Interviews

Glasswerk meets: Silent Screams

• 23rd May 2013

We sent our rock podcast presenter Fish down to Fury Fest in Liverpool to wrap his head around some metal and hardcore. In the second in a series of interviews, Fish chats to Coventry metallers Silent Screams who were the first signing to Ghost Music Records.

You released a new single in february what has the reaction to that been like?

Tom: Really good.

Joel: Really good man yeah, we all had hopes and good expectations for it, but you can’t every really judge how the actual people’s reaction will be.

Tom: I think especially because it wasn’t just a new single for us, it was a new single with a new singer. It was quite a big thing for us to lose James, but then, like Joel said we were really confident with the single, We loved it. We obviously didn’t know how people would react, James had a lot of fans himself but It’s been really cool though man.

Can you give me a bit of a run down as to how this year has gone for you so far?

Joel: Yeah, well basically this year we’ve had the Europe tour haven’t we. We did a headlining tour in Europe, which was Germany, Austria, we played a date in Belgium, Luxenbourg and others, it was so cool. We had a really good time, obviously it was a headline tour but it wasn’t technically off the back of anything, simply it was just a headline tour. I hadn’t been there personally but the band hadn’t been there in a long while, so we went back there just to do a string of dates and it went over and just smashed all our expectations of it. It was so cool to see the amount of people who were so into it. It was amazing. Then we came back from that and did the tour with Bleed From Within and Heart Of A Coward, that we just got off a couple of weeks ago. That’s just recently really, earlier in the year we had the single release.

One of my questions is about that tour actually, what was it like? any good stories?

Tom: I don’t know about stories, but the whole thing was just so cool. Bleed have got such a good reputation over here, and the Heart of a Coward guys are up and coming at the minute. To open for those guys was awesome. Every night was just really busy, and I think there were obviously shows that kind of stood out for us, Manchester was incredible and Glasgow was amazing.

Joey: I found the cool thing about that tour was that every night we had people who knew us, but because Bleed From Within are such a high profile Metal band in the scene, They’ve been on tour with Testament or something mental like that before coming back over here, and we were sort of stuck in more of the Hardcore type Metal scene. It was really cool every night we would have the people who would come out to see us and we would also make a lot of new fans and new friends and people would come up to us and say like ‘i’ve never heard of you before but you’re incredible. You’re really awesome.’ That was the best thing for me because I knew it wasn’t just playing to people who knew us and where coming out to see us time and time and time again. Don’t get me wrong I love that support that each one of those people give but we knew every night we were making new friends and fans, it was really cool.

You’re on a serious amount of one day festivals all over the country throughout summer not to mention Download Festival, what do make of the festival scene?

Tom: I just think that for me, they are quite stressful in terms of everything’s got to be so on point and you know like, especially with Download. You want to make sure you’re ready to go and everything. The plus side to it is that is the whole getting new fans, and that element of walking around all day and meeting new people. It’s so different to just playing a normal show. Where it’s like you get there and there is no ones else, it’s just you and the wait to play and then you play, which is awesome but I think with a festival it’s just like all day just constantly…

Joel: I think with those sort of shows it’s just like the bigger atmosphere. The bigger the show the more energy you get from it and the atmosphere is brought in from everything all day.

I suppose as well its that it’s nice to play to people who want to be there for you, rather than a room full of people just waiting for the next band to come on. They could just choose someone else.

Joel: Oh yeah you always get some of that though, there are always people who go to the show just to see set bands. There are no two ways about it, we’ve been that band and we’ve had that happen to us. You’re never going to beat that. But that is very true actually on a festival day it’s really cool that like when we played Hit The Deck a couple of weeks back on the Bleed tour we had people coming up to us and saying like, ‘Man I left Stick To Your Guns to come and see you.’ That shits insane. I mean I really like Stick To Your Guns as well. I would have loved to have seen them, so it’s also that factor as well, you know people could be somewhere else but they chose to see you. There are plenty of other bands that they might wanna go see and enjoy but they do come and choose to see us, it’s just overwhelming.

How do you prepare for such a large run of gigs or do you just hit it head on and hope for the best?

