Garza Podcast - 178 - MALEVOLENCE: Metalcore Riffs, Guitar Rundown & Navigating Fatherhood

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Garza sits down in-person with Konan Hall & Josh Baines. Guitar players from Sheffield, UK metal band MALEVOLENCE. https://linktr.ee/malevolenceriffSPONSORS:Sweetwater - https://imp.i114863.net/rnrmVBDistroKid - https://distrokid.com/vip/garza 30% OFF!00:00 - Kemper & Quad Cortex01:52 - Starting Malevolence as Kids02:57 - Playthrough: First Song Pessimist09:15 - Buying First “Real” Guitar11:18 - Gear Broken by Airlines14:35 - Acoustic Show23:57 - Playthrough: Higher Place25:55 - Writing Higher Place32:19 - Navigating Fatherhood as a Musician41:22 - Beer Run41:48 - Keeping Same Lineup Since 201047:13 - Partying in the Early Days54:15 - Switching to Digital Amps & Cabs1:02:12 - Konan Builds Custom Music Gear (Konvikt Kustoms)1:13:10 - Performance: Keep Your Distance1:15:30 - Approach to Writing Songs1:23:25 - Riff: On Broken Glass1:27:11 - No Phones at Concerts1:32:18 - Josh’s Custom Shop Ibanez Guitar Rundown1:36:21 - Active vs Passive Pickups1:39:05 - Konan’s Jackson Soloist Guitar Rundown1:45:32 - Working with Josh Wilbur on New Album

My love, Lance, con, Josh. Thank you for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us, dude. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, pretty sick, man. Thank you for, I learned how to download a tone today on the quad Corset. So thank you for showing me. You're welcome.

Some new tricks. Yeah, that's all con that. He's the tech guy. I'm not very good at the Cork Cotex thing. Josh is the riffer. I'm the sorter. Yeah, yeah. He plays the riffs.

I make it so he can play them. Yeah. He makes it sound good. No, that's a fucking team, dude. Yeah. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, you know. 100%. I think the whole band's like that.

So we've all got asset jobs within the band. Yeah. So every member does something different that just all comes together. And we're just a really good team. Yeah. So. Definitely works well. And like, it's taken a few years to, like, perfect.

You know, but like everyone's sort of falling into their own role and it just keeps the ball rolling kind of nice. You know, and it helps it grow, which is nice. You know what I mean, it's cool. Cool to see when you've got dedicated sort of things happening throughout the whole project, you know, and it all sort of comes together at once. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, I've been doing this, like, while you've been sorting these new songs or something, you know.

Yeah. And it means that everything can sort of roll a little bit smoother rather than, I've got this. Now we need a music video. And everyone's like, oh, I've got, let's start now. You know, like if someone and Alex will have like an idea or a concept for something already to bring to the table. And he's like, I've been in touch with so-and-so about filming it. And it just speeds the whole process up a little bit, which is always best, you know.

Your band's been going since 2010. You know, you guys, you're in a band when you're 14, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I joined the level in so I was 14. It's a long story. Yeah, very. We can get into it if you want. Please.

Yeah, yeah. So, me and Josh, me and Josh, I've got that tape at my house. Yeah, yeah, still got it. Yeah, yeah. So me and Josh, me and Josh, we had our own band. Yeah. We had our own band years ago. Yeah, yeah.

Called Decimate. Yes. And we, I met Josh at a bike track when he was 11. And I thought he was a little girl. And he was like, I never forget it. It came up to me. He was like, do you like metal? And I'm like, yeah, sick.

And he told me he had an electric drum kit. And I was like, fuck off. I don't believe you. I ended up going around his house and we jammed. And then we were like, let's start a band. And I was like 15 at the time. You're older. Yeah, I was old.

I'm older. And then we started a band and we wanted to just play metal, but we couldn't play metal at the local can you jam night in the pub. Yeah. Because they'd just boo you off. So we started playing rock music. And we've actually got some of the tracks I'll send them you from when me and Josh. Yeah, yeah.

Like we had to take it in turns. We didn't know anyone else that played. Yeah. So I'd play drums and Josh would play guitar and sing. And then he'd play drums and I'd play guitar and sing. And we've got like, I've got them on my drop box. Like some OG songs, just stick them on. Sounds like I've like inhaled loads of helium before.

Because I was like literally 11 years old, do I mean? I even hit puberty by that point, I don't think. Yeah. Was that one of your first. Yeah, yeah. That's pessimist. Yeah, yeah. That's like the first, one of the first rock songs I ever wrote.

We did it together. You guys still remember that. Of course. Oh, yeah. Probably sing the whole thing to you. I could play the whole song now. What's the chorus? Why you always look down?

Always looking down. Always looking down. Your head's not set you go around. Wait, where are we? Yeah, yeah. It was in standard tuning before, so I'm trying to work it out in beat. Why are you always looking down? Your head's not stuck to the ground.

Not stuck to the ground. Why are you always looking down? Always looking down. That's a mist. I'll see you around. See you around. Yeah. Oh, I'm trying.

So you guys, you guys were already singing too. Yeah, yeah, we were smashing it. Like, he was 11. I were like 15. So we carried on and we did this whole metal band called Decimate. And we actually played shows with malevolence. Yeah, yeah. Charlie and Wilkie and their friend Matt Borodale, they started malevolence when they were 11.

Oh. So I know that. Yeah. Yeah. So they've been doing their band and we did our band. And we all met together. We went to completely different schools. Josh went to a different school than me

and Charlie and Wilkie went to a completely separate school as well. But we met in like the local Sheffield metal scene. And there's some hilarious photos from when we were kids. Like there's one that gets brought up every so often of Charlie and Wilkie. Wilkie's got dreadlocks. Charlie's got really long hair. And there's a photo of them. And we just did a tour with while she sleeps in Europe.

And we brought out this photo from years ago where they played a show at a venue you called Under the Boardwalk in Sheffield. And it literally says, while she sleeps, malevolence. And there stood next to the sign, like throwing horns and Wilkie's got treadlocks. Charlie's got long hair.

And it's hilarious. But then years later, you had ended up joining malevolence. And then in like 2009, all my friends just didn't really care about music anymore. And I wanted to go to shows and I wanted to like get back into the music world. Yeah. Because I've not picked up my guitar at about two.

years by then and then I started hanging around with these guys more going to shows and then they had malevolence josh was in the band and they had a singer called flabby at the time and he wasn't very good so I were just like look I'll I'll sing I'll be the vocalist of malevolence and they were like cool so they got rid of flabby and I joined malevolence in 2009 that's the picture yeah that's it's it band's playing tonight yeah oh wow embers burn embers burn while she sleeps shout out to retaliator from roverum is solosis i solosite yeah someone was like is this silosis i'm not right now unfortunately yeah it's a cool that's a cool memory um but yeah in two oh okay yeah this more those dreads look at those dreads look how young he is and all that's mental so okay so again

how old are you guys in this photo so that's just uh that's matt borodale on the left and Charlie's in the middle. I don't know how old they were, like 11, 12, something like that. Yeah, 12-ish. Wilkie on the right. Wow. Yeah, it's old school. Wish I had that chimera hoodie.

Isn't it? Pretty sick. And then I've got some photos. I've got some photos on my phone of me and Josh. Yeah, maybe if you put Decimate Sheffield into Google, it might actually pull them up. Those dreads are very impressive. Camero hoodie? Just type in, wait, type in Decimate UK band.

Sheffield. Oh, okay. Oh, no, that's the one from London. Do you know what? Oh, there's two ones. Well, yeah. At the time, we had no idea because obviously we were like kids. Let me air drop it to you because it's hilarious.

Yeah, we got to get this photo up there. Yeah, I think there was like a London hardcore band called Decimate that we had no idea about, obviously, when we were little kids and that. How long is Shepield from London? About four hours, ish. So it's not too far, but in, well, sure. In terms of England, it is. Oh, yeah, yeah.

But not over here. Everything's four hours away at least. Yeah, you want to cancel a show. You got Vegas four hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it, man. Oh, you found it. Here we go. Let's hope these send.

This is... Oh, this is working. Oh, crap. You had these on deck. Yeah, I've got them on deck. Oh, yeah. So that's me and Josh. Look at quality of that.

Yeah, that's me and Josh, and that was in the graveyard. Down the road from, like, what year do you reckon that? It's like 2006, maybe. 2006 or seven? Six or seven, yeah, because I'd have been 11 or 12. And that's like we've been to see Lamagod and Chimera at Corporation back in the day. There we are. There we are.

Look, we've still got them guitars, aren't we? Yeah, yeah. I've recorded loads of the new album on that guitar. Is that, Conn, because you, I think you were 12 and he got a Jackson Charvel Model 6, right? Is that, is that it? So that Jackson Charvel Model 6, there's a right good story behind it. So before that, I just had like started guitars, like a stag or whatever. Yeah.

And I wanted a real guitar and I was like, Jackson's are fucking real guitars on there. And I was like, I want a real guitar. So I went to this guitar shop in Sheffield. I think it was called Steel City Music or Steel City Guitar. or something like that. And they had this Jackson Charvel Model 6 hung on the wall. It was 400 pounds. And I was like 12 or 13.

And I didn't have that kind of money. Anyway, I'd saved up like my Christmas and my birthday money to buy a new guitar. And I saw this guitar in the guitar shop. And I was like, I need that guitar. My dad said, well,

whatever you've got, I will match it so you can get a new guitar. And I had like 150 pounds. It came to like, 300 pounds. I was like, I'm a hundred quid short. And he was like,

well, just ring them. up and ask them like what they'll do it for anyway i was like so eager to get this jackson charvel model six i rang them up eight times and in the end they were just like come and get it now and you can have it for 300 quid and i was like straight up bus vion and i went and got it yeah and i've still got it's hung on my wall at home oh you still got it yeah still got it good man ever selling that guitar i love it don't yeah and like all the threats are like flat and everything it's like fucked i can't you can't really play it anymore i thought about getting it sorted out you should yeah maybe i'll take it to dean and get it

it sorted but i'll never take it on tour it's too precious no take it to jackson yeah oh yeah yeah hey uh re because they uh saw it out for me yeah yeah because uh jackson is in uh corona where where i um i live oh right yeah sick i think i know who exactly they would give it to who the part they might give it to a rob knolls all right he's he's really good with uh he's one of the master builders there It's cool. Yeah, yeah. That would be wicked. Yeah, I'd be sick, yeah.

