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By: Sander van den Driesche
At the recent Damnation Festival Sander van den Driesche had the opportunity to sit down with both OHHMS guitarists, Daniel Sargent and Marc George, where they had a chat about the band’s festival appearances, their recent tours with Slabdragger and The Moth, Holy Roar Records and more.
(((o))): Can you please introduce yourself?
Marc: I’m Mark. I play guitar.
Daniel: I’m Daniel, I try and play guitar when it doesn’t break [Daniel’s guitar had some problems during today’s Damnation show].
(((o))): You guys had a good year or not?
Daniel: Yeas, it’s been awesome.
Marc: The new album’s been received really well. We had loads of really great opportunities with festivals, like Temples, ArcTanGent, this [Damnation]. So many things that we wouldn’t expect to have the opportunity to do, so we’re very lucky.
(((o))): I know you’re working with a PR company now, but a lot of this has been done by yourselves, or not?
Marc: We have PR in Europe and we have a booking agent in Europe now, but UK is mostly just Paul [Waller, vocals], like working with Holy Roar and stuff. So yeah obviously a lot of it is DIY stuff.
(((o))): You just finished a tour in Europe with The Moth?
Marc: Yeah last week we came back from touring with The Moth. And in August we were on tour with Slabdragger, which was great, because I really love Slabdragger. That was great fun and we’re going back out with them again in February for a small UK tour.
Daniel: They’re good fun blokes as well to be stuck in a van with for hours on end.
(((o))): In February coming when you play Edinburgh you’re playing at the Banshee Labyrinth, which is quite a small venue. You’ve played a couple of really big stages now. Do you prefer the smaller or the bigger stages?
Daniel: Personally I like big stages, stages like the size of today [Damnation] and I’m getting, I don’t want to say annoyed with, but I don’t want to play on the floor in small pubs anymore. I like it to be a bit more professional and put on a proper show for people.
Marc: Space is important. And what we’re doing, unintentionally lends itself more to a bigger stage with more lights and atmosphere.
Daniel: Yeah we’re quite animated on stage, so we need space to move around. But at the end of the day as long as there’s people there and they enjoy it, that’s all that matters really.
(((o))): Going back to the tour with The Moth, how did this tour come along?
Marc: Paul arranged it and he said that he was gonna do it to see how we get on in Europe. It was a bit like a tester.
(((o))): Was it the first time in Europe for you guys then?
Marc: As OHHMS yes. In our old, separate bands we’ve over to Europe as well. We booked this tour quite a long time ago, before things started to kick off with Temples and stuff like that, so some of the shows were quite low key, which was cool. Yeah it was a good bonding experience more than anything. And The Moth were cool to hang out with, saw some European cities we’ve not been to before. And as usual, European promoters always make you feel special and they look after you really well.
(((o))): I hear that quite often, that there’s a real difference in attitude between UK and European promoters, with the European promoters cooking the band a big meal and making sure you got a place to stay and all that.
Daniel: We slept in some amazing places on that tour. Like a meat locker, a really awesome room above one of the venues, the guys’ flats. And then a beautiful hotel on the last night. And The Moth got a better bedroom than us, which was a bit unfair as far as I’m concerned (laughs).
(((o))): When The Moth played in Edinburgh this year I had a nice chat with Cécile [Ash, bassist and singer in The Moth] and they look like lovely people to hang out with.
Daniel: Yeah, we still message them every day.
(((o))): So as a tester, how did you guys go down in Europe then?
Daniel: The people who saw us really liked it. Nothing was rammed solid, there wasn’t like hundreds of people there. But the sort of 20 or 30-odd people and they came up to us afterwards and shook our hands.
Marc: They always seemed like they were just the people that went to the bar anyway. It was more of a tester to see how we would function on tour together, even though we’ve been on tour before that already. But they weren’t like proper shows if you see what I mean, just local shows that we booked on the circuit.
(((o))): You’ve been working with Jon from Conan on your tours to drive you guys around?
Marc: Yeah he did the Slabdragger tour. It was killer. He was very professional, he was totally cool about everything, he didn’t stress about anything. He was cool as a cucumber. And obviously you’re sitting there thinking like ‘that’s Jon from Conan. I really like his band!’, but he’s just a normal bloke you know.
Daniel: Also, he played us some demos of the new album, and that’s going to be absolutely amazing! And I was like ‘that’s Jon from Conan, and we’re sitting here hearing his new album before anyone else!’.
Marc: And he’s helped us to set up some merchandising stuff that he’s doing in America.
(((o))): Oh cool, so OHHMS shirts will be available overseas as well now?
Marc: Yeah, I think he was just chatting loads to Paul and they were passing pearls of wisdom about things like PR and agents and he was giving us some advice.
(((o))): Both your releases were released on Holy Roar Records I believe?
Marc: Yes, both on Holy Roar.
(((o))): I always associate Holy Roar a bit more with the crazy mathy, hardcore kinda music.
Daniel: We never in a million years expected to get picked up by them. Paul sent it off as he was like sending the record to everyone. He was like “Holy Roar, yeah love that label, send them a copy.” And then we probably got 10-15 rejection letters and then Paul sent me a text message one day saying “Holy Roar’s interested”, and I was like “yeah haha, funny.” But Paul was serious and said “Alex [from Holy Roar] is coming to see us in London when we’re playing with Black Shapes, so we gotta be really good.”
