As you can read here and here, I quickly became quite a fanboy of Liverpudlian Sludge freaks IRON WITCH. They definetely have more than enough potential to become a big name in the downtempo metal game. So of course we at CVLT Nation had to ask them a few questions about their music, their hometown and future plans!
IRON WITCH might still be unknown to some people, so could you give us a short who’s who?
IRON WITCH is a Rock’n’Roll band that consists of five members, Rick Owen (Bass), Dan Fane (Guitar), Chris Fane (Words), Sam Rushton (Guitar) and Will Adams (Drums). We started out back in 2010, in all honesty, out of sheer boredom. There wasn’t much going on in Liverpool at the time other than the Punk scene, which is cool and all, but everyone playing fast all the time gets boring. So, as Crowbar put it, we decided to ‘tune low and play slow’ haha.
How does it feel to be compared to Eyehategod all of the time? Can you still enjoy hearing that?
It’s pretty much just become a standard response now that we’ve become used to, and it doesn’t bother us too much anymore, and from what we’ve seen it doesn’t seem to bother people either. We’re not stupid, we know we have traits of Eyehategod, we play music in a style that was created by them, so it was always bound to happen. The way we see it though, when we started this band we never set out to do anything new, we just wanted to play stuff we liked and stuff we wanted to hear, and its not like we’re the only band out there to have adopted the sound of another. How many bands out there sound like Pantera, Weedeater or Electric Wizard? At the end of the day, we still write our own music and our own riffs and people seem to dig it so cool with it.
Was it a deliberate decision to play this kind of NOLA’ish Sludge or did it more happen just like that?
Definitely a decision we made. We wanted to play something different to what was dominant in Liverpool at the time, which like I said before was Punk/Hardcore etc. I guess it was a sort of our way of responding to it. I mean, Punk is great, it’s one of my favourite genres, but when everyone’s doing it, it gets a bit monotonous. So that was a definite factor in or decision to play this style of music. But it’s not like we totally denied the Punk scene, thats why we still include it in our music, it’s what we grew up on, it’s part of us and our city.
Liverpool is well known for its vivid music scene, how are the more underground scenes doing there? Are there many places where Metal/Hardcore/Punk bands can rehearse and play?
At the moment we don’t have too many venues to choose from, tonnes of places shut down over the past year or so, but we get by. We have the likes of Wolstenholme Creative Space which is really cool, it has a real underground “squat” feel about it with a make shift bar etc. Then we have a couple more venues available for bigger shows, so it isn’t all that bad. There are some pretty awesome bands in and around Liverpool at the moment, like our good friends The Bendal Interlude who have been around for a good 10 years now and then there’s Black Magician and Conan who are definitely worth checking out too, both really fucking heavy.
Let’s talk about your new record that’s going to hit the streets soon: The Post Vegas Blues 7” will be released on Thirty Days Of Night Records, a label probably more known for releasing (metallic) Hardcore like Dead Swans or Hang The Bastard. How did that deal come together?
Jamie was the first person we sent the demo to and we didn’t know what the reaction to it would be. Thankfully he was digging it and was willing to put it out for us. Even though it is predominantly a Hardcore label, he just puts out stuff he likes. The style of music we play also seems to appeal to a pretty wide audience too, so I think that helped a lot.
Your releases are characterized by a very dirty, raw yet powerful guitar sound. What equipment did you use in the studio? Do you use the same stuff when playing live?
Currently our live rig consists of 2x Randall RG100ES guitar heads (one of our guitarists is using one because his head is fucked!) which we boost with overdrive pedals like a Boss SD-1, a Sunn 4×12 and a Marshall 4×12, and a Sunn Concert Lead for bass, which is what we stuck to using on this most recent release Post Vegas Blues. Before with other releases, including our early demos, we didn’t own much gear, so we used a combination of what we had and gear we had borrowed from the studios/friends etc. Guitar/bass wise we’ve always used the same (a Yamaha SG 1000, Gibson Explorer, Squire Jazz), apart from on the Single Malt EP where we used a Gibson Sonex instead of the Explorer.
The reactions to IRON WITCH are uniformly very good, is this piling the pressure for your next releases to a certain extent? Are there plans for a full-length?
Not really haha, the only thing we’re usually concerned or pressured about is if the next/current release is better than the last one. We’re still a relatively new band, and we’re trying to expand and develop our sound all the time. We’ve talked about working on a full length album, and we have a few new, unreleased songs under our belt so it’s definetely a possibility. We’re quite enjoying putting out smaller releases thick and fast though so we may do a couple more before we get into a full length.
How can we imagine the song-writing process in IRON WITCH?
The good thing with the band is that we all pitch in on the song writing process, no ones assigned to a specific area. We all write stuff in our spare time, riffs, lyrics, drum patterns or whatever and then try to meet up once a week to jam and show each other any ideas we have. That’s the usual process. Other times we’ll just head down to the practice room with a few beers/bottle of whiskey and just jam all night and see if we come up with anything.
What makes a perfect IRON WITCH show in your eyes? How important is the audience’s reaction for you?
We quite like playing smaller shows where the crowds are right on top of you and you get more of an interaction with them. They’re always the most fun to us. When you’re on a big stage with barriers in front of you it makes you feel cut off. Crowd reaction is definitely a big thing for us, we like to see the audience get involved and more often than not they do haha.
When it comes down to play/write music – what’s more important: feeling or technique?
Feeling, hands down. Although I’m not saying you don’t need any kind technique too, because your songs would fall to shit if you didn’t, but the stuff we write isn’t exactly hard to play. Its just fun, simple, heavy riffs that we put ourselves completely in to. I mean if you’ve got a song or a riff that doesn’t want to make you bang your head or start a fight or emit any sort of feeling to you then what’s the fucking point in playing music at all?
Do you have any plans for touring mainland Europe or the US?
Yeah definitely! We’d love to get over to Europe and the US to play. We just need to take our fingers out of our arses haha. I think we’ll try and get ourselves to Europe next year for sure, as for the States we’ll have to see.
If you could choose between Tony Iommi or Greg Ginn for a guest appearance on the next IRON WITCH record, who would you choose?
A tough one but I’ve got to go with Iommi. He’d keep that bluesy element we dig so much, and you know he’s like the original master of all things riff. But we do have two guitars in the band, so couldn’t we have both haha?
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thirtydaysofnightrecords.bigcartel.com
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