Throne is a 3 piece London based doom/stoner/heavy-riffing act that eat acts like One Direction for breakfast and then feed their bones to their pet dragons, in short, they fucking rock! We caught up with the band and chatted about Eddie Van Halen, Napalm Death and crap Laser Star Projectors, here's how we got on....
Please introduce the band and your music in one sentence....
Throne is Nicos Livesey (guitar, vocals), Julia Owen (drums) and Will Michael (bass guitar).
You’re called Throne how did you come about choosing this name?
We decided it had to be one word and we just thought it sounded triumphant.
Where did you record your EP ‘Where Tharsis sleeps’? What made you choose that studio?
We recorded at Skyhammer, it's a studio owned and operated by the guys from Conan. We were looking for a place to record when we heard from Jon about his new studio, knowing that Chris Fielding was working there and they had a Neve board was all we needed to know really, we were booked in before they finished building it.
What is the best advice you ever received and who was it from?
Learn the sound guy's name. Ironically I can't remember who told me that.
In your opinion, what is the BEST album/record ever released and why?
That's impossible to answer! My favourite record changes every day.
Tell me a fascinating fact about you or one of your band members?
Nicos's last name is "Yes evil" backwards.
If you had a chance to put together your own ‘super group’, who would be in it? (Only living members please)
Jason Newstead.
Being an unsigned band how hard is it to get noticed and how has social media aided your music?
It's pretty difficult for unrepresented bands to get attention. When you release a record, a press person has to email your press release on your behalf so that publications will consider listening to it or posting about you. Magazines will feature your band if you take out an advert with them and stuff, it's ridiculous. Anyway, social media is really important, we funded our music video through kick-starter, that project couldn't have happened without social media.
Who designed the artwork for your EP covers?
The first one was designed by Emma Sherridan, the second was designed by Tom Cole. We love them both very much.
Is there something you would like to tell each of the band members that you haven’t told them before?
I can't think of anything I haven't told them before.
Official music video to Tharsis Sleeps is pretty impressive; can you describe the reasoning behind it and who came up with the idea?
Nicos thought it up and directed the video with his friend Tom Bunker. The story is inspired by the narrative of our EP, it's a mission to terraform a new planet gone wrong. They decided to make every frame of the video an embroidered piece of denim to make the project totally different to anything else, this meant the process took a shit load longer than traditional animation, which isn't exactly fast anyway, the whole thing took about 7 months to make and we were left with 3500 piece of a5 denim at the end.
What guitar riff still gives you an orgasm every time you hear it?
What classic song would you have liked to have recorded and why?
I would like to have been in the room when Eddie Van Halen recorded that face melter on Michael Jackson's Beat it.
First gig you ever went to?
Will - Idlewild
Julia - Korn
Nicos - Napalm Death
‘Molten Tomb’ is a great tune, what is the inspiration behind this track?
Thanks! Each track off the EP is part of a narrative that runs throughout, that song is about leaving Earth in a shuttle just in time to see it destroyed from a distance.
There are many good bands and musicians out there, who would you ask the readers of musicmuso to look out for?
Collectively, our favourite "current" band is probably Mars Red Sky, they are amazing, check them out.
Who would you like to know has your music on their iPod, MP3 or cassette walkman?
I would be genuinely stoked if ANYONE had taken the time to tape our songs and listen to them on a cassette walkman. I miss the days of leaving the house with one album and listening to it loads of times over, that's probably why I'm more passionate about the music I grew up listening to than anything around now.
If you could describe your music in the form of fictional characters, who would it be?
Jay and Silent Bob.
What are your plans for what remains of 2014?
We are writing an album, hopefully it will be out next year.
Have you had any ‘Spinal Tap’ Moments? If yes, please share!
We bought this fucking laser star projector, we were going to use it as a live lighting thing, it was meant to project an entire galaxy of moving stars and this awesome blue nebula cloud thing, we tried it out in our rehearsal space (which is a tiny dark basement) and it looked rad, we had visions of it looking like a massive super triply laser show. Anyway we took it to a gig and we fired it up and it was a massive disappointment, you couldn't even see the little stars never mind the nebula cloud, it went back in the box and hasn't returned.
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