Q&A: AP 25th anniversary bashers Your Demise

YOUR DEMISE are one of four U.K. bands (along with Bring Me The Horizon, Enter Shikari and You Me At Six) set to take over Las Vegas on June 23 AP's 25th anniversary bash, and apparently we aren't the only ones who are exited. “We're counting down the days,” says guitarist STU PAICE on the phone from England in the wake of their first-ever headlining tour of the U.S. in support of their 2009 release Ignorance Never Dies. Despite his band's wall-shaking brand of hardcore, Paice is impossibly cordial as he talks about returning stateside and the band's next album. But that's why we love our British bands–they can blow out your eardrums onstage then offer you a cup of tea after. Cheers.



INTERVIEW: Marissa Moss



Your Demise have played Vegas once before. Are you looking forward to heading to back to Sin City?

We honestly cannot wait. Now that the new record is done, we can get excited for it. Since we sort of do things in phases, we get excited for things in phases. Now we head to America and we're so excited. We just love it there so much. We love going there to play.



Are you proud that AP has chosen to celebrate with an all-British affair?

Oh, yeah, it's awesome; it's great that a British band can headline in this country, let alone in Las Vegas. Everyone on the U.K. side is bummed out because there has never even been anything like this in England: a U.K. takeover.



Are you going to gamble?

We didn't last time, but hopefully this time we will be able to have a little fun. I was speaking to Oli [Sykes of Bring Me the Horizon] last week and he was like, “Oh, yeah. Vegas.” That's all he needed to say. It was enough.



Are you planning on debuting any of your new songs during the show?

We played a couple of shows in the U.K. recently with New Found Glory and we played new tracks then. They went over really well. We are going to add maybe even more [new songs] to the American set. At the moment, it's three or four.



So you're almost done with the new album?

We just finished the vocals and we have a couple of guest vocalists who have to be mixed. The guest vocalists are really good, so it's exciting.



Can you share with us who they are?

It's actually quite an explosive mix: Andrew [Neufeld] from Comeback Kid and Mike [Hranica] from the Devil Wears Prada. It's going to be pretty banging.



Tell us a little about the direction you are going with the new album.

It's called The Kids We Used To Be. Basically, with Ed [McRae, who replaced former vocalist George Noble] joining the band, we've had a lot of inspiration from ourselves and from each other. Without going too much into it, our former vocalist was a bit of a control freak and every aspect of the band had to be on his terms. The way we look at this album is that it's not exactly like a fresh start, but we wrote songs we have always wanted to write. It's kind of like a twist on us writing with the songs of bands we used to listen to in mind. I grew up listening to NOFX and Bad Religion, so it's kind of like a mixture of all that stuff and bringing it into our terms. The album has a lot more punk rock influence, but it's still heavy and hard.



You've told fans that this album will contain your heaviest song yet.

Yeah, literally. People have been asking us what the record is sounding like and we are saying how it's going to be a bit more accessible. We use that word because it is the only word that comes to mind. I mean, hardcore doesn't have a glass ceiling. So this one song is for all the kids that listen to us and think that Your Demise aren't a hardcore band anymore. They can hear this song and eat their own shit, basically. [Laughs.]



Do you have any standout experiences from being on the road?

Loads. [Laughs.] We have this little saying as a band that we are going to print on T-shirts: “Never A Dull Moment.” Because there never is a dull moment being in Your Demise. I mean, did you hear about the whole Canadian incident? This is only something that could happen to us. We were driving down the road where there had been a shooting; nearly 16 kilometers from the Canadian border. We were going back into America. We saw this car drive past us, do a massive U-turn and drive up behind us. It was the police screaming, “Get out of the car!” We didn't know what was going on, we were in our pant–ourunderwear as [Americans] call it–ready to go to sleep. Then there we were with guns to the backs of our heads. We're all idiots in this situation, we're British and never really been around guns in this sense. They tell us to get on the ground and open the back of the van and realize we aren't going around shooting people. All they said was, “Okay, you can get back in the van and go now.”



On the positive side, you haven't been arrested or accosted by the police in the U.S. yet.

Yeah, we haven't had any problems. We tried to behave [during our first tour] so we can come back and tour the shit out of America. That would be the worst thing, to get into trouble so we couldn't come back. alt