INTERVIEW: Lucas Woodland + Erik Bickerstaffe – Holding Absence / Loathe

Heavyweights of the UK underground scene right now, Liverpool’s chaotic hardcore overlords LOATHE and Cardiff’s melodic hardcore sensation HOLDING ABSENCE recently collaborated for a fantastic four-track EP, This Is As One. We caught up with LOATHE‘s Erik Bickerstaffe and HOLDING ABSENCE‘s Lucas Woodland on tour in Manchester to chat about what brought them together, the concept behind the EP and both groups’ plans for the future.

So, we’re on the second night of the This Is As One Tour – how was last night?

Lucas: Mate, Bristol was fantastic. I think we’d all agree that if every show was like that, it’ll be a perfect tour. Obviously, the weather is quite severe at the moment, so it’s a bit of a unique tour for all of us, but tonight seems to be doing well on presales. So, as long as the shows actually go ahead it should be good.

Full house at Bristol last night, then?

Erik: I think we were both surprised, for it being a headline show I think we were a bit taken aback by how many people were actually there, and how many people stayed for us throughout the course of the event.

Lucas: [To Erik] You’ve played there twice, haven’t you? We’ve done it three times, but we’re both really new bands to Bristol, I guess.

Well, it’s a pretty alternative place.

Lucas: Yeah, it’s such a huge scene there that it was nice that so many people turned out for us. And we played on a boat – Thekla. It was weird. [Laughs] You forget sometimes that you’re actually playing on the water.

I read that the supports for this tour were curated and hand-picked by LOATHE and HOLDING ABSENCE, what went into the choices and that process?

Lucas: Our friendships are formed from appreciation of hard work, and seeing another band’s vision and wanting to support them with that. That’s something that all the bands on this tour have in common – either you’re our friends, or you’re bands that we truly believe in. Just bands that we see a bit of ourselves in.

You have SLEEP TOKEN for a couple of nights on this tour, and judging from the waves they’re making in the underground scene with their original content, I’m guessing that’s what you’re referring to when you talk about seeing a band’s vision.

Lucas: Absolutely, there’s an element to all these bands that’s quite similar, and different. I think SLEEP TOKEN embody that – I don’t think they’ll be out of place playing with us.

Erik: I think this is one of the heavier shows of the tour. SLEEP TOKEN are pretty heavy towards the end of the songs. We have GOD COMPLEX playing with us on this tour too, the guitarist was in one of my first bands and I helped record their EP, so it will be cool to play with them, too.

Lucas: A big thing to note is that for us, genre doesn’t matter. We need to like them as people and have that connection with them, and that’s all that matters to us.

So, This Is As One, the new split EP. How did it come to be, and what were the ideas behind it when you came up with it?

Lucas: Originally, the idea was to do a song each, and then cover each other’s songs. We felt like it was a bit too much hassle though, a bit weird maybe. At first it was mainly a bit of a joke, but we carried on the idea.

Erik: Yeah, there was a point where we were like “actually, this would be sick”.

That’s interesting, since most people wouldn’t associate your band’s images with joking around.

Lucas: For sure. You have to sacrifice some things for your artistry sometimes. I used to sing in a more pop-punk, post-hardcore band and it used to be all about crowd surfing, and talking to the crowd loads. Now, I feel that we just have to portray our message in the truest way possible. But yeah, it mostly came about because we were friends, and really, the idea was to make the UK scene sit up and think ‘oh shit’. To make sure every band on the tour were new, good, bringing out exciting new content for people to discover, and playing as many places as possible.

How far back does the relationship between your two bands go?

Erik: We toured with BLOOD YOUTH on their album release shows, that was April last year. We were aware of each other beforehand anyway, but it was kinda just a mutual arrangement, going to each other’s places, hanging around with other bands and it came from that. We’re both on SharpTone Records too.

Lucas: I would like to make the point that it literally is totally within our hands, this isn’t particularly a record label focused project. We came to them with the idea, and it was really cool how hands-on they were with it.

With the songs featured on This Is As One, is there a connection between them, any sort of journey or lyrical themes or anything?

