What’s been going on with The Death of Her Money since the release of ‘Spirit of the Stairwell’ in 2008? What have been the highlights / lowlights, and have you encountered any challenges or setbacks along the way?
Since our last album we spent a good part of a year promoting that record as much as our daily lives could let us, putting little tours together ourselves all around the UK and Ireland, getting arrested crossing the Irish border, involved in car crashes in Belfast and getting laughed at in customs for wearing un-savoury body art that just appeared from being passed out the night before.
It was also a very creative period where we wrote and recorded the new album, we released a split CD with a band from Russia called “HELGA”, we’re almost at the stage of having a third album written too.
Highlights were playing with so many great bands and meeting so many great people along the way, our album being voted in the top 75 of 08 in this magazine was never expected and playing at Camden Underworld for the first time with “This Will Destroy You!” was a good experience for us.
There were some downsides too, like losing the entire album sessions and with label problems for this release were very hard to take, we also lost our original bass player due to a difference of opinions and his lack of desire, we felt we needed someone who was going to help us progress musically, to give more commitment and to be emotionally involved with the reason we were doing this, it’s supposed to be about having fun so it was not fair to drag someone around the country who wasn’t enjoying himself. Having said that, all these negatives turned into positive’s with a little patience, it was a very positive thing for us that we got a bass player who was ideal for this band in every way.
How did the album recordings come to be deleted and later recovered? Was there a point when you thought you’d lost them for good, and if so, how did that make you feel?
We went into the studio on the last day to do the final mix and we sat there on the sofa with our head’s in our hands when we were told the hardrive had blown and malfunctioned, at that point for me, the thought of never being able to hear what we’d been working on again was intensely sad, also the thought of having to re-record the whole thing again filled me with a desire to quit.
The engineers were on the phone all that day and spoke to everyone they could possibly think of who might be able to help, we booked the studio time to re-record the album for a few months later but a week later I had a call and fortunately they’d came across a guy who specialised in data loss and he seemed very confident he could recover almost all the files. The whole process took around 300 hours of non stop backing up, all the computers in the studio had to be left running for that entire time and if there was a power cut it was back to square one.
In the end all we had lost was one ride cymbal track that wasn’t in the final mix anyway.
When it came to writing the album, did you set out with a clear vision of what you wanted to achieve? And how do you view the album in relation to your previous releases?
We have never had a clear vision of how we want our songs to materialise, I think this album is more focused and mature than the last, and even though I think it’s heavier in a more obvious way than the last one, I do think the listener will need a few plays before they get their head around it, there’s more free-form moments on this album too.
The writing process is still the same as ever though, very quick and spontaneous, the only approach we are aware of is that we don’t think too much about it, the songs should write themselves, we try to be as pure as possible, there are rough edges in places and we keep it that way,
What’s the meaning behind the decidedly un-metal album title ‘You Are Loved’? More generally, what themes or concepts does the album address?
Throughout lies a sympathetic viewpoint of the idea of being immortal, all themes are pretty loose though. I watched the Werner Herzog version of Nosferatu and felt this huge sense of pity for this character. He had this sense of compassion Vs a hunger that controls him, the life being sucked out of someone immortal, for him the only positive change in his life could be death, living forever with the envy of having something he can’t have. There are lines that reference these things and lines that stray elsewhere. Suffocation within people’s lives who follow the government approved way of living, how we are sold these idea’s of happiness and product’s that fill and clog our supposed empty lives.
The title for the album is more of a question that has been disguised by re-arranging the words, finding the parallels of meaning, very un-metal, more art wank, haha.
What effect (if any) does your geographical location and surroundings have on the music you create?
I’m not sure if it makes any difference at all, we have our own ways of finding inspiration, Newport is not a pretty place and the people can be worse sometimes but I need to be happy to write music, I can’t do it if I’m down because you need motivation, and a lack of motivation can be the reason people can feel trapped and depressed sometimes.
What are your plans for the future, and do you have any long-term hopes or aspirations for the band?
We know this is near impossible to make a living out of and we don’t fool around with that idea, we just wanna make good music and enjoy ourselves as much as we can, at the same time I want to work harder than ever and we want to make sure our third album is the best thing we could possibly make happen, we want to experiment more and more with what we have. In the more near future we plan to tour Europe, we haven’t been yet and are desperate to make this happen. We’re also planning to tour Russia as we speak, then we’ll tour the UK and Ireland again later in the year.
Interview by Mike Kemp.
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