I might bring it out next time I come. He should. We freighted all the stuff this time. And to be fair, it wasn't the freight company's fault. It was Air Canada, but they broke loads of our stuff. And like, what happened? This got really chipped up and I've just sort of started relicking it on this tour. Nice.

Because I got annoyed because, you know, when you got like a big bit out of it, and the rest of it's perfect. Yeah. So there's like a big crack in the back of it now after the freight. you'll not be able to see it on the cameras but that's a crack yeah this is a crack yeah it's like split it's like splitting the wood from the neck

so that crack is from the freight yeah well air canada drove a forklift truck into our palette of stuff basically and destroyed yeah no everything like they've crushed josh's guitar case yeah my Enki's like thinner now it's so weird it's like it's all like bent and shit in the middle

it's kind of fucked but shout out to Enki like the cases do work yeah I mean so it saved the guitars. My Yankee didn't get damaged, but my guitars did. It's weird. Yeah. It was weird.

I don't know if they opened them or what, but our front of house guys console, which is worth like 12K, like 12 grand, the fortlift drove the forks into his case. And the day before this tour, I found out it's Valentine's Day, right? So everyone's trying to have a nice last day before they come on this tour with the girlfriends, whatever and then I found out that the freight had all been crushed and everything on Valentine's day I decided not to tell our front of house guy because he would Tom he would have just been like oh my god what's happening what's happening what's happening he would have been flipping he would have been flipping he would have been flipping then it would have ruined my day

it would have ruined his day so I didn't tell him and I just made a phone call to um Scott dixon cases which luckily they're only in holes so it's like an hour away from my house and I rang don her up I was like I've got a fucking emergency like can you help us out and she was like yep and I were like, like, really? She was like, yep, be with you by 11 o'clock today. And I was like, shit. So they just had a guy driver's over a brand new case for it and we flew it out to America.

Luckily, the deaths wasn't damaged. Chucked it in the new case. Laughing. So shout out to Scott Dixon because their cases are amazing and the customer service is sick. Yeah, yeah. Really, soldiers out there. Shout out to Donna.

Yeah. Yeah, they were like the first of like the guitar bases, like flight cases. Yeah. And they were actually really hard to get. Yeah, yeah. Remember, yeah, we tried for a while. Oh, you see like this egg shaped case. Oh, what are those?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, we toured them for eight years. I bought one second hand. And we, we toured it hard for eight years. And we just replaced all of them. And then we got hit by Enki and we swat to Enki. But we still got all them cases.

And still work. Still work. Still, mint. So we just, we got to a point where we were flying three guitars and they were overweight and we just wanted something a little bit smaller just to take two because we only needed three when we were playing the other side off them.

The other side. Yeah. Yeah. So we were playing the other side and that's in an open B tuning. So we had to take a third guitar to play that song. So we had a main of spare and then a different. tuning. I saw, yeah, I saw you guys gave me

an idea. You, you had like, it was just both of you playing a acoustic show. Oh yeah. Two of them. I saw two separate shows and one of them was you guys covered a crawling by Lincoln Park. Oh yeah. And the other one was the outside by Stain.

Yeah, that was a good one. You guys are great singers. Thanks, dude. That's sick. I try. He's good singing i'd not you're good i try he's got the harmonies yeah i'm good at matching harmonies i i heard those harmonies yeah i got the falsetto going on some of these ones super high stuff yeah

at this made me like dude i kind of want to do something something like this it looks really cool yeah it was fun oh yeah it's stained where was this so this is in birmingham and it was actually for the trivium artwork which is in the background for their new record it was like they were touring the artwork all around the world i think and it was like in a palette and they'd ship it to different venues and then they'd have like these events around the release of their artwork so it's kind of yeah it's kind of crazy it's proper crazy like before we we were like

the first were we the first ones to play at this event i can't remember but they had like mat hefi on like a video chat and he was like hey guys da da da da yeah like thanks for coming and checking out my picture and then we just played some songs and it were cool yeah Josh Middleton did some acoustic stuff as well and then was it Tesseract? Tessaract did some They did some acoustic covers and stuff as well And then there was a local band what were they called?

I can't remember Yeah, I do know But they were good, she had a really good voice Actually that girl Yeah, the name escapes me now That's crazy They took artwork And they were shipping it around

Yeah Yeah, because it's like that big canvas thing in the back I don't know if it's like, it must be like the original painting of it or something. Yeah, I think that was like the point on it. Yeah. It's a very trivian thing to do. It is. It's a very tributing thing to do.

Well, it's cool that you guys were a part of it, man. Yeah, it was sick. Actually, do you know what? When I'm going to sing in front of a small intimate audience like that, I'm way more nervous. I'd rather play to 10,000 people. Of course. Like, yeah. behind some chugging overdrive and

there's way more screwing. Yeah, but like you hit you hit a wrong note on acoustic like some of these songs I can't even watch him back because I'm playing too fast and he's like looking at me like Slow it down. Slow it down and I'm just like, so we've got four songs worth of material here

we need to stretch it out. You know what I mean? And like if you listen to, if you scrutinize some of these videos like, oh, it's dreadful. You always your worst. Oh, one was the worst critic, though. The Turn to Stone one is actually sick of this.

Okay. So the Turn to Stone video from the acoustic, that's my favorite one. Because I like sing the... Do I do the higher bit? I don't know, on the vocals. Yeah, yeah, I think so. It's like, we tried to change up our own song. Yeah, just...

Yeah, so it's acoustic a little bit better. It's a different tune, isn't it? Oh, I thought you've made a mistake on the video. that we didn't see that's awesome man yeah we did a acoustic show and yeah it's

it's way harder yeah it's way harder it's like there's only like a few people watching you and it's like you can't I guess you can't hide behind the like the game

yeah yeah you're just right there and people can hear every little wrong you're like oh I practice I promise I practice but fuck it's usually good at this

it's all going away right now oh no fuck and the second I think the one after the... Did we do download before this one or it was after? That was after. This was the first time we'd done anything. This was the first time we ever did a proper acoustic show. And then we did download after and they offered us a bunch of money to play it.

And we basically just laughed and said no. Because we had a main stage, sorry, a second stage, like high up slot the day after. And then they came back with like a ridiculous sum money. And I were just like, okay. So we went and played. We just drove down the day before. We just drove down us to and we took Tom our front of house guy. and we had

we just like said what are we going to play or we'll just play anything because someone had told me it was like in a tent like a small what they normally do the comedy club on and we rocked up to download it was in like the camping village area of download fest and it turned out it was this huge stage that was open air anyway we started playing and there must have been 700 people yeah loads of people came in it was crazy and we only had like four or five songs and we just like winged it on day just like oh we'll go down and play whatever

next thing you know is this huge crowd and we're playing like lincoln park acoustic and everyone's singing along oh wow it was sick to be fair and then um like we got to end of what we were playing and they were just like oh we don't uh they were chanting one more song we didn't have anything else we could play yeah so this is this is hilarious and uh me and my friend you who sells merch for us we'd like be messing around in the studio during lockdown and we'd written this song called mud pie which were just like taking the piss out of everything. Oh this is it? Oh no it's you playing I can never tell them it's.

I don't think I've ever seen this. I don't know. Doing all the rapping as well man yeah. Yeah, both bits man. What was it tuning here? Drop C, probably. No, that's B. It's B, is it?

Just a chugging. It's beautiful, man. I can't remember that. Oh my goodness. Dude, 700 people. I had a boy. Yeah. We were having a great time, to be fair,

just like making it up as we went along. It was sick. But what was so good about that is it wasn't like there was no expectation from the, from the audience. They'd all been out all day at the fest. Everyone who was still going and wasn't too tired of it. Look at a state of that.

So many people. I was like, I was shit my pants were there. Yeah. And I was just like, we were completely underprepared. I thought they were going to be like 30, 40 people max. And I remember that before we went on,

we were just like, right? This is going to be so weird. Like, I mean, there's new, it's going to be people like just eating like, that's a lot of, that's a fucking big show.

Yeah. Because like, when we first like set up and we got there, there were just no one there. It was just, like a few barrels and like you could see a few people like stumbling back after a full day at the festival like you know they've got the the chips the fries as you call it yeah fries and they're just like yeah it's yeah we were just like this is gonna suck yeah and then this happened and I was like

I don't even know words yeah so definitely under for bed oh yeah so at the end like they chatted one more song and I just started playing this random song called mud pie that I'd made up when it was like, just like Yeah. Mutpa. hilarious, but they loved it.

Yeah, and I made them sing mud pie and they all did. And I was just like, this is just so joke. Yeah, yeah. That's what's up. Sweet water.

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and more. Check it out at distrokid.com slash VIP slash Garza and get 30% off your membership. That's distrokid.com slash VIP slash Garza to get 30% off. It was with you. You know a song I really love from you guys that's being since we're on like the on the clean subject

a higher place oh yeah yeah yeah nice yeah yeah well yeah what do you guys do for for for the intro you style don't you literally just go out yeah a sense of a higher place my earthly form behind filling the empty space drifting on ways i go away as i go with the Not that note, so. There you go. That was beautiful, man. Thank you for that. Holy good.

Yeah. It's the changes and goes heavy and stuff. Yeah, I wasn't expecting you guys to go for one and sorry. Yeah, we just play the whole song now. Thank you. That's all good, yeah. I originally wrote the song. It was like a piece of music for my granddad's funeral.

So, like, I'm serious? Yeah, so I wrote like the chords and stuff like on piano and there was like violins and stuff like that. It was all midi or whatever, but. And then they played it. funeral like as his coffin was being like incinerated and then these lot like all really liked the vibe of it so I just decided to like change it into guitars and drums and then the lyrics aren't anything to do with my granddad or anything like that but I guess it's like about loss you know so it kind of fit and it's just like got quite a lot

of emotion behind it and I feel like that translates even if you don't know the story, which is quite cool. And then, like, the guitar solo, when I was, like, tracking it, it's just, like, the first thing that came out of my head. Really? Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, I just, like, I just jammed it, press record, like, on the demo, and I just

played that. And that's what it stayed. It stayed as that. Because it was like, oh, right. It's like, that's like, that's it. Just the one take solo, in it? Yeah. But that was, like, because we tracked it, didn't we, I think?

Or did you, you track it? I can't remember. I've tracked it at home and then we did all the vocals obviously. No, I mean the original though, the eulogy for your granddad. Oh, yeah, yeah. We tracked it at my house like years ago. Yeah, with the acoustic. And obviously with a piece of music like that that's serving such a sensitive purpose, I guess,

I came up with this idea for the, for like the bridge, like the pre-chorus. But years before we end up using the song, like in a record, because it was like such a sensitive thing. I didn't want to be like, oh, look, can we use this? I just waited for him to say he was ready to use it. For years, I just had the, oh, are we on? I just like came up with that idea, like, years and years before we ever used it. And I was just like, and when he said, I want to use it in the next record, I was like, I've got this bit, please, can we have it?

