What happened when 2020 stopped an ambitious young band from having what was potentially going to be the most massive year of their career to date? Sarah caught up with Merseyside own Ashen Reach to find out…

“Hi guys, thank you so much for joining me tonight. You’re the first band interview I’ve done since Thy Art Is Murder/Fit For An Autopsy/Carnifex over a year ago. Tell me a bit about what was going on for you as a band when the Covid 19 pandemic hit in 2020?”

Kyle – Yeah we were actually touring when it began.

Jess – We had two tours at the start of the year; there was the tour with Fahran first, and then we toured with Nocturne Wulf, A Ritual Spirit and Kilonova . We had about 15 shows with those bands and then the world closed down!

Mike – Our last gig was March 15th 2020, it’s been over a year since our last gig. When we played that last one we were sort of anticipating that things may come to a halt but we didn’t think it would be on this level. We already had plans, we were due to go in the studio to record the album around April 2020 but then with lockdown happening, we had to postpone that as well for a number of months.

Jess – We got offered the first slot back at the Motor Museum (Recording Studio in Liverpool), they offered us an extra day before the recording began. We were obviously all in separate rooms, but we were together enough to practice. It really helped actually, and it was great because we hadn’t really forgotten anything in those months we hadn’t played together. We were still tight, but we did have to write the full lyrics to Broken Column and finish the music to one of the other tracks.

Kyle – I think we had the lyrics down, it was more about finishing the structure.

Paddy – I remember doing a bit of writing on the couches in the lobby area, making a few final tweaks and all that. In hindsight, because we were so busy at the start of the year I’m kind of glad things got stopped because of the effect it then had on the album. We had more time to prepare before recording and it meant that the album tuned out a lot better than it would have if if we’d gone ahead and done it in April 20. Obviously it was crap that we couldn’t tour, which is what we wanted to do and we’ll get to do once everything opens up again, but I think it really had a huge impact on how the album turned out. I think I speak for all of us when I say I am super happy with how it went and how well it’s been received. I’m not sure we’d have that to this extent had we recorded in April.

“Homecoming” is a fantastic album and you should be incredibly proud of it. I do pick out a lot of different influences within the music, I’d be interested to know who influenced yourselves as musicians?”

Kyle – I think we’ve all got our own influences. We didn’t decide we’d been influenced by any one or a couple of bands in particular, it’s more that we’ve mixed all of our personal influences. For me, I love Dio, Slipknot, old school Saxon. But then, I’m heavily influenced by Nu Metal. Then you’ve got Joe who is really into his 80s, he’s so into Iron Maiden.

Paddy – I definitely grew up on the Bluesy side of things; when I was first learning guitar I was listening to Eric Clapton, Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd. I gradually got a heavier taste as I got older. It started with Bullet for My Valentine and then more recently of the last 4 or 5 years it’s bands  like Architects, Periphery, Tesseract, Skyharbor. I really love trying to take traditional ideas and bringing them forward as well as doing more modern stuff, I think that makes the pot of influences we all have. I think that makes us unique, at least I hope so. I think people have had trouble pinpointing the sound, the big names do come up, your Slipknot, your Dio, your Alter Bridge… but in terms of bands we sound like, it’s a very short list which is good. 

“What are your favourite tracks on the album?”

Jess – For me there is a song for every mood. I get really into ‘Broken Column’ a lot. I feel it’s such an angry song but it’s so powerful.

Mike – Mine is probably ‘Hole In The Sky’, just because of how massive it sounds. Massive chords, a big chorus everyone can cling on to. And I get to play bass chords.

Kyle – I like ‘Alive Again’ for personal reasons, but ‘Heir To The Throne’ is just a bop! I love all the songs, but when you just get that riff…  I’m just like “Yeah!”.

Paddy – It’s a proper bop.

Jess – Unnecessarily heavy.

Kyle – We did that on purpose though when we did the breakdown. When Tear It Down first came out people were telling us “oh you’re not THAT heavy”, so we were like “Alright then… let’s show them how heavy we can be”. That breakdown is just me Paddy and Joe screaming.

