20 March 2011

Sydney Industrial Metal demons, OUR LAST ENEMY will be hitting the road next week to show everyone what their Fallen Empires album is about.  Frontman, Oliver Fogwell chatted to Robyn Morrison about their impending Metal assault along the east coast of Australia and their recent trip to Los Angeles to record the album.

In 2010, OUR LAST ENEMY pulled up stumps and did what most Aussie bands dream of; head to L.A. and record a kick arse album with a top notch producer.  Fogwell explains how it came to be. “We started writing and demoing in Australia and we were thinking about people we wanted to work with in terms of producers and studios.  We had a wish list of people around the world.  We sent off a few emails and funnily enough it all started when Matt (bass) sent Christian (Olde Wolbers) a message on MySpace.  A few months went past and this message popped up from Christian saying he would love to work with us.

We spoke to our manager and she started working on figures and working out ways on how we could do it; would he come here or would we go there?  We looked at the figures and thought we could do it by sharing the costs between all five band members,” Fogwell continues. “Then when we did that, it got the ball rolling with a few other big things.  It was really the old school way of doing things by sending a message and we got lucky really.”

While over in Los Angeles, OUR LAST ENEMY didn’t divert from the sole purpose of being there – to record and put out an amazing album – even though they would have liked to have played some shows.  “We were actually going to play on a showcase with Christian’s band ARKAEA and GOD FORBID was headlining as well.  But he suggested that since we had limited time, he wanted us to focus on just doing the record.  We did go to a few cool parties and shows but we did focus on recording in terms of what we did with the band.” 

Christian Olde Wolbers did interject his producing expertise which had an impact on the final sound. “It was more about banging out the songs and him telling us to do the take again.  He then worked his magic on the mixing.  The most work that I felt that he did was on my vocals – and that might be just a biased view,” explains Fogwell.  “He’s done a few records where they’ve brought him in and that’s all he did.  On the GOD FORBID album, someone produced it but when it came to vocals, they hired him.”  But even though Fogwell believes that he made the most effort with his vocal tracks, Christian Olde Wolbers made his mark throughout the entire album.  “He gave us a few sample ideas as well.”

Given that this is OUR LAST ENEMY’s debut album, Fogwell explains how they decided which songs in their set list would be unleashed to the world. “There are actually two songs on the album which were released on our EP which were popular that we redid.  And we had a few songs that we’d been playing live for a long time which we knew were crowd favourites so we stuck with those.  We wrote half of the album specifically for this record.  We went in with some ideas which were different to the EP.  There are a few more solos on the record, things like that which we hadn’t explored.”

Prior to their jaunt to LA, Fogwell explains that the band went to The Brain Recording Studios in Surry Hills to demo their songs.  “We did things like click tracks and changed things up in the studio.  We wanted to spend our money the best way that we could in the States, so we spent as much time as possible in pre-production here.  We actually had more songs than we ended up recording. We actually recorded an extra song while we were over there that we didn’t end up putting on the album.  We’re probably going to use it as an iTunes bonus.  That one is called Crisis.  It’s a popular one but we haven’t played it lately with the new line-up.”

Even though Fallen Empires has out for a while now, a traditional single hasn’t been lifted from the album as yet.  Fogwell explains whether that will change in the future. “We’ve just story boarded and gotten a team together to do our first film clip.  That’s going to be, in a way, our single.  Metal bands, especially in Australia, don’t have a traditional single release because we don’t get that much radio play.  We’ll pick the one that we envisage will be the single and that’ll be 10,000 Headless Horses.”

Turning to the album in general and what inspired the band to write, Fogwell confirms that there is an underlying theme.  “We didn’t actually plan on doing that but once we sat down and thought about what we wanted to call the album; we looked at the recurring themes going through the songs.  We saw there was a link; the downfall of things and even the character that kept popping up, he seemed to be around the times of crisis and upheaval which at the moment in the world is very appropriate.  That’s the macroscopic view of the album but I guess there’s also an individual perspective of the songs with frustration of day to day life.  You can pull the picture back and look at it on a bigger scale overall on a global level.”