Lucas: Well, I think it’s a bit different for both bands. LOATHE just released The Cold Sun, so for them I think it’s more of a progression in terms of their sound and moving on to new things.

Erik: For us, anything that we do is kinda a statement of itself, we do whatever we’re feeling in the moment and whatever we wanna progress with. We look at things in terms of stuff we want to carry on with, and stuff we wanna leave behind. We left a lot behind with The Cold Sun and we’re moving onto new things with this new material. For our songs, lyrically they’re pretty separate. We usually write songs as separate concepts anyway though. They both follow a certain story within themselves, but as a band, with lyrics, we just really like the listener to decide what it is and understand the vibe that we give off, so that people who know LOATHE and appreciate what we do can find the meaning for themselves. People always seem to get it right though, and people coming up to us and telling us what they think it means is sick, that’s exactly what we wanted.

Do Saint Cecelia and Everything follow on from LOATHE’s songs or are they totally separate?

Lucas: Well, I think originally we wanted to make a big point of working together, we were gonna be in the studio together, and write the songs together and stuff, but it became a little bit too tough to do with our schedules and stuff.

Erik: [Laughs] Yeah, since we’re all big celebrities now.

Lucas: Yeah, for sure. [Laughs] I think for us, it was more of the case that HOLDING ABSENCE had only had about four songs out at that point, and I felt that there was a lot more we could do. It was a case of showing people what we had left in the tank before an album. We can do the cheesy pop songs like Saint Cecilia, we can do the epic, slow songs like Everything. They were songs that were just a bit misrepresented in our catalogue at the time.

So, it’s not too conceptual then?

Lucas: No, it’s definitely more of a transitionary work.

You didn’t consider writing each other’s songs then?

Lucas: We thought about it, and I’m sure there will be people who wanted a sort of, huge, 7-minute-long collab track, but it just wouldn’t have worked out for us. In hindsight, it would have been class. But, it’s tough enough to get everybody in a room together let alone arrange something like that.

Fair enough. What would you say your respective bands have learnt from each other, from this experience?

Lucas: That’s a tough one for us because, in the best way possible, we’re both very headstrong and independent bands in terms of our sound and image. I feel like we take inspiration from lots of different things.

Erik: If anything it just reinforces the fact that we know what we’re doing with what we want, and that we know where we’re heading. We love what we do and how each of our bands are, so it gave us more confidence. It helped us believe in ourselves a bit more.

Lucas: I think the main thing with this split really is that it was a showcase of what we can, as artists, right now in our career.

Does this mean that there’s a HOLDING ABSENCE album coming out soon, if this material is transitionary?

Lucas: Yep, we’re currently working on it and it’ll be out as soon as we can get it to people, really. Ever since day one we’ve always spoken about an album and it’s always been on the tip of our tongues. When you tell someone an album is coming, they always get excited about it, so we’ve had a lot of tweets and expectations for fans. For writing Saint Cecelia we had to take ourselves out of the album mindset for a bit and then go back in, but we’re working super hard at the moment.

For sure. And what about new LOATHE material?

Erik: I think we’re in talks about what we’re going to be doing soon, but nothing’s set in stone. We’re always writing, and doing our own thing. It’s kinda determined by when our label comes to us and gives us the old ‘yo, it’s time to do the thing’. At the point that we’re at we still view ourselves as a bunch of musicians that enjoy playing together and making music, and we just want to do that as much as we possibly can. The more music we have with our name on it, the better.

Is it likely that any of the songs from the split would make it onto albums in the future, or are they gonna stay as their own separate entity?

Lucas: Originally everything we made up to that point was going to be on our debut album, but I’m not so sure now. It’s easy to attribute songs to albums and to the format they’re bound to, but I think it’s important for us that we keep This Is As One as separate and as sacred as possible.

Cool. So, in terms of the futures of HOLDING ABSENCE and LOATHE, it’s all systems go?

Lucas: Yeah, man. 26 date tour, debut album, it’s all very exciting and we’re just gonna keep doing what we’re doing.

Erik: Music, touring, expanding the universe.

I’m not making that the tagline.

Erik: Yes you are. [Laughs]

Cheers for talking to us, and good luck on the rest of the tour!

This Is As One is out now via SharpTone Records.

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