1.Growing Up
It all started with KISS for me. Like a lot of other kids in 1979, I had all the cassettes, the KISS schoolbag, iron-on glitter T-shirts, make-up kit, you name it. Some guys at my primary school put on a lunchtime KISS concert and I swapped my entire viewfinder collection with one of them so I could play Peter Criss. Two rulers for drum sticks and a Sebel plastic chair for a drum stool, miming along to ‘Detroit Rock City’. 30 seconds into the set I fell backwards off the drum riser and hurt myself and had to go to the nurse’s room. That other kid finished the concertandkept the viewfinders. A brutal introduction to the music industry but it prepared me well!
2.Inspirations
I’ve always been drawn to outsiders – artists who walk their own path and don’t give much of a fuck about the commercial side of things. Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan, Nick Cave, Justin Broadrick, Josh Homme, Johnny Cash, Henry Rollins, Lemmy of course. They’re all quite dark, quite masculine figures but at heart very sensitive men. That line between machismo and sensitivity is very much my wheelhouse. It has a lot to do with my dad, I think. He was a real hard man but also very thoughtful and incredibly vulnerable at times. Dealing with repressed anger and hurt and damage handed down across generations. That’s the inspiration behind our latest release,Ugly Creatures.
3.Your Band
We’re a bunch of guys who are on our second or third time on the roundabout. We’ve all done the ‘idealistic/deluded first band’ thing where the focus is on ‘making it’ or ‘getting bigger’ and all that shit that can kill creativity. We’re over it. We’re older and grumpier and hopefully a little more grounded. The focus is on music and friendship now. We just want to have an expressive outlet, have a few laughs and create something between us that we can all enjoy and be proud of.
4.The Music You Make
We started out very tongue-in-cheek back in 2006 – we’d all been in serious bands previously and we wanted to have some fun with the devil. So the early trilogy ofVolumeEPs we released were kind of our obnoxious take on stoner rock with a good-time rock’n’roll bent, in the vein of stuff we grew up with like AC/DC, Van Halen, KISS and Motörhead. Over time we’ve drifted back to where we originally were getting away from – darker territory with more elements of heavy blues and sludge metal. You can hear this creep in more and more over the course of our last two releases,The Heart & The Crownand especiallyUgly Creatures. We’re not a ‘doom’ band though; we don’t contrive a grim persona for the sake of genre compliance.
5.Music, Right Here, Right Now
As dire as things can seem at times in our industry, I try to avoid cynicism. I can always find music to excite me and keep me interested, inspired and sane. You just have to dig a little.
[The Devil Rides Out photo by Rachael Barrett]
The Devil Rides Out playFrankie’s Pizza onSunday August 14; and Brewtality Festival, Factory Theatre on Saturday August 13.