Because I'd like sat on it for, it must have been like two, three years, maybe longer. It was a while, yeah. It was a long time, weren't it? Yeah. And I'd like,

sat on that bit as a pre-chorus, and then I was like, if anyone makes me change it now, I'm going to be pissed. You can never get the ideas at your head, though, when you've, like, thought about it that much. So we just end up using it.

And that, it's an amazing song, though, that one. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's always people like crying and shit. It's really, it's a nice, diverse piece of music to showcase that we are actual musicians.

We're not just, you know, because, yeah, I feel like a lot of times bands have super heavy sets and they feel like they just need a little bit of a break in the middle just to bring things down before it goes back up. That song for us is really good in the live set

because when we're just, it's frantic and everything's heavy and it's super sick and it gives people a break. It also, like Josh was saying with the lyrics, is we try and write a lot of our stuff not from a really deep personal level. there's like stuff in there that we might be feeling or whatever but we try and leave a lot of the lyrics open to interpretation so anyone with personal struggles or anything like that you know they can interpret it the way that they want to which works really well actually totally a lot of people can relate to the music a lot more than yeah yeah being a specific thing yeah each person has their own their own attachment to it their own meaning you know yeah we do get a lot of messages about higher place and you know you know We've had everything from people playing it to like walking down the aisle, which was, I mean, the song was about, it's a little bit about loss. Yeah. If that works for them, then great.

But we've had it from everything like that to people saying, oh, look, it's really helped me through some, through some hard times and with a recent loss or whatever and stuff. So it's a great song. The great song, yeah. You know, when you hear certain songs, you're like, I wonder what the meaning is behind a song because I know, I know it's heavy. and then and you mentioned it was about your grandfather passing away so yeah yeah i was just curious like what what it was so no yeah that's it like i feel like con was sort of saying like we write ballads as well i guess you might call them you know i mean and that would just seem to fall into place like it was never meant to be a malevolent song in the first place you know it was for my granddad

but something about it just like lent itself really well to instruments and you know putting lyrics over the top of it, regardless of if it's about what I made it for or not. It's like it works, and it just, yeah, it seems to resonate nice with people. And like concert, it breaks up the set if we're playing for, you know, a headline, like over an hour or whatever. You get like, you know, super fast, heavy stuff for most of it.

So it's cool to bring it down in the middle and just like, you know, give everyone a bit of a break and like, you know, put some feels out instead. Did you guys play that song in Riverside? Yeah, we did. I remember that? Mike, what, what song is this? Yeah.

It's dope, yeah. I was like, I had my beer just chilling in my hometown. It's like watching you guys. Yeah, to be fair, we do usually play it like on most sets, even if we're supporting and stuff like us, but if we're doing like the more metal tours, because metal fans are generally a bit more receptive to it, I guess. to it, I guess.

But we're not playing it on this tour just because we want to smash through some heavy shit for half an hour, you know? Like, we've got support slots, though. Yeah, we're playing a song off the new record. Yeah, that sort of replaced it. And I feel like this, the tour packages that we're on right now, how everything's a little bit heavy, a little bit more frantic. And we don't have the time to be able to pull off a new song as well as higher place.

and I feel like what we're doing now, this set actually works pretty well, don't it? Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Yeah, flows pretty well. It's nice to play some new stuff in it. Yeah. Well, Connie, you are, we can say you're a new father. Yeah.

Is this your first tour being a dad? No. Oh, my God, absolutely not. No. So, yeah, my partner, car, she's amazing. And when Fox, he's called Fox. Yeah. So when Fox first came, I,

literally two weeks after he's born, I had to go and play some big shows with five-finger death punch. So I flew out to them shows and flew straight by it, carried on, like helping out and stuff. And then when he was five weeks old, I went on tour with Lama God. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So it was like, it was a really hard time for me because, yeah, pretty tough. I mean, obviously my son's just been born, which is the greatest thing that's ever happened in my life. And then you've also got a tour that I've wanted to do.

since I first picked tup guitar when I was age 12 do you know what I mean and it's those two things coming together and yeah if it wasn't that tour I probably wouldn't have done it I would I probably wouldn't have left

but you know when it's that thing you've worked towards your whole life your whole life man mastodon Kerry King like literally my whole thing and it wasn't just about me either I didn't want to let everyone else down so you know that was like the tour

since we've literally known each other that is the tour. Yeah, we're like always what's your main goal? It's like, tour with Lama God. Tour with Lama God. Do I mean? That's like, that was the dream forever. That's like the same dream as getting a Marshall stack. You know, we're like, oh my God,

a martial stack. One day. And I was just like, look, I've got to go. We've got to do it. So we did that. It was five weeks old, and we went for five weeks. So when I came back, I'd been away more than he'd been alive, which you're crazy. But do you know what? The great thing about being in the position that we're in being in a band and we tour full time it's our

full-time job we don't have jobs outside of the band it's great because when i'm not on tour i get to spend big blocks of time just being a dad which is amazing so like a lot of people you know they'll go to work and they'll come back and they haven't got the energy to play with the son or their child whatever and for me it's amazing because i have yeah spend every like we just had uh two months off and i just just spent every day with him. It was fantastic. And then what did we do after the lamb? God, that's the last tour, isn't it?

Sleep. Oh, no, we did another tour. So we were home for a month or two. I can't remember. And then we went out to Europe while she sleeps. And then on the last two days of that tour, Kara flew Fox out to surprise me. Ah, yeah, yeah.

And it were amazing. I never expected it. We're insane. So we talked about coming out and everything, and then we just said, oh, let's not bother. And then next thing, know I walked into dressing room and she's there with box I could have cried it were insane

it was so nice and I was like whoa this is so sick yeah so he came to his first um malevolence show in antwerp in belgium and car actually used to live there that's why she chose oh come there and we got him one of my my friend priestly made him this really cute little malevolence t-shirt so he came to the show and he's got me i've got a photo but it um he's got his little malev t-d shit on this stood there and yeah we're amazing so good yeah it's beautiful man what's the yeah so uh i'm 39 you know uh my our whole band doesn't have kids so uh remember we we talked about a couple weeks ago i'm like are you guys gonna have kids and like no one said i'm like the only one that's like i'm think i might have some kids but uh there's obviously there's that uh there's that i mean that that that

that fear you know what's uh for it like like like like for you what was like the hardest part having a kid and now and now you're pursuing your dream um i guess just being away from him yeah because i really obviously is my son and i'd like to spend all my time with him but at the same time it's like any job where you're required to go and do something like my dad he he was a steel director used to work on the oil rigs offshore and things like that oh wow and when i was when i was a kid he was away for like i don't know six weeks at time oh oh And he came back and this is what I said to Cara before we had, before we had Fox. I was just like, this is the only thing I'm scared about because when my dad used to come home, I'd cry because I didn't know who was.

Oh, wow. And that's my, that's literally my biggest fear that I come home from a tour, like this tour. Now he's a lot more like, he's really emotive and he's just started crawling and everything like that. My biggest fear is getting home and him being like, who's a strange man? That's my, that's literally my biggest fear. but at the same time we're in a modern world now and we have FaceTime and things like that and I speak to him every day on the phone we face time every day well if we if we can at the moment's a bit tricky because of the time zone changes and stuff but hopefully you know

that's keeps him like keeps the connection there and then when I get back yeah I think you've spent a lot of time with him recently as well aren't you so he definitely knows who you are I know I understand the fear. That is literally the biggest fear, but apart from that, it's the best thing ever. He's going to grow. When he's like old enough to understand what we do, it's going to be buzzing. Do you know what I mean? Or it could go the other way.

He could just be like, oh, it sucks. I want to play Minecraft. Yeah. And all the festival, dad, I don't care. Just leave me alone. No, like, the thing for me is like, you know, when I was a kid and I looked at big festivals in the UK like download festival and stuff I always dreamt of going to them and I didn't go to download

I wasn't allowed to go and I didn't have the money to go when I was younger but the first time we ever went is when we played it and I was like oh my God like I dream really yeah I dream to go into download fest my whole life and the first time we went we played how old were you when was it 2014 2015 maybe yeah I was like 24 25 yeah so I was probably yeah at 19. Yeah, so that's the first time I ever went.

But like for my son, he'll get to come, but watch us playing like a big stage and stuff. And imagine the next day when he goes to school and he's like, all these friends, like, oh, what did you do yesterday? He's like, oh, we went to see my dad play download main stage. You know what I mean? That's like, cool. Yeah.

Yeah. So we've got to make it happen. Yeah, life, man. You got to push. Yeah. that's the drive these days yeah beautiful man thank you for sharing that yeah you're yeah i know uh yeah i know uh yeah i always want to know like a father's like perspective and how uh because i'm just mentally emotionally appearing myself yeah you yeah you should if you if you

thinking about you you you should do it yeah just 100 percent it's the best thing ever the best thing huh literally the best thing ever just think you making a little version of yourself who without other shitty parts yeah yeah yeah yeah it's just sick that's cool i just like i don't want him to grow up too fast because like where he's at now is incredible but i want him to get to the stage where i can teach him out to ride a bike and we can go to like the bike the bike track and we could do some jumps because that's where we met yeah that's what we did yeah we met there doing jumps on the bike track yeah like take my son there we can both go on as bikes like trying not to fall off yeah that's what we had to stop ball all that's what we had to stop ball

all that yeah we actually tried to go to bike track probably like five years ago it was like in covid weren't it yeah we were like when you could start meeting up again we were like outside oh yeah yeah we were like oh we were going to do some jumps and stuff and then we both fell off and we're like no yeah it was like we were about to go home as well it's like one of those are like fuck it let's send it around one more time one last one last one first jump i just overshot it and just like hit the fucking take off of the next ramp and i was just my knee was just like this big I mean, I was just like, all right, yeah, I'm out. And then you, about four jumps later, I just heard a crash.

And he was just on the floor and I was like, all right. I'm an eat earthquake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, massive earthquake. Oh, man. Bush. Bush. Yeah, and then we were like, right, well, if that was like our arms or like a wrist or a finger,

you know, like, you can't get on the wrist. It's like, we're not playing, oh, we? You know? Imagine if you broke your arm before, Thor? God. yeah you'd have to just like glue a pick to your cast yeah yeah

oh they're playing like marty freedman mate like this yeah yeah up to you guys up to you guys we could uh should we grab a quick beer we could bring some beers here we we we had that machine head of whiskey i'm down i'm down yeah let's send it j can we uh which one any Yeah, whatever you want. Whatever. You decide.

