Interview with Twin Atlantic

Twin Atlantic is the new sensation of Scotland. A mental crowd in Amsterdam welcomed them with open arms, cause this is a band that you simply can't ignore. Interviewing these guys has been an pleasure and not only because I've got the honour to give them their first Dutch interview, but because I've never heard anyone talk that passionate about their music as Graig (drummer) did. Twin Atlantic is one the fastest upcoming bands of 2010 and certainly one you should keep an eye on!

Sam McTrusty vocals and guitar
Barry McKenna guitar
Ross McNae bass
Craig Kneale drums

How are you?

Sam: Hungry, but apart from that we’re good. Barry and Ross are extremely happy because thery’re eating caramel waffels.

Barry: Not nessesarily because we’re eating waffels, it’s because we’re eating food.

Did you have a nice time in Amsterdam today?

Sam: Well...We had a day off yesterday, so we spent a day in Amsterdam. Some of us overrelaxed more than others. And because we’re from the UK you don’t get the same liberal attitude about woman in windows and drugs, so some of us went to those different places. I have to say that it was kind of intimidating.

Have you seen the Billy Talent show yesterday?

Sam: Yeah, we went to see that. We we standing at the back just beside the sounddesk.

Did you like the show?

Sam: i thought it was too quiet.
Ross: I think that the volume at a rockshow should be really loud.

Are you excited to play here tonight?

Sam: Yeah, it’s our first time in Holland so I can say that it’s cool to play our first ever show for so many people. If bands come here for the first time they usually play small shows, but we get to play in front of 1500 people, so we’re very lucky!

What do you expect from the Dutch audience?

Sam: I’m not sure...
Ross: The Billy Talent show last night gave us a good indication of the crowd. When the support band was playing, the crowd was really attentive, which was nice because in a lot of places you play people don’t care about support bands. They go to watch the main bands and when the support is on people are doing other things. Yesterday though, people were really watching the band.
Sam: So hopefully it will be the same today!

I’ve read that you think that you belong to the top 5 loudest bands ever...

Sam: Haha that sounds like something I would probably say..
Graig: Did you honestly say that?
Sam: I think I did...That is probably not true to be honest.

What would make you one of the loudest bands ever?

Sam: Probably Graig, he is one of the hardest drummers I’ve ever seen and because of that we then have to turn up our amps to match him. I mean he’s already loud by himself, but we put loads more on top and I’ve got a really loud voice for a rockband. So all those things together and the fact that we love distortion makes us loud. I’ve got five amps, Barry has got five and even Ross has got three. For a bassplayer!! You see what I mean? That enables us to go from really really quiet to really loud! And if we go quiet it makes the loud part sound even louder. Maybe for all those reasons I thought that we belong to the top 5, but we probably don’t.
Barry: My Blood Valentine is really loud. If they play they have to get earplugs for everyone!
Sam: Dinosaur Jr. is also really loud.
Barry: And Slipknot..
Sam: See, we’re not in the top 5. There are too many loud bands!
Graig: You lied. Well, you should stop making bullock statements like that if you can’t back it up!
Sam: I’m an attention seeker, that’s my problem...

You’re Nirvana fans as well, in what ways does Nirvana influence your music?

Sam: I really admire Kurt Cobain’s ability to match the mood in his lyrics with really noisy and horrible guitar. He can change from that to really melodic parts and I admire the way he can mash it all together. He might have been one of the first people to do that, I respect him for that.
Graig: For me it’s the first true rockband and the’ve always been one of my biggest influences. Dave Grohl is my favourite drummer and he is sort of the reason I started playing. He is my main drummer influence.

What things inspire you lyrically?

Sam: It changes a lot. We tend to write our music before the lyrics. I usually think of a story to go along with it, sometimes it can even be based on a joke that one of the guys said and that stucked to my head. I tend to mash it all in the song. When we first started I used to be overly personal about family life and that sort of things. The more shows we played, the more I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable having to talk about my personal life. I started to realize that it was stupid and that we didn’t have to be overly personal. So I started to think about things that everyone could relate to, so that we don’t have any boundries in our music. Everyone can interpretate the lyrics in their own way, it’s a little ambiguous and mysterious.

I really love the song “Lightspeed”, what’s the message in that song?

Sam: As all the songs it’s kind of based on unity and I quess excepting that you need other people to achieve things, like your friends and family. It’s a bit of that, but also a bit of pushed together nonsense.

