MAXIM: Where have you been for the last 10 years and what have you been up to?
OWEN: Prison. We've all just got out.
SIMON: Rehab.
OWEN: Should've been rehab...
SIMON: Would've been nice wouldn't it? We've all kept our hands in musically, but there's been a variety of stuff. Travelled a bit... me and Dave (bassist) live in Australia for a few years. All kinds of stuff.
KARL: I worked at Plastichead for a couple of years, then I moved down to Brighton to work at a music college and did a bunch of bands; Blueprint, Twin-Zero, Blackstorm, This is Menace... I managed to walk away with some love left for music, but not very much interest in how you make a band as big as possible.
OWEN: Dave didn't do too much and I've had my PR company (heropr) so I've been fully engaged with the crappest elements of the music industry for the best part of 10 years, so it feels nice now to be back on the other side.
MAXIM: The struggle for you guys to make it big was quite well known, but why do you think it never actually happened?
KARL: It would take years and years to break it down and if we really knew, then we'd be the perfect managers for other bands. It takes huge organisation to put a band in a position where they can reach enough people, for those people to decide whether or not they like them. It can be very hard and very time consuming to get to that point, and it feels like the end of the journey for the band whereas it's actually the beginning. Take Papa Roach or Bullet For My Valentine, whatever you think of them they were competent and interesting enough for someone to think they could appeal to a lot of people. The bottom line is, music is about saying what you believe in and connecting with as many people as possible. You can argue the intricacies of that but we spent quite a lot of time trying to be different, or trying to emphasise our differences and our individuality, and that probably isolated people or made them think they wouldn't have been interested in us. What we probably should have focused on was that we were making pretty memorable songs and doing something interesting and worthwhile, while not completely out there. With hindsight, from my perspective, I think we approached what we were doing in slightly the wrong way.
MAXIM: One thing we did notice, is that from your original demos right up to the Omega E.P., your sound is completely different as a band. How would you describe the transition?
SIMON: The first album is very much what it is, a bunch of demos put together, and it was at such an embryonic stage in our career as musicians, and as a band as coming together as well I think its quite apparent on the first album as to where we are.
OWEN: That notion of changing musically over time is just so natural though. You've got five different people pulling in different directions with different influences specific to the time that you're in, and somewhere in the middle of that you find some common ground that just happens. It's easy to look back now and look at things like the Omega E.P. and say that it's so introspective and that it has this real melancholy air to it, but that's where we were all at.
SIMON: When I hear it now, it just sounds like we're all tired. It's perfect for the way we were.
KARL: There is a wearyness to it. Broadly speaking we've always done three areas, we do some super heavy stuff, we do some aggressive rocky upbeat stuff, and we do the introspective downbeat stuff. The Omega stuff sounds slightly weird because it was released on it's own as opposed to being part of 10 songs. Everyone just assumed that's where we were going. The stuff we've written recently has been more celebratory, and not like camp disco music, but more celebratory as in we really like the different styles we play and we're really enjoying playing them.
MAXIM: Our chap with the beard was at your last ever gig. He wants to know, and we quote; 'Where the F*CK is the promised DVD of the last ever gig?!'. We told him off for swearing but he still wants to know.
OWEN: It's in the cupboard under my stairs on a bunch of old tapes.
KARL: I think we underestimated the amount of time and energy it would take to put something like that together, so it was kind of suggested, and once it's done you get the material and just have to go through it. Some of it's good, some of it isn't, are all the cuts good enough, is the overal material good enough and so on. 'How much fucking money is this gonna take for a dead band?!' was the end thought!
OWEN: It's better left in the memory I think. I don't think it'll ever see the light of day if I'm honest.
MAXIM: That's ok, neither does our chap with the beard.
SIMON: Potentially I think we ARE gonna do it with our show at the Garage though, so the wait might have been worth it!
OWEN: Yes, I think technology has come on a bit in the past 10 years! No VHS release!!
MAXIM: For those of us who have been lucky... or unlucky enough to see the pictures, what was the deal with the cling film shorts?
KARL: I got stitched up is basically the story behind that! We were on tour and did a show in Paris where one of the guys we were playing with made this cape and head-dress out of cling film and we just thought it was the funniest shit we'd ever seen. So on the last show of the tour, me and Simon donned our cling-film bits and bobs and took to the stage. Then we did the Lost Weekend at London Docklands and thought 'Shall we do something memorable?'
SIMON: It was quite easily led as well. We just went 'You should do that Karl!' and he agreed.
KARL: No, no, no, no! I thought we were all gonna do it! So I stroll out, bold as brass, and just instantly go 'Oh you mother fuckers...'. So yeah, it was a bunch of nothing that got turned into something, and now it won't go away!
