The Über Rock Interview: Ballsdeep

Written by Rich Hobson
Sunday, 27 May 2018 04:20

Hard, heavy and independent to the core, Stoke-On-Trent metal/hardcore crossover bruisers Ballsdeep are veterans of the UK festival circuit, popping up everywhere from the HRH events to Thrashersaurus and Bloodstock.

With the band appearing at Uprising III this very weekend, I caught up with the band following their set at Hammerfest a while back, to find out how things were going, what we can expect of their third record and how they fight the good fight as an independent band in 2018. I started by asking them for their reaction to the set they had just played:

Paul ‘Hinge’ Priestley (guitar): Fucking cool mate; I didn’t even clock the screens [with our logo on] until near the end. Turned round and just saw our name up big like “fucking hell!” We’re bloody lucky – we nearly spent £800 on a new backdrop, ha ha ha!

You’ve done both HRH Metal and Hammerfest this year, how have both been? And what value do you think they lend to the wider scene?

Rich ‘Bez’ Beresford (vocals): Incredible.

Hinge: They’re massive, giving you the opportunity to play alongside the bands you grew up with. It’s just a fucking unbelievable opportunity. It’s so cool to be asked to play festivals like this where they want to book hardworking independent bands like us who will slog our bollocks off to make it work. It’s an incredibly good feeling. We played last year and were on Stage 3, this year we’ve played the main stage at two different events.

Bez: They do the legwork so we don’t have to go and beg to have us back! They’re definitely getting something right with selling out the O2 Academy for two days straight and making sure every room is full. That’s amazing – it’s not full of bands like you’d find at Download; these are all independent acts with a couple signed bands at the top to round it out. Every room is packed for every band, and everybody is loving it. It’s a great time to be in the scene.

Absolutely. So, what keeps you inspired and moving forward?

Bez: I don’t know! We all started doing this shit 20 years ago this year, under different guises and whatever. Some of us have been together for those 20 years, others have been doing different things. But it’s still about living that childhood dream of ‘I want to be like James Hetfield!’ and I just want to do that.

Hinge: If you’d have said to us twenty years ago that no matter what band we were playing in we’d be playing the O2 Academy, we’d have thought we’d have made it by then anyway. So where we’ve got to now, where we haven’t made it, it’s a massive deal to us and we just take it all as it comes.

I think that love shows in the live performances as well – there’s almost a punk-like energy and simplicity to it, you clearly love absolutely hammering it out.

Hinge: Well, we’re not a technical band because we can’t be ha ha! We know our limits and its three chords, so it becomes a question of ‘what can we do with these three chords?’

Bez: There are lots of bands who are successful in doing that kind of thing, who can do everything that others do but make it sound simple. Paul does that – he makes it sound easy, gives it that punk rock vibe.

Hinge: We just wanted to be in a band where we could play the songs even if we were pissed! And here we are…

Word has it that you’re gearing up to hit the studio after this show – what can fans expect of the next album?

Bez: Bigger and louder, more excessive.

Hinge: More, more, more!

Will Harris (bass): For people who have followed us from the beginning, we’ve always just wanted to get bigger, heavier, more in your face. That’s really the only kind of progression we want. It’s the Pantera approach.

Has the break between records (with plenty of time to refine the songs in a live setting in between) affected the writing process at all?

Bez: Well yeah, because what we do when we record the tracks is write two songs and then we’ll go into the studio without a clue how to play those songs and work through them. And then we’ll spend a couple weeks writing the next two and do the same, never really spending too much time listening to the songs.

Hinge: Then we get out on the road and we can properly listen to those songs for ourselves. You don’t even realise it at the time, but when you’re touring 18 months on from writing one of those songs, you’ll notice like ‘fucking hell, this is completely different’. You’ll have the bones on the CD, but it really comes across live, and those bones will sound rawer to the listener anyway. Its not overproduced and you haven’t added all this shit to it. You don’t forget how that song originally made you feel and lose that initial boner for it.

Bez: And end up sounding like the Smashing Pumpkins.

Hinge: If your album’s too polished it just sound like shit.

Bez: And also, if live it sounds just like it does on record… why not just stay home and listen to it?

Harris: I always find it disappointing if I go to a show and come away thinking ‘that worked better on the album’.

Bez: And then you don’t even listen to the album any more.

Hinge: Oh yeah, I’m an absolute wanker for that!

You guys have just landed a couple of sponsorships – what do brand sponsorships offer to an independent band like yourselves?

Hinge: The crucial thing for me is that I’m always looking for new pickups and sounds. You’re always chasing the new sound when you’ve got a new album coming out. I’ve been using these Zombie Dust pickups and just working with Willie who does Zombie Dust, he kept sending them and it was like ‘fucking hell these are great’, so my guitars are loaded with these pickups. I started talking to him about specific pickups and he said ‘why don’t we do your own pick-up?’ and that all came about. It the perfect thing really for a stage guitar, getting exactly what you want and nothing else.

Will: It’s always great finding somebody that does exactly what you want – I use Zombie Dust pickups as well. Willie’s a genius; he makes gear that we plug into all our guitars and makes us want to find nastier sounds. It’s just cool working with people that are striving for the same things as we are.

Bez: It’s crucial as well that he’s a fairly mainstream person who actually wants to work directly with you and find your sound. Which is how it should be, when you land a sponsorship – they should want to make the perfect product for you, and you should want to get their name out there.

How important is it to build relationships with the people you work with (so PR, press agents, management etc.)?

Hinge: FATangel are just as big a part of Ballsdeep as the actual band are. It was us who talked them into starting FATangel by nagging them asking ‘are you gonna manage us?’ ‘no!’, ‘are you gonna manage us?’ ‘no!’… We’re shit when it comes to sorting things out and probably wouldn’t get anything done without them. We sent a couple CDs to Chris and put on the package ‘FATAngel Management’ and that was it, then! It’s been a lot of years.

Bez: We really wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for those guys having our back. We really struggle when they’re not around to support us. But everybody’s doing stuff now to build those relationships.

Will: Everybody ends up being like family and friends and that’s how we want to be with everyone we work with.

Bez: If there’s a whole network of people working together, they all grow together which ultimately helps the scene.

Hinge: It’s like Pantera – they used to always run into the same people on the circuit and work along the same people. They get to know them and then it becomes a community.

Bez: It’s a punk rock thing.

How does the rest of 2018 look for Ballsdeep?

Hinge: New album, or at least recording the new album. Probably looking at a year from now until it’s recorded and released.

Will: We’ve got a few shows lined up to get us through the year, but we’re still hoping that if some of those bigger festivals come knocking around summer we can take a break from writing to play some festivals in the summer. Otherwise, it’s all on for writing album number three!

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