“I’m so sick of getting bossed around by 16-year-olds!” he half-jokes. “‘Prom Queen is so in the past for me and people still harass me like, ‘why aren’t you singing for the band?!’ They talk to me like it’s my fault! Well, guess what – I had no idea ‘Prom Queen was going to make a comeback and as far as I knew we were only doing one final tour and that was it, the end. I had plans for my own stuff and I wasn’t even thinking it was an option. Look, I don’t even care what they do, it’s their band, they can go ahead and do their own thing – but I wish people would stop annoying me about it! A lot of people have sung for that band, I’m not the only one, and yet I’m the only one that gets harassed about leaving.”5
For Crafter, I Killed The Prom Queen is ancient history and as far as music is concerned, for this father-to-be, it’s Confession that sees him recording albums and touring the world these days. In his spare time, anyway…
“For once, it feels like I can have a really carefree attitude with this band,” Crafter reveals. “We take the music seriously as far as wanting to sound good, but everything else is a bit of a joke – we just have fun and act like kids. Dudes are getting older – Dan [Brown, bass] is getting married and my girlfriend is 14 weeks pregnant and our guitarist [Adam Harris] has a really good trade job… Everyone’s got their own thing going on and we tour based on the fact that we are going to have fun, otherwise we’re not interested. We all live in different parts of the country, pretty much, and I’ve just moved to the Gold Coast, but we don’t see it as a big deal because we’re not a young band that needs to be around each other all the time – we know how we play.”
On new album The Long Way Home, it’s heavier, faster and just bigger in general, according to Crafter, who claims he spent time writing the record in Parkway Drive’s recording shack in Byron Bay, then jetted off to Sweden to record with producer Fredrik Nordstrom.
“We knew if we had the option of recording with him, the record would end up being the heaviest record we could ever possibly manage,” laughs Crafter. “We didn’t think it was an option, though, because of our budget, but when Fredrik heard about it he gave us a discount and really came through for us and we couldn’t believe how well the whole thing came together – they even had living quarters there. Fredrik is just a good bloke, I recorded with him with ‘Prom Queen a long time ago. When I even mentioned the possibility of doing this album with him he was stoked to do it, mostly because our band’s sound is very different to what he normally does, which is predominantly death metal.”
The Long Way Home may not be death metal per se, but it’s certainly heavy as all hell – and quite aptly titled, too, as Crafter explains…
“Initially the idea was based around that feeling you get when you can’t wait for something to happen. When I was a kid at school, that one hour before the bell would ring would feel like the longest hour of my life – I just wanted to get home and for the weekend to start! Same thing when I started working. And same thing when we’re on tour as well, those last couple of days usually start to make you homesick… Man, this last tour we did – I’d already named the album by this point. We’d been touring for six weeks and when it was finally time to go home we found out the bus couldn’t take us to the airport, so we had to get a train which took like seven hours. When we got to the airport the flights had been delayed, so we sat there for 27 hours and it was ridiculous. Then we found out that two of us were seated on one plane and the other two were on another flight. So me and the drummer ended up in Shanghai which was farther than we were supposed to go, then when we got to Beijing there was a nine-hour delay over there. Then we had to get another flight to Sydney, then Brisbane, then straight on the stage within two hours. About two songs into the set I’m wondering if I’m even alive. It was the worst trip but so fitting with the album title.”
