In Case Of Fire

Armed with an mp3 player (complete with microphone) and a sheet of questions, I talked to Steven, Colin and Mark from In Case of Fire before their gig in Tunbridge Wells. Here’s what they had to say... 

Rock Pulse: How are you finding the tour so far; are you enjoying headlining? 

Colin: Yeah, it’s definitely good to be headlining, I mean it’s only our second headlining tour of the UK; we’ve played a lot of supports in the last year so it’s always nice to be playing our own shows, even if there’s only ten or fifteen people there some nights. 

RP: The new album ‘Align the Planets’ has just been released; how does it feel to finally have it out? 

Mark: it’s great.
Colin: It’s pretty amazing, yeah, we’ve had some of those songs since we started In Case of Fire in 2005 so it’s nice to be getting them released on an album. We’ve recorded the album twice, once with Tobin and then once with Gil Norton last year, it’s been finished for nearly a year, we’ve been sitting on it for nearly a year, just wanting to get it out there, but I think it was the right time to release it, it sets us up nicely for the summer and stuff. 

RP: Some of the album’s lyrics come across as very heartfelt and personal, was it difficult to release them into the public domain? 

Steven: I don’t really know yet, we haven’t seen what the reaction has been, but it just felt right for those songs so we had to put it down. It’s only on two or three songs tops on the album, so we’ll wait and see. Y’know sometimes you read about bands who’ve done that and then say that they’re not going to do it again because it was too hard, but the stuff that was written about happened a long time ago so it’s not like really fresh, but...It sort of felt cathartic more than anything to be honest. 

RP: At present you’re on Search and Destroy in the UK, how’s that been turning out? 

Colin : Well we’re not actually on Search and Destroy; they’re licensing the album from out parent label, which is Zomba in the states. I think it was one of those things where we were signing to a major, and it just happened to be a major in the states, and for the UK, Search and Destroy being an indie are a whole lot more in tune with what the UK market needs, as regards to the publishing and marketing and stuff. It made sense for Zomba to licence it to them so that they could do the groundwork in the UK, as the music business in America is completely different to the UK, single cycles in America are like, six months, and in the UK it’s like two months; there’s no way that we could have released a single and waited six months to release a second single. So it’s working well, I think it’s what we needed to build up a fan-base in the UK. 

RP: You’ve been receiving a lot of media attention recently; do you feel a lot of pressure on your shoulders because of that? 

Colin: No not really, I mean it’s nice as you need some media as a band, some good press and such, but the most important part for us is just to get a fan-base.
Mark: You learn quickly to sort of ignore press really, especially reviews just in general.
Colin: Even good reviews really, I mean you’ve got to take them with a pinch of salt really. If you walked away from every good review thinking ‘that’s it, we’ve made it’ then there would be a bad review just around the corner to knock you down again. 

RP: You recently supported Bullet for My Valentine at the Royal Albert Hall, that must have been amazing? 

Colin: (pauses) well we’re not huge BFMV fans...But yeah it was amazing to play the Royal Albert Hall, it’s definitively we’ll remember for a long time. It’s not a venue that a lot of bands get to play , because nobody tours it, so it was great to be asked, and to play for such a good cause as well was fantastic. It’s just one of those places where you just walk out and say… ‘whoa,’ it’s a bit special. 

RP: Having played to both very large and much smaller, audiences, do you prefer either or enjoy a mix of both? 

Steven: I think when we play our own audience, now that the album’s out, and we really get our fan-base going, that’ll be pretty special for us, as we’ve been playing other people’s crowds for so long. Playing to a small, packed, club is hard to beat.
Mark: I think you lose a lot of the intimacy and the close nature in the bigger venues; like when we were on the Kerrang tour we were playing fifteen minutes after doors so it was half full venues...
Colin: If it’s you crowd in a big venue like that then that’s great, but we haven’t experienced that yet (Laughs.) 

RP: Has it surprised you how quickly your profile has shot up recently, do you encounter a lot of misconceptions about ‘coming out of nowhere?’ 

Colin: Yeah, it seems quick to a lot of people but it doesn’t seem quick to us; I mean we get asked by a lot of journalists: ‘So, you’ve had this record label landed in your laps….’ Or ‘you’re an overnight success,’ but we’ve been around since 2005 y’know, and before that with Element. I think for us the recognition is like vindication for the fact that we’ve hung in there, and sacrificed a lot for this band. We’re starting to repay the favour, which is good, and it’s like, finally we’re moving on somewhere, which is good. 

RP: How has growing up in Northern Ireland influenced you as a band, is the music scene quite fertile? 

Colin: I think it is, when we were in our previous band the scene was fantastic, and then it went through a bit of a lull, and now it’s come back.
Mark: For a while there were lots of really good local bands, but nobody was really breaking outside Northern Ireland, but now they’re starting to come through.
Steven: I think that’s all from the groundwork back in 2002/2003.
Colin: Yeah definitely, I mean now you’ve got bands like the Answer and Fighting With Wire, and then us, who’ve all gone with big labels and released albums this year.
Mark: It’s been bubbling for a long time.
Colin: I think back home, because it’s such a small place, there are only maybe a handful of really good places to play, so you have to be a really high standard before you can play them. Mark: There’s a lot of competition. 
Colin: I think that the support bands, in our view, are much higher standard than the local bands over here, because there’s so much competition and you really have to be on the ball to play. When the big bands come over to Northern Ireland and they have a local support playing, they’re always surprised at the quality of the bands; they’re professional and have really good songs, and can play, so it’s really good at the minute. 

RP: Can you pinpoint the particular bands which have influenced and informed your sound? 

Colin: I think that any band who says, y’know, ‘we don’t sound like anybody’, it’s just lies, you might not sound exactly like them but every band takes influence from somewhere. I think probably, bands like The Mars Volta, like Muse, Refused, even though we’re not a hardcore band, some of the stuff on ‘Shape of Punk to Come’ definitely influenced us in terms of songwriting. Even AtTheDriveIn and going further back, The Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden, just really good songwriters. Even though we have progressive elements in our music, with breakdowns as well, we always try to retain that ‘song’ sensibility as well, there has to be melody and the overall structure has to be concise. 

RP: Considering how it’s been going so far, do you have any idea as yet as where you would like to be in, say, a year, or further on? 

Colin: I think in a year we’d like to be in a position where the album has made a definite impact.
Mark: I thought you were going to say ‘a lot of money’ there. (All laugh.) 

RP: Those things can be synonymous... 

Colin: Well we wouldn’t mind that, but I think most importantly we’d like a really solid fan-base in the UK, and the album’s coming out in America, Japan, Australia in six months time, so in a year we’d like to have taken off in those territories.
Steven: I think we’d like to be working on the second album.
Colin: Definitely, we start writing this summer for the second album, in between festivals, I think we want to get a jump on it as soon as possible. Again, we want it to be a step up from ‘Align the Planets,’ we’d like to take it in other directions and keep on growing as a band. I think that’s the main thing we’d like to do year on year, just grow as a band, grow as musicians. 

RP: Thanks.