How did the American tour go this summer?Rory (guitar): It was really successful in terms of sales and stuff. Probably about half of it sold out. So all that hard work with Warped Tour and the A Day To Remember and August Burns Red tours payed off really well.
How does touring America differ from Britain?
Rob (drums): It’s more difficult, a hell of a lot more difficult. The drives are the main thing, because it’s such a big country, the drives are so far apart. It takes about 10 to 12 hours to get from one city to another instead of two to three hour drives. And it starts to grind after a little bit, but it’s always fun. The audiences are just as good.
Do you think you’re getting more successful in America now?
Rob: It seems to be picking up certainly. Same with everywhere you go, you go to play to 200 people then next time you go back you’ll be in front of 400. Word of mouth is the best way forward really.
You recently left Atlantic Records, what made you decide to go back to your independent label?
Rory: We’re moving back to the distribution company we were with for Take To The Skies, and we left them because we thought maybe Atlantic might be able to offer something a bit more. But what actually happened was we kind of weren’t big enough for them to pay enough attention to us but we weren’t small enough for them to not bother with us at all so it was kind of like a half arsed effort really. And the distribution company that we were with PS have changed around their whole system. It’s all really modern there, they are very open to changing with the times and stuff. Whereas big record labels are stuck in their ways a lot more.
Rob: They can be quite difficult to work with in that way. Because of the age of internet, they don’t really know how to deal with it and they haven’t changed anything about their deals to tackle that problem. Whereas, PS, the guys that are distributing us now and did with our first album are really forward thinking and always coming out with new ideas. It’s very exciting to work with them really.
Do you think big labels have a bad effect on the music industry?
Rory: I think big labels can destroy a band, they can take a band that is just up-and-coming and sign them into a binding deal where they can’t do anything. Unless you’re just doing it purely for fun which is what we were doing back in the day. We did 400 shows before anything really happened for us or anyone tried to help us. So if you’re trying to get big then signing to a smaller label would probably be better than signing to a big record label.
The new single ‘Destabilise’ sounds a little different to your previous work, will the next album be going in the same direction?
Rob: To be honest it’s kind of all spreading out. No one song is going in any particular direction. It’s the same as we’ve always done, we don’t know what’s going to happen when we go into the studio and when we come out the other end. So it’s gonna be very extreme in every direction. We’re not gonna be able to say we’re going down any particular path.
What made you decide to release ‘Destabilise’ on limited edition vinyl.
Rory: Just to keep it kind of low key and one for the fans really, to make it more of a collector’s edition. Rather than spending loads of money printing CDs, we just thought like it’s not gonna be in the charts so we might as well. Also to give a little bit of promotion to the independent stores that don’t get as many sales these days. With all the CDs being sold in Tesco or whatever, the independent places are missing out on a hell of a lot, so it’s just to give a little nudge to them.
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