Your music is very heavy, but difficult to neatly fit into any specific genre of metal. Is that intentional, or is it just a culmination of your influences?
J: I think it’s a little bit of both. I think early on, there had been kind of a vague blueprint. Me and Billy’s previous band had been more like garage and indie rock, and we had an interest in heavy music but struggled to find a place for what we wanted to do. And then we hooked up with Will, who was doing, like, stoner doom kind of stuff, and he was interested in trying something as well that had a bit more scope in terms of songwriting.
B: We started doing heavier primarily because we all loved it, and because it’s a lot more fun to play. There are a lot more directions you can go, and you can play harder and louder, and it’s a lot more dynamic. And I guess if there’s any real blueprint it’s just to keep that ethos generally and try to do shit that’s more fun within that conceptual framework. And that’s served us quite well, in just how much we’ve enjoyed it, and how people have responded to it.
W: Speaking personally, my previous band was a stoner doom band, and there’s very much a blueprint laid out for bands like that -- there’s a look, there’s a sound, there’s a pool of bands you can take influences from. And if you stay within those boundaries, you have a ready-made audience. You have shows and tours. It’s easy to get booked in support slots, because there’s already a scene. But you step outside of that, and there isn’t a perfect band to tour with.
B: You guys said you had trouble just because you didn’t have bellbottom trousers.
W: Yeah, we weren’t wearing ’70s fuckin’ period dress! It just breeds stagnation when you follow the rules of a scene. It’s refreshing to cast it all off.
J: You don’t think about it early on, but then people start asking you about your perfect bands for touring with, and your perfect labels… and you start to think, man, maybe it is a little bit different, because we don’t have the answers.