Paddy – I’m similar to Jess in a way, my favourite just varies day to day.  Some days ‘Homecoming’ is my favourite one and then the next day it will be ‘Alive Again’ or ‘Broken Column’. ‘Hole In The Sky’ is a huge tune like Mike said. ‘Here I Go’ is one of the more mellow moments on the album.

Jess – The harmonies on that are just so lovely.

Paddy – Much like ‘Alive Again’ is for Kyle, that song meant a lot to me and it just turned out amazing. It’s a special song to me, one of my favourites. 

Jess- I don’t feel these are just songs you listen to and feel nothing, they trigger emotions and reactions in people. I’m not saying I want people to be super sad or anything like that, but music is supposed to have an effect on you and we wanted the album to be an experience. I think we did a pretty good job with it. 

Kyle – We wanted to write songs that tackle difficult subjects as well. You might listen to it and think “oh this is a catchy song” but if you read or listen to the lyrics we wanted it to make you think. One of my friends, her favourite track is ‘Prey’… she’s only just figured out what that song is about. 

Jess – Oh really? We got Christmas Number One in Scotland Rocks with ‘Prey’ and we couldn’t really believe it.

Paddy – People sleep on ‘Prey’ and I don’t know why, it was awesome. I think it’s because it came out before the album did, but it’s such a huge song with a great atmosphere but it’s a got a very important hard topic for a lot of people to talk about. I feel like all of the songs have their place and their purpose. 

“How was Ashen Reach formed? How did you all meet one another?”

Paddy – We started out years ago. First it was Jess and an entirely different group of lads and that evolved with multiple line up changes, and eventually I joined the band. Then we had a rebrand. 

Jess – There was always five of us though.

Paddy – Yeah, that’s been a constant thing, having 5 people in the band

Jess – We were under another name for a while. We had the line up we went to Russia with, but just before we went to Russia as Paddy said we had the rebrand as Ashen Reach. So we were Ashen Reach with other people before this. It was April 2019 when we played the Russia gig.

Mike – I’d joined the band about 12 months before that, I joined when we had the previous name.

Jess – When we came back in April 19 we did one or two shows and then the singer and rhythm guitarist both left. Me Mike and Paddy were just like “Oh do we just stop it now?”.

Paddy – Yeah, we were umming and ahing about carrying on.

Jess – We’d just played those massive shows, and then having two people leaving… it did kind of stop us in our tracks. We just thought then we’ve got something that’s too good to give up on and we now sound completely different to how we used to. We knew we had the passion and ideas and we wanted to show the world our music. We put up some ads on Facebook  looking for a singer and guitarist. We got a bit of flack at the time, people were commenting on the posts saying our adverts were stupid because we wanted the person or people who joined our band to have their own income, like asking us how we are expecting a kid to have a job. First of all, we weren’t asking for a small child to join the band, we just wanted to make sure that we could fund ourselves if anything does come up. We wanted to do this properly.

Paddy – We wanted to hit this hard and that’s not cheap, we didn’t want someone who was going to freeload. Some people understood that, but some didn’t, we got criticised for wanting to have band members with a stable income. We didn’t want someone who had the attitude of “You guys can just pay for me” if we needed to go anywhere or do anything.

Jess – We did have a couple of people message us on Facebook about joining the band, Joe was one of them. I mean, we saw other people on separate occasions. Joe came in and we wanted to see if we got on, it’s important to us we get on and we all have a similar sense of humour, because we’re spending a lot of time together… well obviously not at the moment… We ended up choosing Joe first, and then Katherine Murph (Liverpool Promoter) messaged me out of the blue one day and just said “I’ve just realised, you guys are a rock band looking for a singer, and I know a singer looking for a rock band”. Kyle ended up sending us a video after that, he was ill with a heavy cold and he was singing one of our songs. We’re so glad you did that Kyle, even though we could tell you were ill on the recording. We thought “If he sounds that good sick, what’s he going to sound like when he’s well?” We got Kyle straight in from there and luckily all of us just gel. 

Paddy – There’s a lot of talented musicians out there but finding ones that have the same sense of humour is just as important. You could have the best guitarist in the world but if he’s an arse you wouldn’t want to spend 5 minutes with him. Nobody wants to spend years upon years writing and touring with an arse. 

What is your favourite venue to play in the local area? 