Did you need a lot of people to come as far as you are now, or did you achieve it all by yourselves?

Sam: We’ve had lots of help.
Graig: I quess that at the start we’ve had a lot of help with getting support and booking shows.
Sam: We do have to do a lot of stuff on our own. Ross has done all the artwork and stuff. So we like to be quit heads on, but there are things that you can do and things that you can’t.
Graig: There is a point that you can get to on your own, but from there you need people to step on. When we first started, we had to save our own money to be able to record an ep.
Sam: Stole..
Graig: We practised during the day and we all worked at night and saved up all our money. We started recording and then people started to enable us to get to a certain point where labels were interested to get on board.

Is it hard to get recognition as a Scottish band?

Sam: i think it’s hard for every band, but being Scottish makes it even harder. It’s because geographically the music industry is based in London. Glasgow is so far north that we didn’t really play that much shows in London when we started off with the band. In London we play for like a 300 people, which is kind of a mismatch with the amount of people we play for in Scotland. In our hometown we play for over a 1000 people, but hopefully it will slowly come and meet in the middle. Ross, the wise man, always says that it helped us to actually become the band that we are. We didn’t have the influence from the English record industry for the first couple of years we were in the band.They try to manipulate you and make you in what would be easy for them to make money with. We were able to be who we would like to be.

Last year you’ve released the album “Vivarium”, how would you describe your sound on that album?

Sam: That’s a good question..
Barry: Eclectic.
Sam: Yes, definately!
It’s rock music, it can be really heavy and technical and it can be really heavy and straight forward.. Others say that they hear pretty little guitar parts and melodic vocals, so it’s pretty divers. I think that’s because we’re still learning about writing songs and how we should play music together. It’s a really natural sound on a first record. We’re pretty proud on it, because we got to record it all together at once. Usually when you record it’s with headphones on and you record it track by track, but we got to do it in an old fashioned way.

That must have been one of the highlights of 2009, what have been the other highlights?

Barry: In the summer we’ve played the T in the Park festival. It was the first time we’ve played a proper stage there and it was the biggest stage we’ve ever played in terms of size. The people that we hoped that would come, were all there. There were like 3000 mental drunk people, so that was definitely amazing.

I’ve heard that you’ve toured with the Young Guns last year as well…

Sam: Young Guns, yeah!
Graig: We did a tour with Taking Back Sunday and they were the first band on. They’re really nice guys! They’re going up right now, they’re everywhere.

You will be touring until the end of April, which should be really hard…

Graig: Yeah, we really knocked it out to the extend. Otherwise we wouldn’t know what to do. Touring is important and we love touring and playing in front of people. And we love to go to all this places we never thought we could go.
Sam: It’s really cool, if you look at our myspace, you have to scroll down to see all the gigs we’ll be playing.

How do you manage to survive such a massive tour?

Ross: We haven’t done it before, so we probably wouldn’t.
Sam: We’re all kind of respectful towards each other and we give each other space. It’s never hard to tour as long as you give each other a little bit space. And I always carry multivitamins with me!

So you never really have fights within the band?

Sam: Only about music really.

What is the best way to relax on tour?

Sam: The time when we actually play is the time that we actually release frustration. If you travel you wait all day and that can be really frustrating. You travel miles and miles and you spent a lot of money to get there. So when we actually play the show and it goes well it is like a silent relieve.
Graig: If you play a good show it can make you so happy!
Sam: We like to watch DVDs on our laptops, but because you do it everyday it starts to become really boring.
Graig: Sometimes we have to drive for 10 hours or more and in America that will be even worse.

You will be touring in America, that should be really exciting…

Sam: Yeah, there are not many people our age that can say that they’ve travelled all over Europe and all over the US. We’re just 22 and 24 and someone else pays for it! Well kind of, it’s like a roundabout.

When the tour is over, what will you be doing next?

Graig: More touring…
Sam: We’re actually a non stop rollercoaster! Touring that much is kind of proving to ourselves and to people that have already heard of our band that we’re a serious band.

I hope that you will be back in Holland soon!

Graig: We hope so too!
Sam: We really want to play Pinkpop! We’ll have a big show tonight and after that we’ll get to come back to Amsterdam to play with another band or maybe play a small show on our own. We’ll definitely come back!