Rising To The Masses: Final Coil

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Before the first riffs echo through the fields of Catton Park, we are diving head first into the pulse-pounding world of the New Blood Stage at Bloodstock 2024. So grab your backstage pass, tune your senses, and join us as we explore the stories, inspirations, and the relentless drive of the bands who are rising to the masses! Introducing Final Coil…

How would you describe your band to someone who’s never heard you?

We’re not the easiest band to pin down. Nominally, we tend to fall within the post-metal / progressive brackets, although I’ve heard people describe it as alternative, doom, grunge, and post-rock. From my perspective, although I rarely think about genre, I guess that progressive probably fits us best, because we do tend to explore a wide range of musical boundaries, and our albums have a strong conceptual thrust – especially the most recent two.

Tell us about your band’s origin story. How did you all come together?

The band itself started as a solo project back in 2002 (yep, we’re that old), and then became a more formal entity in 2003, when Richard Awdry (lead guitar) joined. We went on hiatus for a while, because I spent four years or so out in Poland, and this iteration of the band took off in 2008. We were lucky because my wife, Jola, is an incredibly capable musician, so she joined on bass and we advertised for a drummer. It’s no secret that, since then, we’ve had a few drummers pass through the ranks earning us a dubious Final Tap reputation in the process!

What song would you recommend for someone’s first listen of your band?

Describe your songwriting process. How do you create your music?

For the most part, it starts with me. I am always playing and writing, and I tend to jot down ideas, either recording them on my phone, or putting something more formal down on the computer. Some ideas come together quicker than others. Failed Light (from our first album), for example, was the product of a dream. I woke up with the melody in my head and spent pretty much the whole day in the studio, at the end of which we had the song! Other pieces come together over time.

How do you handle creative disagreements within the band?

To date, we haven’t had many. I tend to do a lot of the work in terms of writing and concepts, and Jola basically does the artwork and design that isn’t handled by professionals from outside the band, so that tends to keep disagreements to a minimum. We have regular band meetings, both as a band and with management, and we discuss what we’ve done and what we’re going to do. Every band has its own approach, but I think that the fact that I have a clear vision of what the band should be and how it should sound, keeps things focused and avoids the conflicts that occur when you have multiple songwriters all vying for space.

What are your musical influences?

Oh god, how long have you got?! Our influences are many and varied – sometimes within the same song. Broadly, you could pick out: Alice in Chains, Tool, Pink Floyd, Katatonia, Manic Street Preachers, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, Massive Attack, Anathema, Genesis, A perfect Circle, Depeche Mode, Ulver, and Paradise Lost. I don’t know – ask me that question on a different day and you’ll probably get a different answer!

What’s the story behind your band name?

I was studying English at University and I’ve always been a huge literature geek so, perhaps inevitably, the name is drawn from that. It’s a hybrid of Shakespeare and Dante. From Shakespeare, via Hamlet, we get the notion of shuffling off this mortal coil. However, with a band already called This Mortal Coil (and unlikely to have a sense of humour about my pinching their name), I took Dante’s idea of hell as comprising concentric circles, with the lowest reserved for the most egregious of sinners – people who eat all the red wine gums for example – and came up with Final Coil.

What’s your guilty pleasure music outside of metal?

I don’t really do “guilty pleasures” – if I like something, I’m more than happy to scream from the rooftops about it. I guess a band that tends to surprise people in my collection would be Duran Duran – but they’re a great pop band and have some surprisingly dark stuff nestled away in their catalogue. Seven and the Ragged Tiger was actually the first album I ever bought (on cassette, about a million years ago), so it could be a nostalgia thing, but they’re incredibly talented individuals and, while I don’t listen often, I always enjoy their stuff.

Tell us about your most memorable live performance or tour experience.

I think the most memorable was playing direct support to Marky Ramone at The Garage in London. Somehow, we’d been given the dressing room with the shower – and Marky wanted to refresh himself. So, there we are, loitering around pre-show and suddenly he appears in the room and everything goes silent. He looks around, taking in the scene, and then asks if he can use the shower and I instantly forget… well, language. It was a proper Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy” moment. So, after what felt like an eternity (but was probably 5 seconds), I sort of grunted and gestured him in. I still cringe!

What’s the most challenging aspect of being a metal band in today’s music industry?

