Villainous – Interview

Next Wednesday, Brit UK beasts VILLAINOUS drop their all-consuming self-titled debut EP. We had the prog-metallers down for a chat…..

First up, what is the full band line-up, who plays what?

Sean Stakim – Vocals, Neil MacCallum – Guitar/Vocals, Nick Read – Bass/Vocals, Callum Armitage – Drums.

How and when did the band form?

Neil and Callum watched our old band fall apart around them, but just kept turning up to the studio every week, we added friend of a friend Sean on vocals soon after, and after a slew of auditionees flakier than a French pastry, finally met the multi-instrumentalist Nick, and went from there.

When and how did the band really start gelling and solidifying?

As hard as they were at the time, the run of horrific jamming sessions/auditions, brought the us together, because if we didn’t laugh, we’d have gone crazy. This included a singer the week before Sean met us gurning his jaw off, clearly on coke, a guitarist with no guitar but a rucksack full of red stripe tins and a tale of him sleeping with all his former bandmates partners, and a bassist who came in and froze for four and a half minutes, apologised, then left.

Who are your musical influences?

We each have our own favourites, but there’s a core sound we all seem to appreciate even if we don’t listen to the band in question. Heavy with groove and melody describes what we all like, bands like Mastodon, TOOL, Gojira, Deftones, Baroness, and Machine Head.

Where did the name of band come from?

When the last band split, our old singer’s partner and friends painted us in a very negative light, because we were willing to confront him rather than coddle him. Being painted as Villains for being truthful came up in one of Sean’s lyric ideas for one of our earliest songs, and I think the phrase “Villainous band of miscreants” came up in the pub as a joke, and that word just stuck with me.

How far back does your history with each other (the band members) extend?

Callum and Neil were in their old band since 2014, we gigged and recorded a fair bit with the old band, despite it never going at the pace we wanted, and Callum knew Sean’s partner but not him directly for a couple of years before we played with Sean. I guess Nic is the new guy, only being involved since late 2017.

Where have you played or toured?

As we’ve only really existed for about 10 months, we haven’t seen too much touring, but were lucky enough to play in Worthing as part of Gutlocker’s UK tour for their last album, and we just got back from Birmingham playing with midlands legends Ashen Crown, otherwise just lots of South Coast and London shows with other unsigned bands.

In your opinion, how is your band different from all the other bands out
there?

We think it’s just the combination of our sound, drop tuned hooky riffs, two scream vocals mixed with vocal harmonies doing catchy choruses or euphoric prog sections, we’ve been told we weave in and out of different rock and metal sounds, and we think it holds together as one coherent sound.

Do you have a tour on the horizon?

We have some dates coming up after the release in October – Brighton, Reading, Canterbury, Hastings and London, and many other places being eyed up around the UK for later this year/early next year.

Where can we find your social media sites?

Villainousbanduk – FB and insta

Villainousrocks – Twitter