Your debut album’s out on the eleventh of February – what’s your favourite track on the album?
There are a couple on there that I really like. The first track I wrote with the band is called Save The World, and it’s a bit of an anthemic beast – it’s the last track on the album, and it just incorporates everything that we’re all about as a band.
Was it a good experience writing and recording the album?
Yeah – I joined after about four tracks had already been written so I wasn’t there from the very start but it was still a great experience for me. I’m just really looking forward to seeing what people think of the songs and how they react to them – we’re all really excited to just get the album out there and to see where it goes. The album’s been delayed for a couple of years so it’ll just be a relief to finally get it out there!
What’s your favourite song to play live?
We haven’t actually had the chance to play many of the songs from the album live, so I’m just really looking forward to playing those. At the moment, my favourite is probably Praying For Silence. I just get to go nuts on the guitar, which is always nice!
You guys have had a few singles hit the heights of the charts recently – how does that feel?
It’s crazy, especially because none of us ever expected it! I joined during the campaign for Sunlight, which became a bit of a summer anthem for us, so that was obviously really exciting. I think a lot of it is just down to YouTube, with videos going viral and fans sharing our songs on social networking sites, and everything just came together really nicely for us. When the album’s out we’ll hopefully get the chance to beat our chart positions from before.
Who inspires you as a guitarist?
It’s quite strange actually, because I’m from a rootsy blues-rock background; I love bands like Led Zeppelin and Hendrix and Metallica, so when I was asked to join Modestep I just thought to myself ‘Shit, I need to learn to play rock guitar!’. I just got on YouTube and started watching loads of rockers and learning loads of techniques from the Internet, which really helped. At heart I’m a blues guy, but I do love all my rock stuff.
Do you prefer playing festivals or your own headline shows?
I’m not sure that I could choose between them to be honest. Our headline shows are great, purely because there are no rules – we can mix up the setlist and we get to play with things like flamethrowers and lasers, which is always pretty cool. At festivals it’s always great for the crowd, but we’re often limited to half an hour sets and a ten minute changeover, which is usually pretty manic. We’re just allowed to go a little bit more nuts at our own shows.
What’s the best thing about playing live?
Hmmm… For me personally the funny part is just looking out at the crowd and seeing people punching eachother in the face! Modestep shows are slowly turning into rock/metal shows, so there are mosh pits and circle pits and all sorts of crazy things like that. We don’t incite any of it, and when you’re rocking out on stage you can become kind of oblivious to it all, but if you take a second to just stare at the crowd you just see people punching their friends in the face (in a good way, not a violent way!). It’s just in the way that people do at rock shows, there’s no intent or danger behind it. I just love the energy that you get, and people singing the tunes back is always crazy. As long as people are having a good time it’s all good!
What’s the best gig you’ve ever played?
I think all of us would agree that our best ever gig was at Download Festival 2011. It was actually my first ever gig with the band, and I’d only had about five days to practice before the festival – we got there and did a couple of interviews, and one of the interviewers actually said to us ‘Yeah, you know you guys are gonna go down like a bag of shit, right?’… Not exactly a great confidence boost! The thing is though, as soon as we stepped on stage it just went off. It was absolute carnage, the crowd really went for it – there was a stage invasion, people were dancing around on the stage, it was mad! So yeah, I’d say that our best ever gig was at Download 2011.
Describe yourself in three words?
Energetic, muscular and bloody.
