Call Upon The Author

A couple of weeks back we reviewed Violent Soho’s album (read that review here). We thought it was a breath of fresh air amongst the wealth of stale music that pops through our letterbox. We thought we’d catch up with the band to find out more about them, so we fired our questions at drummer Michael Richards and here’s what he had to say!

You grew up in Australia’s bible belt but you’ve clearly rebelled against the religion that was prevalent in your upbringing. Was there ever a point when you thought maybe starting the band was the wrong idea and you should just get yourselves to church?
Not really, no. As far as staying religiously adamant goes, the type of church we each grew up in was not too clear cut. Most, if not all, Pentecostal churches are pretty much rife with hypocrisy. I can say this with clear confidence as I attended many of these different types of churches as a child, as my Dad was a pastor and all. People seem to not really follow the guideline of practicing what they preach in these places. The pastors of these churches drive around in Hummers or Porches, their wives have Collagen injected up to the teeth. It’s all quite fake and self-righteous. Having grown up in this type of environment, you sort of accept this type of existence as normal. We all pretty much went through the same experience as teenagers when we all started to see the world a little more for what it was and realised all the bullshit that was associated with this super-spiritual religion we were being raised within. Our music was an instant rebellion against this type of an existence. It was our way out of this world in which we were raised. We never really looked back after that.

Who or what were the early influences on the band, during those days in the garage?
When we first started Jamming around we were into a lot of the stuff that our older brothers and sisters had passed on to us from the 90s. Stuff like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine or Blink 182. We still love all of these bands, though since we’ve been involved in music for quite a while longer now, we’ve definitely broadened our influences and taken on a wider approach to how we play. We’re mainly just influence by bands that play music the way that they want to and aren’t ever really distracted by what people might think of that. They just play the music they love. That’s the type of approach we like to take.

How hard was it to find opportunities to get out and play live in your early days? Touring in Australia must be a pretty hardcore process with the distances involved!
It was quite difficult for us to get shows in the early days of our band as I’m sure it is for most bands just starting out. When we began playing, we were quite isolated as a band. We lived out in the suburbs, and we were just teenagers. We didn’t know any hip dudes that could swing us an opening slot at some rad venue in the city. We didn’t even know that you could go and rehearse in rehearsal rooms. We would just practice in my parents’ garage on Sunday mornings while they were at church and piss off any of the neighbours who had opted to sleep in that day. Eventually we made friends with some bands through random meetings, MySpace, going to gigs etc. and we jumped on to some shows and went from there. Touring in Australia can be a challenge with the long distances involved between major cities for sure. It’s about a 12 hour drive from Brisbane to Sydney, which is the next major city from where we live. However in many ways, it’s not that hard. It doesn’t take very long to do a national tour of Australia, as there’s not that many places to play. A national tour of Australia may take only a couple of weeks. That’s as opposed to the United States where it can take a good two months or so to tour the entire nation. After going through that run, Australia seems like a real piece of cake.

the cover for Violent Soho's debut album

Your debut album found its way into Thurston Moore’s hands, and he’s a big fan. How did it feel to find out that someone so iconic was into your songs?

It blew our minds for sure. It was quite a surreal experience when we first got to meet him. He’s very friendly and quite a normal bloke though, and so after the initial shock of it all, it seems quite normal now. He’s a very genuine person and being on his label has been just fantastic for us in the sense that we’ve been granted as much creative freedom as we like. It’s not been like we’ve signed over to this label in the US and now we have to do as they say. They’re just happy to bring our creative vision to fruition and to promote our work. Sonic Youth are possibly my favourite band of all time and so it’s insane that we have gotten the chance to work with someone that we would consider to be one of our heroes. It’s bloody brilliant.

You signed to Moore’s label (Ecstatic Peace!) and recorded your current album with Gil Norton and Rich Costey. How much of an influence did they have on the sound of your album, and was there any particular thing you took away from working with them?
Gil was definitely a huge influence on how our sound took shape on the new album. He’s produced and worked with bands that we hugely admire for their sound, such as the Distillers and obviously the Pixies. I think we were really able to work on our most basic creative level with him in the studio as we really seemed to understand the approach that was necessary to achieving the best out of the songs. That was to work on a level where your being as expressively honest and pure as possible, both on a sonic and especially a lyrical level, but to be conscious of allowing the songs to lean towards their most natural sounding pop sensibilities. I think this is why the songs on the album, though they’ve been engineered and mixed to an exactness (thanks to Rich Costey, the master) they still sound very real and honest. I was blown away with how well the songs came out. The best thing Gil did in the studio was to allow us to have that creative freedom and to allow the natural developments of the songs to take place.

You’ve already built up a strong reputation as a touring band, infact your bio states that you’ve “passed through every one horse town in the US twice”. Are there plans to bring that hard touring ethos over to the UK?
Absolutely! We most definitely have plans for hitting up the UK in the near future. We can’t wait to come to Europe and tour the shit out of that place too. We’ve been working our arses of in the US for friggen ages now. So yeah, we can’t wait to bring that show over to the UK again and do some really thorough touring.

You’re playing Lollapalooza this year, when you’re not on stage yourselves, who are you most looking forward to seeing?
I’m really looking forward to seeing a band called The Antlers. I first heard them a couple of years ago now and have become a bit of a fan since. So I am really looking forward to seeing them. I’m also really keen to see Green Day. I’ve just never had the chance to catch them ever before so for sure, it’ll be rad to get the chance to catch them. Hopefully I can watch them from the side of stage or something.

Okay, last question, if you could pick one other act to share a tour with, who would you pick and why?
Eat Laser Scumbag!… “why?” do you say? They are the greatest band on earth!!

check out more from the band at www.myspace.com/violentsoho