Just you both, both. Both. Both. Oh, not able to stand up. Yes. This is a celebration, man. It's cool. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you for sharing your band's story. It's cool. I mean, there's a lot of stuff I haven't heard. So it's awesome. Yeah. It's, we've been like the same lineup since like 2010. It's too bad. It's going strong.

Yeah, for real. Yeah, which is weird. Like, because, well, we meet so many other bands, obviously, like, over the years. and it's crazy to think that some of the bands have literally got one member in that's still like an original or whatever, you know? People can't believe it. Yeah, people are like...

They can't believe that were the same line up since 2010. I can't believe I missed that. Usually I know like, oh shit, they got all the OG members. I should have known that. But yeah, how do you guys do that? Literally, no, everyone's just been... Ever since we were kids, like, we'd always meet up every week. and just jam for like four or five hours just on a Sunday and like regardless of we had any shows

which we didn't think in the day right one nice one thank you very much cheers cheers cheers nice one to you guys man and briffs I think the key to um sticking as the same lineup is just to have really thick skin and just take the piss out of each other constantly We're not nice to each other at all Yeah, it's brutal Yeah, it's actually brutal How horrible we are to each other Did you guys happen

Did anyone see my story A couple days ago? No, I don't think so No, I took it from Ronnie Radkeke I saw his story That was like I saw the post

I went to the post So I guess that there's legit There's studies now Where I did see it We did see it We're friends and family that like rip

if you rip each other you're more likely to just remain good friends they're they're 300 percent more likely to be loyal and honest yeah fair enough I think there is truth in that to be fair because you like if you're able to like rip on your mates

oh nice shotgun blasts that's hard but yeah if you're if you're able to rip on your mates like there's an obvious understanding that you know each other so well. I mean, and I feel like that, obviously, it makes you, like, comfortable around

your friends as well, even if you're getting ripped on, like, just fine. It's like, everyone's got something you can rip them about. Hey, Jay, can we find that study? It was, ah, fuck, I really want to see it. I mean, there's probably like a few where if you, if you talk shit to

your friends, are you, you more, your closer friends, or you're more honest or something. Yeah. How do you find that? I wonder. Yeah.

The piss take study. Oh yeah. Yeah. There you go. Boom. Yeah. That was quick. Yeah.

Study shows friend groups who insult and make fun of each other are 300% more. AJ, I can't, I can't read it. Are 300% more likely to be loyal and honest? Yeah. Pretty sick. Yeah. I would agree with that. I think that's right.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's right. It does make sense. Well, it would make sense in terms of malevolence. That's great. It has to make sense. Otherwise, we would have killed each other by now.

Yeah, yeah. There's no mercy in the bandwagon. Yeah. No mercy. No mercy. Hang on, hang on. Hang on. There you go.

No mercy in the bedwagon. Yeah. Right, we start a new track. Get some middy drums up quick. No, it's true, man. You gotta fucking, you gotta talk to each other. Because if you insult you. each other you only do

to someone that you really care about yeah and like yeah it's not offensive is it it's just no funding games and like those things that you get ripped about are only things that your closest friends would know do i mean or like would pick up about your personality and stuff like that so it's you know it's all i think kind-hearted you know like touring because we've we've started from the bottom like the true

bottom we used to tour in a car and the car was only had it only had for It only had four seats and four seat belts. We used to fit all five of us in there. Oh, fuck. With amps. So I had my, uh, 65.05 on my, on my lap. Josh had his 50-150 on his lap. We had two guitars laid across the top.

Oh, let's go. Yeah, we had like merch in the boot, snare drum, everything. And we drive all around England in this tiny little car, like being crushed. And like, you'd end up sleeping in a car park in that car. Or you'd sleep at your, like, a random person's, house and i feel like if you if you haven't got that thick skin where you can just rip each other you can never get through them situations that are super hard yeah yeah because if you're just like oh you're all right mate did you have a bad sleep or something yeah you just be like shut

up yeah we're all being fruit same last night we're all it yeah yeah get on with you want to be in a band or what yeah exactly do you want to do it you just send it but you need that honest you just need that honest like get your shit together attitude or you'll never get past that rough bit of touring yeah yeah because it's fucking hard at the beginning yeah it's rough yeah it can be rough we always we always like we've calmed so much now but we used to be a nightmare yeah we were talking about this the other day so we were like we were just saying we were so stupid when we first started touring because you know hotels aren't expensive we just used to get so fucked up yeah we didn't plan on going to sleep yeah we just

I'm not asleep tonight. Why the fuck you need a hotel if you don't, if you're not sleeping? Yeah, we're just going to pay to not use it. So what's the point? So we're not getting a hotel on band. It's a waste of money. Yeah. And we just get smashed and stay wherever.

We just spend all the money on all the stuff. Yeah. Instead of hotels. Yeah. It's like the money that will spend on the room we could get on a case of beer. Exactly. Yeah, that's what I mean. A bottle.

Yeah. And like the first time we toured Europe, they would put your beers in the fridge. When they were gone, they'd just stop. They just stock it back up. And we were like, what's happening here? So this is the best thing ever. And we would get paid like a hundred. 100 euros to go play in Belgium and just get smashed.

And then our driver, so a friend of ours called Shreddy, Tom Redmond. Shout out to Shreddy. Oh, yeah. Shout out of Shreddy. This is an absolute legend. We won't be here if it weren't for Shreddy because at the beginning of our tour, he decided to buy this seven-seat a car just to drive. Like, he didn't need a seven-seat of car.

just a single guy. He didn't need that big car, but he bought that specific car just so he could drive us around on tour. Oh, wow. Which was amazing. He's such a legend. So we owe it to him forever.

He drove us round, and then what he'd do is, like, we'd play the show, and then we probably wouldn't even tell him we're going out. We just disappear. And then he's like, where the fuck is everyone?

And then we just, like, text him to come and fetch us at, like, 7 a.m. From a random spot, and he'd just turn up. And there's this one story. from this time where we went out all night. We were out on tour. Who was it?

Was it heavy hands or someone? I can't remember what band we were on tour with. Which story of it? We ended up at like a scout hut in a random field. So it was like... Yeah, I think it was no second chance because that was like the first time we went to Europe. Oh, yeah.

It was like a scout hut or something. And we're in this scout hut. It was like a weird Euro techno rave where they don't finish any song and they just start another one. And then it comes in with some sort of national anthem that they all started. It was very strange.

And we were out all night. We'd message Shreddy to come and pick us up at like 7 a.m. He turns up in his car. And we all just got in it. And we were so hammered. No one had been to sleep. We were absolutely. We had a gig the next day in Leeds in England as well.

It was Ghost Fest. It was Ghost Fest. Yeah, it was Ghost Fest. Yeah, yeah. So we had Ghost Fest the day after, right? We all got in this car. I've seen you at Ghost Fest, 100%. Yeah.

I've seen you at Ghost Fest. Dang. So we, we, we got in this car, we were driving back to the ferry port at 7 a.m. Everyone's eyes were shut and then Beano just

it'd been sick. Yeah, I was in the... We call it Mega Bitch. It's the seventh seat in the back. You know what I mean? You've got all the gear like here and you've got this tiny space in the back.

But you can shotgun Mega Bitch and it means you're the biggest lad. You're the biggest lad. So, you know, there's ways around it you know so he's in there he's been sick yeah and it starts in my t-shirt like it starts a smell and everyone's like have you been sick and everyone's looking around and then we turn we're like this have you being sick and he's like i don't mean what you mean i don't mean i don't being sick and then we're just like look a bit more and it's like all downing and stuff and then

everyone starts going on everyone's like it was like family guy you know where they all just start throwing up you puked all over your shirt yeah yeah yeah i was like cradling it in my shirt it's not my proudest moment so like shreddy stopped the car everyone and everyone got out and they were everyone with being sick it was horrendous and I was like I was like holding it I was just not pupil just I was just holding it in and I was just sat in in the chair like this I'm not getting out I'm so I was so wasted I was like I can't get out and if I can't get back in so so we're driving to this very poor everyone gets back in whatever and then like half an hour later it just came all at once and I was like oh my

god I wound down the window yeah and I was like throwing up out of the window and then we turned up at the ferry port it was horrendous turned up at the ferry port and I was so embarrassed that I'd been sick all the way down the side of the car you know if you pull up to like the stalls where you get your ticket so so I'd like taken one of my socks off and then we didn't have any car dude we didn't have any waters and I just shout to monster energy I just got a can of monster and just like washed it off the car with a kind of monster and my sock. And then we went to Ghost Fest and played Ghost Fest. On Porsche Reddy's brand new car.

Everyone in the band's thrown up in it. Dude, I probably played Ghost Fest with one sock on. Didn't bring any clothes. Didn't even care. That's a good friend, man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Shreddy, what a dude.

Where did you guys meet him? Just at local shows. He was always in the pit. moshing so and he was just at all the gigs that we went to so just generally start chatting you know and then he used to come and see him a lev like in the little pubs

and that didn't he so it was like he was a big supporter straight away and then we just send up being really good friends with him and he gave us a few lifts and stuff and do you know what it worked really well for shreddy because I don't really know his full background and everything but when he first drove us to Europe

was the first time he'd been out of England. Oh. Yeah. Special. So and then we took him around with us and we did everything and stuff like that. And then a few years later, we took him on tour with Despise Icon, which is like his favorite band of all the time. And he came and did the whole tour of us and he loved it. So it was sick. It was good. Yeah, we repaid him in the end. Ruin his car. I don't think we've ever repaid Shreddy. No. Forever in debt. The shit he used to put up with. Yeah, I don't even remember after it. Imagine trying to find any member. I mean, ignorance is bliss for me there.

I'm like, oh yeah, it's fine. Imagine trying to find any member of our band in 2010. No. Yeah, we were all like, we were all different people, man. Oh, yeah. I look back to myself when I was dirty. I'm like, wow, that's, it's, it's me, but it's a different person. Oh, yeah.

It's fucking, this is my first beer of the whole tour. Really? Yeah, it's my first beer of the whole tour. I appreciate that man. Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah. Again, cheers and more riffs. There you go.

There you go. Yeah, we're very calm now. Very, very... Hey, Khan, so I heard you, uh... I heard you say that you would never... You would never play through a camper. And now look at you. Oh yeah, so...

