Here we go again… Last year we covered every band on the Hobgoblin New Blood and Jagermeister stages in the run-up to Bloodstock 2015. This year, we’re going one better and aim to have interviews from all the bands on those two stages as well as all of those on the SOPHIE stage prior to the event kicking off on August 11th. That’s almost 100 interviews to get online for you lucky people over the course of the next couple of weeks. I bloody love this job, but you lot owe me a beer at Catton Hall, right?
Thanks to all the bands who’ve taken the time to respond!
Kahtet – Hobgoblin New Blood stage, Sunday
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Salisbury, although there isn’t much of a scene there, so we consider Bournemouth to be our band home town.
How did you meet?
Matt and Ben are childhood friends who grew up listening to the same music and have been in bands together since their early teens. Wez asked Ben to his band, The Midnight Sun, in 2009, and they played together for a few years. A short while after The Midnight Sun decided to call it a day, Wez shared some new material he’d been working on with Ben, Ben played the songs to Matt, and Kahtet was born.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
About 4 years as Kahtet.
Where does the name of the band come from?
It’s based on a phrase from The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Read the books to find out what it means!
What are your influences – individually or as a band?
Bands like Tool, Mastodon and Meshuggah have undoubtedly had a big influence on our music. We can’t answer a question like this without mentioning The Contortionist as we’re pretty obsessed with them at the moment!
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We’re instrumental, which doesn’t make us unique, but not having a singer has freed us from writing songs with any sort of traditional verse/chorus structure. “Soundscapes” is certainly along the right lines.
What’s your live show like – why should the baying hordes troop over to the stage you’re playing on to watch you?
Our live show is a fucking journey! Being instrumental, we decided early on that it should be one piece of music rather than individual songs played in a standard start/stop fashion. We won’t give anything else away… You’ll have to come and check us out and experience it for yourself!
When/how did you find out you’d been selected to play at Bloodstock?
We entered the Bournemouth Bloodstock Metal 2 The Masses showcase and came out on top! The three gigs we played at The Anvil in Bournemouth were all incredible. It’s an experience that’ll be with us for a long time.
What sort of setlist can we expect?
A savage/pretty heavy/melodic weird/groovy cerebral adventure.
Which main stage band do you most hope you’re not clashing with so you can see them play?
Gojira followed by Mastodon is going to be mind-blowing. We already know that we’re playing on Sunday and nothing else is going to stop us watching those two bands!
What are you working on at the moment?
We’re finally in a position to record an EP and that’s top priority for us after Bloodstock. As with pretty much everything we do, we have a very ambitious plan, but the result should hopefully be epic.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done on tour?
No comment…
What advice would you give to a young band just starting out today?
Inevitably, you’ll write music that reflects your collective influences, but don’t try and sound like those bands. In an age where guitar tones can be ed from the internet and installed in to hardware, there are more and more bands that sound incredibly similar. Don’t be one of those bands!
If you could be part of any 3-band line-up who else would you have on the bill? One band above you and one below – a chance to plug a smaller, unsigned act!
If we could pick any two bands for a 3-band line-up, I think we’d put ourselves as the first band! Opening up for The Contortionist as main and Tool as headliners would be a dream come true for all of us.
What stage / time are you playing at Bloodstock (if you have your slot yet!)
We’re playing on the Hobgoblin New Blood stage on Sunday.
