INTERVIEW: Leeched

Just before they opened the flood gates and drowned the UK in the filth that made up their debut You Took the Sun When You Left, we were able to grab time with emerging Manchester noise-bringers LEECHED to catch up on how the band birthed their hideous noise, the goals of a band as angry as they are and just what it is about this visceral style of heavy music that is so appealing.

How did LEECHED come to be?

Laurie: So me and Tom [Drums] already knew each other from a two piece couple years ago called LEECHED funnily enough. We all kinda knew each other via online, cause in Manchester everyone is quite connected. Me and Tom were doing that and then we stopped, then Judd [Guitars] kinda put the idea out that he wanted to do something, cause we were all in bands before but they just never were what any of us wanted to do. We started it off with a vision of just playing what we wanted to play and it kicked off from there 18 months ago.

How quickly was Nothing Will Grow From This Rotting Earth put out from the inception?

Laurie: So we all got going January last year, recorded it in March and then dropped it in August, or October, I can’t remember. We just pretty much wanted material out as soon as possible, get the ball rolling.

How does writing work within LEECHED?

Laurie: Me and Judd just compile riffs and push them into songs before adding the drums in after. There’s not really a set formula, but it always starts with me and Judd at a computer just recording riffs so we don’t forget them, put some programmed drums before we bring in the real ones. Some songs might develop quicker or whatever, but it’s not clear cut.

What was it about the previous bands you were in that didn’t quite cut the mustard?

Laurie: Well I moved to Manchester and I joined a metalcore band, I love metalcore but it’s not exactly what I wanted to do. [Tom] can speak for his own bands….

Tom: There was no progression, there were no goals, there was nothing we were working towards so I felt like we’d be doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the ‘career’, if you wanna call it that. If you’re gonna work at something for long, you’re gonna want it to get bigger and better, so you need some sort of drive and progression cause otherwise there’s no point in doing it.

What is the goal with LEECHED?

Laurie: Being the heaviest band alive, haha! Silly, ballsy comments aside…

Tom: There isn’t a goal as such, it’s more like once we hit that goal then we move onto the next one. We’re not aiming to do something and get to a finish line. We want to put out horrible music and we want everyone in the world to listen to it. If you don’t like that sort of stuff then we still want you to experience it.

What were the main influences when you first start?

Tom: NAILS.

Laurie: Yeah, if you wanna say bands and stuff then TRAP THEM, we started the band with all those kinda bands in mind.

Tom: The main influence was probably just aggressive, riffing music. We are seeing what other bands were doing, it looking fun to do and then us just, not trying to imitate or copy it but put our own spin on things and just try and do something for the UK. A lot of these bands are American based, and there are a lot of big, horrible sounding bands from the States and there aren’t many bands experimenting with the dark hardcore kind of vibe.

Have you found the British scene to be quite accepting of an Americanised sound?

Tom: Yeah, because we’re not a single genre, so we will always find people still like it because there are influences from everything in the album. There’s bit of heavy, slow, fast, doom, almost atmospheric bits in the album, so there’s definitely something for everyone.

What about thematically, where is the influence there?

Laurie: It kinda just follows the theme of the band which is just depravity, misery. I’m just trying to think of words off the top of my head, but those vibes are consistent in everything we do, from the lyrics, the artwork, the image, everything. A couple of the songs might have an idea that sparked them, but it just kind of, similarly when I mentioned earlier that we push the songs in different directions. It’s not the best answer but I can’t really give anything deeper.

So where some bands will put deep personal meanings into their songs, LEECHED avoid doing that?

Laurie: Not really, we just follow the themes and ideas we have and it all stems from there.

Where there was a mad rush to get the debut EP out, was there a bit more of a deliberate approach to writing You Took The Sun When You Left?

Laurie: Yeah precisely, we thought about it lot more. We added in a load of synths and stuff, like there’s none of that shit in the EP, and I think that shows in the music, I mean it’s only nine minutes long. The album is a lot more throughout, a lot of stuff got binned off or was started from scratch after being moved around 100 times, yeah it was a lot more methodical.

