THE LONG HAUL were recently interviewed by CVLT Nation.
Hey The Long Haul, how is 2012 treating you all so far?
It’s been a bit stressful but mostly extremely awesome!
In the months prior to the recording and release of your latest effort, Debtors, you downsized to a four-piece and replaced your vocalist, Curt, with Harry Fanshawe. How did this affect the writing of Debtors? Do you feel a more solidified unit having undergone these changes?
It made it very unpredictable because I (Harry) had a lot to learn! I think it’s safe to say we are a tighter unit than ever at the moment.
Debtors was recorded later on last year, but not released until February of this year. Was it difficult sitting on the record for such a length of time, or did you feel it right to wait in order to give it the release it deserved?
It was only difficult when we didn’t have a release date set, once we did it gave us something to work towards and I think had we released it any sooner it would not have been done properly. It’s better to look back on it and say that it was done in a way we can be pleased with.
The sound of Debtors is refreshingly technical and greatly impressive in terms of sheer musicianship by comparison to a lot of young British Hardcore bands currently popping up all over the country. Similarly, the artwork seems to have shunned the current trend of using Nautical/Masonic/Satanic imagery in favour of something more unique, though still heavily symbolic. Were choices made in this regard in order to somewhat distance yourself from that current crop, or did your sound and it’s visual representation come about naturally?
I think if you work simply to distance yourself from something then your results will only have negative effects. For the artwork we simply gave Jamie (McDonald, Bear Face Design) some themes of the record and he took it from there. But yes I appreciate something original in someone’s art, it really makes it their own that way.
It seems like almost every band that springs up in the UK in recent times has some comment to make about where they are from/where they grew up and how it’s affected the way they approach their music, something I haven’t heard from The Long Haul camp. Does being from the south coast hold much importance to your identity as a band?
I don’t think it has had any direct influence on what we write necessarily. Of course where you come from and the society you have grown up to know and identify with all have implications in the things you create; it’s the world you have come to know. But the UK doesn’t vary from place to place to the extent that other countries do so I don’t think that we can say our cultural surroundings are that unique as opposed to other places here. Saying that we do owe a lot to Southampton because if it wasn’t a city that had bands and places to play then we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to first play our music to other people and become a part of a local scene.
You can read the rest of the interview here.