Joel: We’re quite serious aren’t we. When it comes to warming up we make sure we do it correctly. Vocal warm ups and body warm ups. We try and put on quite interesting, energetic set. You don’t ever want to just go for it, because you end up feeling like crap. When I first joined the band I did. I didn’t do any vocal warm ups and I use to just fucking hit it like. When I first joined we went on tour after like a week and a bit and because that was my first tour ever I didn’t really know much about it, I still really don’t. I try. Yeah so me and you are quite strict with that…

Tom: We have a routine so everything leading up to before we play is preparation. Making sure you eat, making sure you’re hydrated. Pretty boring really.

Joel: Really boring actually.

Tom: In terms of performing I just think that you have to be ready to go. A lot of it as well is like to vibe off each other with the crowd, I think that’s quite important like at hit the deck in Nottingham it was just crazy like. It just fucking went off and that gave us more energy.

Joel: Yeah exactly man. The more you bring to the stage the more the crowd want to fucking party off stage and the more they party off stage it makes you go even crazier.

I did drama so I know that a good tip is lemonade is great for the voice.

Joel: Yeah I heard that flat lemonade. You stir it with a spoon or something.

Yeah man stay off the coffee and chocolate it’s all about the lemonade.

Joel: Yeah man, i’m like super serious about that shit. I mean I don’t drink alcohol a lot generally, but on tour I don’t drink at all. I cant do it, i’d feel so bad if I was getting on stage with a shitty voice every night. My voice blew out when we were in Europe and like I said because it was like my first tour, I didn’t know anything about vocal warm ups, vocal techniques or anything like that. So it blew out for a day and I felt so terrible. I felt so bad not just because my voice had blown out, I felt bad that the people who would come and see us will think ‘he sounds like shit.’ Now we always have like honey and hot lemon and stuff like that. As I said we don’t drink alcohol so me and tom usually have Guinness at the end of the tour to celebrate. There are so many people who have just gone into it full on and it’ll only hold up for so long.

Tom: It’s the same with anything, any activity where you exercise a muscle, you’ve gotta warm up man.

You’ve done Europe and Australia? what the best thing about the foreign tours?

Tom: It’s just, especially with Australia, more like a holiday. Like when we went Joel wasn’t with us.

Joel: It’s so sad, whenever you tell stories about Australia i’m like that sounds really good.

Tom: we went like the week before and just chilled out and did loads of really cool stuff and then went on tour. I don’t know Australia just amazes me, you cant really fault it.

What’s the scene like over there?

Tom: Its amazing man….well its the same anywhere. The world is just so connected now. All the music online and on Facebook, everyones pretty up to date on whats going on and they all know what music is current. I remember when I first joined the band, flipping like 3 years ago we went to Europe and everything seemed really dated. It all seemed like really far behind us. That was like back in the myspace days, now going back to Europe everyone knows about everything. Where as when Parkway were first starting out it was really hard for them because no one would except that this was an Australian band. Where as now it doesn’t matter where you’re from. I think it’s just really cool to travel to different places especially the most recent time we went to Australia to have people that knew the songs as well that far away, that is the most rewarding thing.

Joel: That was pretty crazy, like he said, for you to go to different places in the world and for people to know your songs and stuff like that, cause obviously I got the chance to go to Europe and it was mental because we released that single in like february and we went to Europe in march. So the album had only been out for a month and every night when we played the new single there were fucking people singing it back so loud. Even louder than some of the older songs. I can’t even explain the feeling. I love touring, I love playing shows, I love being on stage, I just fucking love it. I’m not good at anything else, like ever. I’m not clever and I know that, just touring and playing shows and writing music.

Tom: Touring in general is awesome but I think there is just something about playing abroad that just heightens it. It’s just like going on holiday as well. Touring the UK is awesome don’t get me wrong playing the UK feels like home.

Theres a couple of things on your Facebook that sparked my interest a little; The first was that in your about section it says you’ve had tour experiences, haunted houses, wolf chases, chemical plant disasters and plane crashes. what is that about?

Tom: So what was the first one?

Haunted Houses.