So when... Who told you that? It's a good story, that. Yeah, really? Okay. So, um... I mean, we all said it. I love Valvamps. I love...

65-05, that's my favorite amp of all time. Nothing will ever be it in my eyes, unless I find something better. But I always said, we used to do tours with like death metal bands and whatever, tech, like Fallujah and stuff, and I used to just rip on them and say,

how many games have you got on your computer? Can you play snake on that? And that's not real and why'd you need that? And I'm never getting one of them. And I said, I'm never, ever getting one. And then we were on tour with despise, was it despise, I think despise icon?

And literally every other band on the package had a Kemper or they had an axe effects or whatever. Yeah. And we were in Poland. The power's bad. Sure. To the venue. Yeah. And what was happening is the power into the valve head, when the power was too little, the valves were just not working properly.

It was making everything go clean. So I'd be playing and it was going like in a wave. So it was like clean. And then the power would come back in and it was too much. so then it'd just be uncontrollable squealing, then back down to clean and squealing. And I sort of had this realization then where I was like,

because we were getting a little bit more further along in our career, and I was just like, if we have one bad show on a tour of 30 days, 30 shows, it doesn't matter to us because, oh, it sucked, nothing worked, all the gear didn't work, whatever. But then that fan that's watched you, they've had a shit show but that's the only time they want to see you yes so I had this realization where you know what there's a reason people are you going digital and it's because

it's reliable it just works yeah the power doesn't really matter because he's using such low voltage supplies actually internally that you know it just works and I was just like okay we'll get a camper so we switched to kempers how we must have had campers for six years or something yeah we had they were they were fantastic they were really really good um and i never really look back from them because for a live setting it's just so much easier in it because like you could take your whole whole live rig on a memory stick do i mean and just like ask a ask a festival if you were flying in to provide a kemper you don't even have to fly anything you know i mean and you have your whole rig there just take the pedal board you've got

everything that you need, whereas it's like, sometimes you advance for a mess of boogie or a 6505 and you get there and it's like a JCM 800 and you're like, I've been there. Well, I don't have the pedals to make this sound the way I need it to sound, you know? We used to just talk with a noise gate, didn't

we? A tuner and a noise gate. And sometimes we'd hit a fest like you said and you'd get a marshal and you've got no tube screamer and you're just like, well, I can't even play. Yeah, it's going to be like school a rock without a tube screaming. There's going to be thousands of people there and it's going to sound shit. I mean, you're just like, well.

Yeah, I've been there, man. This is good. So we got the Kemper's. We used them for a long time. They were fantastic. And then Neural, Max from Neural, basically gave us six, so two each of the neurals.

And it's just, I think they sound a lot better. You know, what I always refer to with Kempers is they have like this high, mid-range fuzz where you can, where you can, especially on a high gain tone, the clean tone's fine, but on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a camper, the sort of high mid is a bit fuzzy. And that's the only way I can describe it. And that's like for me, it didn't sound as true. And then when we first got these, we took them to the studio we used for the last record. And we did an a, B, A and B. So we, we, um, modeled my 6505. And then we put it through this. And we actually both for, that what was coming out of this was the real amp and what was coming out of the 6505

was a, it was like a backwards was a capture or whatever. It was backwards. So then I was just like, cool. That's it. We'll use these. Yeah, we were amazed, weren't we?

Yeah. Sick. Oh, it actually sounds good. So, I mean, they say these are algorithmically perfect and I agree. So, never look back. Never look back.

But do you know what? When we tour, we've just got these amazing cabs from Laney, which is an LFR 412. So it's a 4 by 12 powered, full range, full frequency, FR, FRFR cab. And it's a power cab. Yes, powered cab. So it's 2,600 watt powered cab from Laney. Holy shit. So they actually, I never heard about that in my life. Oh, it's incredible. Devin Townsend was like one of the guys. He was like, yeah, Devin Townsend helped like design it. It's that one there in the middle.

that one yeah so it's 2,600 watts the amazing thing about these cabs rise you've got this thing in called lair okay and that is you stick a USB cable into the back of the cab and it you've got some software and you can EQ the cab so i can run wrap so the way that we run it now is we've got an output from each of our quads that's just so we have two going to front of house and then i've got just a split off one which is just exactly the same signal that goes into these LFR cabs. And you can EQ it, so you don't need to change any settings on your quad. You don't even need to remove your cab from your capture or whatever,

and you can EQ it on your laptop, and it sounds amazing. An EQCAT. This is where we're at right now. Yes, it's getting mad. This is nuts. The future is now, mate. These are the best things ever. So I think a lot of other companies now are jumping on the van wagon,

but Lainey hooked us up with these straight away. Wow. And we've got four of these. Lainey, luckily, they gave us four because they're amazing. And you just link them to each other. And it's, yeah, the mega. So that's the future right there. That is literally the future.

That is literally the future. But when we don't have the privilege of taking them with us, because they are like 48 kilograms each, I don't know what that is in pounds, but they're very heavy. Yeah. Almost 100 pounds. Yeah, it's like the super heavy. So obviously, we're not.

not freighting them over. Oh, yeah. So 5. Yeah, so when, good maths are. Here go. So when we tour over here, like on this tour, we're just running the outputs of the quad into, luckily Nick from Pain of Truths, let us use his 6505s. So we run directly into the send return.

So the effects loop return. So if you run into an effects loop return of a valve amp, you bypass the entire preamp section and you just get to the phase splitter and the power output valves. So you don't have any volume control. If you touch any knobs on the front of the amp, it does nothing. Literally just injecting sound in, you get the full output. So that's why we use the volume control on the quad. I see.

Yeah. So we use the power amps, just whatever we can find, basically, while we're not in Europe or nearby. Yeah, I was curious on my thing. I knew you guys were using Kemper for a while and I was like looking at pictures like, oh wait, are they on quads now?

Yeah, it's cool. Well, yeah, everything's in the rack so we don't have anything on the stage anymore, which is way better. But we, con's built these pedal boards so they're like,

they look a bit like the Kemper ones. So maybe that's, if you've seen that on the photos. But we just got him for this tour, to be fair, because he's been at home making him. Yeah, you want to go on my Instagram.

Okay, yeah, so. Convict. got customs on Instagram. It was something, so this is, so since I started my quad journey, and it's actually been an issue, which is probably why you did it, um, I'm looking, what foot switch do I get because I don't want it on the fucking stage. Yeah, yeah. I can't find anyone that says, do this.

This is what you need to do. What? What you did? Easy man. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, yeah.

Yeah. Go on the second picture and I'll talk you through it. Walk us through this, please. So this is. what we used to run. This is an RJM mastermind LT. It's a fantastic MIDI and RJM are an amazing company. So we had everything on this board. You've got to have a MIDI controller. You need to send a send down to a tuner and everything just gets so messy because you've got MIDI in and out. We're using these things called Kenton Line Drivers because if you're using a standard MIDI cable,

it's only good for up to 50 feet. So when we play like main. stages and big 60 meters wide stages you can't run it on a standard midi cable so the line driver converts midi to cat five so you can run up to 500 meters down a single cat five line so what my idea here this all works in this picture that you can see now but um it's just messy and then what happens in transit is the little midi five pin din connectors come out yes and you just end up like I've seen that. Josh is fantastic at playing guitar, but when it comes to gear, he just wants it to work. Yeah.

And if something gets unplugged in transit, you can't even tell that they've come all the way out. And then he'd be like, we'd start the set. You'd be shouting over. It's not, it's not changing. Yeah, I got a clue. Oh, my God, it's not changing. It's not changing what's happening. And literally, I could walk over and plug a MIDI cable back in and we're back on rolling.

But to stop that, I was like, okay, I'm going to put all this shit, all this mess inside one thing. So you can click to the next slide. I reverse engineered the boss TU3S. Then luckily, RGM, again, fantastic company, they sent me the drawings. So I reverse engineered everything. I built these enclosures. I turned some stuff on a lave, blah, blah, blah. And then I put all of those things in.

So keep going across. I put the boss TU at. You may as well keep going. Sorry. I'm ruining the, ruining the talk over. Go back one. Go back one. So here I've wired all of the things externally,

so they're all internal now. So we have the Kenton line drivers coming in and modify the Kenton line drivers as well, so they carry the 9 volt power to the pedal. And then it powers the Boss TU3S. It powers the RJM Mastermind. And then the MIDI in and outs

are wired, hardwired to the line driver. from the RGM. And it's basically all in this one pedal now where we plug two cables in, which are loomed together, and it works. And you don't need to do anything. And it sends and receives MIDI as well.

So what I've got set up on this tour as well, if you go to the next slide now, the top left button on my floor controller now, my MIDI foot switch. Oh my God, it works. That actually starts my. backing tracks. Yeah.

So I have one pedal. I can tune my guitar. I can change all my patches and I can start my backing tracks. And that's, so I basically, I'd started doing all this kind of stuff with the gear just to alleviate the problems that everyone else seem to be having. Yes.

And then I could talk forever. But we've developed this device that you see there. It's called the RSW. in the rack. So this piece of gear, we've just put it to the market. So what this is, is it powers both quad cortexes.

So you've got a main and a spare quad. So what we've got here is we have, your input from a guitar comes into the RSW. It's powering the quads. And you can switch between A and B, but it switches the inputs and the outputs. And then the fantastic bit about this kit is, if one of them dies, you can switch to the second one

and it just switches all your connections in to the second one. So you've got no problems, you just carry on playing. Well, the main feature of this is that we have got an auto-switching function. So I had this idea just from like playback rigs, how they work. So we feed a tone, like a sine wave, into the main quad cortex. That tone then goes back to the RSW. And it detects if anything's wrong. with that tone and if the tone is broken it automatically switches from A to B so it

basically just switches all the ins and outs from your main to your spare quad. Wow. So if my if my main quad cortex on this tour I've been using this device now for about six months, took it on every tour took the prototypes on tour but it's just hit the market you can get it at sweetwater. You can get it at sweet water and neat audio he is the US distributor for this device. so R sW neat yeah um so basically you should if you're running two quads or you're running a quad you need to get one of these bits of gear because it does everything it's got MIDI throughbox in it it powers everything um it's a great bit of kit and that just it reduces the

need to have like eight different devices yeah which all cost way more collectively than one of these costs. So this helps things make basically a more simple. Yeah, it's just basically all you need is this one, this one U-wrack, two quad-cortexes and the cables between them, and you'll never have a problem ever again. Holy crap. This is nuts, dude. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

And it works with AxeFX, and, you know, we incorporated it. So it works with the FM-free floor controller for Axe Effects, so it'll switch. one controller between two Axefx as well which is great so it's a good bit of kit and if you are running two you should definitely buy one and and this is you this is my marketing video yeah this is dope dude you actually you actually did something about it you're like fuck this i'm gonna figure out how to fix this problem yeah well that's awesome man there's so many people just you know having problems with stuff and not that they rarely like they rarely go wrong but when you're you get to a certain level of being an artist you can't afford to have anything go wrong with

anything yeah totally so you just want this piece of mind like mine's never failed it's never even switched but if it did switch if it if mine did switch need to switch if it failed yeah i know that in point five of a second i'm back going and it's fine yeah that's dope it's like you wouldn't even notice it's that quick you wouldn't even know it's like in a live setting yeah people Wouldn't know, huh? Yeah. Holy crap, dude. Awesome, man.

