Source: Official Facebook
We caught up with caveman battle doom warriors Conan just before they leveled the Elektrowerkz, Islington for a special one off performance. Ten years on since their formation, and a year on from the release of last album Revengeance, we chat to them about hard graft, hard touring and even harder tone.
MOSH: It’s been ten years since Conan first formed – what can we expect in terms of you celebrating?
Chris Fielding (bass/vocals): Until tonight when everyone’s asked us about it, we haven’t thought about it at all! *laughs*
Jon Paul Davis (guitars/vocals): We’re not going to celebrate it in any big way, I don’t think. We celebrate our existence every day and we praise Crom that we’re still going. *Laughs* But seriously it’s cool that the band has been going for ten years.
MOSH: Did you ever expect that the band would last this long?
JPD: We never expected anything from it really. Going right back to the very, very early stages it was something I wanted to do just to alleviate boredom. Being in and out of bands, I wanted to try something like this and it’s snowballed from there. Am I meant to say something like ‘looking forward to the next ten’? *All laugh*
MOSH: It’s been around a year since the release of Revengeance – how do you feel about the record after a year of touring it? How have audiences reacted to the album compared to your older material?
CF: We feel good. We’re very proud of it, and we’re pleased with how it’s gone down. It was obviously mine and Rich’s first album in Conan as musicians. It’s a ‘Conan album’ but it’s got different influences from two thirds of the band, as well as Jon having grown as a musician. So it sounds different to [2014’s] Blood Eagle, and I think it surprised a few people. Not everybody liked it, some people were like ‘oh I don’t like this FAST song’ *laughs* But on the whole it’s been received really well.
Rich Lewis (drums): You can see it when certain songs kick in. The stuff we hadn’t necessarily done much of before, like the ‘fast stuff’ and blast beats, and ‘Earthenguard’ as well, you can see people really get a kick out of it.
CF: We definitely wrote it with touring it and gigging it in mind.
JPD: It was the first album that we recorded together, but we’d been touring together a little bit before that. And that really helped, and it’s probably fair to say it’s the first Conan album where all three members have shared the writing equally. No disservice to the other members who have created some awesome albums, but we wrote them in a slightly different way. This time, all three of us in the practice room, jamming the riffs together, there and then. It definitely added some vibrancy to it. I remember the very first writing session that we had, I think I was fucking around with the chords from ‘Grim Tormentor’ and then Rich started playing along with it, and all of a sudden it became the intro to ‘Revengeance’ itself. I’m very proud of the other albums and how they came together, but this seems like more of a complete effort, which is awesome. I think that’s how it should be.
CF: I remember we were trying to work out one riff and I wasn’t really feeling it, and then we changed it and Jon said ‘Oh yeah you can tell it’s working now because Chris has got a smile on his face for a change’ *everyone laughs*
MOSH: Can you tell us about a time that you took satisfying Revengeance?
*big pause, slightly shifty looks*
JPD: I could tell you, but I won’t *laughs*
CF: (In an Alan Partridge voice) Needless to say, I had the last laugh.
JPD: There’s been plenty of occasions in Skyrim where I’ve been defeated and had to come back and defeat someone, but I don’t think that really counts.
CF: We’re pretty easygoing people. We let the music do all the aggression and violence and we just like to be a bit calmer.
MOSH: You’re well known for switching up your gear and tracking down retro amps in order to nail down your tone. When did this obsession start? Do you think you’ll ever be 100% happy with any one setup?
JPD: I feel like I’m 100% happy with my setup at the moment. I like to experiment. You say I love tracking down retro amps, and I do. But now that Conan are touring more, I can’t rely on them. One of the nicest amps that I had was a Laney Supergroup from the late 60’s, but there’s no way I was gonna be able to tour with that, so I sold it. And in the end I switched it up so now I’ve got Matamp amplifiers. So far, they’ve been perfectly reliable – Oh shit, I’ve said it now! Touch wood! *everyone laughs* Normally when I say an amp’s been okay, they blow up. I find that, in general, the older amps are slightly less reliable if you tour a lot with them. So that adds to my merry-go-round of gear switching.
MOSH: You’re all very busy guys – family commitments, day jobs, running businesses and studios, label management, other bands – do you find it difficult to balance all these things and Conan?
CF: I probably find it the most difficult, from a touring point of view, because I run Skyhammer studio. Bands will come in and want to book time, which could be from a few days up to three weeks. Touring is the same – it could be a one off gig, or it could be five weeks of touring. I have to be careful how I prioritise my time, which is why sometimes I’ve not done certain gigs or tours because someone will have booked in the studio first.
JPD: I’d say we’re pretty lucky in terms of how flexible we are in general. We do tour a lot, and it’s awesome.
CF: None of us have nine to five commitments work wise.
JPD: That’s the key. It’s almost like a nice problem to have.
MOSH: Do you find how spread out you are geographically an issue?
JPD: The geography is totally fine. Because we’ve got the studio now, that’s our home. So when we want to practice we’ll just get together for three or four days, however much we can when we can. The studio availability is the main thing and then we all just work around it. We’re very lucky to have that.
MOSH: What’s next for Conan? Can we expect more shows throughout 2017 or working towards a follow up to Revengeance?
JPD: Yeah we’ve got shows coming up. We’ve got plenty of time where we can write. We’ve got two really good tours in the works – USA and Europe. A few festivals, things like that. But we are mindful of the fact that we need to get writing, and that will happen soon.
CF: We’ve done a lot of thinking about writing *laughs*
JPD: We’ve never failed to write an album when we’ve wanted to in the past, and I don’t think that will change.
