3 View From Across the Pond #1: An Interview with Brighton, UK's Sonace

Sonace are:
Steve Larkin – Vocals
Jason Rhodes – Guitar
Jonny Senett – Guitar
Paul Lennox – Drums

About a year ago I picked up a bass guitar for the first time in twenty years and after a bit of practice I thought about looking for a band. I answered an ad on the work intranet and this is how I met Steve Larkin, vocalist for Brighton UK band Sonace. After listening to their stuff I realised I was nowhere near the standard these boys needed so I ruled myself out so as not to waste their time. Now that Nik has kindly given me the opportunity to give you a view from across the pond it was a no brainer who my first article was going to be about, so I got the Sonace boys round for a beer and a chat. What I found is a refreshingly mature and focussed bunch of young guys with an amazing sound and energy. Now with gigs under their belt and an upcoming EP, Sonace look to be gaining positive momentum.

SP: So first up, when did you guys form?

JR: About two and a half years ago I got in contact with Steve through an ad online and we clicked straight away.

SL: To begin with it was just me, Jay and an ipod. We’d use the ipod as a backing track and then jam together to come up with ideas.

JR: Then about six months later we got Jonny involved, and Paul joined last.

SL: He turned us down at first.

PL: Yeah, well I’m a session drummer and was in about 10 bands at the time I didn’t want to waste their time.

SL: But we slowly seduced him...

PL: I did want you but I knew I couldn’t commit [laughs].

JR: He was really helpful though, got us in touch with a load of drummers but they just didn’t work out, but then things changed and Paul could come on board.

SP: So Jonny, you joined towards the end of 2008?

JS: Yeah September ’08. Paul was late October, early November.

SP: And three of you have links to BIMM [Brighton Institute of Modern Music] is that right?

SL: Jay worked there, didn’t do music, Paul works as a session drummer there and Jonny went to study.

SP: So when did you graduate, Jonny?

JS: I didn’t even complete the course, it wasn’t what I expected at all. I didn’t turn up to the end exams, it wasn’t for me.

JR: You were struggling to find a band and were about ready to give up looking, weren’t you?

JS: Yeah, I was applying for punk bands, anything I could but it just wasn’t happening. Then I saw Jay’s advert online and thought, bollocks to it I’ll give it a crack, what’s the worst that could happen? Now here we are about two years on and things are ticking over nicely, so it was one of those lucky breaks.

SL: When me and Jay got started with Sonace we just wanted good, reliable musicians. We’re all really serious, on the same page you know? It’s not just about meeting people who can play well, it’s about whether you get on with them too. I mean we’ve all got a lot of genre differences but we all love the music that we do and that’s the main thing really.

SP: So you say you’ve got a lot of genre differences, what kind of stuff do you listen to individually? What are you listening to at the minute?

SL: Celine Dion [laughs]

JR: I listen to stuff like Lamb of God… I’ve been listening to Avenged Sevenfold a lot, like the earlier stuff because it’s quite riffy and heavy. Pantera, Metallica, you know that kind of old school stuff, all riff based. When I was a kid my mum listened to things like Whitesnake and W.A.S.P so I was brought up on the older stuff.

JS: I think the metal band I listen to most is Lamb of God but I take a huge amount of influence from different things, like jazz and a band Paul got me into called Esbjorn Svensson Trio [EST]. But metal-wise as well as Lamb of God, things like Pantera, Nevermore; Jeff Loomis is a massive influence on me. But I think my biggest influence is Megadeth, I’m a huge fan. It’s mainly the early stuff I like, the Chris Poland era, Killing is my Business is one of my favourite records.

PL: Well I’m a session drummer by profession, just about [laughs]. Scraping a living. So I play lots of different styles. I’ve been drumming for fourteen years now, I’m obsessed with it, I love all styles so I’m a bit of a random one. I grew up in Bermuda so the first styles I played were things like reggae, soca and calypso. But in terms of metal I love the obvious ones like Pantera, Slayer and Maiden. Then there’s The Haunted, the old stuff though, I’m not too keen on the newer Haunted. Opeth are wicked too, and then there’s Strapping Young Lad. But as a drummer it’s interesting to listen to the more extreme metal.

SP: I suppose it’s more technical isn’t it?

PL: It is, yeah. I think my metal drumming hero is Gene Hoglan from Strapping Young Lad.

SP: Yeah I remember him from the old Dark Angel days.

