PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Hi, this is Lee Walker on behalf of www.PlanetMosh.com interviewing Dale and Chris from the band Malefice in Wrexham’s Central Station venue.
• You are about half way through your current tour – how’s the tour going so far?
Dale : Umm its cool, its not really been like a constant tour for us, we’re just doing festival dates and random off dates so its quite sporadic, but its been really good. Our album came out Monday so yesterday was the first time we played with the new album out and everythings starting to feel proper now, it doesn’t feel like we’re playing new songs like we can actually perform them now which is really good. So yeah we’re just having a really good time, just wanna keep going now.
Chris: It’s really nice to be back out coz we took a little bit of time off.
Dale: Yeah we took about 6 months off to get the album sorted. But yeah were going home tonight, but I think we’d all rather just stay out and play a few more shows.
Chris: Definitely!
• For this tour setup you seem to using a lot of different support acts where ever you go. What are your favourite ones so far?
Dale: I haven’t got a clue. We like using local supports because it’s promoting the local scene all the way around the country. You take a band at our size, you need all the ticket sales you can get as well, so we’ll always make sure all of the supports on our headline tours are all local. We had quite a good thrash band that played with us last night, but I couldn’t tell you who the fuck they were, but when you do this as your job, and it sounds arrogant as fuck, but the last thing you want to be doing is listening to metal 24/7, so we’ll try not to even listen to metal in the van, like I’ve been listening to City In Colour all the way here, some acoustic stuff, just chilling out. I try and check out some of the supports but depends how my ears are feeling.
Chris: But its nice to give some of these bands a break as well, I remember before I joined Malefice, my band getting a gig with a bigger band was the best thing that could happen.
Dale to Chris: Your band actually got taken out on tour by Malefice.
Chris: Yeah I supported Malefice on a tour.
Dale: Yeah so we robbed him coz he was a better drummer than the one we had.
• Now you have just released your new album “Awaken The Tides”. The overall noise that I am hearing about it is pretty good. Can you tell me how it all came about?
Dale: It’s a fucking long story man! Well we split up with our drummer about January last year, got Chris on board after we came back from the States, and pretty much started a new band just under the name Malefice, So it was going back to basics really and it was really fucking difficult to write a new album coz we were on tour in Europe for four or five weeks when we were doing a bulk of the writing, it was when we were out with Devildriver and Anthrax, so we wrote most of it in the dressing rooms didn’t we (looks to Chris)
Chris: Yeah, which I thought was cool, it was a whole new way for me to write and I thought it was really good, coz everything we needed was there.
Dale: Like right now this is our dressing room (looks around the bar) tonight, and we’ve set up a Mac Book and a guitar pod and we’ll sit there on Logic and just write riffs and program drums to it and that’s how a lot of our album came about.
Chris: Coz with Devildriver, we’d get to the venues at 11am and we wouldn’t have to do anything til 4pm, and it’d just be like 4/5 hours of nothing
Dale: And that’s the worst thing about touring
Chris: Yeah 100%, just all the sitting bout, it’s fucking infuriating, when your out for weeks on end, your just like, for fucks sake just give me something to do.
Dale: People say, oh being in a band is really glamorous, for an hour yeah, when your on stage.
Chris: But driving from reading to Austria no. Took us like 3 days, just wanted to kill myself (both laugh)
• What are your favourite tracks from the new album?
Dale: Wow, I think mine is ‘Blessed Cursed’, mainly lyrically coz its all about all of us as a group back in the day we used to hang out and get fucked up all the time, just drink take drugs coz we were at that age when nothing fucking mattered, and it was like your so oblivious to what the worlds actually like, between the age of 17/18 and through to like 21/22 you just don’t give a fuck, and you just go berserk . The songs about me looking back on those times and just fucking cherishing them coz it’ll never, ever be like that again.
Chris: Very Hazy memories
Dale: Yeah (both laugh)
Chris: I have to say ‘The day The Sky Fell’ just because even though it’s a very heavy album, and we are a metal band, its another texture to the album, it’s a little bit softer, almost a bit risky for a band with the back catalogue that Malefice has got, but I think it’s a really strong and powerful song and has got a lot of meaning behind it, and I think coz it’s a bit different for us to do.
Dale: I think that’s the edge we have over most British bands, that we’re quite fucking brave, its almost an arrogance, but we call it ‘Swagger’, we got a bit of swagger, we don’t give a fuck what anyone says.
Chris: we wanted to do it
Dale: Yeah ‘why did you put this on your album? Coz we wanted to’…next. ‘Well why did you put this on your album? Coz we wanted, ok shut up’ you know what I mean (both laugh)
• How do you think your new album compares with your other releases such as the Relentless ep, and your Entities and Dawn of Reprisal albums ?
