Ant May from Festivalphoto grabbed a quick word with two of the guys from Dripback just after their performance at Hammerfest.
Festivalphoto: OK you’ve just played on the third stage here at Hammerfest. How did you enjoy that?
Dripback: We’ve literally just come off stage, changed clothes and then come straight up here. Yeah it was super cool really, we had a good sound, we had our old faithfull Russ Russell doing the sound for us. Nice vibe as well. Haven’t really done much this year so its been nice man. We did the Biohazard tour but it was a bit short though. It’s been a nice start to the year so far and this place was cool.
Festivalphoto: Adam has had a nightmare trip to get here, having only flown back to the UK this morning – how did he manage to stay awake for the show?
Dripback: Things that we can’t talk about (laughs). Well he had a kip, I sat on the floor on the way here and Adam slept along three seats. We picked him up from the airport at what was it, seven o clock this morning and he slept the whole way here.
Festivalphoto: How did you enjoy the Biohazard tour?
Dripback: The Biohazard tour was so cool man, I mean we grew up with those people so listening to all those bands you never think that years later when you’re in your thirties that you’re going to be playing with those guys, so yeah it was super cool, and they’re really sound people. Killer set every night as well.
Festivalphoto: It must be a great feeling to be touring with a band you really admire?
Dripback: Yeah yeah for real. It’s kind of silly really because I’ve always been a bit Soilent Green fan as well, and when we did the first tour that we did as a band, we did it with Soilent Green and that was so cool man, and the same with Biohazard as well.
Festivalphoto: What’s the plan for the rest of the evening? A few more interviews then hit the bar?
Dripback: Yeah we’re on the way to getting shitfaced now actually. We started that this morning, had a few beers in the van. We’re going to check out some bands and definitely try and pace ourselves and see if we can make it to see Criminal at 1am or whatever time they’re on and I want to check out Elimination, proper British thrash man, the way its suposed to be, no frills. There’s going to be no sleep tonight, we’ll sleep when we’re dead.
Festivalphoto: At the moment you’ve only got an EP out. Any plans for a full-blown album?
Dripback: When we went on tour we’d already written a load of songs for the album and the guys have been working hard on it and writing for years so they’ve even been digging out stuff they wrote a long time ago.
We’ve got the album on the go, we’ve got plans over the summer to go and record with Russ again. It was supposed to be earlier but best laid plans and all that, we had to put it back a bit. So we’re due to go into the studio in the summer, start laying down all the tracks and we should see something towards the end of the year, maybe the start of 2013, a full blown Dripback album.
We played two new songs today on top of the ones that are on the EP, so there’s plenty of stuff there, six songs from the album altogether including two that we havent even rehearsed as a band before.
Festivalphoto: Any tours planned for later in the year.
Dripback: We’ll see what happens. Everyones got jobs, we’re all responsible adults to a certain degree….well we pay our rent. We’ll see if there’s any festivals we can gatecrash in the summer, but the focus is on writing and recording the album.
