Crackout

Last month Crackout released there debut EP appropriately titled "EP1". It was a culmination of nearly a full year touring with the likes of The Bluetones, King Adora and Amen. We caught up with the hardest working men in rock to find out why they rate Weezer so highly and how British rock music is dead.
 

Q: So how has it been touring with King Adora and Amen?
A: I saw this fanzine in Norwich the other day and the last sentence on King Adora was "Beware, Lock up your daughters!!!" - you do not know just how true that is!!!! They are our best friends in rock.
 

Q: Its all about the music with you guys. In essence you're the reversal of the King Adora "style over substance" ethic aren't you?
A: One of the hardest things you have to do as a band is think up a name for the band and cover art. We just had this idea to do a plain cover and call it EP1. We started the band when we were 15, just before we started our GCSE's, and we were going through all these different band names and we had to stick with the name Crackout because of the interest we got after the first gig.

I read an article in the newspaper the other day that people aren't buying singles anymore. Single sales have dropped by 22% in America over the past year, but album sales have gone up a lot more. I think its because of Napster. Were a real pro-Napster band because we've bought an extra 25 albums because of it.

The record companies are worrying because they've realized they'd signed a whole load of shit bands. People can try out a few tracks and go and spend the money on another band. At the end of the day there's nothing better than having a new CD with all the cover art.

We've had people down the front at these support gigs singing every song. There's about an albums worth of material on Napster so its helping us launch.
 

Q: Would it be fair to call you a straight up punk-rock band?
A: Yeah. There's one track called "My Mistake" which is a really fast punk tune. Weezer are our biggest influence as well as people like the Get Up Kids and Pavement. I suppose were like them, but heavier, in the fact that they have really strong songs.
 

Q: There are so many punk rock bands nowadays that just mellow out. How can we be sure you don't let us down?
A: We were saying the other day that if we did 6 albums, would it be really weird thinking what the 6th album would sound like. Even the Deftones are mellowing out a bit really. Its just a coming of age really.

Everyone should buy Frank Sinatra. I've got a 21 CD Box set and i've been going through each one on tour. Its quite good for a Kerrang band to be listening to a bit of Frank. Miocene's drummer Leo actually listens to Coldplay and there feelings are there isn't very much soul in most heavy bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn. They think there is more soul in a band like Coldplay or Weezer. There theory is they like playing the heavy music, but they don't listen to other heavy bands.
 

Q: You recently were talking about there being no decent mainstream guitar bands. Would you like to elaborate?
A: It true really. I think on the whole the best British band at the moment are A, apart from the obvious U2's. I'd be hard pressed to think of any other ones. There seems to be a trend that you've either got really heavy music like Nu-Metal or you've got the Coldplays and Travis'. Even Green Day have started to abandon electric guitars.

I remember when we were at school and The Offspring went to number 1 and we thought "great, there's going to be a revolution" - it still hasn't happened yet. Its kind of waiting to happen. You go round a town like Oxford and you'd expect them to be wearing Radiohead and Supergrass T-Shirts and all you get is Limp Bizkit, Korn and Linkin Park.

For living and acting like hard-line Rockstars you can't go any further than Oasis. Oasis were like the last band who had that rock & roll ethic, you don't really get that anymore!!!
 

Q: So are you working on the album at the moment?
A: We've got this American guy called David Eaton who's going to produce us. He's spent most of his life engineering, then he did this band called Down My Hack and they are almost exactly like us. We just heard this cover they did of "Boyz In The Hood" by NWA and they've just been on tour with Weezer. In the next two weeks were going over to Texas to start recording.

I know were going to get a different sounding record in America - they must use Rock Electricity!!! There's something different between records recorded in America to over here.

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EP1 is Out Now
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