Can you tell us how you guys first got together then? There have been quite a few different line-ups throughout the history of the band, I’m the latest member to join and I couldn’t be happier to be playing with the current line-up. Before I joined, I went along with them for three dates in Belgium and got a little taster of tour life, along with a lot of tasting of Belgian beer. I got the feeling that the old vocalist wasn’t enjoying the touring that much and then he announced he was leaving once they got back to England. I had been in bands with Mike (Bennet, guitarist) before, so I knew he was an awesome songwriter. I knew Tom (Higgins, guitarist) and James (Glover, bassist) from going to shows and clubs in Manchester, and I met Carl (O’Pray, drummer) through the rest of the band. So, I did a vocal audition and got the gig. As I said before, I’m beyond happy to be part of this band, and hopefully can help to keep up the strong reputation they already had whilst exploring new areas of song writing as well.
How did you guys get to the band name Empires Fade, and what do you want it to mean to your fans? As far as I’m aware, it’s just a cool band name. It’s pretty memorable and we thought it was relatively easy to say until people started calling us Empire Space, Vampires Fade and Empire Fades whenever we told them the name. It’s not that difficult, is it?! Maybe we just talk like tits, especially Tom.
For readers who may be unfamiliar with your band, can you tell us a little bit about how you sound? We all like a wide range of music, but for the most part I’d say that the overall sound of Empires Fade is a fairly even mixture of August Burns Red, Misery Signals and The Ghost inside if I had to give people reference points. It has tech parts, there’s aggression, heavy bits, fast passages and plenty of melody. Crowds could and do definitely go sick to it, but there’s also an element to it where I think people can just stand back and appreciate what’s being played. It has breakdowns in, but they’re challenging, basically we don’t like to give people an easy ride at first but if you take a few listens to get it stuck in your head, hopefully you’ll be impressed. I still get baffled every time I hear a new demo, and it’s easy to forget that other people haven’t heard these songs 1000+ times like we have so it may take a bit of time for some. But, with any luck, we’ll win you over in the end.