THE INDEPENDENT
While She Sleeps went DIY and Loz Taylor rediscovered his voice
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR HIGH POINT OF 2017?
“Managing to get two albums out back to back. I think people are aware of the problems I have had with my voice, and after having surgery on it in between This Is The Six [2012] and Brainwashed [2015], I don’t feel like maybe we’ve been given quite the crack of the whip that we should have done. So to have been able to carry on like a proper band has really been a huge relief.”
HOW RISKY WAS IT FOR YOU TO CROWDFUND YOU ARE WE?
“Well, you might end up with no one buying your product and then you feel a bit stupid. But, for us, it was something that made sense. We’re not these really militant punks, but there has always been a very strong DIY ethic to our band. We were confident that our fans would buy into what we were doing, and they did.”
WERE YOU SURPRISED AT THE SUCCESS OF THE VIDEO FOR silence speaks?
“I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything, but no, because we really believed in the song, and we had Mat’s [Welsh, guitar] brother working on it, who’s an absolute genius when it comes to making videos. And we had Oli [Sykes] in there as well. It just felt like everyone was really working together at a really high level.”
PRESUMABLY YOU AND OLI ARE BACK ON GOOD TERMS NOW?
“Yeah, it’s been no secret that there was some pretty bad blood between us before, but it was at Tom Searle’s wake that we saw all of these people from down the years. And it’s a cliché, but you start to think that life’s too short. You look around and you realise how far our scene has come, and how connected you are to these people, so we decided to make peace with it, and having Oli on the record just made sense to show that.”