The Über Rock Interview: Ashen Crown

Written by Rich Hobson
Sunday, 25 February 2018 04:40

It’s been a whirlwind of activity for Birmingham’s Ashen Crown since forming in 2016. Their self-produced demos have earned them a reputation for fierce death metal inspired grooves, drawing on everything from local legends Bolt Thrower to Lamb of God. The band won the Metal to the Masses competition in 2017, which landed them a spot at Bloodstock Festival.

I caught up with the band following their appearance at last weekend’s HRH Metal fest in their hometown to see how things are going and when we can expect their debut EP…

How was opening the stage today?

Kieran Scott (Vocals): It was awesome. I’ve still got the adrenaline pumping through me now.

Ste Fowkes (Guitar): It’s great because we were doing soundcheck, looked up and were like ‘holy shit there’s a lot of people here.’ Hopefully this’ll push us towards some other festivals too.

Kieran: I was a bit conflicted at first about opening, but then I realised it meant we could drink afterwards, so there’s that! And the place was rammed, because we were the first ones on. We tried to set the bar, get the room going so that for every band that follows people are in the mood. We had a pit – that shocked me; I thought headbanging, but…

Ste: A circle pit at one in the afternoon – awesome man.

Kieran: We had the exact same thing at Bloodstock, playing the same time. We had a pit and it was like, ‘it’s one o clock!’. People are half-cut, but I take that as a massive compliment.

How was Bloodstock for you?

Ste: It was… scary. We were little fish in a big pond and it was mad hearing that, like, Decapitated were in the tent watching us, a couple of main stage bands watching us. I saw Russ Russel in there and I spoke to him. It was like ‘fuck! Russ Russel watched us!’

Kieran: We went from training to be a band, to it being a case of something we have to do now, so it’s like we REALLY need to bring it.

Ste: I remember getting onstage and looking at my pedalboard, thinking lots of people were in the tent for the last band so we’d see how it goes. And then I looked up and couldn’t believe it; nobody was leaving. It was like ‘fuck! This is going to be rammed’ and by the last song the crowd was out by the bins. 900+ people, massive circle pits.

Kieran: We were lucky; Whitechapel had just finished, you could just hear some lows and distortion from their set and then we started. So people wandered over, like ‘what’s this then?’ and stayed.

Did the experience teach you anything?

Kieran: Yeah, we have to grow up as a band, simple as that. We really have to do it now.

Ste: Watching the video back, one of the things Simon [Hall, organiser] said to us was that we really had to bring it. You can’t be shit, beaming and smiley fucking about with your mates.

Kieran: I’m terrible for it.

Ste: Take into consideration that our music is supposed to portray brutality. But then I had the biggest fucking trouble in the world containing the excitement and joy. I started playing, mates were heckling us and we were watching a massive circle pit, it was just like ‘shoot me now; I’m good.’

Kieran: IT WAS SO FUCKING COOL. It will never get old for me, to see a circle pit break out – it’s the ultimate appreciation. If we didn’t get a pit now, I’d think we’d fucked it.

Ste: When we played Bloodstock, it was like ‘I know I shouldn’t do this’ but its so hard to contain that excitement. The rest of these guys, they might be beaming inside but they don’t show it.

How’re things going for the band right now?

Ste: So fucking good. We’ve got a video dropping in the next couple of weeks – a new video single. We’re supporting Obituary…

Kieran: I’m still processing that.

Ste: Yeah, shout out to Ian (Shaw, Surprise You’re Dead) for putting us on that.

Kieran: But that’s the Midlands community for you; I bump into so many people I recognise and its always like ‘It’s you!’ That’s another great thing about this festival too, that there’s so many local bands about. Wrath of the Gods just played their first ever gig here and they were shitting it, I just said ‘why are you doing this?’ and they said ‘because we love music’ – there you go! And they did absolutely fine.

How beneficial do you think the local scene has been to you so far?

Kieran: Oh man, massively.

Ste: Playing with bands like Memoriam is awesome. We’ve got this ethos of we don’t want to over-saturate our hometown. No disrespect to other bands, but some will play every week and it just makes it… Less. People get bored; you need the gigs to hone your stagecraft, but luckily we’ve had a platform to do bigger gigs —

Kieran: Straight away.

