During the build up to the release of Bullet For My Valentine’s brand new album Temper Temper, the band’s drummer Michael Thomas (better known to most of the bands’ fans as Moose) kindly agreed to have a chat with James about the bands’ thought processes around Temper Temper, touring and various other things. Read on for more details…
First off, thanks for taking the time off to talk to us..
No problem!
What do you consider your goals to be with new album ‘Temper Temper’?
Our goals would probably be to keep old fans, meet new ones and grow as a band.
So with this goal in mind how would you say your fanbase has changed over the years to where you are now?
Erm, its just grown bigger and bigger because a lot of people liked The Poison and we’ve been adding with every album, theres something there for everyone I think. It’s just grown as we’ve grown as a band.
Would you say you’ve widened the age range in your fanbase?
Yeah, well someone who listened to our E.P or The Poison in 2004 or 2005 who’ve stuck with the band and they’ve just grown with us, they don’t want to hear the screamy vocals anymore y’know?
Did it ever feel daunting during the writing of Temper Temper trying to top Fever because that was a huge album for you.
No, not really, with every album we do, if we’re not happy with anything on the album we’ll write a new song.
Did you go about writing Temper Temper any differently from your previous albums?
Erm yeah, we actually didn’t have any songs before we started, we didn’t have anything, so myself and Matthew just went to Thailand and wrote it all there and just recorded as we went along.
What made you choose the title track and riot as the lead singles?
Erm, it was because they’re both totally different sounding songs from the album and we wanted to release those first to see if we could gain any new fans.
So they’re the most representative of the album?
No, the rest of the albums a completely different class, just we wanted to pull new fans in so we put those two out first.
On the subject of the album tracks why did you feel the need to do a part two for Tear’s Don’t Fall?
Well we finished in the studio one night and we wanted to have our fans input on writing this album so we put on our social media sites which songs they would like to hear a part two of and there was a lot of diferent songs but we decided to do Tears Don’t Fall.
What were the other songs that were quite popular?
Waking The Demon, a range from each album really, but Tears was like the overall winner.
How have other bands influences on Bullets music altered and changed over the years of all your different albums?
We’re still listening to what we listened to back then I guess, its just we’ve changed musically, and we’ve gotten older and matured as musicians and songwriters y’know? Just the same really.
So you see the evolution of your sound more as maturing, more so than your influences changing?
Yeah, I reckon, yeah.
Going onto gigging and touring with Bullet, whats been the most memorable or just your personal favourite gig or tour that you’ve done with bullet?
Ahh, theres been loads! I love touring so every tours been great so far, most memorable would be, probably Metallica. Because we did that on our first album and stuff, and we were stoked to get the opportunity to do that.
I was talking with Sean from While She Sleeps the other week and he mentioned that bands like Bullet were a ‘foot in the door’ for them to gain popularity were there any sort of bands that provided a foot in the door for Bullet?
Definitely bands like Funeral, they helped us a lot, they were from the same area, so Wales and they were getting pretty big with their first album, in that little scene going on in South Wales they definitely helped.
Was it a conscious decision on your next tour to play slightly smaller venues, last London headlining date you were in Wembley but this time you’re in Camden Roundhouse. Did you say “we’re going to downsize the venues for this tour.”
Erm yeah, I mean this tour now is the small one, we haven’t played UK for like, two years now so we’re going to start small, go round the world then we are coming back to do the bigger shows.
So it’s a prelude to a major headlining tour?
Yes, just kinda warming up if you’d like, ’cause we haven’t played live in awhile.
Whats your favourite festial to play? You’re playing download this year and you played Reading last year. Is Download your favourite or do you just happen to play there the most?
Probably Download, being with those bands that are similar to us in the heavy metal scene y’know but then when we play dfestivals like Reading andwe’re kinda like a sore thumb on that bill so I think it kinda pushes us to be even better.
Do you think you could sum up Temper Temper with just one word?
I think its probably one of the darkest albums we’ve done, and once people hear it they’ll understand what I mean.
Thanks very much for talking to us, I’ve just got one, final, slightly silly question – Do you think you could deck a horse with one punch?
Hell no, I mean, they’re pretty fucking solid animals man!
Bullet For My Valentine’s brand new album Temper Temper was released this week (w/c 11th February 2013) through RCA Records and is available at all the usual CD stockists and MP3 download stores. Bullet will be embarking on a short UK headline tour with Halestorm next month which is completely sold out (details of the tour can be found here). They will also appear at the 2013 edition of the Download Festival, sub-headlining the main stage on the Friday night under Slipknot. Further updates on BFMV (including a review of Temper Temper – coming very soon) will be available here as and when we get them.