I guess it’s trying to wrap your head around all the elements necessary to get people to take notice of what you’re doing. I grew up in an era where the key was to get a publication like NME or Melody Maker or Kerrang behind you, and that would be enough to kind of make it out of the gate. After that, you worked at developing your live presence and creating a worthy catalogue. Now, you have to consider multiple audiences over multiple platforms – you practically have to be a marketer and musician. I can’t say I enjoy that aspect of it, but when it goes right, it’s amazing.

Any advice for other aspiring metal musicians?

Focus on being yourself. It’s easy to find yourself getting led by what’s popular at a given point in time (or within a given community) but, if you want to get the most out of making music, you need to reflect your own passion as authentically as possible. It might make your initial progress that much slower, because you fall outside of what other people are doing, but in the long run it’ll make you much happier.

What’s next after Bloodstock for the band?

Well, this year, we’ve been promoting our third album – The World We Inherited – and, right now, I’m working to confirm some shows in France. They’ll be our first shows in mainland Europe as, while we recorded in Italy, we never actually played there. It’s a lot of work, but if it all comes together (and I’m hoping to announce something soon), it’ll be a massive highlight. I love France, and the thought of playing there is just amazing.

How do you choose album artwork or visuals for your releases?

Mainly it’s Jola and me who deal with that side of things. We’ve been very lucky in working with Andy Pilkington (Very Metal Art). For the first album, we simply gave him the music and lyrics, and he created the stunning image that adorns the cover. For the second and third album, we gave him a fairly clear brief that reflected the content of the records and he brought it all together perfectly. For the EPs, Jola worked really hard to create art that reflected the moods of the music within. Of her designs, my favourites are the covers she did for Somnambulant I and II – I think she really delivered with those.

What’s the most unexpected inspiration for one of your songs?

I guess it would probably be the work of Francis Fukuyama on The End Of History. His theory (which he later recanted) emerged from a sort of post-Cold-War euphoria and, in brief, he argued that the history of conflict as we knew it would be replaced by the rise of liberal democracies around the world. It was in stark contrast to Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations, a theory which still has numerous advocates today. At any event, the idea of the end of history – wherein a more settled order emerges may be somewhat utopian in nature, but it fitted the immediate mood when the Wall came down, and it provided the perfect closing concept to our most recent album.

What’s the best gig you’ve attended as a fan and why?

Oh man – this changes week to week. Truly, I don’t know – some of the early shows I went to like Sebadoh, just because I was young, and you can’t beat the sense of youthful excitement; or Roger Waters doing The Wall, because it was so unexpected… It changes all the time. But, right now, I’m just after seeing Cypress Hill with an orchestra at The Royal Albert Hall, and that was absolutely astounding. The musicianship of the band, the atmosphere, the wave of love from the audience, and the timeless songs… It was truly awe-inspiring.

Have you faced any challenges as an unsigned band? How do you overcome them?

It’s an endless challenge. It’s a challenge to keep the band together when things are slow, or when a gig has been disappointing. It’s a challenge to develop the social side of the band when everyone really just wants to focus on the music. It’s a challenge to see music you’ve worked hard on be overlooked or dismissed.

Any musician will tell you these things.

However, I prefer to remind myself that when it goes right, all those things disappear. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs in this band but, with every up, there have been some amazing people helping us behind the scenes – Russ Russell producing the last album; our management team; Andy with his artwork; Lee Waters who did some lyric videos and Jay Hillyer who did the actual videos; our friends who took time off work to be in the clips, or to attend shows. So, if ever I get moody about a given issue, I try to keep in mind all the amazing people who’ve been there along the way. It’s pretty awesome when you think about it.

How do you stay motivated during creative slumps?

I don’t know that I’ve ever really had a creative slump. I’m always writing. Not everything I write is good – hell, there’s a whole folder named “what the **** were you thinking?!” on my hard drive which will never see the light of day!!! You know, you just work at it. Sometimes my output for a week is nothing more than a riff that never goes anywhere, sometimes I’ll write the bulk of an album in a month. It’s important to just keep working away at what you love and, while you’ll be tempted to throw your hands up in despair when the third song in a row ends up sounding like an off cut from “The Spaghetti Incident?”, those are the pieces that can lead you to come up with something more in keeping with your own tastes with time. It’s always worth recording everything, because you never know where it may lead with a subtle tweak.

Final Coil are set to play The Hopical Storm New Blood Stage On Friday 9th August 2024.