Love Is Noise: Living in your own way
“I want LOVE IS NOISE to be the band for people where they can listen to us and it helps them in whatever way they need to be.” Cam Humphrey, vocalist and guitarist, is keen to create catharsis and connection through his music. LOVE IS NOISE burst into the alternative metal space, garnering comparisons to bands like DEFTONES. Yet on their debut album To live in a different way, they are keen to liberate themselves from expectations and foreground emotional connection.
Cam shares the vulnerability that fuelled the process of creating the album. “I’m quite a positive person, and when we did Euphoria and all the other singles it was fairly easy for me in terms of being in a good space. But with To live in a different way I was in quite a bad place and I needed the record to really show that, because we wanted it to be as real as possible. The album was therapy to me. It helped me write down all my problems and everything that was going on at that time and put them in a positive light.”
This therapeutic expression spans the thematic currents of the album. “With Ascending I talk about death and how it can impact you in many different ways, but how it impacts me is that I know that there is an end game to life in general, so I want to live my life to the fullest.” Equally, Cam explains that he is particularly proud of Mist for its emotional process. “That song lyrically was one of the hardest things I’ve had to write down, and I cried as soon as I finished the final note of that song and that was actually the last song we did on the record.”
One of these themes Cam is also keen to express is time, and the importance of taking time with the album to understand it free from expectations. “People would think before they heard anything off the record that we’d drop a DEFTONES inspired alternative metal track and keep pushing that with the release of the singles. But with every release we do we never want to be in our comfort zone.” Instead, Cam lists the likes of BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE, PORTISHEAD, COLDPLAY, RADIOHEAD, JEFF BUCKLEY and THE BEATLES as influencing the album.
“Its very scary because were releasing songs that are different, and there will be opinions. Especially on Century Media, which is a heavier label and we’re blessed that Century let us do what we wanted to. We’ll pay the favour back with heavy tunes in the next few years.”
The process of recording To live in a different way also found LOVE IS NOISE in new territory, recording majority of the album live. “We had the ability to go into the studio and write it like it would have been back in the day. That’s where the nostalgia side of LOVE IS NOISE comes in. We feel like we’re a band that could have existed in the 90s really well. And were bringing that back but in a completely new way. Being able to record the live cello and have three different drumkits set up it was a blessing to be able to create a real sounding record and I think we’ve created something special.”
90s nostalgia also finds its way into references to Fight Club and The Matrix across their music. Cinema is a huge influence for Cam, who shares, “the dream one day would be to write music for a film like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.” This soundtrack-esque influence shaped the making of the tracks, “we just dropped Sunshine and when we finished that song I was like ‘this song could fit at the end of a character walking away at the end of a film.”
“We write music and we create visuals and we create art that we enjoy, and as much as we can we make it so that it doesn’t follow trends,” Cam explains. “I really want to fly the flag for that and for anyone who’s reading this who feels like they can’t create the art they want to create because it’s not reaching the people they want it to reach. Just do what you want to do and if you believe in it, and you believe that it’s great, other people will believe that it’s great.”
This artistry carries itself to their live shows. “We want every LOVE IS NOISE show to be an experience that you never forget. And that’s why we don’t play as many shows, because financially it’s not possible to put the same amount of effort in and go to play everywhere in the same way. When people come to our show’s they know that the ticket price is worth what they’re going to get.” Recently off the back of a tour with THORNHILL and GRAPHIC NATURE, Cam shared the “lightning in a bottle” feeling of gaining new fans on the road and looks forward to the album’s release show in London, promising “new bits we’ve never done before.”
Freeing themselves from genres and embracing catharsis, for LOVE IS NOISE the art will always be the top priority. Sharing his hope for what listeners can take away from the album, Cam hopes “that their opinion of what a heavier band can do has now changed.”
To live in a different way is out now via Century Media Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS117 here:
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