Hightower Temple at Countercult Weekender by Tim Beckett
Royal Blood, the Grunge revival, the state of modern popular music...Adam Teasdale has got plenty to say, oh and he's also a sound engineer, producer and drummer for North East Grunge / Alt Rock band Hightower Temple.
Mark Tyers (MT): I last saw you guys perform live in March, how's the rest of your year gone?
Adam
Teasdale (AT): You saw us when we were just starting
off as a band and so much has happened so quickly! It's been
overwhelming at times! Over the summer we played plenty of shows
across the North East. We played at Trillians, the O2 Academy, Little
Buildings and so many other great venues you hear about in the area.
We got great support from bands like Spyder Byte from Brighton
along with local bands such as Fallen Mafia, Creature,
Like A Wookie, A New Nowhere and Devils Night.
Those guys took us under their wings knowing we were a new band of
similar styles and helped us get gigs and support slots, we really
couldn't be any more grateful to those guys.
AT: A guy called Tim Beckett got in
touch with us over Facebook after hearing our debut single, Mona. He
told us he was from CounterCult Records and the label was
hosting a weekender festival in Birmingham in September. He gave us
the run down and we told him to count us right in! The weekender
featured some great up and coming bands within the alternative and
grunge genres. We made some great friends along the way including
bands like VultureCult, Fluorescent, Grunts,
Finished 52, Celladoor, Void, Gutterflower,
Mexican Painkiller and so many others. They were all amazing
and such lovely people, it really opened up doors for us as far as
networking goes and it allowed us to develop some great connections
for future gigs up and down the country.
AT:
We are currently half way through work on the debut EP! There's six
songs in total. We've got the drums, bass and rhythm guitar down,
all that's left is some lead guitar, vocals and then any other little
noise makers we need to throw in here or there. We're hoping to
release it in February of 2018. We're doing it completely
independently to, all recording, production, album artwork etc. is
done by ourselves or close friends of ours which has proved to be
challenging, but we're enjoying every minute of the creative process.
MT: What do you think about the
state of popular music at the moment? Do you see yourselves as a part
of the whole Grunge/Alt revival which has been spearheaded by bands
like Drenge, Darlia, Slaves, Titlefight and
of course Royal Blood?
AT: As far as popular music goes,
we're open minded. We're not a band who would shy away from any
particular scene, we just happen to play a genre of music that fits
under the alternative genre, not as mainstream as the likes of
Rihanna or Ariana Grande. We listen to every style of music going as
a band and as individuals. On the car journey to Birmingham we
listened to Missing Persons' Greatest Hits, very different to
what we play or bands we're associated with!
We'd
like to consider ourselves part of that movement for sure! We'd like
to see more alternative bands hit the mainstream charts, I know
there's a few already in there. It's always nice to see popular
music change from time to time. I remember when Royal
Blood first hit the
scene and everyone went nuts! We look up to those bands a
lot, especially Royal Blood, Drenge and Darlia,
some of our favourites and biggest inspirations. I think the
CounterCult Weekender was a real eye-opener to the popularity
of the grunge/alt revival as like I say, there were so many bands,
playing originals that were incredible. The popularity of the
revival gave us the kick up the backside we needed in regards to
getting our music out there and joining the scene. There's a lot
more originality within the revival than people would expect. It's
not just every band trying to sound like Nirvana, it's real people
making real art with their own spin on things, there's a lot of
freedom. We'd love to see this revival continue and as we said as
far as popular music goes, we'd like to see more and more of these
bands get into the spotlight as it really is a perfected art.
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