Pure Rawk – Accept No Substitutes

London’s very own monsters of rock, King Lizard have been consistently making waves over the past few years. Now they’re finally gearing up to release their debut album.

Frontman Flash talks to Nix about what the guys have been upto, their Islington Academy show this weekend, Hellfire Festival and their brand new live DVD.

N: You guys have been quiet recently, what have you been upto?

F: Well, well, well, young Nix, we’ve actually all trained to be international spies and have been really busy with that really, you know – learning how to kill a man with a single move etc. Very time consuming.

Other than that we’ve been recording our debut album, ‘Viva La Decadence’. It’s really awesome. We started recording it just before the Pure Rawk awards where we headlined February 08. We’d just done 5 tracks with Chris Tsangaredes who’s worked with Ozzy, Thin Lizzy, Bruce Dickinson, Judas Priest, TigerTailz and … Anvil. It was really cool. It was an amazing experience to go record with him there in Dover but getting the time and money together was difficult and we weren’t really sure if he was best for our style.

Since then we decided we’d wasted a lot of time messing around with the recording and we hadn’t done anything with it so we wanted to do the rest of the album with Andy Brook of Shush as producer. He’s done a lot of our demos and really knows our sound and what we want to capture of the bands essense on disc. We knew we could just get in there and fire em out, plus Andy’s like one of the guys so it’s all been very natural. We’re just mixing now but basically we thought fuck it, we’ve pissed about too long without actually having a full album and we’re already writing new stuff so we couldn’t really move on till we’d got the old stuff out there.

N: However, a show slot on Hellfire festival – I heard that was a last minute arrangement! Tell us about that?

F: Yeah, well we were technically not meant to play anywhere in London as we’re headlining at the Islington Academy on the 3rd of May so we’d turned down a lot of gigs then we were all out in Soho and were wasted as it hapens then we get the call at about midnight. We thought, ‘fuck it’, we had to do it really it’s a great gig and good publicity for us plus it’s something to do with Transcend records who we’ve been talking to and you know, make contacts and all that? plus we had to go show those metal heads how to rock!

N: Show at the Islington Academy, tell us about that?

F: Yeah, it should be wicked, we’ve not played live since … errrm … since the Helfire thing actually! but we’ve done another show there before where the promoters really fucked us about and cut our set short, I had a bit of a rant about that on stage, you know one of those big companies who claim to work with Sony or whoever to lure bands in just to make rip them off and make money out of em … anyway I won’t get started there! but it’s an awesome stage and I love running up and down the press pit and all that plus we really wanted to do another big show and get to do a full hour and a bit set. So looking forward to it. I know probably every band says this but we really belong on a big stage, when we did the Scala at Unholy we just owned it. We play a stadium rock show wherever we play so the bigger the stage the better!

N: The album, how is that progressing and when can we expect to see that unleashed onto the world?

F: It’s going really well, as I said we’re still putting the finishing touches in and it’s shaping up nicely. I hate giving ourselves deadlines cos we alway break ‘em! But we’d like to have it released this summer but you never know. Once we’ve settled on the appropriate deal and everyone’s happy it’ll be out.

N: How different is the new material to the older stuff?

F: Well some of it is the older songs from our demos and various unofficial releases but re-recorded. It is songs that we’ve been playing live but a lot of them we’ve never recorded before and some of the older tracks are a little different than how they’ve been on demos before. We felt we had to get those songs out at their best and officially before we could do an entire new album of new songs.

Basically we’re a fine tuned machine now. We know what we’re doing and we’ve become very at one with each other as musicans and I think that comes across on the album. I know it’s good cos we impressed ourselves! I dunno, I’m really happy with it and so are the guys, we’ve put down 15 tracks and as far as we’re concerned we’ll release em all! we’ll see. It’s great tho, VIVA!

N: Any tours coming up?

F: We’re gonna do a few UK dates here and there and probably another big london show at the end of the summer or something and then come back out and tour on the back of the album. We’ve yet to play abroad and we really wanna do some Scandinavian dates, cos they love it out there! Also we wanna do Israel, they all love their lone warrior Niro who ventured to London to seek the glory of rock n’ roll! They already love us there! Then there’s Alice’s homeland, Rome, but I dunno if they’ll let us in when they see he’s coming back to raise hell!

N: New bands to watch out for?

F: Hmmm, I recently got too know the drummer from Yel Piracy, they’re pretty cool from up north, they’re gonna start doing london, I think they’ll hit it off. Also I saw an awesome band the other day, Uncle Rotter? fucking brilliant, bunch of nut cases wearing halloween masks with songs like ‘Fit Goth Girls on the end of my dick’. I dunno if they’re new but they’re wicked.

N: Song you wish you’d of written?

F: Fuck that’s a crazy question, there’s loads of songs. My favourite song of all time is Sweet Child O’ Mine, I wish i’d written that … I’d be fucking loaded as well! Sky would probably say something by tool but I think it’s such an amazing song, always makes me feel good.

N: Favourite song you have written?

F: Hmmm probably ‘Rain on you’, there’s a lot of emotion and anger in that song and at the time I had to let it out before I killed someone and it’s all in there. I love all of em to be honest but there’s about four or five absolute favourites that’ll prob be in our set forever!

N: Ultimate festival line up? (bands dead or alive)

F: Guns n’ Roses (original line up)
Motley Crue
Skid Row
Kiss
Marylin Manson
Rolling Stones
Aerosmith
Metallica
Megadeth….

AH I’ll be here forever! That’s another impossible question, it could be a four day festival! … oh wait, King Lizard headline…

N: If King Lizard were a product, what would it be?

F: An unstopable killing machine sent from the future to protect you from your past … no wait a really nice car … with guns that pop out … or a dildo.

N: Plans for the rest of this year?

F: Make lots of money and be really successful … buy a house … a nice car … I dunno, we wanna get the album out mainly then just do some shows get it out there, take over the world … something like that.

N: Tell us about the filming at King Lizard shows – theres stuff thats been filmed for a DVD?

F: Yeah it was specifically the Underworld show back in Nov. We sold it out and we got some guys to film it, Perry Stevens who does the Paradise City and Dirt clubs and Sky’s brother Peter who’s also a cameraman, got our good friend Adam Crow to record the sound live and he basically mixed it and mastered it like a live album so it’s pretty cool. Niro’s on his way back from Israel with the finished product, he’s been working with the editor out there, one of Niro’s old friends Adi Koren, really awesome talented guy, he put a lot of time and effort into it.

From what I’ve seen it’s amazing, animated menus and bonus features the whole shebang … it’s very warts n’ all! We’re unleashing em at The Academy show I think the fans will love it … but fuck them I want my copy!

For more news on King Lizard and upcoming tour dates, check www.myspace.com/kinglizardmusic – top image and live shot (c) Ila Desai