LUKE CALEY
Press To Meco’s guitarist and vocalist likes to mix business and pleasure where SikTh are concerned.
“I started really getting into rock music when I was about 11 or 12, and that’s when I first picked up a guitar. At school, there were a few kids with older brothers who were into tech metal but until then, I had no idea that music could be so complicated and sound so good. I would have been about 13 when I first heard SikTh and a couple of years later, the local band I was in ended up supporting them. They made this noise that I’d never heard before and that was when I really got into them. Within a few months they become my favourite band.
Dan [Weller] is one of two guitarists who’s had an impact on the way I play, in particular the way he uses chords. From a technical perspective, Summer Rain and As The Earth Spins Round are just unreal, but Peep Show, from their first album The Trees Are Dead…, has influenced me the most. I really wanted to develop that kind of sound into my guitar playing.
I know a lot of people hold SikTh responsible for djent, but I feel djent is a lot more syncopated and rhythmic, whereas SikTh are more about melody. In my opinion, they’re one of the most important bands in progressive metal from the last 15 years. They left such a stamp on the scene and they were relatively ahead of their time. [When they reformed] they came back bigger than ever, it was almost that everyone else caught up.
I got in touch with Dan when Press To Meco first got started and he’s been really supportive of this band. We recorded in the studio with Dan when SikTh announced their reunion and I was so excited. After we’d wrapped up for the day, he’d be practising SikTh riffs in the same room and the teenage guitarist in me was fanboying pretty hard over it!
We supported SikTh in 2017 and straight after, we were the main support for Arcane Roots. They were such a good band and [Melancholia Hymns] is unreal, it’s so good. They and Black Peaks are pushing the prog-tinged alternative rock scene and I think it’s impossible not to respect them for how far they’re bringing the genre.” NRS
Here’s To The Fatigue is out now via Marshall. For the latest tour dates, see www.presstomeco.com.
“They’re one of the most important bands in prog metal from the last 15 years.”