Well, shit, should we, uh, yeah. I've bored you with my tech. No, no, no. Okay, so where, okay, just to wrap this, uh, where, so people should go to sweetwater. Uh, yeah, so sweet water, you can buy this already built into rigs that you can just purchase to plop your quad cortexes in as a turnkey solution. Or you can go to neat and neat will sell the individual one you rack. RSW. If you're in the UK, you can get it from Fratronics engineering in Glasgow.

Or just hit me up on Instagram where we can sort it out. Are you planning to mass produce the actual mini-controller? Are you trying to? Do you know what? We've got another product coming out that's in the works at the moment, which alleviates the need for the MIDI controller. I might do a couple of one-off runs of that. I need to talk to, if we weren't doing this today,

I was going to go and see RGM. It's there based here as well, I think. Oh, well. I was going to go and talk to him about it. But I can't say too much. But the other thing I've got planned, it's not really for people changing patches on the floor. It's a solution for people running tracks in there,

in them, like if they're running MIDI just to their, quads that are right okay it's a solution for them to be able to tune on stage mm-hmm um without the need for a million different things and running audio to stage and backing things like that so okay that's uh that'll probably hit the shelves next year nice yeah we're all we're all just trying to make things more simple but making things simple is yeah yeah we're always here like how can we make them more simple and dumber and we're like trying to make make more simple it's like it's hard how do you how do you fix this problem right here yeah it's uh without sacrificing something like

Totally. You can't. You just got to make a brand new product that does it. That's what I found. You've literally just got to think of the solution. It's as easy as that. Build it. Honestly.

It's not easy. I mean, it took us over a year to develop it and perfect it. Of course, man, that's a lot, dude. But we eat moly, man.

Everything and that's like the highest quality audio parts and equipment that you can get because I just said to OLLI, who I'm in partnership with it from Fratronics, I just said to him, look, I don't want a device that's built that it's designed to make loads of money. I want one that's built to be fair

that will last people a lifetime. So it's got Carnhill isolation transformers in it which are from like Neve consoles and things like that. It's really high spec that's designed. Because this is not aimed at a bedroom player right? No one needs a redundancy

quad cortex for their bedroom project. Yeah, it's for professional. It's for like cold plays guitarists and yeah you know that's great man so but then that they'll probably that probably puts you in position like whoever get whoever you get into business with you have it has to be honest part partnership you know say hey this is this one i'm trying to do i'm trying to fucking exactly yeah solid so it's awesome man thank you yeah thank you for sharing man you can't should we get into some uh some more riffs dude i was listening to uh hell yeah i was listening to uh listening to keep your distance.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was like, what are they doing in the intro? Oh, God, I'll mess it up now. Yeah? He loves this bit. We've just got this constant joke in our band that I just play it like. He's always got a swing on it. I even fucking up or what?

Yeah, I play the whole song. They're pretty tight to mess that bit up. Oh, we're doing all right. It sounds sick in these headphones. It does, isn't it? Not bad. There's no, there's no click because you guys were just,

yeah, locked in. Oh, we've been doing it since here 11. Yeah, that's a good right. It's only locked in being in. Yeah, that's it. You got, you got your locked in, man. I could, uh,

I could feel when you hear the, uh, history and, uh, in a friendship school. Yeah. It's awesome, man. How did you guys, like, come up with those riffs? How, how did, uh, how did I, how did I pop up? Uh,

Josh writes all the riffs. Mm. All of them. in the history of malev my fingers bleeding i think in the i think in the in the history of malevolence i've done two or three riffs in all the albums and like we spoke earlier um everyone in the band's got their own place and yeah banos is the riffs nice yeah i like write the songs the music for the songs really um but in terms of that one i think i don't really remember what i was trying to go for just

I always found that like a lot of the songs previously had been in like open, you know, starting on open. Classic. Classic. So I just thought like what had happened you know, if I tried to use start around a different fret and like push me to maybe like write something that

is a bit different or use some different shapes. Do you know what I mean? Because if like in that verse like you've got to use you've got to keep that anchored you know because that's the root note so no longer you you know what I mean

so it's like push me to use some different shapes and just see what happened really but I think I just wanted something bouncy that was going to be kind of chugging I think we'd being on tour with like dying fetus so like watching them every night you know what I mean just wanting some of you know some like

syncopated sort of like chugging and then yeah it's just like a little tail lick I guess but yeah I was trying to like think about it like a sort of A, B, A, C sort of thing. So, would be like the A, I guess. B. Yeah, there's a B and then it's like the A

and then a C and then A and then it's like B slightly different. You know, just to it. So you've got like a hook that keeps coming around but then it's like varies slightly every time. Now you got to be...

The way you think about Rousse's crazy. It's like, I've been playing guitar since I was like seven. Seven, yeah, so. More is like,

yeah, I'm 30 at the end of this month. So it's like most of my life has been playing guitar, you know? Damn, yeah, you're going on what,

like fucking 20? Yeah, 23 years. 23 years, yeah. Holy crap. Because usually like, we all like, okay,

this is like the A part and this is like the B part. You're like, oh wait, one, no, this is one riff. This riff has,

So A part and a B. Yeah, I just want it to be like, I want to think about it in terms of like how it repeats. So I want it to be catchy. So there's like something that keeps happening. So like the A part, I guess. Yeah. But then for me personally, I don't want to play the same thing four times.

I mean, because it's, I don't know. I want the songs and the riffs that we play to be challenging for me as a player. And like, it's just like a personal. gripe I'm like I don't want to just play like you always makes them too hard for me yeah yeah yeah it's a challenge every time it's like how can I piss off con yeah yeah yeah yeah sick do you know what though go on I was gonna say now you do a lot of the singing though it's like that's your part in it so I'm like I give you the I'll like do something over the top of it if you're built playing the chords or whatever like that was like a big learning process because originally we'd just not think about the vocals

at all and like the first couple of albums were literally just like riff soup and it'd just be no repeats new riff new riff new riff try and make it as hard as possible and then we try and put vocals over it and it just be like it's like impossible yeah first album it's just like no structure to it whatsoever it's just riff after riff and then it's a really hard time trying to be like how's this song end yeah you'd have to think through the whole song to even get to the ending because the riffs are just crazy but there are some really um there are some really hard to sing over riffs that we still got yeah 100% are like That hard didn't have to play it.

Yeah. It's been a one. Pardon me! That one wasn't as tight, but yeah. Well, yeah. No, you're right. Some of them were, like, really hard to sing over, aren't they? Yeah, some of them are pretty mad.

But, yeah, I just, I just want stuff to be catchy, but, like, fun to play. Yeah. I always find it, it's like, they're always fun to play, aren't they? I think, I think that, like, the way. You know, Josh explains all this A, B, theory and stuff like that. Because I'm not a massive theory person. I just think of them as they feel sick to play. Like, almost every riff that's a Mellev riff that you've written,

they all feel so good to play. Like the one we just played there, like, just pretty much all of them. I don't think there's any many awkward ones. No, I guess, like, the awkward ones are, like, buried in, like, track nine. Yeah. Yeah. Just like once you've recorded them, it's like never really sees the light day again.

Yeah. So, so Con, you're kind of like, that's kind of like your filter, right? You'll bring him some risk for songs and hey, this feels good. This is fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that when I hear a riff, you know, when you teach me how to play out, it makes me more excited. Yeah. So like when I was learning some stuff off the new record and like we'd sit down and we go through it and then at end I'm like smiling and I'm like yeah that's actually sick yeah I think that it's the same for it well I don't know if it's just me or if it's the same for everyone but you you first hear a riff from a surface as a listener listening in and you don't really understand the intricacies of that riff the first couple of times yeah it was like the first time I listened to Fallujah and what what's that record called flesh prevails yeah when we

told of them and you know I watched I watched I watched I them live and I just didn't understand the music because it was hard for my brain to process it and then I went and I spanned the record a few times on some long drives on that tour and then I was like this is actually incredible yeah because like you miss all the extra intricate notes and what you thought was the riff has got like 16 more notes in that riff yeah like Scott cast there's these incredible guitarist and yeah just like oh my god it would and that's what I'm saying like when Josh writes a riff and we're recording it we stick on the record and i come to learn my part of it whether it's the main or the harmony or

whatever and i get into it it's just like so much more intricate than the surface level of looking at that riff and then that's when you're like oh my god this is not only sick that you understand like every note being played yeah but the feel it gives you when you're playing it yeah it's just like this is sick this is sick yeah hell yeah man thanks you're just fucking riping dude that's not true there in it yeah well i hope so yeah and then like you Even like the fast riffs like in OBG that's like my favorite riff to play live because it's literally like just chugging two three four yeah yeah holy crap that's like that's a riff and it's fast big circle pit moment and you've got you you've got every element of what is a sick

riff to me in there because you've got your chugs and you've got your triplets your chugs your chugs your fast bit you've got your nice slides yeah and it just everything together and it repeats and you're just like this is sick yeah comes back nice as well yeah it comes back super nice and then yeah it's like got a big chorus and then it comes straight back into that riff again it's just like yeah yeah yeah we used to like well i still do to be fair it's like when i write a demo like do think more about the vocals obviously these days and like putting verse parts or whatever you know to like make it a song yeah but generally like every riff would have like a bit where the crowd would participate

do I mean so if it's a fast riff I want it to make you want a circle pit yeah if it's like you know what I mean if it's half time I want it to be bouncing do I mean if it's a breakdown it needs to be an obvious breakdown where you're gonna march do I mean it's like every

part like whether it's a side to side or like a two step or whatever you know it's like I want each part of the song not necessarily everyone is going to do it but you could do it You could mosh through the whole set, you know what I mean, if you wanted to. Or if it's a chorus, I want it to be like anthemic.

