Check out this great interview I got to conduct with Jake Fogarty (drums) and Robin Adams (vocals) of UK based metal band Red Seas Fire!
How did the band originally come together? Who approached who with the formation?
Robin: I think, basically, it started off with Pete about five years ago or something. He likes to say “in his bedroom”. I think he knew Leo and Sam, our old bassist and old drummer from college, something like that. He had quite a popular YouTube channel at the time, on which he put out an advert for a guitarist. That’s when our old guitarist responded to that advert. Then that came together after it was, like, two or three more years before they found me. Then I went for an audition. Then the old drummer left the band, so we put out an audition for a new one and that’s how we found Jake. Obviously, the old bassist left, and we’re auditioning new bassists now. So we may have found a new one.
Tell me a little bit about the writing and recording process for the Confrontation EP.
Jake: For Confrontation, it was a lot more band involved, compared than Exposition, mainly down to the fact that when I joined the band, Exposition was the first EP that was released kind of under the new lineup. A lot of it had already been written, and ideas had been thrown about for it. But Confrontation got more of an input from everyone. I mean, how it started was that Pete would do kind of the groundwork of it, the riffs and stuff, and throw them our way so that we can adjust our own parts on it. Basic drum parts, and he may even come up with melody lines. All in all, Confrontation was like a three piece effort. Robin went away and worked on his vocal parts. I went away and worked on specific drum parts. I think it all came together like that.
Robin: Yeah, we live pretty far away from each other.
Jake: Yeah, we live like two hours from mine to Pete’s, and then from Pete’s to Robin’s it’s another two hours. So when we do meet up and practice, which is normally before a one off gig or tour, it’s quite an intense process really. We make sure we get a lot done because we don’t get to see each other really.
Robin: Writing is predominantly online for us, since we’re so far away.
It’s amazing what you can do with technology though. The way that you can all be in different parts of the world, and then you can use something like DropBox to submit parts and things like that. But it’s workable.
Jake: Yeah!
What would you say was the inspiration behind the title Confrontation?
Jake: That links into the whole thing that Pete came up with. He studied film in college. Mise en scene is something to do with French people or something.
Robin: *laughs*
Oh yeah! I learned about that once. It’s about the way that, if I remember correctly, the way that a filmmaker can tell a story, or something like that.
Jake: Yeah! It sticks in with the whole exposition, confrontation, resolution cycle. It kind of reflects in the music as well. It’s more aggressive, kind of deep down, emotional, and raw compared to anything that we had done before. I think we took a bit longer on it. It has to do with that concept and Robin’s lyrical content as well. Robin should talk about his vocal lines since I can’t relate to that. (laughs)
Robin: That’s pretty much where I came from, just following that compositional process.
How did the song “ The Gold Room” come into play?
Jake: I think that, kind of like structure wise, Pete had demoed some old riffs awhile back. I remember when I first joined, there was a DropBox full of stuff. I think that a couple of the riffs come from that, but a lot of it is from his just staying up till crazy hours of the night. Just demoing stuff.
Robin: Obviously we were going for this rawer, more aggressive vibe on this entire EP anyway, but I’d been playing around with a new type of scream, which I guess is pretty predominant on the new EP anyway, as opposed to kind of the low, cookie monster scream I was doing on the first couple releases. Lyric wise, I actually kind of forget what it was about (laughs).
Jake: Well that’s good! (laughs)
Robin: I’m going to open my little text file that I have right now… Oh yeah! “The Gold Room” was very much a political thing, really.
Jake: You are quite political anyway, aren’t you Robin?
Robin: (laughs) That just seems to be how it’s coming out.
What specifically about politics in that song?
Robin: I think it was about the kind of growing separation…the whole affluence thing. The thing about the one percent. It’s touching on that a little bit.
The next two questions I ask to every artist that I interview. What kind of message would you like fans to walk away with after listening to your music?
Jake: I think… what we’ve tried to do with this EP and what we pride ourselves on is… we are involved within a genre that is quite overproduced and techy and all of that stuff. I don’t originally come from that kind of background, I come from a punk-y, hardcore background. Pete enjoys a lot of that stuff as well, but I guess we’re just not the norm. We’re not overproduced, and tech, and “jent”. We’re trying to be as real as we can. We want people to listen to us and get the message of not only the lyrics, but the time, the effort, and the energy that’s been put into it. We really slaughtered our way through this EP. We took a lot of time on it, recording-wise. We recorded drums in London at this studio, which we had to do overnight, so we did it all in like a 12 hour session, starting at like 1 am. Literally, I was fucked the next day.
But I threw all I had into it, and what the songs were about and what they stood for, because that’s what we want fans to walk away with after listening to our music.
The next question is, and this is kind of big one: what does music mean to you?
Jake: Oh my god. (laughs).
Robin: So much emotion!
Jake: I think that music is the only thing I’m good at, I think I’m pretty shit at everything else. It’s just something that I’m interested in. It’s a really good way to express and vent emotion. But like, music is always there. You can relate to it in a non-cliché way. If you’re angry, there’s fuckin’ songs out there for angry people. If you’re sad, there’s sad songs, and all that. Robin, your turn to fuckin’ music, man!
Robin: (laughs) I think this is something that I haven’t thought about very much. I think I read something like this a couple weeks ago, “what does music mean to you”? I just find it’s what I’m doing at all times of the day, whether I kind of want to or not. If I’m at work or something like that, I’m just kind of writing in my head all the time, to the detriment of my job. I can’t really concentrate on anything for long periods of time without getting sidetracked by some kind of musical thing. It’s what I spend most of my time doing without even thinking about it.
Jake: So basically, music is life.
Robin: Yeah! I’m just kind of doing it all the time.
Last question I’ve got, what are the future plans for Red Seas Fire right now?
Jake: Yeah! World domination, basically. We’re definitely going to have another EP out this year.
Robin: That’s the plan, to do Part 3: Resolution. We’re writing for that right now.
Jake: I hope I can say this, but about half of that is written. At least the structure of it is written.
Robin: That and then, the next step in writing is how we’ve always planned to bring all of these EPs together into a proper album and do a real physical release with that. Rerecord it, bring it together for an album, and then try and get some kind of distribution for that.
Tour-wise, we’ve got a tour over in the UK. In August, we’ve got a tour with Black Dogs. And then we’ll be at EuroBlast as well.
Jake: We’ve got a couple of festivals in the UK as well that we can’t announce yet, but they’re confirmed. They’re pretty obvious what they are (laughs). We’re hoping to get a proper music video out for one of the tracks before all of the touring starts in the summer. I think that might be it right now!
I think in the long run, we’re all at the point where we’re looking to take this as full-time as we can. We’re looking for someone to put their faith into us, and take us to that next step, whether that be management or a label. We’re just going to keep working as hard as we are, and hope it pays off in some way or form in the future.
Make sure to check out their music at www.facebook.com/RedSeasFire
This has been another shameless promotion.