Interview: The Suzukis

Alter The Press recently spoke to Wigan's The Suzukis, a rock quartet who are set to release their second single, 'Reasons For Leaving' tomorrow. In addition the band will be releasing their debut album in October on Deltasonic Records.

Bassist Robert Warnes told ATP about the video for the new single, their influences, joining Deltasonic and more.

Alter The Press: The video for 'Reasons for Leaving' involves a table being set with a UK flag and then being destroyed. What exactly is the story behind the concept of the video?
The Suzukis: The video for 'Reason for Leaving' was mainly the idea of a friend of ours called Dom foster. He’s doing all the visual side for the band, stuff like videos, sleeves, posters etc. He has a fantastic talent for visual art and media and we like the fact he’s from the same place as us and been our mate for years. The idea is pretty much as simple as politicians stealing the food from normal people's tables. We wanted it to be quite aggressive and have them smash it up. We are buzzing with the way it looks its fantastic he’s done a great job. It only cost £100 too, so it can’t be bad.

ATP: Your sound has been described as "angry". What fuels the aggression in your music?
TS: The anger in our music is a hard one to answer. We generally aren’t angry people but we do have quite short fuses I suppose, but at the end of the day it’s just the music we make. We don’t write love songs we write angry heavy tunes.

ATP: The energy you guys bring has been compared to legendary bands such as At The Drive-In and The Stooges. What are some of your influences?
TS: There are shitloads of influences. We're just into music. Chris’s favorite bands are The Fall and Joy Division etc, but Bamford would rather listen to hip hop and soul jazz records stuff. The rhythm section is fairly heavily influenced by Radiohead amongst loads of others. My favorite album of all time is "Ziggy Stardust" (by David Bowie). The obvious ones are bands like Nirvana and Queens of The Stone Age. When you’re into music there’s something good about most of it.

ATP: You have a lot of festival dates coming up. Being a band with really loud high-energy shows, do you prefer the open space of a festival to a regular venue?
TS: I reckon the smaller gigs are the best ones, because the crowd get into it. You can’t beat it.

ATP: Were you guys together long before signing to Deltasonic?
TS: We were together a while before we got signed. We were never a band who went looking for a record deal or anything like that. We didn’t really give out demos or have a MySpace or anything. We just got on with being in a band because it’s really good fun, then Alan from Deltasonic saw us at a gig when we were all absolutely smashed, and said I’m from a label and I’m into what you're doing. We didn’t believe him until he phoned Chris a couple of days later and it turned out he wasn’t just some weird old bullshitter.

ATP: Your debut record is coming out soon. When can we expect it?
TS: The albums out in October it’s pretty good too. We are half way through writing the second one which is so far sounding even better. Hopefully people will get onto it and enjoy it as much as we do playing it live.

ATP: With a new single and a record on the way. What are some future plans for The Suzukis?
TS: For now were carrying on writing and playing live as much as we can. Other than that we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

'Reasons For Leaving' by The Suzukis is released on Monday July 26th on Deltasonic Records.

The Suzukis on MySpace and Twitter

Janay Kinney