Interview: In Case Of Fire

© Laura Callan

Q: We saw you a couple of weeks ago supporting FFAF, how was it touring with them?

Colin: Yeah it was good, it was a good show, we did the full UK tour with them and Cancer Bats, it was good we were bus-sharing with Funeral [For A Friend] as well so we’re good friends with them and stuff now. It was a good tour, I think some of the crowds on the tour were a little bit quiet in places for all of the support bands, the whole “we just wanna see Funeral” kind of thing but then other shows like the Portsmouth show were really really good and really receptive.

Steven: The Portsmouth show was a bit of a technical nightmare; we use a sampler during our set but it crashed on us in like the first or second song so we kinda had to re-arrange the whole set while we were up there! But it actually ended up pretty good, it was a bit more of a punky set than usual, but it seemed to go down pretty well with the Portsmouth crowd, we think.

Q: You’ve been compared to bands such as Muse, the Mars Volta, while that must be hugely flattering, you do seem to want to forge your own place in music, how would you describe your sound?

Steven: It’s just a natural thing when we go into the rehearsal room and we’re coming up with new material, it tends to verge toward the more epic side of things, our songs just tend to be that bit grander than the normal rock song. I don’t mean that to sound egotistical, we just like the big sound, we like things on a big scope. Not all the songs are like that but we find that that’s just what moves us when we write. So I can understand why people say that we’re like Muse, and that to us is a massive compliment because they’re just an unfathomably good band, they’re unbelievable live, and if we can take our cues from them then we definitely will.
I think sometimes when we play a live show especially to people who haven’t heard us, they kind of look at us a bit, and it takes them about 4 or 5 songs to really get it. There was a guy last night who cam to see us in Leicester, an older guy who was writing a review of the show, and he came up to us after and said that he couldn’t pigeon-hole it at all and came up with some bizarre explanation of our music, he said it was a mixture between trance…

Colin: Trance and something else, and we sort of looked at him and said “Trance? Really?” You know!

Steven: So really if people who come to see our music can be more open-minded then they’ll get the most from it, but we’ll just have to wait and see until the album comes out in February.

Q: You’ve had quite a lot going on this year, what are you hoping next year when the album comes out?

Colin: World domination. [all laugh] We’ve got the Kerrang! Relentless Tour coming up in January which is really good and we’re the opening slot on it so it gives us a real chance to walk off stage after every show and tell the other three bands to follow that, you know that kind of thing, which is a challenge that we love. And after that obviously the album’s coming out so we think we’ll be doing probably another run of headline shows, and then once the album release starts to kick into gear we’ll be touring again, maybe some more supports and some more headline shows. And then we’re in festival season, and then it’s September again, you know what I mean it’s just a complete blur at the minute! But much more touring!

Q: You played quite a lot of the big festivals this summer, how was that?

Mark: It was some experience we only played our first festival last summer, we played Rock AM Ring, and Rock AM Park was our first ever festival, which was absolutely huge.

Steven: One of those venues was an ice hockey rink, they were that big, and Airborne were on before us.

Colin: Airborne opened our stage in Rock AM Ring and Rock AM Park, and then there was another band on and then us, so were sort of looking at the line up and seeing Airborne and going “they’re on before us?!” and they’re album had just gone number one in Germany. So they were like coming out and the place was full and then there was another band and then we walked in like “Hello!”
Both nights we got really good receptions and really good feedback from it.

Mark: The festivals are a real challenge to us, it’s basically like everything we’ve been doing, we’ve been going out there, nobody really knows who we are or anything about us and it’s like giving us a blank canvas, we have to go out there and impress those people every gig that we do. And the festivals especially are almost even harder, but we’ve seen a build over the summer. By the time Reading and Leeds hit we were definitely getting in some good crowds and stuff.

Colin: And since the festivals we’ve had people come to the shows and tours since then and say “Oh I saw you at Reading” or “I saw you and T In The Park”, that sort of thing. So that’s what the festivals are for they’re for picking up new fans that wouldn’t necessarily maybe have come out to see you before you know. That’s what people love about festivals, you just wander around into a tent and go “Ooh”. It definitely worked for us and we hope that by the time next year’s festival season rolls around that we’ll have moved up a little bit maybe on some of the slightly bigger stages, that’s the plan anyway.

Q: You seem to be well on your way, you’ve been really hotly-tipped by a lot of people.

Steven: It can be a bit of a curse, I mean in some of the reviews we read of This Time We Stand somebody wrote it was “the most eagerly anticipated single of this year” which made us laugh…

Colin: We were like “Yeah, by us!”, maybe it’s the most eagerly anticipated release this year by us!

Steven: I think that’s well wide of the mark but I don’t know it’s just, people have written quite a lot about us but at the end of the day we just want to see the fan base get a bit bigger, we want people to really get into the music and we don’t really care, well you obviously care a bit what music journalists write about you but you got to take it all with a pinch of salt, the good and the bad. We’ve read some really bad stuff already, and then there’s other stuff tipping us, so you’ve got to put that all out of your mind and just fingers crossed in 2009 we’ll get that fan base a bit bigger and people will like our music.
There’s a piece about us in Kerrang! like a proper feature all about our growth as a band, and I mean last year before anything happened for us when we just finished recording the album in our own house at home, we’d been doing this for a while so we’d given ourselves three months up ‘til Christmas and if nothing happened we had to realistically look at things, and thank goodness something did happen. But you go from that last year to this year and it’s just unbelievable, so everything for us is a real blessing really, we just feel like pretty much the luckiest band in the UK.

Colin: Even if we are some nights only playing to 6 or 7 people!
Q: Our show on PureFM.com is called The Live Hour and it’s all about great live music. Why do you think live music is so important and why would you tell people to go and see live music?

Colin: I think live music is the crux of what we do, if you’re a band and you can’t play live, you shouldn’t really be a band, you should be a songwriter for somebody else. It’s like if you can’t play live you’re basically a pop band, you need to be able to play live because that’s what you get into a band to do in the first place. If you love a CD and you go and see that band and they can reproduce it live, you can see the full energy of the stage performance, it automatically raises the bar again, you love the album even more. Playing live is one of the most important aspects of being in a band without a shadow of a doubt.

Steven: I think I’d recommend people to see bands play live because it’s like you might love the album but you go and see them play live you feel that if you’re in a good venue you feel the par of the PA system you feel the kick drum hitting you in the guts, the music physically does move you, it’s a completely different experience than listening to a CD, like Col said you go and listen to that band again and you’re almost rediscovering the songs sometimes.

Colin: It even happens sometimes maybe you’re in the middle ground where you don’t know if you like a band, like the album’s okay, but then if you go and see them live and they’re unbelievable, you go back you’re like “That album’s fantastic! I love this band now.” It can have that much of an effect on your opinion of a band so it’s incredibly important.

Mark: Especially discovering new bands, a lot of new bands maybe their CDs aren’t up to scratch, they don’t have a lot of money behind them, but if you go and see a good new up and coming live band, you can take your basis from that.

In Case Of Fire’s debut single This Time We Stand is Out Now, with their album to follow next year. Visit www.incaseoffire.com for tour dates and more information.