An Interview With: Normandie
We sat down with Normandie ahead of their Manchester show at Sound Control to ask them a few questions and get to know them further.
You just released your new single ‘Pay For This’ from my point of view it shows a new poppier side from the band, we’re just wondering if this is the direction you’ll be going in the future ?
You think it’s poppier? That’s a surprise, I thought ghosts was more poppy because of the synths. It is super simplistic I guess, it doesn't have a bridge, it goes verse, chorus verse, chorus, so in that chase, yeah. There will be quite a few songs on the new album (approx 15 songs) and hopefully all of them won’t sound the same and I can tell you that there will be more heavy guitar riffs on the album for sure, we done that with awakening and we feel like we want to stick to that on some level.
What are the current influences of the band, are there any current bands that you are listening to ?
Personally I have taken the opposite direction I’ve basically stopped listening to music when I’m at home and also traveling to the studio I listen to podcasts, around science and just people talking. It’s nice to hear people rambling rather than having music all day. So I guess the influences for this next album has to be everything I have been listening to up to this moment, but I haven’t found any recent artists I have been really locked into or anything like that. I haven’t got any new influences in the last 2 years I think, which could be a good or bad thing, I don’t know.
I know it’s just the start of the tour but are you enjoying it at the moment, being in the UK, doing your own shows for a change, rather than supporting ?
Yeah. It feels good to bring back Ryan, we asked Ryan and he was like yeah, we don’t see it as he’s supporting though. It’s a co-headliner tour and the only reason we play after him is because our sound will be a bit more you know because we have the full set up, drums, guitar, bass. He wanted to go before us because he wanted people not to be judging his performance regarding the energy of our show, so we’ll be on after him because of our energy I guess.
What’s your favourite song to play live of off the set so far ?
I think it has to be Awakening, it’s the second song we play and that’s when we are forcing people to jump and you can see the difference from the first song. We start off with Fight and there's to much to do with that song with the crowd singing along and then when Awakening kicks in it’s sort of my first way to perform vocals fully and it’s nice to have Fight to build up that energy and get warmed up. We feel the fans vibe for the first song and then the second song we’ll know if they are with us or if we need to put some butter in there. So yeah Awakening is our favourite.
What parts of the UK do you like playing ?
It’s been good everywhere so far, but the show in London was really good as it was a sold out show which was really important to us, but the response overall has been really good. It was nice to see because the first show we ever played was this venue and it was nice to see that it was now sold out on our tour.
Are there any differences to playing in the UK than back in Sweden, have you got more fans back home ?
No, we have more fans in the UK, thanks to all the publicity we’ve had over in the UK. Over here it feels like the UK are still proud of rock music and metal music and the scene you still have. The likes of Don Broco, While She Sleeps and Bring Me The Horizon they’re all pushing through to the main lands of europe and the UK people are very proud of that but as for in Sweden we don’t have that, sure we have In Flames but people back home in general don’t pay much attention to which bands are making it and people in general don’t support them. I don’t know why but there's no pride in the Swedish with the rock music scene at the moment. It feels like we are doing it together with the people in the UK. Unlike the people in sweden they are just watching us grow and they are not apart of it. Over there they don’t want to call themselves a fan, as it’s deemed uncool I guess, but over in the UK people come up to us and say ‘hey I’m your biggest fan’.
Is there anywhere in particular in the world that you haven’t played yet that you would want to play ?
Everywhere, everywhere in Europe. Russia is really doing it for us right now, they have a great scene, also just personal touring wise I would say Australia just for the exploring I could spend a week there just exploring.
Leading on from that, you don’t get much time off when on tour, what do you particularly like doing when you have a few hours to yourselves ?
Try to hang out with Jack and Ryan to become better friends with them instead of just going off on our own, otherwise that’d be boring, other than that everyone uses the days off to generally just relax.
If you could collaborate with anyone who would you pick and why ?
Hayley Williams, because she is just on a different level than anybody else, she feels like a legend at this moment in the rock scene, she is the Beyonce of rock for sure.
What can we expect from Normandie in 2018 ?
We are going to try a new cover because it’s been a long time since we did that and that’s a fun process. Then after that probably find some new versions from Inguz as we haven't really closed that chapter, when it comes to acoustic versions we didn’t really do that and we still want to release music whilst writing the new album, I hope we will have a new album in the next year.
Interview by Jessie Jones and Joe Mellor