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Music
Kerrang! can bestow), but as I gather immediately, Sean Smith is more than up to the task. “We actually got nine Ks! One week they gave us four Ks, and the week afterwards they did a reprint saying ‘Actually we counted up the Ks wrong, we meant to give them five!’ So we were the first band ever to get a
beforehand?” admits Smith, cracking a grin. “We were doing a photo shoot on a cold hill in Guildford, and I got a phone call saying we had got the MCR tour, but I was too cold to care!” “But the best thing about it, I think, for us, was that they chose us to do it,” Lawrence interjects. “Same thing with Limp Bizkit
But however they are received by the public, who might choose glitter over substance, it is clear that The Blackout are in this business for themselves. “Higher And Higher”, the first single from “Hope”, has become one of the most hyped tracks in the UK since its release last week. nine K album! That’s more than Metallica ever got!” I ask how The Blackout have found touring with one of alternative music’s biggest bands, and how they landed their coveted support slot. “I did an interview [with Kerrang!] recently, and they asked me who was left that we had always wanted to tour with,” recounts Davies. “We had just toured with Limp Bizkit in Europe and that was a dream come true, but I said that I had always wanted to tour with My Chemical Romance. And then this came about afterwards, which is insane!” “We didn’t even know we were doing it until - what, a week
- when we played with Limp Bizkit, they chose us as well.” Once upon a time,The Blackout played Cardiff ’s Barfly venue to approximately no people, save for the bar staff. Today, as they bounce around in a chrome hotel suite, still buzzing from the previous night’s rapturous response from the audience of a band that wanted them on the bill, the days of living handto-mouth in a van seem like a distant memory. By rights, they should be on top of the world. However, “Hope” presents a much darker vibe than their last album, 2009’s swaggeringlytitled “The Best In Town”. “It’s, like, personal experience over the last two years,” shrugs
Davies. “Since the last album, we’ve had ups and downs. Several of the songs are quite cheery as well, but I think we’ve just seen people kind of come and go, and kind of turn their backs on us and stuff as well, so that’s where the darker element kind of comes from.” Even being the best in town, the hard knocks of life as a band help to keep them grounded, as Smith goes on to reveal. “It’s just, like, seeing some bands and pop stars that are a load of shit come from nowhere and do really well, and then there’s us with a nine-K album and we’re NOT massive!” Their experience on the Vans Warped Tour (punk’s infamous annual travelling circus) during
the last album’s touring cycle gave them a first-hand view into the injustices of the music scene: “A lot of bands who are getting a lot more attention have a lot of trance bits, vocoders and stuff like that, but the thing is, you’re a band. Be. A. Band.” Lawrence snaps. “I saw BrokenCYDE play. They’ve got a rapper and a screamer, but I’m sure that the screamer was miming.” But however they are received by the public, who might choose glitter over substance, it is clear that The Blackout are in this business for themselves. “Higher And Higher”, the first single from “Hope”, has become one of the most hyped tracks in the UK since its release last week,
and with the album following on April 4th, are they worried about how it will be received next to “The Best In Town”? “Nah,” quips Smith, to the amusement of his band mates. “When we made this album, I don’t remember once thinking like that. We literally just went in and wrote the album we wanted to write.” “Instinct was to go, ‘Well OK, we wrote a good album, surely we can write a better one’... it wasn’t like ‘It MUST be better’, but we were moving on as a band. How can we beat nine K’s anyway?” The answer was the best sound bite this reporter could have hoped for. “TEN K’s, that’s how!”