Photo by Critical Mass Photography
We managed to catch up with Fallen To Flux after their set at Camden Rocks 2015 – you can see our review and photos here. Here’s what they had to say.
Hi guys, hope you’re all well. What does it feel like to open this festival – how did your set go?
Oli (Clipsham, vox/guitars): It’s our first ever festival appearance, so we are really excited. It’s a lot of fun – we are coming off the back of exams, stress, not playing music and it’s such a great release and to play this room. It was fuller than I thought it would be, there was more than 6 people haha.
Björn (Gugu, guitars): Opening up the festival is ideal really, we get to play our set and then go and enjoy a lot of our favourite bands.
Luke (Walley, bass): We don’t drink before we play, that’s a rule. But we drink afterwards haha. The space was quite small, my bass head nearly took the sound system out each time I moved.
Any problems with the set?
Oli: My microphone kept falling off, other than that it was a really good experience.
Luke: It was really nice to go back to a smaller venue, because you have people a lot closer to you and it’s easier to interact. Not saying we are playing huge venues or anything but it’s nice.
As you’re free after your set, which other bands are you looking forward to seeing?
Chris (Trem, drums): It’s not we’ll get to hang out with them or anything, but I’d like to see While She Sleeps.
Oli: Straight after this we are going see More Than Most down at Belushis. We’ve played a couple of gigs with them, they’re good friends of ours. Hopefully hang out with them and hopefully hang out with the guys from Dirt & Amaryllis.
Luke: I really like Sonic Boom Six, so I’m pushing them.
Björn: I would say Raven Age if possible. They just kind of pop up occasionally, not that I know them personally, but they seem to spring up on bills. They’re amazing. It’s great to see so many people playing really good music.
Who are your musical influences?
Oli: Bullet For My Valentine, definitely. Which is ideal for today with them being headliners. Comparing us to them would be the ultimate compliment. They’re the ones, obviously they are huge in the scene, they have had a particular influence on me. That’s definitely propagated into the music that we play and obviously these guys bring the diversity in terms of influence.
Björn: Basically when we were looking for a new guitarist before I joined, “do you like Bullet?” was one of the main questions haha.
Luke: From a bass perspective, it was always RATM for me. That very strong, fast, thumping bass line always got me. I still think that comes through in the way I write bass lines.
You have a couple of EPs out now, and an album out in the summer?
Luke: We are going to need a little help on Kickstarter essentially, it was made aware to get the fans knowing what needs to be done. We definitely plan to do fan perks and that sort of stuff. T-Shirt packs or fan bonuses would be great.
Oli: We can play a personal show at your house. We will do your physics homework for you…
Chris: Knowing our luck we’ll get someone on the Isle of Skye who wants a house show haha.
Oli: We are currently turning my parent’s shed into a makeshift recording studio for our demos and stuff. We aren’t kidding ourselves about being able to produce an album ourselves. We are basically going to live in my parent’s shed and 100% make music.
We have been looking through your merchandise and we are confused by the fact that you’ve not been sued by Fear Factory yet! You have a startlingly similar logo to the industrial metal titans.
Oli: I haven’t seen the Fear Factory logo, that’s why.
It’s basically an F facing left and an F facing right.
Oli: Well it’s missing the T isn’t it? (laughs) It’s a third different.
How is the search for a new drummer going?
Luke: It’s going alright. This is the old one! He’s going a bit grey and he’s incontinent, we have to put him down. It’s early days yet, so anyone that reads this is still welcome to get in contact with us.
Björn: We are holding some auditions next Saturday actually.
Oli: We want to be as exhaustive as possible with it because this person will essentially be a writing partner straight away. But it’s going well.
Any plans for your next tour?
Oli: We have more of a UK tour planned soon. Details aren’t being released yet but this is going to be the first time we hit more of the UK. It’s not totally confirmed yet, so I don’t want to jinx it by saying we will be playing here and then they turn around and say no haha.
Luke: We do have a tour bus planned, that’s what I’m excited about. My favourite bit is when I get into Stansted, as I’m abroad, I’m not just going there by myself. The timing works out as such that I’m going to be walking out as they rock up in the band van, and they’re going to be playing Judas Rising by Judas Priest, which is my favourite song of all time, so they’re just going to have that intro going while I walk to the van in slow motion. It’s going to be good.
So what is the most fun you’ve had on a tour so far?
Oli: Well the one tour we’ve done so far haha. This tour in July is probably going to be our first proper tour of the UK. We did a mini-tour if you want to call it that. The shows were a bit too spaced out to have been a full tour. It was a series of shows over two weeks in three different areas. We played one of those in Birmingham, in a place called The Roadhouse, which is really out in the sticks. It’s not the sort of place you get walk-ins or anything. We didn’t know how to get fans to come to gigs at that stage. So we ended up playing to our support band and they played to us. They didn’t bring anyone either. But it was good, they even did a wall of death for us.
Björn: Two on one side, two on the other side, it’s the most brutal thing I’ve ever seen haha.
Luke: Another time was not technically a tour but a gig we did in London. Sometimes you get a big crowd and that’s brilliant. Sometimes you get less than a big crowd, which is ok because you don’t have to build the energy up for the crowd so much. That’s still something we love doing, but with a smaller crowd and long enough cables, we can get out on the floor and start dancing around the five or so people.
Where do you see the future taking you guys? Are you doing anything with your studies?
Oli: Some of us have jobs lined up, two of us just graduated literally yesterday. We did like physics, not so much anymore haha. Three months of studying it straight, you learn to love other things. That and chemistry were how we all met.
Luke: It was at Imperial college, it’s not a coincidence that we have all studied physics.
Oli: I guess that we aren’t kidding ourselves in the sense that we have something to fall back on, plan B. I have my grad job lined up but I won’t be starting until March next year. Which gives us 9 months to flat out focus on music for the only time in my life and see what comes of it. That’s the crux of it, Chris’ career plans unfortunately aren’t compatible with being in a band. It’s not like we kicked him out because he’s shit or anything.
Apart from the obvious one, being Bullet, Which other bands would you like to tour with?
Oli: I’d quite like to tour with Letlive actually, just because of their incredible frontman and getting to watch him do what he does every night. I saw them at the Electric Ballroom last year and it was just incredible amounts of energy and I’d love to have that.
Luke: Adam, the guitarist from Killswitch, is an absolute mentalist. So I’d have to say them. For a good 6 years of my life, they were number one for me. And of course, he comes on in a tutu sometimes. If I ever get to the point that people will let me do that, I’m there!
Björn: For me, someone that I’d like to tour with, not that the music is compatible, is a German band called Edguy. They’ve been for me, since I was 12, my big heroes. They are power metal, we are going to slay the dragon, that sort of thing. It’s good fun, they’ve got an intro that says “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the freak show” (laughs)
Chris: Mine would probably be Architects, because it was the first band that I really got into of this type of music. Because before that I was more into jazz and older classic rock. They got me into the whole metal scene and they’re just sick. Just to be able to stick your head near a speaker when they are playing, would be like, yes please.
Interview conducted jointly by Colm Browne and Karen Young.
