Fearless Vampire Killers: Calm Before The Storm?

Having heard their debut album and seen them play live(read the review here I was really excited to hear that Fearless Vampire Killers were back on the road soon for the Kerrang! tour. I managed to catch a few words with Drew, bassist and musical maestro to the band, as he made his way to practice on a cold and snowy night whilst he tried not to fall and break anything on the icy streets of London.

H: Can I ask you at first a bit about how the band got together? That was in 2008 wasn’t it?

D: Yeah, sure, I guess it stems from some of us in the band all coming from the same area of Suffolk and had been in bands before, two separate bands really. I was at Uni doing music and just got drawn into it and really it just progressed from there. We were watching the Roman Polanski film Fearless Vampire Killers and we were like “That’s it! That’s the style! That’s the name!” It just evoked so much it has the love it or hate it kind of title and so much potential.

H: So was it a bit of a culture shock moving from Suffolk to London?

D: It’s hard to think now because we’ve been here so long but I guess at the start. Even our drummer Luke, who’s from Hemel Hempstead, had a bit of a shock. We’re used to having to walk for twenty minutes to get to the nearest shop so it’s quite unusual to walk out of your door and have hustle and bustle and shops everywhere. It’s good and bad I think we all miss the peace of the countryside but when we were there we just couldn’t wait to get out because there was nothing to do. We had that naive dream of coming to London and making it big in the big city and obviously it’s a much harder job than that, but it’s where it’s all happening and we needed to be here and after slogging away for a long time in London we’re actually starting to get noticed a bit more. It’s been trial by fire and it’s forced both physically and emotionally just to grow up and really focused us on what we had to do. Through the trials that we went through when we got here means that we can do it if we all just stick together and really work for it.

H: So do you think this has bonded the band together into a closer knit unit?

D: Oh defiantly, and in that sense well for many reasons we’re all living together in a two bedroom flat so it’s incredibly cosy! You have to be quite comfortable with each other to be sharing a bed with another twenty two year old boy at that time!

H: So you did the debut recently ‘Militia Of The Lost’ how has that been going then?

D: As far as I can tell it’s gone down really well, I think in our own way we’re all quite pessimistic people, and we always think the worst is going to happen, like we’re going to try something and it’s all going to backfire and all going to go wrong, but we’ve gotten such an amazing positive reaction to the album that we never expected. The support from Kerrang! Magazine from the start and Rocksound and then lost of people following us and you always have that fear with something new that it sounds a bit more different a bit more polished than it was and you might lose that edge and that audience, but they’ve stuck with us all the way. I think we managed to get into the charts at number thirty which made us all like little school kids we were just“Oh my God! We got into the charts somehow. It’s still quite surreal, we went into HMV today, and we could pick up our CD and go “Wow, we actually got into a shop.” It’s been amazing.

H: I saw you live up in Newcastle with the ‘Killing Is Dead Tour’ and had a great time watching you guys. The theatrics on stage we’re really cool is that a big part of the band as it was quite nice to see a bit of showmanship on stage?

D: Yeah, that comes from the bands that we grew up with looking at the likes of Queen and The Beatles and even Green Day trying to get the enjoyment of playing across on stage and that kind of bombasticness of Muse, especially in their earlier performances, where you try to put as much as you can into the music even at the cost sometimes of your physical health or your instruments. We just love that theatrical style and it’s something we want to keep building on that we’ve been really working hard on for this Kerrang! tour set. All of our focus has been on going on and putting that extra bit into our performance. We want to make it into a show as opposed to us just going on with our heads drooped and just playing through our set.

H: Are you looking forward to the Kerrang! tour then?

D: Oh yeah! It seemed like an age away last year and then Christmas day came and is gone and now it’s here. It’s a little nervous for us, I think we’re pretty confidant but you do get nerves as these will be some of the biggest gigs we’ve ever played with the audiences, it’s pretty nerve wracking but we’re really excited. We’re used to playing, at best, like the Academy 2 size venues. So we’re hoping to not be feeling too out of place and just going out there and giving it our best.

H: You definitely got a very warm reaction from your fans when I saw you play, I did notice they were quite young some of them, does that ever concern you at all?

D Oh no, it’s never a concern. That said it’s never something we think about we’re just happy that people come along and just get the music. We all remember being that age and just because a fan is younger it doesn’t take away their value to us. It was that sort of age when I was discovering the bands that would shape my life and they are the bands I still go to when I need that hit of inspiration and I think that is really important. I love seeing those guys there and it gives us a great excuse to be quite immature ourselves and have a bit of a laugh! We have quite a spectrum with the young fans and they will come with their parents and it’s great chatting with them about our older more classical influences like prog rock and it’s great to have those two ends of the spectrum come in and say“We really like what you’re doing.” It’s awesome really.

H: Now I’ve heard some rumours that there may be a new album in the offering soon?

D: It’s not an album as such it’s a five track exposition, a little taster of things to come maybe. I can’t say too much but it’s a little tater and a chance to really get stuck into the whole conceptual side of that literary exposition and some of the back stories of characters and a real chance to be terribly pretentious but in a fun way! And musically it’s a little bit more barmy and quite a lot more ambitious as well.

H: It’s based in Grandormina?

D: Yes that’s right. Grandormina is where all of us go for inspiration. The whole thing is Laurence’s baby really he’s amazingly conjured this whole world in his head and he’s been writing stories for it and each album and even the EP’s where we were still forming the basis of the band had this grand concept behind it, which is too massive to explain quickly and even I’m stuck sometimes it’s great! I get to be a fan and read what he’s written and go “Wow, that’s amazing!” We’ve always tried to be an escapist band where you can lose yourself away from the drudgery of life and go into this fantasy where you can be whatever you want to be and lose yourself in the music and at the same time it all relates back to personal experiences and there are a lot of songs on that first album which are about our formative years in the band in London and really just building yourself up.

Main Photo by Scott_Chalmers

The Kerrang! tour kicks off tonight in Cardiff and continues on throughout February. You can get tickets from the following merchants: www.aloud.comand www.gigandtours.com

February 2013:

Sun 03 Cardiff Uni Great Hall 0292 078 1458

Mon 04 Manchester Academy 0161 832 1111

Tue 05 Bristol O2 Academy 0844 477 2000

Thu 07 Southampton Guildhall 02380 632 601

Fri 08 Norwich UEA 01603 508 050

Sat 09 Liverpool O2 Academy 0844 477 2000

Sun 10 Glasgow O2 Academy 0844 499 9990

Tue 12 Newcastle O2 Academy 0844 477 2000

Wed 13 Sheffield O2 Academy 0844 477 2000

Thu 14 Birmingham O2 Academy 0844 477 2000

Fri 15 London O2 Academy Brixton 0844 477 2000