I-def-I-interview

• 3rd Apr 2006

I-def-I-interview.

Mark cooper: So where are we at with this tour now?

Tom Clements (Guitar): This is basically a warm-up for the gigs we’ve got with Breed 77, working on what songs were gonna play.
Chris Mahler (Vocals): Like one of the new tracks we played at the sound check.

Coop: Yeah, what was that song called?

Chris: We’ve not yet got a title, were toying with a few ideas; but the track is pretty much ready to go.Ready to play live.
Tom: Were gonna try it tonight.
Coop: And that’s the stuff that’s going on the next album?
Tom: Yeah, were about half way, were probably working on between eleven & twelve songs.

Coop: So what sort of headspace is this album, compared with ‘Bloodlust casualty’?

Tom: It’s pretty much a similar headspace, were still dealing with a great day-to-day struggle, still kind of a dark place although everything’s getting better at the moment. Were still pushing against everything (laughs).Were still fighting against everything.
Chris: (Laughs).It’s still a dark time for us; a lot of the lyrics come from a dark subject matter.
Tom: It’s still fucked up. (Everyone laughs.)

Coop: ‘Bloodlust’ has been incredibly well received, after several demos; does it feel like your finally being accepted?

Tom: There’s definitely a bit of that, we were half expecting to take a bit of kicking, because were not playing what’s considered to be popular.

Coop: Yeah, you’ve said before that you were ‘Pushing against that trend’

Chris: What’s kind of considered ‘cool’ at the moment, all that emo trend is like coming to the tail-end now; the U.K market now for the last four years has been saturated with emo bands doing the same kinda thing, and the hardcore bands wanabe Dillinger escape plans y’know,and I don’t think there’s any bands doing that straight forward metal-like where doing; so were going against the flow, were not wearing those horrible drainpipe trousers (Laughs) and all that shit y’know.

Coop: So it’s a definite thing you wanna go against, you want nothing to do with it?

Tom: Nothing.
Chris: We wanted to totally disassociate ourselves with it.
Tom: We never wanted to follow anything that was going on; we just wanted to play the music we wanted to play.
Chris: We’ve always been antisocial to trends; weve never sucked anybody’s cock.

Coop: It’s difficult cos people want to put you in a genre, in terms of who to tour with etc, but you don’t want to be labelled.

Tom: We’ve played with some extremely obscure bands (laughs),I mean we played with Killing joke and were nothing like them, but we survived it in one piece (laughs).
There were moments when we thought we wouldn’t-there a bit strange.

Coop: The first demo you did was in 2001 right?

Chris: Yeah, we did a four track demo; to be honest with you the production on it is really awful.
Tom: It did help us.
Chris: It served as a tool to push us to a next level. To start pimping the name of I-def-I and getting the tracks out; back then the nu-metal thing hadn’t really died off and we were very much a kind of new metally type of band, before we evolved into what were doing now.

Coop: There were a couple more demos after that?

Chris: The first demo we were kinda young, we actually thought it sounded good. After the second demo we made a six track mini album, kind of similar to what ‘Bloodlust’ is like. We found ourselves in-between a rock and a hard place.
Tom: We were still finding our feet musically and kind of figuring out what we wanted to do.

Coop: But that’s a good thing, a lot of bands have decided what they sound like before their a band.

Chris: Oh yeah totally. The great thing is that ‘Bloodlust’ is our debut, this is the first thing people are gonna hear, were fortunate that ‘Fake smiles and lullabies’ c.d that we recorded 2-3 years ago, wasn’t the first thing that was heard. It wouldn’t have been a strong introduction. We probably would have got ripped apart, and I don’t think we could have handled it.

Coop: A lot of peoples introduction to the band will be ‘Bloodlust casulalty’, what did you want to achieve with it?

Tom: We wanted to get it absolutely right. We wanted the songs that represented us the best.
Chris: We wanted to show all the elements that make I-def-I’s sound, every kind of possible angle, I still don’t think we’ve reached our full potential yet by a long shot, I think were just starting out-as far as song writing goes.

Coop: So you think you achieved that.

Tom: Definitely.
Coop: The riff in ‘Sorrow’ is excellent. It strikes me as being one of the high points of the album.

Coop: How have things changed-the albums been out three weeks.

Tom: Yeah, three weeks.
Chris: I think people have been holding out for this one since 2002, weve made a lot of friends on the road, a lot of new fans. I think people are now like ‘Shit!-they’ve finally done it.’ It’s been tough yeah; weve had things set us back. I think the U.K scene is waiting for something that isn’t the tail end of a dying genre. Were kind of focusing on songs that have a longer shelf life; like classic bands like Machine head, can go out with one song that they played back in the day, they can still play after ten years and it sounds great. So that’s more of our aim, the long term.

