Spit Like This talk to eFestivals

As we were still nursing our tender heads and preparing for an evening with W.A.S.P., eFestivals sat down with London favourites Spit Like This to ask them exactly why they hold the proud record of being the only band to play all three Hard Rock Hell festivals.

Hello Spit Like This. What's the deal with you lot then?
Lord Zion [vocals]: Well a long time ago me and Vikki [Spit, bass] met and shared a lot of tastes and interests, and we decided to put a band together as she already played bass and I was looking for something else to do, and we put out some EP’s independently before we decided to put together a band that could actually play live. We found [Vile Gilez, drums] and we kind of went along as a five piece, and then as a four piece. We released some stuff that got in the shops, we got Cyndi [Rott, guitars] in 2006, got the album released and have spent this year doing things like Hard Rock Hell...

This is your third time in three years at Hard Rock Hell, why do you keep coming back?
Vikki Spit: Yup, the only band to do that!

LZ: We keep coming back because we're asked! In the first year no one knew who we were, and we came from out of nowhere. We were put on the main stage opening it up, and I think we just surprised a hell of a lot of people. So the next year we came back, and we were voted the seventh best band of the festival, and so now we're back again.

Why do people dig you guys so much at this kind of event?
LZ: Well not everyone does! The people that come here want to be entertained, so I think the bands that come here do that sort of thing well – Twisted Sister in the first year, TigerTailz last year – and if bands can give off a lot of good energy, they can receive it back. It's just a high energy thing, we all love what we do. I'm a big fan of Ratt for example, have been for years, and I saw them yesterday and was bitterly disappointed that there wasn't very much going on. We don't disappoint in that respect, we just come out and it's full-on and intense until we get off again. We try to entertain and have a laugh, we don't take ourselves too seriously even though we take what we do seriously. You can come along to our shows, and there’s shouting and screaming, but they're also having a laugh.

There seems to be a certain DIY ethic about the band...
VS: If you want something done well, do it yourself.

LZ: It's tough, because it's hard if you're not a PR company approaching a magazine, but we're persistent and we're polite, and that sort of thing goes a long way. At the end of the day we can't be ignored forever, so we just keep knocking on doors and gradually they open.

What else have you been up to this year?
LZ: The album came out about this time last year, but we left the label we were on as they were the sort of label where the bands were very heavy metal. We found management in Germany and a new label in Sweden, so our album's just been re-released and we'll be recording a follow-up album to come out this time next year. The re-release has bonus material, videos, a poster and stuff like that.

How much of the songwriting process have Vikki, Vile and Cyndi been involved in?
LZ: From the first EP up until recently I'd written most of the stuff, but on the album we're doing now we’re writing it as a four-piece because we're really getting to know each other as a band. To be honest, to start with it wasn't really a band so much as being me getting a vehicle to get out what I wanted to do. I was lucky enough to find people that wanted to play that live, but I've got that out of my system, and we’ve solidified as a band, so it’s been good to explore that.

Vile Gilez: It's great, we're playing a couple of newish songs live tonight that were written by the four of us here. We've got our own little personal flavours in each of them, so it's cool.

How's the new stuff sounding?
LZ: I don't want to say it's more of the same, but at the same time we're not going to suddenly start playing extreme thrash or something like that. It'll still have our flavour, but it'll probably be a bit more cohesive. There was stuff on the first album that was written years ago, whereas this will be written in a much more condensed format.

VS: After the first album we've got a lot more experience in the studio. We're talking to quite a few producers; some really good people are interesting in working with us. We want more of a live sound, we definitely want to get that aspect across.

LZ: We often get the criticism that we're much better live than on CD, and I don't know if a rock band can fix that, but we want to come as close to fixing that as we can.

'We Won't Hurt You (But We Won't Go Away)' is out now on GMR

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