‘We played Download festival, with Metallica’: So So Gay talks to Reachback at Cazfest

By this point we were on quite a roll with the interviews, having a good time, and were thinking who to do next. After remembering them playing on stage, we realised that Reachback were the only rock/metal group playing Cazfest, so when we spotted Ruby William’s trademark pink hair we made for her like piranhas. …

By this point we were on quite a roll with the interviews, having a good time, and were thinking who to do next. After remembering them playing on stage, we realised that Reachback were the only rock/metal group playing Cazfest, so when we spotted Ruby William’s trademark pink hair we made for her like piranhas.

Very chilled out and relaxed post-performance, Ruby (vocals), Craig Chin (drums) and Joe Williams (bass) agreed to chat to us about what caused them to play Cazfest this year. Ruby explained: ‘we played last year, we were at an earlier time last year and they were like “Do you want to come back again?” and we were like “Yea, sure!” Good time last year – even though it was raining.’ Then Craig went on to explain the response from last year, saying: ‘I think we were the first band on last year and after we played, they said “we love you guys, we will definitely put you guys on later next year.’’’

Recognising the local accent, we asked if they had played locally, and Ruby explained: ‘we kind of do play the Essex-scene, but… we’re now going out into different towns and stuff. We recently supported McFly which made our fan-base a lot bigger.’ We didn’t realise how big, in terms of their genre, until Craig informed us, ‘a few months later we played Download festival, with Metallica.’ Colour us shocked. We did a quick research and discovered that Reachback were one of the bands named by Red Bull to do a National tour, starting with Slam Dunk, and opening the main stage at Download. Not bad for a local band.

Wanting to know more about any album in the works, we were told: ‘We just recently recorded our new single, so we just came back from the studio. We recorded two singles, one of which is going to be our single, which is called Get Up, and the other which is called Pretty Sick for Slick, which is going to be a B-side to our single, which will be up later this month’, which means that it should be up soon for interested parties, although unfortunately – ‘we haven’t got a date sorted yet.’ Darn it!

When we asked for a description of their music in three words, ‘pink, candyfloss and energetic’ came about – not something you’d expect from a metal band – so we wanted to know their stance on whether rock had changed. ‘What you would call “metal” years and years ago is definitely not what you would call it now. We are kind of in a new era of metal’, Ruby told us, continuing by saying, ‘our kind of genre is pop-punk and if you listen to the pop-punk stuff from years ago it’s not really what we are, so it definitely has changed.’ We discussed the possibility of rock as a genre being dead, and Craig came up with a very good retort: ‘You think “is it dying?” and then you look at the bigger festivals in the UK, like Download. You look at Download and you get 100,000 people and you think rock music is dead?’ We are so stealing that argument for the future.

While telling us that they are touring up North (‘we’ve never been up North before’), and that they are pleased because, ‘we’re looking forward to meeting some of the McFly fans’, Joe made an excellent point concerning how they fit in with metal as a genre: ‘throughout our career, we’ve played with some really heavy bands and we’ve played with people like McFly, and we seem to get a good response everywhere we go.’

‘To people who have never heard of us before – check us out – and come down to a show, you will not be disappointed!’ We weren’t and we will definitely be keeping an eye on them for the future.

You can visit Reachback’s website, Facebook and Twitter or download their EP ‘Wake Up’ from iTunes

Thanks to Rob Anderson for the photos