Dale: Um, I think comparing it to them is unfair, in any stretch of the imagination, because we started really, really young, I’ve only just hit 25 and Chris is only 23. We started putting out stuff when we were 17/18, so it’s a big fucking progression, so I will never compare …
Chris: every single release is different isn’t it, as the band progresses
Dale: Yeah, we’re just finding our feet as musicians and we always said when we were younger that it was really fucking important, you have to put, we put out that Relentless EP and it must have only sold about 300 copies, but it wasn’t put out to make money or to get us fucking massive, it was put out to get feedback so we knew what people thought of what, and that’s what’s helped this band progress coz we’ve always been recording, even when we were recording demos when we were younger, we’d record once every 2 or 3 months and do a 3 track EP or demo or something and that’s been going on and on and on and that’s happened now on a professional level, and this latest album is fucking head and shoulders above anything we’ve written before, but that’s because we’re further along the line. The second a band reaches that plateau here we can’t get anything better than their last album that’s when to stop.
Chris: Or when your albums all start sounding the same. I’m always looking for something new and exciting anyway, every 6 months or so I need like 5 new albums and they’ve all gotta be good (both laugh)
• Back to when you first formed when you were in college did you think you would ever grow as big as you have done?
Dale: Nah actually, I think if we’re honest, I mean me and Rusty our lead guitarist pretty much formed this band, this band started with me and him and we used to play Metallica covers in his bedroom on the guitar. And you know we’ve had a really fucking rough time and we look back and we thought about jacking it in, like is it really fucking worth it, and we’ll say to each other right if the 25 year old me or the 23 year old Chris could go back to the 16 year old me and him and say you are going to do this but we jacked it in, what would you fucking say to yourself? Its really easy to forget where we’ve come from to where we are. So, I dunno, I think you always dream of doing something, or you wouldn’t fucking do it otherwise cos theres fuck all money in it, we just survive basically.
Chris: Barely
Dale: Yeah barely (both laugh), but everyone’s got a dream and there wouldn’t be a single band on this planet if there wasn’t a fucking dream, and we’re just lucky enough to be following ours.
Chris: I mean football players, actors, yeah everyone’s got a dream. I definitely didn’t think I’d be doing this at 15/16.
Dale: But we are so well done us (both laugh)
• Do you have any advice that you would to pass on to upandcoming bands out there?
Dale: Get a credit card and a van and then just go and be prepared to fall out with every band member you have at least once or twice a day. But the thing is like, honestly, its not fucking easy, and anyone who thinks they can just go out there
Chris: and play guitar
Dale: Yeah. People say oh the rock n roll lifestyle, must be wicked to be in a band, or people I went to school with have been to uni and stuff like that and they come out and they are like ‘oh you still haven’t grown up yet?’ and I’m like mate if you had any idea what we have to go through and what we’ve had to do, I’ve been all over the world, I’ve seen some fucking incredible shit, and I’ve had to put up with some shit, like this ain’t the easy life. So if you wanna do it you’ve got to be prepared to sacrifice fucking everything, and if your not, don’t even start.
Chris: Yeah and its so easy to get bullied in this industry as well, so you gotta have a certain amount of common sense, yeah and I think it’s a certain amount of common sense as well, you can easily get into the whole rock n roll lifestyle, and I think that’s where problems start, you really gotta hold your own.
Dale: but even like little things, I mean we’ve recently reigned back our drinking big time, we used to be really fucking bad, I was really fucking stupid with drugs back in the day as well and I’ve had to reign that in, we all have in a sense, but very recently with alcohol we’ve completely knocked it on the head before playing.
Chris: at the end of the day people are paying money to come and see you, they’re not paying money to see you miss drum parts or play shit solos.
Dale: we have a one beer rule, and whether you have that beer with your lunch, or 30 seconds before you go on stage that’s your one beer. If you wake up In the morning and have a beer that’s it your not having another one before you go on stage.
• Are there any messages that you would like to pass on to your fans?
Dale: Just keep fucking supporting us man, there’s not enough words of thanks or praise to thank people for fucking getting behind us and always, always rooting for us. We’re not the most fashionable band in the world, but were one of the ones that are really fucking respected and that’s coz we’ve worked hard. We’re the working class of fucking metal bands, so everyone that can relate to us and everyone that’s supported us, your helping 5 dudes like their fucking dream. We get people thanking us for our music all the time and it’s like dude seriously
Chris: and they get tattoos with the lyrics on their arm and stuff
Dale: Do not ever thank me, I’m just a fan of metal like you and we’ve landed on our feet, yeah we’ve had to work hard, but there’s a lot of bands out there that will working hard and get nowhere, they wouldn’t even get past the first hurdle. It is a little about luck but just thank you I suppose is the whole cleache.
• Anything else you’d like to add?
Dale: Yeah drink Jagermeister!
Chris: More Jagermeister!.
Check out the new album Awaken The Tides out now through Metal Blade Records
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/maleficeofficial
