Stone Gods Interview
 

                                By
                                    

                  Merlin Alderslade

   
                         29.01.2008

With their-long awaited debut EP ‘Burn The Witch’ finally seeing a release in the near future, the mighty Stone Gods met up for a chat with Soundshock only hours before they were due on stage at the legendary Camden Underworld. Relishing the opportunity for a quick natter with head shredder Dan Hawkins and bassist Toby MacFarlaine, we discussed the tour, the band’s new heavier edge, and why it’s best to go vinyl.

You’ve probably been asked this far too often, but where exactly did the name ‘Stone Gods’ come from?

Dan: It’s a good name isn’t it! Basically we were trying to come up with names for ages while we were making the album, and naturally there’s a lot of downtime whilst different people have to add their parts and overdubs and stuff. It basically turned into a three month brainstorming session, and none of us could agree on a name. After a while, our guitar tech Aidey - who’s like a fifth member of the band – said “I’ve got it…Stone Gods!” I don’t know where he got it from, but his argument was to imagine what it would look like on a load of flight cases stacked up on stage at Reading Festival.

Toby: Would it look good on a black t-shirt? Yep? We’re having it then!

And can we just clarify that it is ‘Stone Gods’ and not ‘The Stone Gods’…

Toby: Yeah it’s just Stone Gods, it’s not exactly that we don’t want to be lumped in with the indie crowd, but there are just so many ‘The’ bands out there at the moment…there was a time when there weren’t any!

So when you decided to start anew with the band after The Darkness, what were your intentions in the grand scheme of things?

Dan: We kind of let it go wherever it wanted to go really, I’m a big believer in not trying to channel things in any particular direction too much, especially with producing as well. When we got together the types of songs we all wrote were really diverse, for ages while we were making the album and doing things other than gigging we were playing different songs that may end up as really good b-sides, good acoustic songs. We’re really into that stuff, and it was during those sessions that the idea for the Magdalene Street video came from.

A lot of the new material has a very heavy metal feel to it…

Dan: Definitely, it’s just taking things to the extreme isn’t it? If you’re writing something that’s heavy anyway, you just want to make it sound as heavy as possible. The same principle goes for everything else though, including the acoustic stuff; on the album there’s a twelve string-led ballad that we play live, and that sounds really beautiful. We didn’t want to go “right, let’s just be really heavy because the Darkness weren’t!” or something like that; we just wanted to make some music. We’re not particularly interested in gathering a pop audience like the last band did, because it’s not popular music, and those kinds of audiences tend to desert you as soon as you move on to the next thing. We’re interested in building up a core rock audience!

There’s been a significant amount of time that’s passed between the break-up of The Darkness and the promotional cycle for Stone Gods kicking in. Was that intentional?

Dan: It’s funny, because some people come up to us and say “oh God I didn’t even know you’d split up!” and then others will go “it’s taken ages hasn’t it?”, but for me it’s seemed about right. As soon as the Darkness had split we formed into this band, and then we went straight into writing for a couple of months, and then into recording for six months, before rehearsing and then getting all the logistics sorted for another four months…and now here we are on our first tour! This is actually as soon as you can do it; we’ve been going like the clappers, we just haven’t been releasing stuff. But, we’ve got a body of work and an awesome album we’re proud of, with a tight band.

Has it been much easier to get interest raised towards the band the second time round?

Dan: To be honest I don’t really know. We haven’t really gone to many record companies or to try to book many gigs. There hasn’t been any of this “look at us, we were in the Darkness!” stuff, this tour is off our own backs - we’re unsigned and have no financial support for it. I’m sure that if we had been waiting for any negotiations to finish we’d be doing this tour in a month or two from now, but we don’t want to give anyone the chance to shoot us down, so we’re building absolutely everything up from grass roots. Anything we attain or achieve and any deals that we do will be a really nice bonus! With the album, we’re looking for the right people to release it, we don’t want to jump straight into it. The music industry is in a strange place at the moment and we want to make sure that we’re going to go with the right people.

You’ve been on tour for a while now, how have the crowds you’ve been playing to been?

Toby: The audiences have been amazing. Last night was good, we played in Brighton and had our first stage invasion!

Dan: Yeah! We’ve played with Thin Lizzy, Apocalyptica and Thunder, and I think that covers most age ranges really. Apocalyptica have a lot of kids at their shows, Thunder are probably a bit more middle-age territory, and Thin Lizzy obviously attract an older audience, and I think we’ve gone down really well with most people because we make a real effort and put on a show.

Toby: I think this year we’re gonna tour some more, play a few festivals and just stay on the road from here on-in.

So how’s the album sounding? All done yet?

Dan: Yeah it’s all finished basically, the tracklisting is done and all we have to do is put it out – or find someone to put it out for us more importantly. We love it, it’s quite an original and very large sounding rock record!

It’s been pretty difficult to actually track down any of it for a preview listen! Was that a conscious effort on your part?

Dan: Yeah it has been because you don’t want to give too much away. You look at these Myspace pages where everyone has plastered all of their songs on for people to hear, but we just say to people that if they like a bit of what they hear from us, then come to the gigs! We’re in it for the long haul, we’re releasing an EP on the 25^th Feb, so there’ll be a bit more for people to hear…I think we’re just doing it the traditional way. We’re quite traditional in the way we like to do things really – we’ll be designing our album around vinyl! I think we’re just a bit old fashioned.

‘Burn The Witch’ is out 25^th Feb

Interview by Merlin Alderslade