Mike – I think in Liverpool over the last couple of years we’ve taken a bit of a hit for the ideal go to music venues. Our list of venues we play in Liverpool is actually quite small, I think the last 18 months we’ve mainly been playing shows outside of the city. But if I had to pick… I think the guys would agree with me but we played Moshfest in Jimmys  last year, and it was a relatively new venue, we’d never been there before and it recently been refurbished. I was interested to see how the gig there would be. We spent most of the day there at the festival, every band that was on was brilliant and by the time we played it was just completely packed out, the sound was amazing. 

Paddy – Yeah, Jimmys was the best local one for me too. 

Mike – I mean, it’s not my favourite in the UK…

Ooh! What is your favourite?

Mike – Trillians in Newcastle.

Jess – I knew you were going to say that!

Mike – We’ve played there 3 times and we’re scheduled to play a 4th. I can’t wait to get back there

Jess – I think because Trillians do the free entry gigs whenever we play gigs there, it’s always packed. We don’t play as much in Liverpool as I feel when we go to other places we find people are more into Rock than Indie. The Liverpool scene is more indie, more singer/songwriter type acts, that seems to work better here. When we go other places, Manchester, Scotland, Wales, even down South, it just all seems to kick off. I mean we’ve not gigged much down South but we’ve got stuff lined up for the second half of this year.

Paddy – Years ago when I would go and see a lot of bands, and being in my own band as well, I’d go to Manchester. Even when bands tour, say for example, Nothing More, when they came and played a UK tour they had a Liverpool date, as most bands do now. But years ago, there wouldn’t always be a Liverpool date and I’d always end up going to Manchester. Manchesters always is a better gig, a better atmosphere, a better crowd. We do get some of the bigger bands in the arena, but I don’t feel like Liverpool’s underground scene is that great.

You’ve recently started to announce some of the bookings for this year. What shows are you most looking forward to?

Jess – Planet Rockstock. That feels like such a huge step for us, especially considering we’ve only been around as this line up for about 2 years now, we haven’t been around all that long. To be announced on that line up is crazy. I’m excited for everything, but I think that’s what I am most excited for. 

Paddy – I’ve got to agree, that’s such a huge opportunity for us to play a big festival organised by the largest rock radio station in the UK. There is load of signed bands on, big bands. I’ve even been to Planet Rockstock a few times myself as a fan, I’ve seen Blackstone Cherry and British Lion there. The people who will be there, the faces we’ll be in front of, the radars we’ll be on, it’s such a huge opportunity for us. Like Jess said, we’ve not been around that long really and we got offered that gig, it was unbelievable. 

Kyle – It was like when got offered the Ryan McCombs gig (front man for Soil) I was so excited! But then the Rona happened… I’m still heartbroken over that one. I love Soil. 

Jess – Because we’ve not been able to gig and we’ve had the album out since November, we’ve got people who have become big fans who have never seen our band play live. It’ll be exciting to see these people at shows singing our songs. We’ve not played some of the songs on the album live because we only finished writing it in the studio. I just want that feedback in person from people singing the songs… Fans have plenty of time to learn them by now, so no excuse.

Mike – Yeah, the lyrics are in the album case. 

Jess – There’s so many people we’ve spoken to online who are saying “oh we’re coming to Swansea” or “oh we’ve booked to come to Exeter”. I’m just really excited to meet the people who have helped us. We wouldn’t have been able to create the album without the help and support of those people. We released ‘Tear It Down’ and ‘Prey’ by ourselves as we wanted to show people what we could do and see if people did want to help us kickstart it. We had immense help from family members and then the NWOCR group on Facebook were constantly sharing our stuff, they’ve been so supportive to us even though we don’t consider ourselves NWOCR, that’s not what that group is about but they were so helpful to us. We really have them to thank for helping us fund the album too. I’m looking forward to meeting the people from that group, to actually thank them in person. 

Kyle – I’m looking forward to playing the songs we’ve not played yet. I don’t think we’ve played ‘Epiphany ‘yet or ‘Broken Column’ yet. 

Guys thank you so much for your time this evening.

Catch Ashen Reach at Gullivers NQ with Haxan on July 9th and Badgerfest 15 on October 17th 2021

http://www.ashenreach.co.uk/