Talking angry fucking music and Ricky Martin, Circle Pit caught up with Heights vocalist Tom Debaere for a nice little chat ahead of their show with Postmortem Promises and Martyr Defiled.
What’s the origin of the name, Heights
Unfortunately theres not really an interesting story to go with it. I mean we were playing with lots of ideas, we spent quite a lot of time choosing. We settled on To Climb These Heights for quite a long time which we liked but then we ran past a few people and felt that it was a little too wordy too many syllables you know. So we knocked it down to Heights in the end.
What genre of music do you consider your work to be and who are your major influences?
Genre wise, probably I’d say…we’ve been calling ourselves a hardcore band for quite a while but I think maybe in the early days we were far more hardcore influenced than we are now. I think were floating around post-hardcore these days as that can probably fit better. There’s obviously hardcore in there and theres metal and ambient things as well. Bit of a mix but we go for post-hardcore most of the time. Influence wise, were all, we’ve got a massive range of influences. Everyone in the band are into a wide range of music. Sort of in the early days you can draw parrallels with Devil Sold His Soul, Architects, Bring Me The Horizon bands like that that were coming through at the time. I mean me and Dean are massive Brand New fans, those sort of more melodic bands as well on the influence side of things.
What venue was the favourite you had played and why?
I had a lot of fun at the Marquee in Norwich, I think that’s probably the favourite one of mine. Hevy Festival was a lot of fun as well but hmm…it has to be the Marquee, that was lots of sweaty fun.
Who writes your songs and what are the main themes or topics for most of your songs?
Everyone really is the short answer. I (Tom: Vocalist) do all the lyrics, music wise Dean (Guitar) writes quite a large body of music but everyone has their own input to it, quite a collective collabertive effort to be honest. Just the world around me really, I like to use metaphors in my lyrics, that way people are free to read into it what they want I try to approach it that way. If it’s personally I just write about what happens to me on a day to day basis really, things that make me angry things that piss me off stuff like that.
Do you think these topics will change over time?
That’s actually a conversation we’ve had within the band because the albums that are coming out from the bands that we were heavily influenced in the start – bands like Your Demise and Architects there lyrics seem to have changed themes because they’ve been so busy with the band, their songs seem to be written about there life “now” like on the road things like that. I personally want to keep my lyrics angry, I guess is the short way of putting it, just to keep the passion in the music. I don’t want to write lyrics about having a good time, I want to write shitty lyrics.
How has your music evolved since you first began playing music together?
Actually the Tom’s (theres 3 Toms in the band by the way) it’s evolved a ridiculous amount since we started together because I went to school with those guys so we spent music lessons playing together which obviously that was quite embarassing back then. As Heights, I think it’s just matured than changed really. I’m hoping people will see that when we release the album and compare it to the EP. It’s still definately Heights, I personally would say it just sounds more mature: The heavy bits are heavier and the epic are more epic so I’d say we’ve expanded rather than changed.
What has been your biggest challenge as a band? Have you been able to overcome that challenge?
(…Thinking, A little push, you know like finances.) Haha I guess it probably is money, were all really really poor. We just work shitty jobs, I get paid really badly to phone up companies and try sell them electrical testing which is pretty ridiculous. Yeah, we all work our shitty jobs to do what we wanna do which is this band. Deans quite lucky he does his design work so thats a bit better pay.
What advice do you have for people who want to form their own bands?
Just work fucking hard, write music for yourself, make music you want to play. Buy a van get on the road and get in many faces as you possibly can. Releasing a free EP works really well for us because obviously it’s really hard to get people to buy your music when you are just starting out so it’s much easier if you can just give it to them. That worked for us.
What are your rehearsals generally like? Do you have a set time each week in which you practice or are rehearsals more spontaneous?
We try practise as much as we can but theres not like a weekly thing, like every Friday. We’ve got rehearsal rooms Loki that we go to. We normally end up pissing around and wasting a lot of time but when the work needs to be done we get down to it.
Where do you see the band in 5 years time?
I hope in five years time we are still really busy, able to continue touring, write music and if people still care about us by that time then we’d all be pretty happy.
Who has the worst cd in their collection and what is it?
Oh no, that’s probably going to be me. I’ve got Ricky Martins first album in my collection that was the first album I ever bought and it’s still there!
Who has the most annoying habits?
(No pause, just straight away) DEAN! I could reel off a list if you want.
Give us the 5 most annoying then.
His feet smell, his farts smell, he snores. He does this annoying sniffing thing were he savours the moment and slides his hand along his face.
What else does he do, oh he bites his nails, although I bite mine aswell. Deans going to hate me for that.
What is the strangest ritual or ocd before you go on stage?
Before we go on stage we all huddle up and nuggey each other.
Really?
Yep. Epic.
Big thanks to Anna and Graeme for setting this up and big thanks to Tom for chatting with James at Circlepit
Thanks to James for the shot of the band, check out his site at www.aperturetocapture.com
[...] At the end of it all, it was good hanging with the band, they’re pretty chill guys but with music to melt your face. I also did a 15 minute interview with Tom no.1 (Vocalist) for my fellow photographers website which is here Interview: Heights. [...]