(((o))): Hahaha, so no pressure then!
Marc: (laughs) Yeah he texted me asking if we should try Holy Roar. And I went like well we tried everybody else and they’ve all rejected us, what’s the worst that can happen? And we had the art already done and the record was ready and it was something Alex was aiming for and he just clicked onto it. And his words were “I came to see you to make sure you weren’t dicks”.
(((o))): What are OHHMS’ influences?
Daniel: We get this asked a lot. And we’re all into so much different stuff, because there’s quite a big age gap between even Marc and myself. So Paul and I are into a lot of older stuff and Marc is into Winterfylleth, that’s all he listens to at the moment.
Marc: Yeah I’m into post-black metal at the moment, but generally bands like Converge, Old Man Gloom, Sleep, that sort of ilk really. But I started out like everyone else, with like Nirvana and the generic stuff and then developed my taste from there.
But Chainy [bass] and Max [drums] are into a bit more noise-rock, esoteric things and Paul’s just into Black Sabbath full stop.
(((o))): I would describe your music as psychedelic, doomy kinda stuff. There are huge psych elements to your music.
Daniel: That’s just the way it came out really.
Marc: I am really influenced by Pink Floyd. Because my dad listened to that a lot when I was young and it kinda got into my system. I love the band. That’s where a lot of the solos come from, like ‘Comfortably Numb’ and things like that. That’s where all that psychedelic comes from and we just use phasers and stuff on the pedal boards and it just adds that psychedelic. I think it makes us different, not just doom, doom, sludge, sludge, spacey bits.
Daniel: Yeah a lot of the songs are so long, you need to break it up and make a bit of a journey out of it as we would get bored playing it otherwise.
(((o))): The psych scene is definitely doing really well at the moment. Are you jumping on that train at all?
Daniel: We get to play with a lot of different things. We play a lot of local shows with hardcore bands and then we play on the main stage at ArcTanGent with loads or really arty bands. And we fit in there as well.
OHHMS at ArcTanGent. Photo by Ed Sprake.
(((o))): What did you think of ArcTanGent? It’s a bit of Echoes and Dust’s favourite festival and we’ve always supported it really well from the very beginning. Did you just go for the one day that you were playing?
Daniel: Yeah we were on tour at the time so we couldn’t stay for the rest of it. But the day we were there we got there like well early in the morning and spent the whole day and stayed the night and it was awesome fun.
(((o))): I always hear great things about the atmosphere at ArcTanGent.
Marc: I felt it was just a festival. But it wasn’t a bad atmosphere.
Daniel: It was very different than Hevy though that we played a few days before. Hevy was a much more metal attitude [does a macho grunt], while ArcTanGent was a bit more thoughtful.
Marc: At Hevy people would be in the pit and hardcore dancing, but ArcTanGent it was stroking their chins. That’s the difference. They really pay attention. I felt a lot of pressure playing ArcTanGent. I didn’t wanna mess up, like Body Hound were on before us and they’re like spot on musicians, they’re like really tight. So we really felt the pressure. You could tell that people in the audience knew what they were on about.
(((o))): And you came from Temples with a really good reputation where you were received really well, or not?
Daniel: That was our first really big gig. I can’t remember who played before us, but they played to a decent sized room and then obviously they came off and the crowd disappeared we thought oh well, we’re just a little band, we can’t expect people to be watching us really. So we set up and went offstage and sort of chatted to each other and right we gotta go on now, went back on and when the lights came up the place was packed. From the front to the back all up the stairs up the side. I was like holy shit!
(((o))): Have you started working on a new album already?
Daniel: We started writing songs for a new album and that’s our next step. We’re going to start recording in December, but we’ve not put a time limit to when it’s gotta be done. Because we have no idea how long the songs are going to be, some are quite long, some are going to be a bit shorter. We don’t want to give us a date when the album’s coming out and then having to rush things and not get it exactly as we want it.
(((o))): Will the new album be released on Holy Roar again you think?
Marc: Yes. Paul’s chatted to Alex and he said he’s interested in putting it out on Holy Roar again. We’ll see where that takes us.
Artwork for ‘Bloom’.
(((o))):Your releases always have some great artwork. Is all that done by the same person?
Daniel: Yes, Nico at Black Sails Design.
(((o))): Do you give him free reign with the artwork, or do you give him a rough idea?
Daniel: We just said it has to have animals on it and that’s what he came back with.
Marc: We had the fly design from ages ago and that was from one of my old bands and we just resurrected it and he added some of the line work to it. And we really liked it. And for the second one we said different animal, slightly different but line work, but in the same plane. But all releases together is like a collection. As they are EPs, cause the album is gonna be slightly different, it’s gonna have a separate theme. But then after that we’re planning to do another, a third EP, so you got all the animals, the fly, the goat and whatever else we decide to do.
(((o))): Is there anything you’d like to add?
Daniel: Please come and see us.
Marc: Keep an eye on our Facebook page for us playing in your town. We’re on tour in February, May, June. We do a lot of Europe this year, but we’re hoping to hit more UK like festivals and stuff in the Summer.
Daniel: But nothing’s been confirmed yet.
