I’m standing outside The Bread Shed in Manchester really excited to do my first interview for ROCKFLESH and it just happens to be a band who I really like, the time comes that we had organised and I was panicking having not heard anything from the band, thankfully my phone then rang and Lucas from the band couldn’t apologise enough that their earlier interview had over run. Panic over, I make my way round to the connecting pub for the interview where the whole band are sat at a table ready for me, this was crazy as I thought I was only getting one or two members of the band.

As I am getting my notebook out and phone set to audio record I am chatting with the band and they are as pleasant as I had imagined, we get chatting about a previous gig where I had been to, and actually photographed them but more of that in a bit.

Let’s start the interview with the biggie for everyone at the minute, the dreaded Covid and how it feels to be playing to an audience again after almost 2 years of not being able to.

“It feels amazing to be doing what we love once again as there were numerous times where we thought there was no hope for us getting out there to play a show again, this tour rose from the ashes of a previously announced tour which was delayed before being cancelled and then this tour even got delayed once more but thankfully we are here, just a shame the tour only has a few more nights left.
We had almost forgotten what it actually felt like to play live music to a crowd again, we played 2 shows before this tour and it is like it had re awoken a beast in our minds, we have friends in bands that during the pandemic have decided that music wasn’t for them anymore but we went the complete opposite way.”

it is so unfortunate the main support for the tour, Ghost Iris, had to pull out due to a positive Covid test in the band.

“Yes, it is unfortunate about losing Ghost Iris but it’s a great opportunity for the bands who are opening the show tonight and one who literally had a day’s notice managed to pull it off getting here to perform. The other nights throughout the tour the crowds were going crazy for both bands though and even though on their first visit to Wales with a show in Swansea there weren’t many people there but some even travelled across the UK to be at the show, now that’s dedication, the vocalist plays Call Of Duty with them and then got to go to his show.

Your latest album, “Cold Blooded” towards the end of 2019 has barely had a chance to be performed to a live crowd and you are releasing a new album in February 2022, are you looking forward to the crowd hearing more of that?

“It feels great having the new music there waiting for the crowd to experience it, the world has been in such a s**t situation over the past 2 years, the highlight of the lockdowns for us was when small groups were allowed to meet up and we took that opportunity to write and record new material which we feel is the best music we have ever written. We feel the new album is a level up from the previous records including “Between You And Me” and “Cold Blooded”, we feel we have cracked the code with the “Cold Blooded” record so we want to write more material like that, the best of InVisions with more soul. We are now writing songs that will leave a lasting impression on the listener rather than just focusing on the drops.
The new album is also going to be moving a bit away from the similarities that people find with us and Attila. To a certain extent the new material we wrote was for how it would sound in venues where we aim to be playing in the coming years rather than where we currently are as we were writing without having played a show and realised how much we enjoy writing the music side rather than playing just break down after breakdown.

What is your favourite show you have ever played.

Our favourite show was when we had the brilliant opportunity to play at Download Festival on the Thursday night and even got to headline the tent, it was the largest crowd I’ve seen in that tent, it was crazy.

We also played a festival in the Czech Republic where the crowd went absolutely mad and brought so much energy after us travelling in our van for pretty much 24 hours. So these shows will certainly live on in our memories. We actually thought someone was joking with us when the person organising the event at Download contacted us on April 1st, our guitarist literally told them to f**k off, thinking it was a joke, thankfully for us it wasn’t, and we got the show of a lifetime.
Not a favourite show but certainly a memorable one for us was when we were on tour with Bleed From Within, we played at Rebellion and the mixing desk actually caught on fire, possibly to much gear but 3 channels were literally set alight.

Influences as a band?

One band that always gets brought up as an influence for us is Attila with their mix of metal core with rapping but we listen to a lot of hip hop and our vocalist is so talented in many different styles so we use this to our advantage and try to create a unique overall sound. Bands such as Killswitch Engage and Bullet For My Valentine are the bands that got us into heavy metal and our love of music. Another band that very much was an influence is Asking Alexandria with the “Stand Up And Scream” era rather than their newer material and it feels right to have them as an influence as they’re from our same home town.

When we’re in the van heading to our next gig, we either have Hip Hop or Micheal Jackson on, so inevitably it will bleed into our music in one way or another, and we can’t forget the little name drops of Nsync, Spice Girls and Beyonce in their influence just for good measure.

Can we expect more remix contests on social media like the one over the lockdowns?
”It was a really fun contest and it was really good to hear a fans imagination and interpretation of our tracks. It was really difficult to choose a winner, the winning song actually currently has over 700 thousand streams on our Spotify channel securing its place in our top 5 tracks. We have plans to maybe do something similar again as we are planning on maybe releasing different versions of tracks from the new record but we don’t want to say too much to be safe as nothing is decided yet  

Thankfully the interview went smoothly, and we headed outside together while they got their gear and merchandise sales ready and I got into the queue to enjoy a night of metal. Than you guys!