After finishing their UK tour and with more dates planned up north, Hinterland are one of Nottingham?s quickest rising stars. They have a new album in the pipeline and if you want dirty, fast, emotional and catchy punk, you won?t find a better band. This week we wandered into a stinky little room backstage at Nottingham?s Rock City, to find out more?
Darren – Vocals
Lee – Drums
Gavin ? Bass & Backing Vocals
JoOp: Here we are backstage of Nottingham s infamous Rock City after your gig supporting Projekt Mayhem , how was the vibe up there for you guys??
Darren: It went alright, it was the first time we played together for like 3 weeks because of my illness. I thought it was pretty good actually.
Gavin: There was a good sound on stage and quite a good vibe.
JoOp: Yeah, I d like to say well done guys as well, really enjoyed tonight.
Darren: Thank you very much, as I was saying though, sometimes you have those gigs where you think people get you and other times people don t get you when you re speaking. I thought I had one of those gigs where when I spoke into the microphone it was like I was speaking a foreign language!
Lee: I m Chuckling away in the background.
JoOp: Through fear of fucking up you usually DO fuck up! So it s best just not to go down that road. How did the tour with Dangerlust work out for you?
Darren: Went really well! Played a bunch of new venues we ve never played before and won over some new friends. Sold a shit load of CD s. I think what was weird, was how disorganised other bands were! Dangerlust were really organised, but when you turn up to other venues and you ve got two local supports and they can t bring a person between them…
JoOp: Very common, some bands don t take any responsibility at all and expect it all to just happen.
Darren: It s not easy for a touring band you know, tell a friend! Bring them along to your gigs!
JoOp: It?s always good to network.
Darren: Precisely, They re really nice guys and it was a good tour. We keep meaning to hook up with them again.
Gavin: We got to play some odd venues as well didn t we? Real mix n match of faces…
Darren: Let me tell em! Let me tell them the Northwich story, we played at this place in Northwich.
Gavin: It was in Barnton, a British Legion.
Darren: And it actually was a British Legion club right, in the middle of fuckin nowhere and we turned up and debated going home for a start. When we went in there it was like a scene out of Pheonix nights, gold stuff round the back. There were pictures of the Queen n shit!!
Gavin: T?was a Massive room as well, like a big school hall or whatever.
Darren: We did an awful sound check, went really badly. I was in a terrible mood, so I walked outside and opened the doors and there were like 200 kids outside just queuing to get in.
Gavin: As opposed to what we thought would be a very big, very empty room.
Darren: It was rammed! The place what packed, it went really really well, a girl drank my sweat…. Errrm, which is cool!
((everyone laughs))
Darren: She asked my for my t-shirt and we were in that kind of mood where we felt like rock stars! So I gave her my t-shirt and she held it above her head and then rang it out into her mouth! She wasn t bad looking either…
Lee: For a 12 year old!
JoOp: Ooh God *scratches head* but rock n roll all the same!
We ve heard there s a new album release on the pipeline. Care to share the news?
Lee: Yes, there s a new album coming out, and it s gonna be about 7 tracks, got bits of it recorded, just at that working out stage. It s such a fuckin big job isn t it?
Darren: Yeah we recorded it the same place we recorded Got a new Drug (Current E.P)
.It?s gonna be called Simian we expect it to be released probably October. This time we re putting a lot more effort, a lot more time and a lot more money into it, which means it s gonna sound so much bigger than the last one. We did a session, which started at 6pm and finished 4am the next morning! By the end of that session we could barely play or speak…
Lee: To each other!
JoOp: Cool. What s on Hinterland s cards for the future?
Darren: Getting the album out, to people that matter.
Gavin: Got a mini-tour of the Northeast at the end of September.
Darren: Those crazy Northeast bastards! We stay out of London because we hate it and it s rubbish…
Gavin: Let s hope nobody reads this in London, but in which case we think London s great!
JoOp: Could you clarify the Splitting up rumour, Gaz and Steph got confused because you mentioned it at one of your gigs?
Lee: Yeah, we re definitely splitting up.
Darren: We had errrm, a bit of a bad gig at Junktion 7 last time. We had a bit of a falling out with another band, which will remain nameless. But they soon split up…. ThisIsTheWayTheWorldEnds, ends! It was a really shit gig for us and we didn t enjoy it, probably the first gig we ve done that we haven t enjoyed. So we re not actually splitting up, we may split up again!
Lee: It s a work in progress.
JoOp: So, what is this New Drug you sing so enthusiastically about?
Darren: I saw an interview with Kurt Cobain and someone had just asked him about some lyrics and he said what do you want it to be, man? I always find that kinda offensive as a fan, but the true answer to this is, there are about 3 drugs in the song,. The first is cocaine, the second is Hashish and the other one s T.V! And you can make of it what you will. There s one lyric in there that s about a comedown on Speed.
JoOp: Cool. Shout outs?
Darren:
There is one person that we lean on for absolutely everything, and he supplies us with material, that s Silent Bob, he does all of our design stuff including website, album art, singles art and our posters.
Thanks to Dangerlust and Mashton Grace.
A shout out to Junktion 7, obviously. You guys for being constant supporters of local music for God-knows how long!
We re like the Nottingham music scene s geeky little brother that nobody particularly wants to admit that we re apart of any scene, everyone tries to disown us and we just try and carry on in our merry ol way. Eventually we re gonna grow up and people are gonna have to admit that like y?know, we re actually quite good looking…
Images supplied by Hinterland
Web Site – www.hinterlandrock.com E-mail -hinterlandrock@hotmail.com
