Furyon are currently one of the UK’s most impressive unsigned bands. After they opened the Metal Hammer stage on the Sunday of the the High Voltage Festival this year in Victoria Park, Rock Sins was lucky enough to catch up with Matt, Chris and Lee to see how it all went and share some congratulatory Cherry Bakewells whilst discussing their performance, getting signed and Alter Bridge amongst other things. Read on for more….
Jamie: Well, I’m sure you’ve been asked six or seven times already but did you enjoy it? Seemed like it went pretty well!
Chris: Unbelievable mate, unbelievable. We were all sat backstage saying “if there’s two hundred people then they’ve turned up to watch us, if there’s two thousand then do give it a little bit more?”. We generally just do the same show whatever we don’t want to let ourselves down.
Matt: We didn’t have a look around to see how many people were out there, if it was ten people or two thousand people, they’re gonna get it anyway.
Jamie: Looked to me like a pretty impressive turn out!
Matt: We were very impressed, and pleased.
Chris: I was trying not to smile so much *laughs* I was like “Matt, look metal!” *laughs* “Stop smiling!”
Jamie: How are you feeling because I’ve been told you weren’t supposed to play?
Chris: I wasn’t! Thanks for bringing the cherry bakewells though for a broken jaw these are pretty fucking good! I can kinda suck these *laughs*
Matt: Well this is the last date of our tour and Chris has only done two dates
Jamie: Did you do the Brighton show (Furyon’s hometown show)
Chris: Yeah I did the Brighton show cos its our local one.
Matt: But he looked very ill afterwards.
Jamie: How did you break your jaw in the first place?
Matt: Come on, true story!
Chris: Alright true story, me and Pat the other guitar player, we went out to a village near where he lives to this fair thing which isn’t too dissimilar to this apart from its filled with thousands of wankers rather than music fans. So we went out drinking all day and I didn’t want to stay at Pat’s house because its a shithole so I decided I’ll ride my bike home.
Jamie: Oh no…
Chris: Bit of a mistake really. I had an incident with a drain and an argument with a kerb and I snapped my jaw in half. So I’m more metal than before I’ve got titanium plates in my jaw!
Jamie: Niceee….
Chris: This is the closest thing to solid food I’ve eaten in three weeks.
Matt: Two days before going on the road right! I get this call and I’m thinking…..it’s a weird call at stupid o’clock in the morning, and it wasn’t THAT kind of call that you want to get at stupid o’clock in the morning. Of course, I went to Eastbourne hospital and Chris is just lying in this hospital bed
Chris: Mashed up
Matt: Mashed up, and you know it sounds really bad because I was like “oh no Chris!” but part of my head, this business like band band band part of my head went…
Lee: Idiot!
Matt: What are we gonna do! And all you wanted to ask him straight away was “are you gonna be alright to play?”. *laughs* And he’s just lying there and can’t even talk to you. But its all worked out well, like he said he’s even more metal now.
Jamie: Did you have someone who could fill in?
Chris: Pat actually went out and did the entire thing on one guitar.
Matt: We went and did one rehearsal, moved some things around, I contemplated playing some guitar because I used to play some guitar before we got another guitarist in the band and we thought no lets just go out as a four piece and do what we do. Bless Pat he really came up trumps. But of course we missed Chris *laughs*
Jamie: We mentioned the Brighton show which was your homecoming show and Chris’s first show back with the band, I’ve heard a lot of good things about that show was that something that went well for you?
Chris: Well again we were pretty nervous, we hadn’t really had a chance to rehearse. My jaw was actually in a really key part of the healing process, I wasn’t able to headbang or anything like that, which is a big part of what I love doing on stage. It turns out that it was a real packed house we had four or five hundred people in there. Which, for an unsigned band in Brighton is a pretty big deal! It just went down amazingly, and with today I’ve had the extra week to heal and realised that if I grit my teeth, I’m actually able to swing my head around and nothing jars loose hopefully, we’ll find out later *laughs*.
Matt: It’s a funny one, when you do those sorts of gigs, even like today with crowds like that, it becomes easier. People are there and they want to see you. Everything just rolls for you. But the home shows are always good. Today was brilliant.
Jamie: Do you have anything lined up for the next couple of months after this as you said this is the last day of the tour?
Chris: We’re going to be playing again October/November time back out on tour. Our video for Disappear Again is out there at the moment, we’ve also got a video that we shot last December, a live video for Don’t Follow so we’ll hopefully be getting that out within the next month.
Jamie: Awesome
Chris: That video is amazing because its all of our fans going absolutely loony.
Matt: In fact some of the guys that I could see on the front row today are in that video.
Chris: They come everywhere man
Jamie: The guys who were down front on the right going absolutely mental and circle headbanging?
Matt: Yep thats them, they’re there every time. Hats off to you Harrison and The Essex Crew! Hats off to you.
Jamie: I think for an unsigned band such as yourselves to have a dedicated following like that, doesn’t matter how big it is but its still a pretty cool thing…
Chris: Its great. Its funny I do remember as a kid of following bands around and not having a concept of whether they were signed or not. I just thought they were really good. So it’s really quite nice to be able to carry on with that tradition. You don’t have to be signed to be out there doing good music.
Jamie: Absolutely not.
Chris: You don’t have to be good to be signed.
Lee: You can be shit like us and still get people turning up *laughs*
Jamie: I think its fair to say that your profile has been growing and growing this year, have you had any talks or interest from any labels about signing you for album number two?