Ste: Literally! We hit the ground running. Bloodstock was like our fourth gig and it was like ‘what the shit is going on here?!’

Kieran: Yeah, we realised we really needed to step up our shit haha! It’s been a great experience for getting to know people and make connections, we’ve just been lucky in a sense. All the bands on all the stages were really fucking good, so that really shocked me when we won the Metal to the Masses. At the end of it, it was like ‘yeah, we won!’ and the benefits are still paying off. Today is a good example of that; doing MTTM got us with FATAngel, FATAngel got us this gig. It’s mad.

Ste: There’s the Hil’s Ovation shows as well. Our first ever gig was a Hil’s Ovation show; I knew Hils and Jay knew Hils from previous bands, it was Hils that gave my old band Tour of the Grave their first break.

Kieran: She is literally the mother of metal. If you treat her well, she’ll treat you well. First gig we ever did was supporting Hostile in the Institute – if we didn’t do that, I honestly don’t think we’d be where we are today.

Ste: That was a platform man, a real opener.

Kieran: We were FRESH.

Ste: There were loads of fuck ups…

Kieran: But nobody knew the material so it was fine.

Ste: We played our fastest two tunes in half time, going from 200bpm to a hundred.

Kieran: I nearly suffocated! The reception we had was brilliant as well, so many people came to see us. But again, the whole community is nuts. What she does really deserves recognition.

Ste: She’s got an eye for it, a sixth sense. She can pick up on things that a lot of other people miss. One in a million. Who else does that kind of thing? She’s the promoter that all other promoters should be. She comes along like ‘nobody will give you a gig – I’ll give you a gig.’ There’s a lot of people who’ll blow a bubble up your arse, she’s not like that.

You’ve played with some pretty big names in the Birmingham scene, like Memoriam (ex-Bolt Thrower) – how is that?

PHOTO CREDIT: Sean Larkin/HRH Metal

Ste: It’s really weird how that all came about. I knew Karl [Willetts, vocals] back in the 90s, when he left Bolt Thrower. I remember seeing in The Foundry, chatting away and I was like ‘nah’, wearing a Vision of Disorder T-shirt, Biohazard or whatever. I listened to a lot of hardcore back then and I went away and listened to them and it was like ‘fuck, this is really good!’ and got to know him through friends of friends. I got to know Andy [Whale, drums] through Moseley Rugby Club. I saw this Memoriam page kick up on Facebook and hadn’t seen Karl for many years, got in touch because I was a fan and it was really weird. I was talking to Scott [Fairfax, guitar] on Facebook and told him that we were getting a band together, with a couple of drummers in mind, playing brutal death metal. So I sent Scott a message asking if knew any drummers and he sent a list of guys to ask, and we managed to get it all going. The rest is history. Kieran turned up and absolutely blew us away.

Kieran: I’d never been in a band before – I was a bedroom band guy.

Ste: So we’ve got this relationship with Memoriam where we’re not the best of mates…

Kieran: But we will nod to them from the bar. It was really nice of them to put us on the bill. They don’t really play many local shows, but then Bolt Thrower were massive in Europe.

Ste: When they asked us to play it, it was just like ‘fuck yes’ – they’re death metal legends.

Kieran: The whole Birmingham scene is just phenomenal; Warwound were wicked that night too. I’m from Shrewsbury, so this is all a bit foreign to me, but I see people I know everywhere. It’s this big community – I can see why metal came from Birmingham, because everyone loves it here – they really do.

How’s the recording coming?

Ste: The single is done. We recorded at Robannas Studios; it was part of the Bloodstock Metal to the Masses prize. We recorded everything but the vocals there, which we did later. Its mixed and mastered and sounds ugly as shit now.

Kieran: We’ve got a music video as well. We filmed that in September last year, right after Bloodstock and we’re just waiting for the mixing. It took longer than expected, but its fine. We’re recording the EP soon as well.

Ashen Crown’s debut EP is out soon. They play the following dates:

Saturday 12 May – Keighley, Manorfest (with Evile, Memoriam, Xentrix and more)

Saturday 30 June – Birmingham, O2 Academy

Friday 6 July – Amplified Open Air Festival

Saturday 21 July – Manchester, Rebellion (with Shrapnel, Solitary, Incinery and more)