Tom: Haunted houses was our first Australian tour. We played this place where they let us stay in the venue. Part of the venue was just a big hostel. It just weren’t right man. It was like being in fucking resident evil. Every time I tell this story the guy that we met gets bigger and bigger. We went upstairs and searched the toilet and it was just pitch black, and we were like ‘No one fucking lives here’, then out of the shadows there was this huge like 10ft tall bald geezer with an eye patch. You cant get much better than that. He just looks at us and he was just like ‘Hey’ and then walked into his room. That place was pretty haunted. Plane Crash…I’m pretty sure that was just when we were coming back from Australia the first time. We flew with Emirates and they have those cameras on them where you can look underneath the plan, and we were coming in to land and I was just like thats green. It’s fucking Grass. He came down almost hit it and had to come back up and go round again. People where screaming and there were couples holding each other and stuff. The wolf thing, that was when we were doing the album in America and where Joey lived at the time we were in the sticks. Really far out, and so at night when you were out on the porch, you had the porch light and then it was just pitch black. We got this american football and sam our guitarist ran out and was like throw it. Then we heard all these fucking growls and it weren’t a dog man. I spilt tea all over myself and just started legging it back into the house. You could hear them at night as well, like circling…well

Joel: You couldn’t hear them circling (he laughs)

Tom: No you know just as in like you know around the house and in the area generally. But we asked Joe what the fuck they were and it was like… they weren’t dogs. He said they were wild…somethings. I don’t know fucking Hyenas or some shit. (he laughs) they would have eaten you anyway .

The second one is that you’ve listed conspiracy theories and aliens in your interested. Who’s the conspiracy nut?

Joel: It’s all about conspiracies dude. Sasquatch he’s a big one for me (he laughs) He’s real dude. He’s real.

You maybe have more chance with the abominable snowman because there is a huge amount of wilderness for him to hide in that humans haven’t searched.

Joel: There are a lot of caves man and he could be in any of them.

Tom: We use to just be into it like so much. Especially when that move Zeitgeist came out, we just all watched it. Most nights driving back from shows we would just talk about Aliens and stuff. Our old singer James would just research it all so hard and bring all these stories and we’d all just be listening to him intently. He’d tell us about all these abductions and stuff.

It’s almost like ghost stories round a camp fire.

Joel: When we drove back from Glasgow the other week, me and Sam and Adam where in the front and we where discussing ghosts. There where some hard ghost stories going on, so in depth and we were just all freaking each other out and it was like four o’clock in the morning as well when we were driving back. (He Laughs)

That might be a good idea for your ITV2 spin off series. Ghost Hunting with Silent Screams.

Joel: Yeah Man

Tom: I think being on the road can just be so long, especially Europe and Australia. Some of the drives where like 14 hours.

Joel: We did do it 12 hour drive in Europe, through the night.

Tom: It’s just cool stuff to talk about. It’s interesting. We don’t like believe it, we’re not going to get like Tom Cruise on you or anything, but it’s just interesting man.

Is there another release planned in the near future?

Joel: Currently we are just writing. Trialling ideas around, bouncing ideas of each other.

Tom: There will be a release though, we just don’t know when yet.

Do you think it’ll be before or after festival season?

Joel: We’ve been so busy with shows. I mean there has been a lot of shows. After I joined the band things were a little up in the air a bit. It was hard because it was a bit of a transition period for us. Then when that was done we toured a lot and now we’ve just had the time to figure out our next steps, with what we are going to do and how we are going to put it across to people. What we thought people deserved. We can’t really ask for more than how people have already reacted to it, It’s been incredible man, so fucking cool. But yeah we’ve not really stopped.

Tom: And now that we are busy with these festivals. But we are definitely writing. So you can expect something after the festival season.

Something Big Maybe?

Joel: Just wait and see man (He Laughs)

The last thing is what’s your favourite thing to listen to at the moment band/release?

Joel: I’m really digging the new Colour Morale album. I’ve not always been a fan of those guys but there new album is really cool man. I really, really like it when bands are able to reinvent themselves, not reinvent themselves into a completely different band, but more like step it up to another level. It’s so cool and they really have, they’ve smashed the shit out of it.

Tom: Really digging the new Northlane. It’s incredible as well and the new Bring Me The Horizon album.

Joel: Ah yeah the new Bring Me album yeah.

Tom: we’ve been checking out the new Heights album as well. It sounds awesome.