“I can’t wait mate, it’s gonna be sick,” he enthuses. “We’ve just come back from Australia, touring with House vs. Hurricane and it’s your winter over there, so it was a bit chilly I guess, but in February it’s gonna be boiling so I’ll be sweating my arse off!” he laughs.
The tour with House vs. Hurricane was a resounding success, so they have a very good impression of Australia and high expectations of their return. “It was good man, really good,” he informs us. “We had really good reactions nearly every night. We had some fans there, which was cool, so I think it was an all-round good trip.”
Sean is confident that the band will deliver something a little different from most of the other bands that punters will experience at Soundwave. “Yeah, hopefully something new and raw and powerful, and something they haven’t really heard before,” he says. “Hopefully, anyway!” he laughs.
He is well aware of the size and scope of the Soundwave lineup, and he is very excited about it. But the bands he’s most excited about seeing and sharing a bill with may surprise some, despite the presence of some of the greatest heavy hitters on the planet. “Yeah, it’s mental,” he says, “I want to see Linkin Park. I’ve never seen them, so it would be pretty cool to see them. And I haven’t seen Blink 182 for seven years so it will be totally cool to see them too.”
Despite the frivolous origins of the band’s name, their songs have quite a bit of anger and some pretty meaningful lyrics in them, and this begged the question as to what their tunes are actually about, and to what extent the town they grew up in had an effect on their music. “This latest album is something about the war, and respecting your elders and that type of stuff,” he explains. “There’s a lot about inner strength and what we’ve been through and what we’re doing, and why we do it. And then there’s a lot of stuff about the UK and what’s been going on. People don’t give a shit about it. I guess it’s an angry album. Seven Hills is basically about where we’re from, and us knowing each other from Sheffield. Sheffield is built on seven hills, so that’s where the song title comes from.”
And in keeping with the rough and ready background the band members come from, the band intentionally keep their production quite raw and real on record, in contrast with the uber-polished sounds that many of their contemporaries prefer. This can be clearly heard on their brand new album This is the Six.
“Yeah, that was an intention,” he says without hesitation. “We wanted a production but we didn’t want to lose that raw edge. That was an actual thing that we discussed with the producer, we didn’t want to be an electronic, plug in electric drums type of band. We don’t like that sort of sound, we never want to lose that rawness. I think we’ve mixed it quite nicely. It’s a nice sounding record and it’s raw as well.
“There’s a lot of bands that just sound like each other,” he opines. “I’m not digging at other bands, ‘cause that’s what they do. Even their recordings sound exactly the same, and sometimes I don’t understand how they can be okay with it sounding like so many other bands. I don’t see the point. I’m not one to judge or know, but I guess a lot of people are like ‘Well this band are blowing up, and if you listen to that tune it’s really cool, let’s try and do something like that.’”
BY ROD WHITFIELD