The timeliness of the subject matter on Fallen Empires is an eerie coincidence.  Fogwell agrees and shares some experiences.  “It’s ironic that that’s what the album is about. Everywhere we’ve gone with the record; it seems that things like this are happening when we leave.  We did New Zealand and then that happened,” explains Fogwell, referring to the earthquake in Christchurch. “We were actually booking our Japan dates as we speak but now we’ve pushed that back indefinitely.  Even after we left America, they had the big fires.”

Not only are the songs on Fallen Empires enough to coax you into buying the album, the artwork rounds off the complete package.  Fogwell gives an insight into where the idea stemmed from. “A Melbourne company called The Bodycage Media; they’d done a few albums before ours which we liked.  (Sheri Tantawy) did the SWITCHBLADE album and we were co-headlining with them on their headlining tour when we got back from the States.  We told her our idea and our concept and she loved it.  She’s the type of person who tries to make the current thing that she’s working on better than the last.  She put a lot of time and effort into it.  She put almost as long as the record took to make,” laughs Fogwell.

OUR LAST ENEMY will kick off their Tearing Down the Empire Tour on 26 March 2011.  “We’ve just finished a really big one.  It was a July (2010) to January (2011) tour of Australia and New Zealand.  We’ve got a new member or two in the band, so that was really good to get them locked in and solid.  We’re really tight at the moment.  This is going to be a second leg in a way.  We get to go back everywhere and do it all again.”

If you haven’t seen OUR LAST ENEMY and you’re still not convinced, Fogwell explains what you can expect to see live. “It’s an intense visual experience.  You’ll get covered in liquids of many descriptions.  You may get jumped on or we may jump on each other.  It’s a show.  We’re not there to just stand around on the stage, play fast and stand still in our jeans and our band t-shirts.  Even though we’re a metal band, we put on a real rock show.”  Travelling on tour with four other people for any period of time can be a challenge.  Fogwell shares his thoughts on who, hypothetically, would be kicked off the tour bus first.  “It’s me and the bass player, Matt.  We’ve had a few hissy moments on tour when we thought we were leaving the bus or the hotel room but everyone has their go.  I know that Matt and Jeff have had their thing.  I guess that Matt’s the common factor,” he laughs.  “So, I think Matt would be the one to go,” he jokes.  “But we’re the kind of band who can scream at each other and then hug each other because we know that it’s a tour.”

Amongst the tour madness, OUR LAST ENEMY will be filming their clip, and then planning how they’ll get to Japan and also back to the US for some shows.  “Europe will then be after that,” says Fogwell.  “We’re going to be writing and road testing a few new songs on this tour because we want to do an EP before the end of the year with the new members so they can put their stamp on the band.  It’ll be more of a bridging type of record before we do another full album.”

Catch OUR LAST ENEMY on the TEARING DOWN THE EMPIRE TOUR. Fallen Empires is out now through Riot! Entertainment.

Tour dates

with Viral Millennium

26TH MAR - WHIPLASH FESTIVAL (VALVE BAR), TEMPE NSW
Other bands : The Amenta, Witchgrinder, Berserkerfox, Havoc, Infektion, Ilcontent, Foundry Road, A World less Cruel
$20 Presale/$25 @ the Door

SAT 9TH APR - WHIPLASH (MAYFIELD DIGGERS), NEWCASTLE NSW
Other bands : Shadowmill, War Faction, The Seer
$10 Presale/$15 @ the Door

FRI 15TH APR - CABBAGE TREE HOTEL, WOLLONGONG NSW
Other bands : The Sacred Truth
$10 Entry

SAT 16TH APR - THE BASEMENT, CANBERRA ACT
Other bands : Chud, Na Maza
$15 Entry

FRI 22ND APR - RUBY'S LOUNGE, BELGRAVE VIC
Other bands : Synthetic Breed, Dark Earth
$15 Entry

SUN 24TH APR - THE EVELYN HOTEL, FITZROY VIC
Other bands : Witchgrinder + 1 TBA
$15 Entry

SAT 30TH APR - WHIPLASH (BALD FACED STAG), LEICHHARDT NSW
Other bands : The Eradicated, Ghosts on Broadway, Caulfield
$10 Presale/$15 @ the Door

Our Last Enemy

http://www.myspace.com/ourlastenemy

Riot! Entertainment

http://www.riotact.com.au