So, you know, it's like a big sing-along. Then everyone can get involved. You can crowd surf. You can get on your main shoulders and like sing it. I mean, I just want to every time I just think of like a huge festival crowd, is it a wall of death? Is it the circle pit around the sound tower? Is it a million people crowd surfing, do I mean?

Or is it like a two-step and there's just like tons of people in the sound tower? in a tiny room like going at it you know i mean it's like that's what i want or that's what i'm envision in my head when i'm like writing a song what was the uh what was the work in title of on broken glass was it festival banger which one's festival banger that were keep you distance oh there you go yeah festival like that was the working title yeah yeah festival banger well look what happened so everything's like congratulations yeah yeah it works yeah everything's written with like the the intention like you were saying so it's like hard bits

with that I just wanted like the intro you know like if you're massive festival you just came out it's like yeah it's like

you get everyone cheering and then I play it wrong but like it builds like nice you know I mean and there's like a sing-along bit and then keep your test

you know what I mean it's like just everyone do da da da sphink of like corn at love woodstock and that. Don't know what I mean?

It's just like everyone jumping. That's like all I wanted. You know? Yeah, that's awesome, man. One of the most iconic moments in, uh, in heavy music, dude. Yeah, that's it. It's just like waves, in it. It's just fucking waves, dude.

It's kind of upsetting that there'll probably never be a gig as good as that. Probably not, dude. Way too much health and safety. You need at least 300,000 people out of their minds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where I've got like this huge nostalgia thing with them, because that's what we grew up. on right yeah like that's prime time me getting into getting into music just in just in general like obviously just random pop stuff before them but when I hit like my early teens it was like limp biscuit

I've still got the chocolate starfish and the hot dog flavored war original CD yeah I've still got linking park hybrid theory original like that kind of stuff it would like burn onto tapes my my older brother is year older than me he'd like bring him and he'd be like check this out hate being perseverance and stuff like that nice and I've got this huge nostalgia thing now where I'd love to just do a show or a festival where everyone just handed the phone in I know tool did one recently where you had to put your phone in a bag but you could yeah it's like what comedy shows do now when yeah put it in a bag yeah but I'd love it because if you look at like like Woodstock and then like Evanesson's playing rockham ring and there's no

phone there's no phones everyone's just living in the moment no one like I think people in crowds nowadays are too scared to do something crazy because they know it will be immortalized forever. Yeah. And there's definitely an element of... I think about that. Yeah. I think about it in that way. And I just think that, you know, back then, kids were doing crazy shit like this.

It's immortalized forever because it's on a big camera. There's no one putting one in the face going, you're an idiot. Yeah. It's not like you'd be tagged a million times in that if you were that guy on that video. They wouldn't have seen this for 10 years, this video, probably. You might never have seen it. Yeah, it might never have seen it. But like now everyone, you look at a gig, now everyone is just phone.

You know what I mean? And then just like, I don't know, just saying, look at me, I am here. Rather than being like, I'm just going to go like crazy in the pit. It's weird, in it because like on the other hand, it's cool to see like videos of the crowd's perspective after you've played. Do I mean, oh, it sounded sick. It looked mental. Like people are like having such a good time. You know what does give me hope is that I've been going to shows and being like the old guy.

There's like this work, like like around here and where I'm from there having like the smaller shows. And there's like this resurgence of other genres and need these. These are kids. They're like 16, 15. I'm like the old guy. Yeah, yeah. Borderline creepy there. But what I was very surprised at was the people that were on their phones like in between bands were.

me and some of my friends. Ah. Everyone that was in high school were just watching the bands. Yeah, yeah. I was like, gave me like a little like, oh shit, I thought I knew. It gave me like a little bit of hope there. It's pretty cool. And then the bands were over. Then everyone went outside and people were just

talking. Yeah, that's sick. Talking. I was like, huh, I wonder where this is going. I wonder where it's going. Yeah. But then, but then you go to like one of our shows, you were to our shows, like, the phones just, yeah. Yeah. I was like, I wonder, I wonder where it's going, you know. I wonder if we're going to reach a point where everyone's so oversaturated with just staring at the screen that it's going to go full 180 and people are going to get brick phones and start

moshing. Whenever we never really know where anything's going to go, you know. Yeah, I think there's like, I've heard like recently there's like groups of young, like, trendy kids or whatever and they're like refusing to have iPhones and shit. Do you know what I mean? Like back on the Motorola flips and that. That's cool. That's so hipster.

Yeah, it's like the most hip thing ever. Monty, cannot borrow your flip phone. I mean, do overnight, dude, overnight people were wearing baggy pants. Yeah, I was like,

oh shit, all my pants in my closet is now just useless if you want a little good trans. I'm like, oh shit, people were wearing what I was wearing

what I was wearing in high school was baggy, baggy dickies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should have kept those pants. It comes. It comes back around like every 10, 15 years. Everything goes crazy.

Everything comes back around. It'll be skinny again soon. Yeah, yeah. That's it. Well, yeah, the, uh, con, at least for you, the dad bought Zent. That's it. So, it's pretty sick. You're in, dude.

I'm in. But, but, but in 15 years, you might, you might got a fucking new trim it up. I'll be a granddad by then. Yeah, you were. Yeah. I'll be on me last legs. How do you, gone? 34.

34, okay, cool. Nice. Yeah, I'm the granddad of the band. Yeah, granddad. Yeah, look over and make sure no one's fucking up. Yeah. Nah, they all look at me. Oh, he's fucked up again, granddad's here long.

How are you guys, how are you guys on time? Do you guys, do you guys get back to the venue? To be fair, no. What time is it? Counterparts will have only just got some stuff on the stage, I would have thought. We usually sound check about five. Five? Okay, great. I do have a couple more questions, but we have hit an hour and a half, but I have a few more questions.

Yeah, I'm chilling, aren't we really? Let's do, yeah, let's hear about the Ibanez and the Jackson. Yeah, all right, sick, yeah. What's this thing? This is the first custom shop that I've got off Ibanez. It's made in LA. Congratulations. Shout out to Tyler.

Bosing. But yeah, literally, I got the opportunity to get one. I just always wanted a reverse headstock but obviously being left-handed there's limits to what you can get even if you are endorsed like I've been as they do a couple of models in left-handed

so you know when I got to choose before it'd be like you can have this one that's like $400 or this one that's like $2,000 so obviously there's no in between yeah so there's no in between but obviously you go for the higher one I mean, of course. So I just wanted to make something that was easier for me to travel with,

easier to play live, like all the left-handed guitars that they do at the minute all have a Floyd, which is fine, but I don't really use it. So there's not really much point in me having it. So I just opted for a fixed bridge. Don't really need the tone knob. So I got rid of that, like most people do these days, to be honest. Reverse headstock, got the locking tuners. and I based it on the Squire Strat

that my dad bought me when I was like seven so it was a sunburst with the white pick card you know, Squire and I just wanted to like pay homage to myself as like starting off really as a guitarist, you know, I've always like

being a fan of Ibanez guitars and you know, now I play for them and I've got my own custom like one of one I was like oh it's like it's like a full circle moment for me a little bit, you know. But yeah, it's fairly standard, simple stuff, really.

Like, I've got DiMazio Illuminator in the bridge and a liqueifier in the neck. So this one's like way warmer and just sounds a bit nicer really for like cleaner stuff and then, you know, if you want to get some like Jimi Hendrick stuff going.

Hell yeah. But yeah, a hogany body, ash top, maple neck the rosewood fret board fairly fairly standard really I just wanted it to be

I just wanted it to work like conversation earlier you know it's like I need to eliminate all the problems that I have with Floyd's and you know like you're up and down

in the air all the time on planes and stuff so they warp you know like the necks a warp of quite a lot and stuff like that sometimes and having a fixed bridge you just kind of, it's easier to solve, you know?

Yeah. I can just like tighten the trust rod and it's not going to pull it all out of tune. And I don't know, it's way quicker to change all my strings and stuff, you know, because we don't have text or anything. So it's like I want it to be five minute, ten minute job really, you know, and it stays in tune really, really well. Yeah, I absolutely love it. It's pieces. It's beautiful, man.

Yeah, thank you. It's kind of funny how usually like it's backwards, like, like you're like, you're like, You're like the Ripper, but you have the fixed bridge. Yeah. Like keeping it down, he has the, oh, Floyd Rose. It's kind of funny. Yeah, you like the Floyd Rose. I just never played, well, actually, I own one guitar that doesn't have a Floyd on.

And that's a Baritone warrior that I got on the last tour. Nice. Yeah, I'm just going to say, don't you think it's hilarious how archaic it is that we've got computers and cables and, you know, everything now is digital? But we still play a piece of wood. Yeah. With wire. Yeah. We're playing wire,

wire strings on a piece of wood. It is mad that, actually, isn't it? It's crazy, you know? I'll just thought about it then. Yeah, wow.

That's true. Aalkeic. They've not really changed that much on the guitars. They're just dude nicer woods now. Yeah, yeah. You can have a funny color. Gold stuff.

Guitar's had not changed. No. No. It's crazy. Yeah. And I actually got right, right before we get into, into your Jackson.

I got this from you. I was like, oh, shit. Like, uh, I'm not sure. if you still backed this, but since everything is going, like, like the digital, as far as the amps, you, like, active pickups aren't really necessary anymore. And, and I got that from you.

Yeah. So I've actually got active in this. Now, but then I saw you with the EMGs. So what I was saying on, I did a gear talk a couple of years ago. That's probably, you got it from a video on YouTube where I was just saying, like, it's a digital world now and you can just change your gain on your input and things like that so yeah you don't really need like the low end um or that high high end or whatever your actives give you emg's uh these are 821 and 85 i think and it just gives you a nice like mid boost clarity makes a bit more aggressive you can do i used to do an 18 volt mod on my emgs when i had them 10 years ago oh wow yeah so you run it two batteries in um series or whatever um but yeah

I just think that you don't necessarily need active pickups when you're using digital stuff. Because you can just EQ it to whatever you want. You can make it sound good. Yeah, that's true. Another thing is, is active pickups are a lot more high gain output, like a lot hotter. So you might, like, I have to roll mine back quite a lot on my input. When I was using 6505, I used to use Seymour Duncan invaders. Because they were like the highest output, passive pickups I could get.

and they sounded so beefy. But when I've played, my Charvel Model 6 has actually got an invader in it. When I put it into a quad, it's just too high. The output's crazy. So I have to roll it back a lot. I don't really know to be honest.

