SKYCLAD

This being your fourth album, do you think it will be harder to break into a new market (the U.S.) or will the experience be helpful? 

I think it helps, because we're a band that kind of matured over the years, like a cheese or a wine. When we did our first album, to be honest, we weren't really that sure of what we wanted to do. It's taken a few albums to find our direction. 

Is it hard to get the live sound just right, balancing the guitar and the violin and the keyboards and everything?

We had a few problems in the beginning, because the clubs we were playing were small and the PAs were shitty. But, the soundman we're using now is one of the best in the U.K. It's taken a while to get the pickups on the violin just right so we didn't get feedback from them, but it's not a problem any more. We have had a few nightmares in the past, though...(laughs) 

Will Skyclad be touring the U.S. with this album? 

We hope to. We've got our manager with us here right now and he's going around meeting all kinds of business people, trying to put a tour together, for October. We're mixing our follow-up album, our next album, in Providence, Rhode Island, so that should be released in the States around October. 

You've used Kevin Ridley as your Producer on all the albums so far. Will you continue with that relationship? 

Yeah, he's become really indispensable to the band. We've just completed our follow-up to Prince of the Poverty Line, which is our last one with Noise Records. If you decide to change labels, we'll try some different ideas, maybe use a different producer and engineer, but we'll still work with Kevin, he'll definitely be part of it. He's a great musician and he works really closely with the band, plus he comes from the same musical direction as the rest of us. It's great to have someone like that to work with who actually cares. 

How do you feel about the metal scene right now, both in the U.K. and abroad? 

I think there's a lot of bands following the fashions. I think there are some good bands that are trying different things, which is great, but I don't like to see bands copy other bands, and it really seems to be getting that way, especially in the U.K. There's a lot of British bands now that try to copy the bands here in the States, who are obviously the best at being Stateside bands. I don't think the world needs any copies of those bands. It's hard work to be different; it's much easier to play it safe. But that's not something we want to do with Skyclad; we'll never be about that, we don't want to follow trends at all. 

Do you still get a lot of letters from fans in the U.S., even though this is the first U.S. release since the late '80s?

Before the release of this LP, we were getting lots of letters from people who were buying the albums on import, tapes off friends, bootlegs, stuff like that. And from all over the world, from very remote countries, and that's really cool. We've gotten a lot of press from the States, and Australia as well. I think we must have quite a good underground following. 

What is the inspiration behind the lyrics to "The One-Piece Puzzle?" 

It's about how life is really, really difficult sometimes, you know. Life's a struggle, it's hard to get by. It's sort of a personal song for me, about the emotions I've had and things that have happened to me in the past year. 

How about "Civil War Dance?" 

"Civil War Dance" is for the politicians who don't really care about the working people and things like that, in the U.K. and everywhere else. It's basically saying that, if they don't start to take notice of the poor people, the homeless people, the unemployed people, the same thing could happen here that happened in the old Eastern Bloc countries, where people got sick of the way they were being forced to live and, they just turned around and said, 'No more.' With the atmosphere in the U.K. and Europe at the moment, people are just getting very disillusioned with the whole thing. There's a general theme running through the whole album of the homeless, the oppressed people. There's a songs about hard drugs, as well, and how people get lured into them when they've got not money and no hope and no future. Drugs seem like the answer when they're really just a one-way street to death. 

Do you see a big worldwide change coming, socially and politically speaking? 

I really hope there is because I don't think our society can last very much longer if it carries on the way it's going. That's why we write the lyrics that we do. It's like, okay, maybe we're not going to change the world, but we've got to try. We're only one, small band trying to speak out, but I think more people should. I just hope that the politicians and the people who actually have the power to make a change and make a difference, do so before it's too late. Maybe it's too late already. I sincerely hope not.