INTERVIEW: Martyn Millard – Orange Goblin

ORANGE GOBLIN have been one of the UK’s staple names in hard rock for a few years now. They’ve continuously stepped up their game with each release, and 2018 sees the release of their ninth studio album, The Wolf Bites Back. The album sees a slightly more darker side to the band, and fulfils some of the bands wildest dreams such as having Phil Campbell feature a couple of times. We had the opportunity to chat with bassist Martyn Millard about The Wolf Bites Back, working with producer Jaime Gomez Arellano, touring, and more.

You’re set to release The Wolf Bites Back very soon, how you feeling about it?

Martyn: I’m excited, I think we all are. It’s been a long time coming, it’s been four years since the last release or near enough. We’ve had these ideas knocking around for a while as you can imagine. We’re just very excited for people to hear it, some of it is new territory for us without it being too drastically different, we’re very excited and looking forward to playing the songs live.

You getting some good responses to what’s been released so far?

Martyn: Yeah, the one track that was released, Sons of Salem, we got some great response back from that. It makes you want to go “have more” but no you can’t. We’ve had a few journalists who have had pre-orders and stuff and have given good reviews or good feedback anyway. We want people to hear it, we won’t please everybody, but we never will, that’s how it is, we’re excited for everyone to hear it. Especially long-term fans who have been with the band for a long time, I’m looking forward to seeing their reaction and hearing their reaction, that’s important to us.

This album is a lot darker than ORANGE GOBLIN’s previous records, can you tell me a little more about this turn?

Martyn: I don’t know if it’s meant to be, I think maybe life around you seeps into the music somehow. We live in a pretty crappy world right now, but I don’t know, I think the last few records Ben has always touched on the darker side with his lyrics anyway, fantasy really, he doesn’t go too political or use it to get to other people. Our music is about escapism instead of getting a message out there, I think maybe the darker side is coming through because it’s horror and fantasy which we’ve touched on before. Musically I’m not sure if it’s darker, certainly when I was in the studio I thought “Christ, this is more commercial than we’ve ever been before.” People have said that before that it seems a bit darker and that seems to be the general thing but for me personally I don’t think it is. I think it’s just us, all different shades, there’s light and dark, for me if it does sound dark I don’t think it’s massively deliberate.

You’ve got a bunch more noticeable influences on this record such as Wishbone Ash. It’s cool. What is really interesting though is the lyrical influences. There’s alien serial killers to descendants of the Salem witches. What was the writing process like for that?

Martyn: It all comes out of Ben‘s slightly deranged, booze sodden brain. He writes all the lyrics, the lyrics are him, the three of us deal with the riffs and he deals with a riff here and there, but we leave the lyrical side to Ben. He’ll obviously run it with us and say, “what do you think of this?”, so leading up the recording you’re bombarded with sets of lyrics that he’s written and song titles and things like that. We’ll usually say it sounds great, it sounds awesome, but he involves us, he also involves us in the way he projects his vocals on the album and asks our opinion about his vocal melodies and stuff and the way he attacks the song and Gomez the producer is very good with Ben in that respect. As far as lyrics go, he does a lot of reading, watched a lot of movies so he’s influenced by what he’s into at the time I think. Maybe if it’s a story on the news that he can embellish or a film that he’s seen, I think it comes out of the mixing pot that is his mind.

Everyday is a school day with some topics.

Martyn: Yeah, it is [laughs].

You’ve mentioned Jaime Gomez Arellano. How was it working with him on the new record?

