Chris: The Mighty Boosh! We were sat round Eric's having a spliff weren't we? Watching The Mighty Boosh.
Eric: We're not fans of The Mighty Boosh, we don't think it's that funny!
Chris: It was just on, it was on BBC 3 and was an episode about the 'Ape of Death'.
Eric: It's monkey hell basically.
Chris: Just came up, said that would be a cool name for a band and at the time it was me, Jamie and another guy, Jamie was originally gonna do vocals. But then we switched Jamie onto guitar and kicked the other guy out because he wasn't good enough. So yeah! That's basically where the name came from, a shitty BBC3 programme that had a cool name.
JoOp: Right cool, have you ever expanded your gigging outside of Nottingham, where's had the fortune of putting you guys up?
Eric: To be fair, in the 4 months we've been together we've only stretched as far as Derby.
Jamie: Put on a good show there.
Eric: Yeah, me and Jamie gigged a lot in Derby in our old band Dead By Dawn so, we know a lot of people up there and they put us on. The girls who run a night called Ponce, they do 'Ponce In The Park' every year and put us on to support their fund raising, it's like a hard-core dayer. But Derby is as far as we've been yet, just got a recording done, like a live recording, so we're gonna use that to spread our wings a little further.
JoOp: Nice one, where do you hope to take the band and you know, what's the big plan?
Chris: Fingers crossed, we've got Digby from 'Earache records' coming down tonight, to listen to us. So, well who knows from there? I know what we're doing… I reckon we could take it…
Eric: We just wanna take it as far as we can and just have a few drinks out of it, have a bit of a laff!
Chris: I'm just enjoying playing in a heavy band and that was the reason why it started, because no-one was doing heavy music, everyone was farting around with Emo. and that metal-core 'Everytime I Die' kinda thing. So we were like 'Fuck this, let's just do something that's heavy'.
JoOp: Did you all come from different musical backgrounds?
Eric: Naaah, we're all metal-heads.
Chris: Our sound has changed a little bit from when we were in a band called Reasons Unknown and Eric was on vocals and we were playing like a hard-core metal tinge kinda' music. We used to stay after practice and just jam didn't we? – and it kind of went from there and that's when we incorporated everyone else.
Eric: Thing is though, we're all metal-heads and we're all good at playing metal… We can't really do much else…
Chris: We like old skool metal, and I know these guys are big death metal fans. I still listen to a lot of classic metal. The rest of the band listen to stuff that I don't listen to. A lot of the metal-core nowadays is influenced by classic metal like Metallica so I think we're playing a sort of Metal-corey sound, influenced a little by death metal riffin'… And I think that's what separates us from every other band, that I've heard. Not just Nottingham, I don't think I've heard a band sound like us. Not as heavy as us… Playin that kind of… Well it's not death metal, but it's definately got death metal influences.
Jamie: There are bands that stick to one style, there are a load of metal bands out there that just play one style. I think we play quite a few ranges of styles, especially in the later songs, there's some definate hard-core in there aswell.
Eric: The most important thing to us, is not to fall down the road of blatent hero worship. A lot of bands will just play what they're into, which is fair enough, but it's just hero worship man. They'll hear something and repeat it, and that's the lowest form of… Monkeys! – show them some stuff and they can repeat it easily. We don't really listen to a band and go 'ooh we like them'. We just listen to Metal and spew out what we think it should sound like, that's pretty much how it goes.
JoOp: Wanna talk about side projects?
Chris: Sanzen, sound checking now, Andy and Jon. Andy bass, Jon vocals, been in Sanzen a long time.
Martin: I got a little band going on, it's alright, it's getting there, Bite The Curb. It's sort of like thrashy, converge… Bit spazzy.
Chris: Basically we quit 'Reasons Unknown' as soon as this band started. We knew this is where we wanted to be.
Eric: Me and Jamie quit 'Dead By Dawn' also because of 'Ape of Death'. But 'Dead By Dawn' reached a point where we didn't wanna take it any more and kinda moved on I guess.
Chris: I'm trying out for Legion Of Doom aswell. Their drummer's leaving, Legion Of Doom are playing tonight, I tried out on Sunday, so hopefully… I don't think I'll get it but apart from that, that's it.
JoOp: Finally, any shout outs you wanna give to maybe bands you enjoy gigging with or people?
Eric: Sanzen!
Chris: Legion of Doom, Emergency Funeral, all the bands tonight errrm…
Eric: The Smears are all hot man!
Chris: Colette who's doing the sound tonight, fucking top bird.
Eric: To be honest we pretty much only played with bands that we're mates with so far. Apart from 'Cephalic Carnage' and the bands in Derby.
Chris: The 'Ponce' girls! for putting on 'Ponce in the Park'.