PL: He’s such a tasty, creative drummer. There’s a new breed of drummer out there now in extreme metal, almost ten a penny who are fucking ridiculously technical but, you know, Hoglan does it with style. And Necrophagist, their drummer is unfathomably sick. I fucking love Decapitated, their drummer, Vitek Kieltyka was one of my biggest influences but he died a couple of years ago.

JR: The thing about Paul is, because he’s such a rounded player who plays all sorts of different things, he’s not kind of typical metal.

SL: He’s got a very unique sound, he brings his own cards to the table.
JS: That’s why we hate him [laughs].

PL: And I love EST, they’re probably my favourite band in the world. Ever. It’s like a mixture of classical and jazz but it’s really accessible. And their drummer, Magnus Ostrom is amazing as well.

SP: So, Steve, your go.

SL: Well, my old man got me into Black Sabbath and Mike Oldfield when I was a kid. The first gig I went to was to see Spineshank with Sikth and Dry Kill Logic at the Astoria in London and it was like, right that’s it, I want to be a metal vocalist. And I’m really into older stuff like Kittie, early Slipknot and Korn; their first two albums are fucking sick. I like Killswitch Engage, their second album is wicked, and I love American Head Charge, Martin Cock is my idol. A band I’m listening to at the moment is Sybreed, they’re like that proper heavy, industrial metal. I like industrial, I’m bang into my techno too. But I listen to all sorts, I even bought Faithless’s new album, I really dig what they do. I’m a strong believer that while I do metal it’s important to have variation, and the rest of the boys are the same. I like to have a healthy balance of all kinds of music, you can’t be narrow minded. I’m just into fucking everything, mate.

PL: I’ve just remembered another band, I think as well as Opeth and Strapping, one of my favourites is Emperor. I call their drummer the Keith Moon of metal.

SP: What you mean he sort of runs at his drums?

PL: [Laughs] Yeah, he’s just fucking incredible. SP: So you’ve got this EP coming out, when do you think it’s going to be ready?

SL: How long’s a piece of string? [laughs]. Nah, I think about a month, two months max.

SP: What stage are you at now then?

JR: The fun stage.

PL: We’ve done all the editing and shit and now it’s making it sound good.
SP: How many songs are on it?

JR: Three studio tracks, two live tracks and a video of the making of it. It’s called Welcome to the Silence.

PL: It’s sounding fucking awesome, it’s going to be incredible when it’s finished.

JR: It’s being produced by a guy called Simon Eden and he’s wicked. He’s really talented and has gone way beyond the call of duty for us.

SL: He’s produced a lot of local bands, he did the second EP for a band called Systema, an EP for Bucket joy and has done stuff with Samsara who are like a reggae, gypsy, folk band who are doing quite well.

SP: And given that you’ve all got a lot of different influences, what would you say are the main influences on the Sonace sound?

JR: We tend to say Pantera, The Haunted and Lamb of God as the main influences when we’re asked that.

SL: While we try to give it a unique feel we’re quite structured in our song writing.

JS: Yeah you could say that the structure is pretty traditional, you know, intro, verse, chorus and then a bridge, that kind of thing.

PL: We don’t want to lose people with our music, we want the crowd to enjoy it and fucking headbang as much as possible. When we’re writing new shit we try not to be overly techy, try and groove as much as possible really.

JR: We’re trying to make it accessible as well as heavy.

SL: We’re not trying to simplify the music, but we want to be able to give people a bit of anticipation, so they have an idea what’s coming rather than getting lost. I mean we play technically but we try to make it so people can get a feel of where the song’s going.

PL: We’re very song focussed. All the instruments, the drums, guitar and vocals have to contribute to the song, no indulgent bullshit either.

JR: Yeah it’s not technical for technical’s sake, you know like, ‘look at what we can fucking do’.

JS: It’s more a case of, well this is a good riff so we’re going to use it.

PL: A lot of people have said we sound like early Haunted, Steve’s vocals are pretty similar to that kind of thing, full on brutal.

SP: So how do you find the Brighton metal scene? Do you have trouble getting gigs? Any local bands you’re into?

SL: Fucking hell, you’ve opened a can of worms there! [laughs].

PL: One problem is there aren’t a lot of places to play any more, I can’t believe all these venues are closing.

SL: Yeah, the Hobgoblin’s closed down, The Freebutt has shut, the Engine Rooms has shut. It’s difficult to find venues to play at round here at the moment.

PL: But there’s some fucking good local bands that we’ve become good friends with. Like Mask of Judas.

SL: Here There Be Monsters, they’ve really got our backs. We’ve supported them, they’ve supported us.