Martyn: It was ace, really good. We’ve been very lucky with people we’ve worked with in the past, people on record, we’ve been so lucky. We’ve known Gomez for a while, in and around London, and through friends and then you see him around London, and friends say we should work with Gomez on the new record. I think that was around the time that PARADISE LOST released not the last album, but the one before and hearing that first track kick in and thinking the production was incredible and thinking that this guy is a good choice, The Plague Within, that’s what it’s called, I just went to my CD rack and had a look [laughs]. I know he’s done a bunch of bands we like. He’s great, he’s a real perfectionist when it comes to tone when it comes to tuning, my God he’s a perfectionist when it comes to bloody tuning. I play a very old guitar where the tuning goes out quiet a lot, not so much be able to hear it in a live environment but in a recording environment I couldn’t hear any different, but he was telling me it was out, and I was literally playing a note and then tuning up, it was that intense. He also makes you play, he’s one of the best, he pushes you to be the best musicians, he pushed our boundaries in how well we play and perform, sometimes you need that. I think with the last record Back from the Abyss, maybe we got a little bit too comfortable, not Jamie’s fault, or the producers he done a great job on that and Eulogy for the Damned, but I think it’s good to mix it up. We have changed producers a lot over the years just to keep things fresh and I think it was a nice choice to go with Gomez this time round, nothing derogatory towards Jamie who has done our last couple, but it keeps it fresh, it’s new for the band too. This is the first time we have ever recorded drums first and then guitar, it’s always been drums, bass, guitars, vocals, it was odd for me. Chris only takes two-three days to do drums and that’s only because he tires towards the end of the day, if he doesn’t get tired he could probably get them all done in a day, he takes his time but it’s still only a couple of days, and I’m ready to go in on the third day to start tracking bass and it’s like no Joe next, Joe takes fucking forever so I thought “Shit, I’m going to be ages down the line here!” I had to reschedule all my planning. It was great though. He’s a great guy and he knows his stuff, he’s got a lot of vintage equipment there too, it was very interesting to go there and record. We weren’t recording with our own equipment, Joe was in some respects, we had all sorts of stuff that I’ve never heard of. He had wall of amps and speakers and stuff which was exciting for us, we don’t get to do that.

That’s brilliant, sounds like you were really kept on your toes.

Martyn: Yeah, I think that’s the point of going with a new producer. They each have a different way of doing things so each time we go with one it’s not the first time, but it’s very fresh, always have different ideas and different ways. I think if you stick with the same producers and studios each album is going to sound pretty similar and we’ve found that with our last record that it didn’t sound as fresh as the one before, we wanted it to be slightly different. That wasn’t to do with the producer though.

The album was written with an effort to make sure the songs would work live. It gives the album a rawer feel, with Ben [Ward] saying that it’s something that is lacking from rock and metal lately. Can you explain that?

Martyn: Again, we can only talk from our own experiences, a lot of songs from our previous record Back from the Abyss were great and we loved a lot of stuff, and I loved a lot of songs on it but playing some of them live were a real bugger. You need extra musicians to do the songs justice and before we went in we decided we weren’t going to overdo it, we weren’t going to overlay it, we were going to keep it raw and just so if we want to play these songs live which we do, maybe one we won’t play live which is a shame, but it’s got a lot of stuff going on. All the others we can, I think they are a lot more straight forward to play as a four-piece, that was our thinking for it anyway and sometimes you listen to bands live and you know there’s more going on there than what is going on on stage, samples or backing vocals or keyboard samples and that’s okay for them bands but for us we want to keep it more straightforward and stripped back.

You don’t want to lose your sound.

Martyn: That’s it. Look at GHOST, GHOST have lots of backing vocals, that works, that’s a show, that’s a real show, I get it but we’re different, we want to be as stripped back as possible.

ORANGE GOBLIN are playing Stone Free next month, a day after the album release. Are you excited about performing some of the new tracks?

Martyn: Yeah, we are, we’ve still got to decide which ones we want to play. We’ve been gigging and playing shows since the albums been recorded and we’ve been playing two new songs live, one of them works really well which is Sons of Salem, the other one is a little bit more layered, I think when people know it they’ll love it but it’s not as bombastic as Sons of Salem which goes down okay straight away, people prefer that already. We’re only playing 45 minutes at Stone Free, so we can’t play too many, the album will only be a day old as well, so we’ll play two, I’d like to play three, I think we can play three and give them a bit of an air, bring them into the set. We’ve played this same set for four years now.

