Punk Rock Factory: “We Were Terrified! We Thought We Were Gonna Get Bottled!”

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Who would have thought a Punk band covering Disney and Musicals would be such a hit in 2023! Punk Rock Factory are a band who are quickly making a name for themselves by putting on memorable and enjoyable sets full to the brim with childhood favourite covers in an explosive Pop Punk blend! I had the privilege to sit down with Lead vocalist Peej and drummer Kob before their sold out show in London to discuss their upcoming album, previous performances and so much more! Here’s what went down!

Hi, I’m Nick from The Rock Fix and I’m here with Peej and Kob from Punk Rock Factory! How are you guys doing?

Peej: Yeah, We’re good man!

So you’ve got your new album ‘It’s Just A Stage We’re Going Through’ which comes out at the end of March. How is it trying to take these musical numbers and transform them into your own sound?

Peej: Easier than Disney believe it or not! We thought the musical stuff was going to be tricky just because of what it is. But off the back of doing two Disney albums, like, the Disney music is so classically scored, the arrangements within it are absolutely insane – key changes and stuff, chord progressions and stuff. It was just crazy. So it was easy. It wasn’t easy but it was nicer than doing the different stuff because it was it just flowed so much better.

Kob: Yeah, just in general it had a better structure and stuff for us to work with!

This isn’t your first time doing musical numbers, I believe you did The Greatest Show on one of your earlier releases. Did you find it easier going back to doing it now than you did previously?

Peej: Oh, yeah!

Kob: We definitely stepped it up with how we’re working as well now! We’re working a lot better now. We’ve definitely matured on this album. It was kind of very punk rock early days, whereas we approach it in a different way now which is a bit more professional, methodical and just living, eating and breathing in the studio and getting it all done ourselves.

Peej: We’re spending a lot more time with it as well.

Kob: Whereas before, we would give ourselves a deadline and we’d all lock ourselves in the same room for four weeks to get it done. Whereas if we’re in four separate rooms for four weeks, we can get four times as much stuff done! So it’s just been able to take more time without parts and stuff. We worked remotely more on this album which we’ve never done so I did the drums at home, you did the vocals at home. So everyone wrote their own parts. And then we all came in together to finalise it then.

Your music translates really well over to a live show and you’ve played a couple festivals now but one big one was when you were a last-minute addition for Bloodstock 2021. How was that? Because that’s notorious for being a heavy, heavy festival!

Peej: It was crazy! We’d never played live before as a band, as PRF we’d never played live before. But it was the Sunday Wasn’t it?

Kob: We were told that we might be available to do a 20-minute set, and we didn’t know what was gonna happen.

Peej: So we had a 20-minute set ready, just in case. And then the Sunday we got asked if we could do one from the top on the Thursday night on the Sophie Lancaster stage for an hour or hour and a half or something! We were terrified! We thought we were gonna get bottled. We didn’t know what to expect. We thought we’d just go up there. We’ll see what happens… a bit of fun and they loved it!

I remember walking into the tent and it was just a completely different atmosphere from anything I’ve ever experienced at Bloodstock!

Peej: Yeah, we loved it. It was it was amazing. It was absolutely incredible.

How have you found moving on from Bloodstock to playing festivals like Slam Dunk and a couple sets at Download?

Peej: I mean, Slam Dunk was an amazing one. We had a big stage and a big crowd!

Kob: I still feel that Bloodstock is our crowd!

Peej: As much as you’d expect Slam Dunk being a punk audience to be one, the metal fans just love it. I think metal audiences are more up for just having a laugh! They are far more accepting. Like, we didn’t know what to expect but we must have had about 8,000 Metallers just singing Disney songs!

Kob: Just all these Vikings screaming “Let It Go!”

Peej: It was so funny man! First show like that!

You guys have released two of the Disney albums. Have you had any backlash from the Disney Corporation? They are notoriously difficult with their property!

Peej: We covered ourselves with that! We had a contact at Disney. We had artwork signed off.

Kob: Yeah, the artwork really was the problem that we had to get checked.

I know bands like Ice Nine Kills have had issues with that in the past.

Peej: That was with their merch, wasn’t it? So they did like goofy slicing someone’s throat and stuff and they got told to take it down, so because of that we kind of reached out to Disney and said is this artwork okay, and we did actually change a few things. So there’s an earlier iteration of the first artwork, that was slightly a bit more Disney. The assets have changed but in terms of like the music side of it, we pay cover licences for everything so everyone gets their money.

Kob: Everyone thinks you’re not allowed to do it, but you actually are as long as you do it properly!

Peej: We get it so much on social media! The amount of comments we get going “you’re getting sued!”

Kob: We want to make sure that the original writers don’t get ripped off as well. We want to make sure they get their fair dues because they wrote the song so yeah.

Going back to the new album you have released two singles. What was the reaction to those? Especially to ‘You’ll Be Back’ from Hamilton.

Peej: So much support for Hamilton. People are loving the fact that we’ve done Hamilton and some are asking about doing more Hamilton now.

Kob: We did look at a lot more songs from it but that was the only one that really translated.

Peej: Yeah, the next single though, which is out at the end of this month. The video is amazing. We’ve done the video. It’s probably one of my favourite tracks on the album!

Kob: We can say now it’s ‘Defying Gravity’ because we started playing it in the set! We’ve really stepped the video up and it is incredible!

So I guess I’ll finish off with a more light-hearted question. Obviously, going into the future. You’ve done Disney, you’ve done the musicals. Have you set yourself any limits of where you won’t go or are you happy to just expand outwards?

Peej: Not really. I mean, we’ve kinda got an open book with a back catalogue. We could do decades we could do band-specific albums.

Kob: We’ve thrown so many ideas around and we even talked about a manga album, we talked about even going and doing 60s and 70s even bands Like, imagine a Maiden Punk Rock Factory album! I want to do a Kiss one someday! We did ‘God Gave Rock N’ Roll To You’ and Gene Simmons tweeted us and everything so I want to give that another hit.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. Thanks so much for your time! Is there anything you want to plug or promote?

Peej: The new album is out on the 31st of March. Pre-orders are still available on the website. You can pre-order physically or you can pre-order on ITunes! The new tour is obviously at the end of the year, and tickets are flying out for that! We have got some huge production ideas for that! Like the dates that we’re doing now. They were kind of thrown together with the production but we’re taking a step up with that!

Kob: The October UK tour is gonna be a big step up!

Well, I look forward to seeing you guys tonight and hopefully, I’ll see you there as well. Take care guys!

Peej: Thanks very much.