Rm13: Bloodstock is arriving, so you guys must all be very excited.
Luke: “Yes! Bloodstock to date is by far the biggest gig we’ve done. As a band we’ve been together for a year now and the album’s been out for only a few months so we’re very lucky and privileged to get the gig. It’s going to be awesome, we’re going to love it!”
Rm13: Is this your first festival appearance?
Luke: “Yeah, effectively it will be, although having said that we did the Bulldog bash the other week…”
Rm13: Is there anyone else you’ll be checking out at Bloodstock?
Luke: “Any other bands? Oh yeah, loads. We’ve been lucky enough to do gigs with a few of them. Gamma Ray - we’re looking forward to seeing them on Friday night, and of course Children of Bodom.”
Rm13: So why should people come to see you?
Luke: “Why us? We’re a bit of an unusual choice for Bloodstock ‘cause technically we’re not what you’d call a Metal Power band. We’re certainly powerful, particularly live. We’ve got a powerful sound and we have fun on stage. We enjoy it and hope that the crowd enjoy it too. The kind of music we play is a little more “Old School” - kind of. We’ve got some nice, catchy singing choruses and a good beat and rhythm to it. We just give it our all. When we’re on stage we push it as hard as we can. The gigs we’ve got up to now, people have really appreciated that. Every gig we’ve done we’ve had a great reaction from the crowd and we expect that to be the same but multiplied twenty times at Bloodstock.”
Rm13: When you say twenty times, are you ever a little nervous, or is it all part and parcel for you?
Luke: “You can get a little nervous, but it’s more excitement than anything. We done this for a while now and while this is the biggest gig we’ve done, we’ve still done some good ones and nerves don’t come into it so much. We’ll get excited, You stand there at the side of the stage and get yourself ready, and go “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”; you know it’s going to be good and you know it’s going to be fun. To be honest you can have a gig and there are only twenty or thirty people there, as long as you’re enjoying yourself and the crowd’s enjoying themselves as well it’s still a great gig. But to go out in front of two to two and a half thousand people and have that reaction is just phenomenal, we’re gonna love it. The band started up eighteen months ago maybe. Bobby joined us in March/April ’03 and that’s effectively when Panic Cell became Panic Cell. Me and the other lads had played in bands together before, but hadn’t pushed it to this kind of level, and when Bobby joined it was obviously going to work well and we decided to actually go and record some stuff professionally (with Dave Chang). We’re not one of those bands that goes along with the next new thing, we’re all a bit more “old school”. Bands that we like are like Slayer, Gamma Ray, AC/DC and those kind of “euro-power metal bands.” And I guess that’s where we take our influences from, those kinds of bands. We still listen to the new bands, but basically that’s where we derive our sound. We prefer those “old school” riffs. It’s got a catchy chorus, it's got a solo. While I like the new bands there’s nothing better than a guitar solo! This is why we’re gonna love playing Bloodstock, 'cause there’s gonna be, fucking twenty phenomenal guitarists, all givin' it out. I’m gonna love it! It’s gonna be awesome! We just want to try and maintain that kind of level that bands like that used to have. I know it’s going to be difficult ‘cause it’s a little bit “retro” - I guess we’re doing it with updated sound. A lot of the new bands are a bit sort of “I hate life” whereas with the “old school” it was more "Yeah! Yeah!" And we’ve got that kind of attitude."
Rm13: Do you think that some bands sound better live than in the studio?
Luke: “Yeah, definitely, and visa versa.”
Rm13: Would you release a live album?
Luke: “Yeah if we got the chance to. If we did a gig were it was recorded to a high enough standard, definitely. Yeah I’d love to do that. We love playing live and it allows you to do so much more. We’ve been able to do a video and been on “Skuzz” for the last fifteen weeks, and we’ve spent all but two weeks of that in the top ten, and you're talking about bands ranging from Slipknot to Evanescence, Linkinpark to the lesser well-known English bands like Yourcodenameis:Milo. We even hit the number one spot about seven weeks ago for requested videos, and we’ve got a new one coming out. We’re actually going out to play a few gigs in Italy this month with some friends of ours called “War Child”. They’re coming over to play in the U.K. and then we’re touring with them over there. This is our first trip out of the U.K. and we’re really looking forward to it. And it’s going to be awesome!”