Coop: Do you think you’ve got any of those types of songs?

Chris: I don’t want to speculate, but we still get people asking for stuff off our first demo.
Tom: The new stuff that coming along is so powerful, it’s going to be difficult to pick what to play in the set.

Coop: Is there any unknown bands at the moment you like?

Chris: Are boys in Profane are like brothers, weve toured with them, and their like a really good band. I really like a band called ‘Forever never’ that’ve got an album on Casket. That’s pretty good; it’s like one of the things that jumped out for me.

Coop: They toured with Fozzy.

Chris: Yeah, to me that’s really good.

Coop: Straight up metal.

Tom: That guy can really sing.
Chris: That’s something I admire. One of the last British bands I truly respected was Earth tone 9, because Karl Middleton was such a fantastic vocalist.

Coop: Do think that’s missing?

Chris: Oh yeah, bands like Vacant stare, y’know James manning, great singer all these great bands that have great singers.

Coop: It’s that middle range; you get your screamers and growlers, but not that middle ground.

Chris: One of the things that I’ve found playing with some bands, is they all seem to scream there lungs out, which is o.k,if your into that kind of thing; I like to listen to good vocal melodies and hooks, something that’s memorable.

Coop: You’ve toured with Stone sour, One minute silence and a whole load of other bands, what did you learn from that?

Tom: Playing on a big stage; like when we played with Stone sour, in front of like 3500 people.
Chris: It was like pissing in the ocean! (Laughs) but it took us to a whole new level of profssionalisim, where we had to up our game. After seeing how the bigger bands handled that we approached the live thing more professionally. It’s like the transition from being the biggest in the primary school to the smallest in the high school.
Tom: Live is the best thing, it’s a clique itself but its true. We pride ourselves as being as good live as we possibly can be, and were always trying to push it to get better and better performances; that’s the one thing about ‘Bloodlust’-it sounds so damn good, we have to be that good live.

Coop: People expect that, and then some; they expect the album as well as something they can see.

Tom: That’s what we want to do.

Coop: You were in a band called ‘Signing Gaia’ Chris, what were they like?

Chris: They were more straight rock.
Tom: Pearl jam (laughs)
Chris: Back in those days I was listening to a lot of Snot, stuff like that, kinda grungy stuff. That for me was were I learned to sing and how to do the screamy thing as well. Before that I was drumming, I wasn’t actually the original drummer, but they were like ‘You should do the vocals, we’ll get another drummer’.

Coop: And you Tom you were in Sector 7g, Mute, what were they like?

Tom: That was a band that existed for about three months, it was nasty screamy Will haven kinda stuff. Sector 7g was basically a Seputura cover band. Playing the fairly late ‘Arise’ fast as hell stuff.
Chris: Tom gave me like four songs he’d wrote for the Mute project, I worked on those tracks for like three weeks, which became the very first I-def-I songs. So kind of the same thing he was doing,
Tom: With better vocals (laughs).

Coop: (To Tom) so are you endorsing Ibanez at the moment?

Tom: No it’s Kev.(Mel-drums and Kev-bass are also in the green room.)
Kev: Yeah, I just spoke to a few distributors and stuff, passed on some material.

Coop: Anybody else an endorsee?

Kev: Warwick and Line 6- I’m the only one making the phone calls (laughs).

Coop: Now, more recently you’re going to tour with Breed 77, how do you feel about that?

Chris: I’ve been listening to their album a lot, that song they released a while back ‘La ultima hora’which I thought was a great song.
Tom: Their new stuffs heavy, it’s good.
Chris: Their a band, kind of like us who, have been through a lot of shit themselves and kind of dragged themselves out of it.The’ve proved to be a self-sufficient band. Got to where they are through their own merit.

Coop: You played a date at the Preload event?

Chris: We thought we’d get to play the Download festival last year, I’d love to play this year but,wether or not we make It I dunno.When the times right it’s right y’know.Were not forcing anything that’s not going to come naturally.
Tom: A lot of gigs planned.

Coop: Just gonna tour your asses off.

Tom: Were doing the U.K late may and then Europe probably July time maybe.

Coop: Any plans to go into videos or singles territory?

Chris: The video thing is one thing we’ve been talking about, for a long time we know we’ve got to get a video out there. We’ve been speaking to a few companies, it’s basically getting the time, the budget to do it justice; hopefully in the near future, it’s not the top of our priorities list.

Coop: It sounds like you have a big fucking list. (Laughs).
Tom: (laughs) Yeah, we’ve got a big list.