This is the first guitar I've had in 10 years with the MGs in it. And I actually really enjoy them. I think it's definitely making my pinchers come out nicer. Okay. Because my string gauge is really high. I play 13 to 62. and I've got a wound G on there as well. And I'm trying to do pinches and stuff on the G

and really tight. Okay. Sometimes I'm struggling to get my pinches in. But since I got the EMGs, I'm a lot far. So maybe I take back what I said, you don't need it. I think that maybe you just...

Roll on in. You know. Same as the digital campers. Yeah. Yeah. I did never have one. Yeah, exactly. But I just think it's all situational,

in it, whatever works best for you. I only use one pickup anyway. I never touch this one. So, yeah, that's it really. And this is my Jackson soloist. This is one that's made in Corona, California. Nice. This is the newer model, though.

It's not, I can't remember the exact model number, but they did one before this that I had a black one. And this is the newer model, and this is a lot better. That's great, man. This is all stainless steel, all the hardware, and I think the stainless steel frets as well, which is really sick but this is the neck through and i don't know if you can see it but i put five springs in the back you gotta have five springs dude you have to my strings drop me uh yeah

30 to 62s i honestly i couldn't tell you the specs of this guitar but i like it's my favorite one sick and i love the green this is like my favorite color anyone uh anyone who knows me knows i love green always in green but yeah this one's just a workhorse it's sick and i've started to reliccate it because it just got smashed up on the flight over here so i thought i've got tim tim hillya brook from jackson's going to see this and he's going to be like what the fuck but i dragged this guitar across the ground the other day yeah he's going to be like no more for you yeah you know what i've um yeah i've got about the 13 guitars um and it's like mj series and u s u s u sa series and they're all incredible jackson look after me so well sick man it's just a great company to play for do you know what it's my dream

it's literally a dream come true for me it sounds quite sad to an outsider but you'll understand it because you play guitar the big deal man you literally start off playing guitar you look at these guitar magazines and you're like i wish i could have that yeah and then the the craziest do you know what the craziest bit about it is when you sort of like five between five and eight years into your career and you sort of getting bigger and you're doing well and you approach companies and you say can you help me out they don't care you don't yeah they literally don't care it's fine and that's the worst bit for me is i wish jackson's a lot better now they're helping out younger artists and things like that but when i was coming up through you know i'd reach out to companies please can you

help me out can you buy one buy one here's 50% discount which is amazing 50% i didn't have any money yeah i literally didn't have a you know when you're a great deal but I'm still broke yeah yeah the sacrifices that you have to make to be in a full-time touring band you can't hold down a normal job you don't get any money you don't have any you paying you rent and your bills while you're gone for five weeks and you're not making any money for that five weeks and you get back you broke and it's just like I can't afford a guitar at half price so but but now obviously we've got a lot bigger and and I get looked after and everything I just get sort of out with what what I need and

Just a fantastic company to play for since Tim Hilliabook, Brooke joined. Because I think, you know, being an artist in the US, it's fantastic. You've got like Mike Tempester at Jackson and all the OGs and everything. And you get looked after. But I think England, it's a bit like misk in terms of endorsements. So like Ibanez is through like headstock, which is just an Ibanez distribution. company yeah things are through don't really have a so it's not we don't really have like direct contact and since um fender bought jackson and fender have got a UK um head office oh yeah

um you know since that all happened then things have got so much better for you know that's awesome anything about that but before then it was actually really hard to get anything um or to get any support from any companies oh wow and i think still like uh ESP is yeah It's really hard in the UK to get any sort of anything going because they just don't have the facilities to support you. So now, you know, Jackson's got a thing and you're in touch with Tyler over here. Yeah, I've like become more familiar with the American side of Ibanez and stuff like that, which has helped me out loads, to be honest. And like when guitars have been like lost on airports on flights over here and stuff like that, like they sent me, you know, like a spare out or whatever. just so I can play the shows until these ones turn back up and stuff like that so

that's cool man it's like but yeah you're right there's not really anyone in England there's like fen who works for Lainey and he's sort of like coupled with ibanez in the UK he's like a middleman yeah but he's like so he's like he's like he's like he was a guy who was like got me this custom really he was he was like look i'm going to the ibanez meet we have to like show who our artists are and like from my points in the world and like tell him why they should support these artists and stuff. So he was like really at my back about that sort of thing. And then yeah, they came through and made me this amazing guitar.

So do I mean, now I'm in touch with them. It's a way easier. And I can text Tyler like whenever, you know. Yeah. But yeah, for Jackson, it's a lot better in the UK. It's amazing now. And I've got 14 guitars and it's like a dream come true. Like I was saying, when I was a kid, I always dreamt of just playing.

for Jackson, never mind getting a free one. And now, you know, we're talking about doing my own custom shop. Nice. So I'm not showing it's going to happen, but that's going to be sick. Yeah. That be rad, man. So, yeah. You got to come down to a corona and check out the shop.

I know, yeah. Be awesome. I said to Tim, I'd come this time, but we've got a side show tomorrow now, aren't we? Yeah. We're playing an extra show tomorrow. Oh, we're at Bakersfield. Oh shit. Yeah, you're out there. Yeah. It's way out there, man. Yeah. Yeah, good few hours.

So we're playing a side show. Otherwise, I had some plans to go and, you know, visit. Where's the actual Jackson custom shop? It's in there. Is it Nashville or I don't remember? They got one in Arizona. Yeah, they got one in Arizona. Because that's where Mike Shannon came that time, didn't he? When we played. That's it. That's it. Yeah, Arizona. Mike Shannon, legend. The legend. He's a fucking legend. all around that warehouse and corona talk about Mike Shannon yeah he's a fucking

legend still still man yeah yeah well cool anything um is there anything that you guys want want out there people that uh just I mean the new album's coming sick soon soon I can't say any more than that but um yeah this time round sorry no gone I was just going to say this time round we took a completely different approach to to write in the record um we flew out here well first of all we got we've been working with josh wilbur he helped produce the album oh nice josh wilbur flew over to the uk on two separate occasions for a week uh we did a lot of writing with him and what was great about this album is um we've got so many ideas collectively we all collectively pitch in to write the lyrics we it's

like a huge group decision on everything. Josh writes all the riffs. But then we all sit and we compile things and, you know, which is bound to to start arguments. So, you know, everyone in the band's such a big personality should get your point across or even heard. And because we rip each other so hard, it became a really like volatile space when we were writing

that was almost becoming quite a lot of a chore. So we'd all get together. we'd be like oh we've got these ideas what do you think to this vocal bit and like will you just be like nah like literally he'd turn up late to the to the room we will have been there two hours we've nailed it we've tracked it all we've got it all down hit play nah and you're like well what don't you like about it and is you know and then someone comes out with well i just don't like it i don't have to tell you what i don't like about it then it became like this big back and forth of well if you got if you got a better idea let's hear it i ain't got out and then you we reached this

stalemate of writing where so we got josh wilber in the pump part and he was amazing because he just became this mediator yeah he was good that actually sound well just hold on to that or that actually sounds sick do you want to get in and try it let's just try it and and he gave everyone in the band an opportunity to voice their ideas yeah and we actually heard them rather than getting shut down straight away. And it's really brought out the best in everyone. Like everything on the new record is such a huge step up.

The vocals, the melodies, the guitar, the drums, everything's fantastic. And I just can't wait for everyone to hear the new record. It's amazing. Yeah, it's going to be sick. It's such a step up from a Lev. It's really cool. Yeah. Is there any timeframe or just keep

Oh, I can't say. I can't say. Just keep jamming. Yeah. The single the next single comes out in a couple of weeks. So, like, while we're on this tour. Oh, wow. Yeah. You guys got your own warehouse, huh?

Yeah, yeah. So that's where Josh came, like, we've got... Yeah, it came down there. We do all the, like, MLVLTD, like, stuff out of there. It's, uh, we've got the practice room in there, all set up. And then there's, like, the merch warehouse bit, uh, where they send all the stuff out and, like, take orders and stuff. And then upstairs, there's a little studio space. So that's, like, where we're out.

like the demos and I'm generally just in there every day riffing when we're at home. Chang Treater is like a bit of a nine to five. Do I mean? So it's like going to the office sort of thing. Go to the riff office. Yeah, go to the riff office. Which is sick, do I mean? I'm very grateful to just be able to do that.

Do you know what I mean? But yeah, that's where we like did it all with Wilbur. He came in and like took over the workspace and we were just like, look, these are the demos and he was like, right, you know, dive into him and he's like, I had this idea or like this bit's sick or like I hate this bit I mean or whatever I'm like that's my favorite bit

he's like no not going to work man drags it to pin yeah yeah no no it was good he like definitely like gave us a lot of freedom with it it wasn't like

you know he was like this is the way it's gonna be it was like none of that at all it was you know you got to know how our band works and who we are as people and how like

our sound or whatever or what we were trying to put across and he definitely like took all of that on board and like just tweaked it to like make it better rather than being like this is how it's going to sound you know it's like he wanted to make our record not we were just able to keep it very malevolence weren't we yeah everything that we stand for and everything that we've sort of like built up as our brand and our music over the years we just he weren't like oh we're going to do it this way this is my way he just like we managed to keep

it just like ah it's us beautiful it's just a representation of us in every way but better this time yeah yeah yeah yeah way more refined there's some major bangers on this record looking forward to hearing it yeah yeah and after hearing and also people listening watching after hearing how uh you know i could hear the history of your band so it's uh i'm looking for what you guys do next yeah yeah nice well man now we're very we're looking forward to it a lot of Hopefully it'll be well received. You know, there's always that bit of nerves, didn't they? Before you put a record out and you're like, I think it's sick,

but is everyone else going to think it's sick? I'm not nervous at all. It is sick. I'm just telling you now it is sick. And when it comes out, if you don't like it, you don't like metal. Literally, that's it. That's the bottom line. If you don't like it, you do not like heavy music.

That is, that has to be put out somewhere. If you don't like it, you like metal. So, yeah, yeah. If you don't like it, you don't like metal. So, yeah, what's it? There you go. Or maybe you could say, if you don't like it, you're a fucking pussy. That same thing, isn't it?

Yeah. That too. To be honest, I am holding my pee. Yeah. I'm older, so the bladder is not as strong. Same here. I have to stumble to toilet. Yeah, where can people find you guys?

Where do you want people to go? YouTube, Instagram, like wherever, malevolence riff on Instagram and think it's the same on YouTube same on everywhere really Spotify just malevolence you know and Apple music all of the anything all the major LTTD.com yeah that's it cool yeah yeah thank you for being here and I was honored to be in your band for our 45 minutes yeah thank you for ripping I appreciate me honor just for having us hell yeah anytime all right everyone that's it later

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