PL: Divine Chaos, they’re just brutal. Vier are another good band, we’ve played with them. Brighton’s metal scene is up and coming, man, it’s having a resurgence.

JS: Blind Eye Fury as well, they’re another good band.

PL: Yeah and Lithurgy. Fucking Lithurgy, man. They’re amazing. And Blackstorm are wicked too. And one of the biggest local bands is Furyon, they’re all good friends of mine and fucking amazing players. They’re just starting to take off now, big time.

JR: All the bands on the scene are really supportive, there’s a really positive feel to things. Everyone gets each other gigs, we all gig with each other.

SL: Everyone really looks after each other, returns favours and that kind of shit. Not a lot of egos, man, which is a good thing.

SL: And while we try to get out and gig in Brighton we try to get ourselves out there too. We get out to London, we’ve got a tour coming up in Cornwall in November supporting a really good local metal act out there. It’s about spreading yourself around.
JS: We’re trying to branch out into other places too, like Reading, Hastings, Romford, because there’s a really good metal scene in those places as well.

SP: So do you find that you have to gig up in London to get noticed? I mean a lot of music can get a bit focussed on London and the rest of the country can get forgotten it seems.

JS: Well at the stage we’re at it’s good to be getting gigs in London, it’s a great place to be gigging.

SL: We’re lucky because I got a lot of connections when I was with my old band, Taming the Insane. I was gigging with them in London all the time so that really helped us with contacts. It’s all about trying to build up a reputation for yourself as a band.

PL: And we’re still developing a fan base.

SL: We’re also finding that the more gigs we’re doing the more we’re being offered, we’ve got a lot of gigs off the back of the ones we’ve done. It’s about getting yourself out there, getting your name about, mate.

PL: We’ve only done five gigs so far, so we’re still developing confidence as a band. We know we can get so much better, I mean we’re getting there now.

SL: I think one thing that’s on our side is we’ve spent a lot of time getting ready before we’ve gone out there with our stuff, so when we did finally get out there we were pretty tight from the start.

PL: We were in the rehearsal room for a year before we did our first gig, weren’t we?

SL: We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs at this stage before we even got out onto the gigging scene. We’ve all stuck together and stayed positive and I think that’s really helped us gel as a band.

JR: The thing that we’ve always done is make sure we haven’t rushed things, to make sure what we’re doing is done the way it should be.

SL: We’re very honest with each other, we don’t fuck about.

PL: We’ve had some barnys haven’t we [all laugh].

SL: At the end of the day when we do have an argument it’s because something needs saying. Once it’s out there we just deal with it and then jog on, we don’t let it fester. We’ve got no room for internal politics. Yeah we’re very honest with each other.

SP: So, there’s still a conspicuous lack of a bass player here. Are you still looking?

PL: It’s the reason we’ve kind of had to postpone things for about, what, a year? We’ve had a nightmare finding someone that’s enthusiastic, technically capable and reliable. And someone who fits in with us all. We’ve had one guy who came close but he just didn’t fit in with the rest of us, the personality wasn’t right. And then you get the classic people who you meet in a pub or whatever who seem really up for it, give you their number and then won’t even answer their phone.

SL: We’ve had to put up with a lot of timewasters. They say they can play the stuff and are all up for it at the start and then they mess you around. It’s like, for fuck’s sakes do you want to be a musician or a fanny? [all laugh]

JR: It’s surprising because there are so many good musicians in Brighton.

JS: We’ve had a few guys who’ve offered to session for us but no one who wants to come in full time, they’re all into their own projects and stuff.

PL: Hopefully someone will come along soon but in the meantime our initial bass player, Rich Harvey has come back to session for us so we can get gigging and he’s really good.

JS: Rich is really busy right now, he’s doing a teacher training course and is really focussing on that but he’s been really good to us and helped us out while we look for someone permanent.

JS: Without him we wouldn’t be doing these gigs, we’d still be stuck in the rehearsal room. We’d still be searching.

PL: We would have been so demoralised we might have even split, so having him help us out has been brilliant.

SP: So it’s just a case of playing the waiting game I guess?

SL: We’ll find the fifth person, we’ve just got to be patient.

PL: It’s really tested our brotherhood, because as you can imagine the frustration is massive. We’ve been together for two years and it didn’t look like we were going to get any gigs, so Rich has been great.

JR: Again, it’s about not rushing, we wait until it’s right.

Check out Sonace's Myspace here.

Live pictures courtesy of Sarah Turner.

Words and Interview by Small Paul