Tom: Writing the EP and putting out the EP slowly made us find the sound we eventually wanted. The EP is quite grindcore, its fast and aggressive, and we wanted to keep those elements but we wanted to see what else we could do with it. It is a multi genre album in a way, it’s still going to be heavy and people will call it hardcore, but there’s no limit to genre. We just wanted to find specifically what we wanted, and we’ve found that with the album. Writing the EP made us find what we wanted.

How was recording the album?

Laurie: Everything was written before we recorded. I had the whole album fully done in pre-production and just printed the tempo maps and we went to the studio and re-did the whole thing. I think the better prepared you are, I mean if you’ve got a million quid you can piss about in a studio all day, but the more you put into a recording session the more you get out.

Tom: It makes the whole process a lot easier.

Laurie: We had five days to track it. Then the mixes we had next week and then to see it fully mastered it took about two weeks. We wouldn’t have been able to do that without all the prep.

Do you like working as fast as you do?

Laurie: Yeah, got fuck all else to do ain’t it!

Tom: We’re all busy, but it doesn’t mean we want these thingd to affect the band; we want the band to become busier than us doing our own things. We’re not going to make the band slack cause we’re busy, we will make time for the band. This pace that we’ve set now, it’s something we plan on carrying on. We put out the EP fast, we put out the album fast and like we said earlier, there won’t be a boundary, we’re just gonna see how far this goes. We’re not gonna slow or stop.

With this idolisation of the American sound, is it fair to say that the States are a place you have in your sights?

Laurie: Yeah yeah, that was something we wanted to do with this album cycle, maybe towards the tail end. We will go as far as we can, America would be awesome, but there are loads of places I wanna go. Japan would be amazing, and they love music and they’re really good at it.

Given how intense LEECHED are, do you think there is a real barrier for extreme bands to jump before reaching those goals?

Laurie: Yeah, extreme music is becoming more widely accepted. We’re not really aiming for international success, but for as many people that can hear it as possible, and if we can push as many boarders as we can then great. If we can just write the music we wanna write and people latch onto it then the logical step is that it’ll accumulate and take off.

Now that you’re 18 months into LEECHED’s life can you feel yourself get tighter each time you play?

Laurie: I think there are specifics to that question. The songs are getting there because some of them we’ve only just learnt them, but with general things, that’s the thing with bands, there is a certain sound to a band who have been playing together for so long, and you can definitely hear it. We’ve only been together 18 months but the more we play live as a whole we get to feel each other more. You see it in bands that have played together for 30 years, they think as one, that’s what you have to aim for. That’s the whole fucking point of being in a band, we’re not here to show off our chops, not that we’ve fucking got any, but we’re not here to just sit and play guitar, it’s all about how the band works as a whole.

What is it about this kind of music that you find so appealing?

Tom: It’s just so fucking heavy, it’s just riffs and noise and I don’t know why I’m drawn to it, or why other people are drawn to it, but they are and it’s fucking awesome. I think it’s just the whole underground, not normal, aggressive, noisy, it’s just a new experience for most who have gone to rock gigs or local gigs, then they come to see us, they’ll realise there is something more intense. There is something more visual, more noise, just everything, it’s not the norm.

Considering this is your first proper outing in a band, what made you want to dive straight into the deepest, darkest depths of the underground sound?

Laurie: I don’t know y’know, I was thinking about this the other day. When you’re young and you listen to metal for the first time and it’s the heaviest thing ever, then you discover another band and they’re the heaviest thing and you can never un-listen to what you have done before. I like all music, I don’t exclusively listen to heavy music, but probably because LEECHED are the hardest I’ve ever gone before I don’t see the point in not going for it. Plus I love the theme we have with this band, I just want to carry it on.

You Took The Sun When You Left is out now via Prosthetic Records.

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