It’s odd to see the of Anti-Clone wearing a friendly face, and being perhaps the most open band I got together with over the weekend when we’ve seen them decimate stages with their mammoth nu-metal attack. Nevertheless, here they are in conversation.
What are you guys thinking of Amplified so far?
It’s been good despite the weather I think. The setup itself is really cool and the main stage sound is pretty damn good! Being out the front is cracking so they’ve done a really good job with that. It’s been a shame that they’ve been forced to make changes but the fact that they had a contingency plan in place speaks volumes from the organisational aspect. They’ve been dealt an unlucky hand with the weather but they definitely pulled it together.
Are you sticking around for the whole weekend?
No we’re only around for the day but we’re here this evening so we’ll have a couple bevvies. I’ll be on my gypo-cider haha! I’m not sure how politically correct that is but basically I’ll be walking around the campsite saying “You got a quid mate?”.
Are you going to see any other bands?
Yeah, obviously we’ll be about after we play so we’ll definitely be catching Krysthla especially after seeing them at Bloodstock. I think they had a bit of trouble with their gear that time so hopefully they’ll be fine this time. I’d quite like to see High Hopes as well and I think Heck are supposed to be playing today but they may have swapped with As Lions. I’ll be seeing one of them anyways and I’ll watch Asteroid Boys too, I know Conor’s looking forward to them. Going back to the first question, what’s good about this is there’s bands everywhere you turn which makes it a ton easier, for example when we arrived Outright Resistance were playing and they were fucking incredible.
They’re bloody good aren’t they?
Yeah, we saw them a few years ago when they were a much younger band but they’re doing so well.
As a band, what’s the plan for the rest of the year?
Well we’re playing Macmillan Fest in September where we’re headlining a stage. That’ll be fucking amazing. We’re trying to organise another music video though I won’t say which song but it’s in the process and it’s looking super creepy and pretty out there. We took the pill and we went down that route so that’s gonna be an interesting one. The storyboard is very cult-like in the literal sense which is probably the best way of explaining it. We all had a meeting with our director who does all our videos and he pulled all our ideas together. It’s still in the pre-production stage at the moment but it’s looking good!
When do you reckon that’ll be out?
We’re not too sure at the moment. We were really aiming to be shooting it in the next few months but it’s looking like it’ll be the end of this year maybe the beginning of next year. There are no confirmed dates at the moment so watch this space!
More broadly, where do you want to see Anti-Clone go in the next few years?
We wanna go all over the world haha! It’s been a while since we played abroad so we’d like to do that, we’ve just come off a mini tour as well so to be able to play more of those would be great. We’re aiming for Bloodstock again and and even Reading and Leeds and all those festivals. We’ll play for anyone that’ll have us really! We just wanna play and get out there, you know, and personally I just want more people to see us. I don’t think our live show is too terrible! We do get up to some shit…
And from your own discography, where would you point people to go to for them to best understand the band?
Well we only have the two releases so far; the EP and the album which came out last year… it’s quite an interesting question actually. Considering it’s only an album and an EP though I would probably point most new listeners to both releases. Obviously there’s some bangers on Hands Sewn Together which will give people an idea of what we play so that’s worth a listen but The Root Of Man will probably show people where we’re at now because there definitely is evolution and growth between the two. It’s a lot darker, but I would say to check the both out. Both releases give an idea of where we’ve been and where we’re going.
The next album is getting pieced together and I don’t want to say we’ve found our sound but we haven’t strayed from the sound of the last two releases. It’s definitely being refined on this new release, it’s not that we’re not experimenting or that we’re just staying with what we’ve got, we need to make it tighter and we’re always adding new elements. We’ve played a lot more with electronics and samples and the band’s been going for six years now so we’re definitely on a learning curve in trying to keep it interesting for both the fans and us.
In an answer to your question though, I’d point new listeners to both the album and the EP. While the album is more recent, the EP is still important. Most of what we’re playing today is from the album.
What’s the key message you want to get across in both your live shows and recorded music?
With the live show we’ve been progressing a lot to the point where it’s just balls-to-the-wall and we want people seeing us to have fun and we obviously want to have fun with it too. People should mosh your ass off and lose themselves because the live show is very immersive. For each of us in the band, the live show is a very different experience between us onstage, for me personally it’s about releasing rage and when you put the masks on we lose our everyday selves and out come our alter-egos. It’s really weird because you forget everything before and you begin something new so that’s what the live show is for us. In of how the crowd feels, I hope it’s the same! When we start I think a lot of people are quite confused. On the mini tour we’ve just done I think a lot of people aren’t sure what to think of it in the first song but as the set goes on I think they start to understand whatever it is they understand. Maybe that it’s heavy?
For the EP especially, the message to me was more to do with anti-conformity from a religious aspect but the album touches on a lot of different themes across the album, a lot of it is still “do your own thing and be your own person”. I mean it’s in the name, Anti-Clone! Mosh the fuck out though! That’s what we’re hoping for later on today.
And lastly, with The Rolling Stones “Top Metal Albums” list going around at the moment, what are a few albums you’d put together as a band to create your own “Top Metal Albums” list?
Ahh, well it’s very different for everyone really, there’s five of us in the band and for Peter, he’s an insanely nu-metal oriented fellow. Lam is very much into post-hardcore, Drew is really into his proggy, tech-metal stuff like A Perfect Circle while Conor is a very different beast entirely whose into everything. Mike and Conor share a lot of the much heavier stuff like deathcore. That is everything to him and he’s pushing that influence increasingly on the music. Mike definitely has the heaviest taste for sure, if the vocals can go lower than the bass then he loves it! Mark Poida, the current singer of Aversions Crown, was in a band before and there was this one song called “God’s Mouth” or something where the vocals drop an octave below the bass at the end of the song. It’s just pure filth and I love it!
If we’re going for straight up fucking classic metal albums we go back to Iowa again and again and again. There’s a few of us in the band where if we’re driving some distance and we want something to just put on because no one can think of what to listen to, Iowa goes on. It’s such a fucking solid album. The next go-to album for us is Exoplanet by The Contortionist. Both of those albums have pretty much lived in my car for the past two years now. They’re no longer my possession, everyone needs them! As a band, for us to put together an album of our favourite bands would be really difficult with all our different music tastes. I think Iowa is the safe bet though.
I think I might prefer the self-titled one personally… just about.
Yeah, Slipknot is really good but when you get into “People = Shit” AAAAARRRGHHH! Then there’s “My Plague” and “Disasterpiece” and the intro to “Heretic Anthem” too. IOWAAAAA!!
Outright Resistance said that too!
Well we’ll have to go over and say well done!
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