Matt: Absolutely. There’s still interest in people signing for album number one because you have to remember that actually although its been bled out in a certain way there’s only the collectors edition in terms of physical copies that you can get through us. There’s only a certain amount that were done and that was done for a reason.
Chris: We wanted to appease the fans but not chuck it out there to the masses. Fortunately/unfortunately through the situation with downloading it gets out there.
Matt: Of course, a second album is on the cards so for labels, they see that and they know its a whole package.
Chris: So agencies, come on get us signed up, come and knock on Furyon’s door.
Jamie: Well as we were saying earlier there’s an awful lot of shit bands out there who are signed and then there’s guys like you who should be signed and aren’t.
Chris: Well thank you very much!
Jamie: I think today will have proved that to anyone who maybe wasn’t sure beforehand.
Chris: We’ve seen the crowds around a few bands and we had a good crowd for an opening act, we’re really happy with what we’ve got.
Jamie: I think apart from possibly Sylosis you may have had the biggest crowd on the Metal Hammer stage all weekend, they’ve run you pretty close but you might have just pipped them?
Chris: Were Sylosis last night?
Jamie: Yeah, Electric Wizard were supposed to headline that stage last night but couldn’t get here from Norway with what’s going on out there so Sylosis ended up 2nd or 3rd headlining.
Matt: I must admit, we were absolutely stoked with the crowd.
Jamie: Well there’s got to be a big difference with playing something like that and then a festival like twitrfest, which don’t get me wrong is great but this is another level
Matt: Well you know Iain asked us to do it and he’s asked us to do it again actually and of course we will! You guys are really good to us so of course we’ll do it, you have to do these things.
Chris: With the band we are you come to Twitrfest, High Voltage or anywhere else you’re gonna get the same show. You’re gonna get 100%. That’s it.
Jamie: You guys are very involved with interacting with both people like me and the fans through your twitter and facebook and other things and you seem to do it so much better than so many other bands whether they’re signed or unsigned.
Chris: We’re fully in touch with the fans. At any opportunity we’ll chat to them or message them like if they send us a message saying can you send me a tab for a song of course man I’ll send you a tab! They’re the only reason why we’re able to do it! Why wouldn’t you want to be in touch with them?!
Jamie: It’s just so nice to hear that because sometimes when people get to a certain level or even when they’re not at a certain level some musicians can be real pricks to their fans, for lack of a better expression. But you guys aren’t like that at all.
Matt: We know people who are quite high up in the game and they’ve been there and done that and they won’t even go out and sign things for anyone, y’know? And there’s reasons behind that, whether its they want to completely preserve themselves for the next night or whatever, but I couldn’t see myself ever doing that.
Jamie: I was in here yesterday and Myles Kennedy was in here and he was surrounded by about 15 press people despite the fact he wasn’t supposed to be doing any press. But at the same time he was signing autographs for people through the fence and I thought that was really cool and that’s the right way to be.
Chris: Yeah man he gets it. He knows where its coming from, they’re the people who are going to be paying his flight home
Matt: And you know what? They’re also the people who will be coming to see Alter Bridge later this year
Lee: I think Myles Kennedy has had quite a long road, like before Alter Bridge he never really got the recognition that he should have had because he’s a fantastic front man
Matt: He’s been working hard for a long time
Chris: Myles is a bit of a hero for our band man, he’s a good lad and hugely talented. You read his stories and he was thinking about knocking it on the head before Alter Bridge happened.
Jamie: That would have been a crime.
Chris: Mate that would definitely have been a crime.
Jamie: You know maybe some day down the road you guys would be a very good fit to tour with Alter Bridge if that could be made to happen?
Matt: We’d love to! We’ve seen bands going out with them and you just think “someone’s shunting the manager one in the arsehole” *laughs* Again its politics isn’t it? Its just politics and sometimes I feel sorry for some of the bands who get put on these tours. I’ve seen bands on tours before where they look like they’re scared to death because they know that this ain’t their crowd.
Chris: We saw Aerosmith and there was a band called Shed Seven supporting and Shed Seven were some really shit indie band and they were like “what are we doing on this stage?!” and its because someone at the label thought it would be a great idea to save money on publicity and put one of their own bands on the bill.
Jamie: I know one time Slayer had a band called Elis open for them and they were like a hip hop band and I think that’s the single dumbest thing I have ever heard..
Matt: There you go. It’s crazy!
Jamie: Cos most bands would get eaten alive by a Slayer crowd but that…
Chris: The only sense behind it I can see is “lets make the crowd really angry before we go on. What can we do, lets put these guys on”.
Jamie: Right, one final question, bit of an oddball question and something we’ve been asking people this weekend, I don’t know if you’re Simpsons fans or not but who is your favourite Simpsons character?
Matt: The cops son
Jamie: Ralph?
Matt: Ralph!
Chris: It’s a close one between Barney and….what’s the bus driver called?
Jamie: Otto Man
Matt: Ralph, Ralph!
Chris: You know what, Pat is Barney
Matt: Pat is definitely Barney
Chris: I’ll go for the bus driver
Lee: Mines Marge cos of the blue hair, she’d get it man
Chris: You’d be Quagmire but its wrong show! *laughs*
Matt: If we’re talking on that level Lois would definitely get it
Jamie: Alright guys on that note thats it thank you very much!
Chris: You’re welcome!