You want to mix it up a little now.

Martyn: Yeah, it keeps it interesting for us and for the people who regularly come and see us.

MOTORHEAD’s Phil Campbell threw in some solos on the album, how did that come about?

Martyn: Well, Phil Campbell is PHIL CAMPBELL AND THE BASTARD SONS and Ben is his booking agent, he books PHIL CAMPBELL AND THE BASTARD SONS as a living so that was pretty easy to make that phone call and say “Phil, want to do a solo or two?” Unfortunately, we didn’t get to meet him, I didn’t anyway, Ben met him, we sent the stuff to his studio in Wales and he listened to it. When we got the solos back we thought wow, he does one in Sons of Salem and one on Zeitgeist, he done three-four different ones for each, I might be wrong, but I think both of them on the album are his first ones. They just blew me away, I found that amazing, incredible and so grateful he took the time out of his day to do it. It just works because if you listen to them you can tell it’s not Joe playing, Joe is an amazing guitarist but there’s a different sound and a different feeling and it brings something slightly different into each of them songs. Oh, did I say Sons of Salem? I meant The Wolf Bites Back [laughs]. It’s one of them moments where you hear the solo and you feel like schoolkids again. It was really cool.

It was a proper schoolkids dream come true.

Martyn: Well that’s it, we’ve never said we’re anything else other than to just have fun. Obviously, we take it seriously on the music side, but we just enjoy playing. We enjoy playing to good people and we’re just having fun.

I guess if you stop the fun it becomes a chore.

Martyn: We always said that, we always said that once it becomes a ball ache then we’ll think about turning it in. There are times and days and occasions where it is a ball ache and things don’t go right but there’s a lot of planning and arranging to do, especially with us because we all have day jobs, we spent a lot of our album time and weekends away playing. The traveling and airport stuff can be tiresome but it’s not a ball ache it’s just part of it. It comes with the territory. Every time we’re on stage we’re having fun and it might not look like it at times, it might look like we’re dying but we are having fun underneath the grimacing.

What’s next for ORANGE GOBLIN after the release of The Wolf Bites Back?

Martyn: Again, we’ve all got day jobs and the day jobs are a ball ache in regard to the band because everyone’s got mortgages and kids, and Chris and Joe have got young families so losing jobs is just a nono, we just can’t do it. We tried it full time for a bit, 2013-2014 we went full time and gave up our jobs. Being away for so long though it became too much, and it was hard, not for an amazing money, not bad but not for being away 9 months of the year, it was like we’re going to end up dead. Everyone thinks you’re touring in luxury, especially in America, 15 weeks in America and we was sleeping upright in a van because we had nowhere else to sleep, it’s alright if you’re 20 but everyone now has bad backs. Touring yes, there’s some news coming about touring, but I can’t mention it but there’s a UK tour coming in October/November time and that’ll probably be it as far as touring goes. It’ll be a good tour, a great package, we can’t wait to announce it and it’ll excite some people, apart from that gigging at the weekends, long weekends away, here there and everywhere in Europe. In August we’re busy, we’re away every weekend, we kind of see where it takes us. If the right tour come along though we’ll never say never, if SABBATH come around which they could depending on health and they’d take us on for six months we wouldn’t say no. That’s a once in a lifetime where you pick up the pieces after. It’s been wonderful watching my friends tour with bands like METALLICA who are having the best time, but we’ll see there’ll be plenty of shows and a UK tour and we’ll see where it takes us into the next year. We usually just get booked for most weekends of the year, we might go off the radar except for the town we’re playing in. It’s exciting for us to have a new album out for people to hear.

The Wolf Bites Back is out now via Candlelight/Spinefarm Records.

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