“They’re a local band from just up the road,” Hudson says. “Our new drummer [Tommy Davidson] plays drums for them. They were really good. It’s quite different to what we’re doing. It’s a lot more electronic.”
A well-known musician amongst the Leeds scene, Davidson joined PABH after original drummer Lee Vincent announced his departure in February this year. Vincent had been with the band for three albums, including their most recent effort, 2014’s Blood.
“It was like breaking up with a girlfriend,” Hudson says. “He was like, ‘It’s not you, it’s me. I need to go on to do other things.’ But it was all totally cool and we’re still good pals and stuff. It was up to him to make the call and change it up and we totally supported it.”
Despite the lineup change, Pulled Apart By Horses haven’t lost any momentum. Since forming in Leeds in 2008, their knack for delivering high-energy shows has allowed them to travel to all pockets of the globe. The band’s 2010 self-titled debut packed a devastating post-hardcore punch, loaded with bruisers like Back To The Fuck Yeah and I Punched A Lion In The Throat, and they returned with even more sonic ammunition on 2012’s Tough Love. But given their track record, LP number three, Blood, may have surprised a few fans. Drawing on everything from psychedelia to stoner rock, Blood sees PABH transcend the post-hardcore label for something far more diverse.
“With the first two albums, every song we had at the time made the album,” Hudson says. “It was more of a document of what we were doing and everything was 100 miles per hour. With Blood we just wanted to take a bit more time to craft an album rather than going, ‘Oh fuck, we’ve got these songs. Let’s record them and then go tour again.’ I think we just wanted to take a bit more time with it really, without going into the super over-indulgent double album, concept album or something. We just wanted to chill with it a bit.”
Lyrically, Blood draws on some rather unorthodox sources. Case in point: the track Lizard Baby. “The lyrics for that song were inspired by our weird, fucked up royal family,” Hudson says. “There’s a dude called David Icke who does all these talks about the all-seeing eye and the Illuminati and stuff. He’s got a theory that the whole of the British royal family, and people that are in power, are lizards. When we wrote that tune the new royal baby thing was happening, so Lizard Baby came from that. Just sort of taking the piss really.”
The band are currently in the process of writing new material and have around “six or seven” rough song ideas worked out. Though, it’s unlikely any of these will be ready when they tour Australia in October. The inflection in Hudson’s voice indicates he’s genuinely excited to get back to our shores. After all, he cites the band’s set at Golden Plains in 2011 – where they received the coveted Golden Boot from a majority of the crowd – as one of their career highlights.
“I remember loads of people started holding up one of their shoes and our tour manager told us that was a sign they do at the festival when they’re really into a band,” Hudson says. “But when we were playing we didn’t have a fucking clue and we were just like, ‘Are we about to get pelted with shoes?’ But then we realised everyone was smiling, so we were like, ‘Oh, this is cool’.”
BY JACK PILVEN
