Album pours out band’s hatred for the music biz
Modern metallers Blood Youth are promising a new album full of hatred for the music industry.
In the meantime, they play The Prince Albert, Brighton on September 23.
As guitarist Chris Pritchard says, they recorded the album just before lockdown, and he and the producer mixed it during lockdown. He is not quite sure when the release date will be. But he is sure enough of the contents.
“As a band we have been given a lot of bad advice and had a lot of bad luck and had a lot of bad opportunities. We have been surrounded by rats and leeches and everyone has been making the money apart from us. The album references the state of the music industry. I hate this industry. It is the worst industry. It is the only industry where people can get away with robbing people point blank.”
As Chris says, the band members don’t have big houses and families – and yet all the people around them do: “Our money should be coming from somewhere, but it is not coming to us.
“We have given everything to this band from day one. We are one of the very, very few bands that have been around from day one with the right intent. You see bands dropping because they are not in it for the right reasons. They just fall off the grid, but these fake bands are the bands that get the big opportunities. We don’t get the big opportunities. We don’t get the limelight. We don’t get the heavy press.” So why not just give up? “Because we love what we do. I am an artist. And I want to be paid for what I do. All of us have to do other jobs just to live. But because we commit so much to the band, we lose jobs, we lose relationships. The band halts you from getting a mortgage, from getting relationships, from having a job for more than a year. It just drags everything down. There just isn’t any money for artists anymore.
“Everyone is taking a cut. We don’t make any money out of it. I have not made a single penny from the band for seven years. We have done everything that we should and more than we should. We have done more than we should have to, but I have not had a single penny.
“So that’s the topic for the album. Love and hate. Love for the music and hate for the music industry.”
But at least they are back on the road: “We’ve always wanted to do a tour like this where it’s just stripped down, up close and personal with no (rubbish) in between. Whenever we’ve tried to do something like this in the past, other tours and opportunities have got in the way but this time it’s happening. It feels more perfect than ever to have this be our first tour back after being away from fans for nearly two years now, to bring them back and closer than ever straight out the gate. We’re super excited to hit these towns and cities, most for the first time ever, with new songs, new visuals and a new skin.”
Their recent single was Iron Lung. Vocalist Kaya Tarsus explains the song’s meaning: “We wrote Iron Lung just before the impacts of the pandemic swept across the globe, and looking back it couldn’t have been more fitting if we tried. The song centres around having someone or something to get us through each day; “Will you breathe for me? Will you bleed for me?”
“We all have our own (rubbish) going on in life, and at the end of the day you’re the only person that can help yourself through it.”