Gnarly metallers BLOOD YOUTH have built up a reputation for loud guitars and even louder gigs. Returning with smash new single, “Iron Lung“, and news of a new tour which comes to Newcastle in September, the back end of 2021 looks like a busy one for the band. Damian Robinson caught up with Chris Pritchard to find out more.
Hey Chris, the new single, Iron Lung, is ferocious and a bit of a departure from your last release. Could you give us a hint at where the sound has come from?
Yeah sure, we’re often pushing our sound in different directions, and there’s a lot of new sounds on the album, so we wanted to cover all grounds on the first single. Iron lung really sets the course for what’s coming next from the band, so it’s a crucial song for us.
Is it a good indication of what we can expect from the album?
Year, it’s interesting as the song was written last minute and pretty much after the new album was written and demo’d. I’d say that this was written within an hour and just came naturally, as sometimes the best things do, and once we added the synths and the strings it became a real statement of the album and our progression.
That’ll be a heavy sounding album then?
Yeah, the intro to Iron Lung feels little like Machine Head and we wanted the riff to rely soley on the high hat, so it’s little things like that which make the difference sometimes. On the album we wanted to experiment with digital pads and electrons and modulation, so we have songs that are atmospheric and synth driven, as well as songs that have mad riffs and choppy structure changes. We don’t want to be predictable.
So maybe now the difficulty is replicating the sounds live? Do you know what the upcoming tour will sound like?
We’re playing Newcastle Student Union on September 18th which is a good time to see us as between then and now we’ll be doing all of the hard work of realising how to play the new material live. We have a new drummer, who’s amazing, and a few more suprises which we can’t reveal just yet, and we have a few weeks to really get fit and work out how to bring these to life naturually. But it’s all good, becuase as soon as we can, the next challenge will be pushing ourselves again. And that’s the way a good band should always do things; it’s about challenging yourself and keeping things fresh.
BLOOD YOUTH
LIVE DATES 2021
18.09 – Newcastle, Students Union