is ‘This Is Where It Ends’ by ‘All Shall Perish’, but I can’t really pick a favourite song really, as I listen to too much. If I could pick 3 it would be
What a horrible night to have a curse- The Black Daliah Murder
A pure evil- All Shall Perish
Rose of Sharyn- Killswitch Engage
Thank you Nick for filing this in \m/
Lee’s review of ‘Ranks of the Damned’ EP & link to free download for it as well!
http://www.planetmosh.com/2011/08/shadows-lie-within-%E2%80%93-ranks-of-the-damned-e-p-cd/
Keep up to date with all the Shadow Lies Within information, gigs and so on