MAXIM: Well, you did it to yourselves. You did. And that's what really hurts. Anyway, the love from your fans is quite well known, and you inspired many bands in the UK scene to do what they're doing. Who inspired you lot to be the noisy sods that you became?
KARL: That's a tough one really... there are bands we draw musical influence from and then there are bands that we draw philosophical influence from and think that's who we aspire to be like. Fear Factory, Sepultura, Helmet and to an extent Korn. Any of those bands that originated a sound and took it to it's logical conclusion, who were never really bettered by the wave of bands that followed.
OWEN: I've got a big thing about that, influences are all seen through a prism of what you got into when you were younger, what you liked, and in my head the bands that you loved when you were 14, 15 or 16, they leave an imprint so that everything you do in terms of making music goes through the prism of that. What makes good bands good is that nobody could reach that point on their own, they all need each other.
SIMON: Individually we're all influenced very differently. A big melting pot of influences.
MAXIM: What was the lowest point as a band?
KARL: Working really hard as a band to put ourselves in a position where we had some sort of opportunity, and realising we'd been a bit 'blue skies' about the whole thing. When you go out and play all you wanna do is slay the people that like you already, and you're good enough to impress people who hadn't heard you. We were going out playing to 1500 people a night, and then we'd be bickering amongst ourselves about when we wanted to go home or what we wanted to eat, and it was completely distracting us away from what our objective was in the first place. A classic 'can't see the wood for the trees' sort of thing, and it's only when you look back at it after you feel like....
OWEN: Like it should have been fun.
KARL: It was a wasted opportunity, an amazing thing, but because it was so fucking hard to get to that point, having to pawn our balls, use my credit card to rent a van to go away for a month, buy 100 packets of noodles so we knew we could eat. You need to be in a good headspace to do that stuff and impress people, we worked really hard and then fell at the final hurdle.
OWEN: There wasn't one bad moment really. It was more like getting shot in the back five times and having to crawl up a hill bleeding! -laughs- It just goes on and on, and gets worse and worse.
MAXIM: And in order to cheer us all up, what was the high point?
SIMON: There were loads... there were some really nice London shows, getting in a van and going on tour in Europe. It was good despite being difficult.
OWEN: It was polarised.
SIMON: When you set out as a band, you set yourself goals and meeting everyone of those goals was amazing.
KARL: Even though there are positives and negatives, if we'd just drawn a line under it and chosen not to try, we'd be a lot more disappointed.
OWEN: I look back on it now and it's all anecdotally awesome. It's all about where your head's at, and we did have a fucking good laugh. After the big break, the first night back together as a group, sadly without Joe (guitarist) as he couldn't make it, but without the wives and girlfriends and we got royally fucked. We were just banging annecdotes all night.
MAXIM: What are your favourite songs of your own creation?
KARL: For me it's the ones that are really upbeat and adrenaline based but are also really memorable... so 'Star Damage', 'Withered'... 'Evil Crawling I'. 'Tat Twam Asi' is good but it's quite brooding as well. The stuff that's exciting isn't the stuff that's musicially challenging usually, but it's what impresses the most.
SIMON: I like the ones that we never quite play the same, like 'I Nagual Eye' where towards the end you can smash it off or groove it, however you want to interpret it.
OWEN: Despite the differing influences, we all like heavy shit, and playing live that's what works. It's so primal.
MAXIM: Are you recording anything new?
KARL: We're recording next week actually! Four tunes, another four on the back burner. We've cherry picked everything that we loved about what we did, and we've tried to sweep away all the stuff that was boring for us or demoralising in any way. The writing, recording and gigging was all the stuff that we liked, it was the promoting and organisational elements we didn't like!
MAXIM: What happens after the tour? Are you going to leave us all and break our hearts again?
OWEN: I think the plan is to end it all with a massive punch up, all fall out again and not talk for another decade.
SIMON: We're just gonna suck it and see. Check out how the new songs go down. Amazingly there is still quite a big interest for the band, which is surprising and quite nice as well. The way we're doing the new E.P. is via this pledge system, which is great because if people really want to see new stuff from us they can put their money where their mouth is. We're completely D.I.Y. so it's very helpful when they do!
MAXIM: Sign us out with some words of wisdom.
SIMON: Say yes to every opportunity.
KARL: The only true knowledge knows in knowing that you know nothing.
OWEN: There is only one life rule, which if you follow, everything will be alright; 'Don't be a c*nt'.
Photo's were taken at Warr's Harley-Davidson on Kings Road, Fulham Broadway.
You can find out more about earthtone9, including where to see them live on their official site; www.earthtone9.co.uk
You can also help them with the creation of their E.P. by going to the following link; http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/earthtone9
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