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Interviews : “We’re so much more prepared to wait and make sure what we’re releasing is perfect!” An Interview With Matthew Jones (Martyr Defiled)

By on September 30, 2014

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Martyr Defiled – Matthew Jones

UK based deathcore act Martyr Defiled have powered their way to the top in just a few years, creating some of the heaviest, most aggressive music there is. Ahead of their Australian tour along with Boris The Blade, Elegist and I Exalt. I had the opportunity to have a chat with front man Matthew Jones on behalf of Metal Obsession who had heaps to say about what the band’s been up to, their new album and their first trip to Australia!

The band released their new album earlier this year in April and have done a few tours and festivals, including the massive Download Festival with it! “Yeah it’s been pretty great, we’ve just done a few festivals in the UK and Europe and the response has been awesome! Download was absolutely mental! We actually played a show in London which was our release show and one of the guys who books Download came down to the show. So we met him, went out for a few drinks meanwhile playing the whole ‘it’s our dream to play Download’ card,  and he told us next year! But then a few days later we got a call that somebody dropped out of the line up and we were bumped right to the top, we were the very last band to get announced. It was a  whirlwind thing, we basically had two weeks notice but yeah we  just jumped into it we had everything ready. It really was insane, we were hanging out with Chester Bennington backstage and I was stoked because I love Linkin Park; in fact Meteora was the first CD I ever bought!”

Martyr Defiled was formed in 2007 by a group of friends who shared the same passion, the same ideas and the same love for music. Matt gave me more insight into the background of the band, and more specifically the band’s name, which has a very simple yet deep meaning to it. “Well we started in 2007 as a group of friends who were all in bands that broke up and we sort of got together after that. We were just one of those local bands that would meet up and things just went forward from there. We started gigging and people enjoyed it! With the name though it was just batting around different ideas, different themes that we liked, and we got more and more inside the idea of someone dying for something you believe in but you don’t really know what it is.; and at the same time being lied to which is where the name comes from.”

Talking about the new album in more detail, Matt had a lot to say about what it is the band is trying to convey through their music, and with the lyrical themes that they focus on. This was really interesting to listen to! “The idea of ‘ No Hope. No Morality’ lyrically sort of continues the ideas  in the previous release which centers around very anti-establishment, anti-political things. I wanted to look back into those ideas; the motives behind things that happen, why people think the way they do but it’s mainly the idea of ‘original sin’- the fact that we’re all born sinners and we have to work to not be that. In the eyes of Christinaity, you have to repent for the sins from your birth and again the idea that if you’re born with that, you’re born as the lowest of the low you have to work your way up from there. But if you know that you can never quite reach that point of no sin, that there’s no hope of becoming that perfect person, then why would you have that moral standpint if you’re going to hell anyway?  I kind of attacked that angle from a few different viewpoints for instance if I was a priest and I’ve got all the way to the end of  but I’m still going to hell even though I’ve led a pious life how would I feel at that point.  The fear at the very point when the gates of hell open up and you’re going down and you’re wondering why; just that regret of everything in your life that you could have done differently. But yeah that’s just one idea for one song. I try not to have too much of a concept that’s too restrictive in terms of how I want to portray myself and the band but I do like exploring such ideas and add a bit of a personal flavour to that and let people take from it what they will.

He also gave me more insight into what the band has in mind when creating the kind of music that they do  and emphasized on the importance of the band moving forward constantly and progressing. “I think we always went out there with the idea of creating an album that was bigger than the sum of its parts something that we’re all quite passionate about the music that we write we don’t want to be too one dimensional create something that isn’t 1 song repeated 11 times. We listen to an album and we hear you can hear when the band has got four really good songs and then it’s like ‘that’s really good, lets write another 7 of that’. We wanted each song to have it’s own characteristics its own individual style each song should have that Martyr Defiled  twist. We actually wrote about 35 40 songs; almost  3 albums worth of material.  When Ryan, our newest guitarist who actually came in to the band as a fan  he was writing the songs in such a way that it brought elements from different tracks, different releases of the band – for instance he’d go ” I like this era of Martyr Defiled with this sound, I like this part and that part’ and so on. He’d merge it all together basically trying to bring back a whole lot of our back catalog and put it in the new album! Those 35 or 40 songs that we wrote though consigned to this album session, the door closed on that one. I think its positive to write all those songs because when you’re writing an album you’re listening to a certain set of records, picking apart different ideas and you have to close the door on parts that you don’t need if you want to progress stylistically.”

 

Ever since they started out in 2008, the band has undergone a few line-up changes, and given those changes, Matt shared his thoughts on how that has impacted the sound and dynamic of the band. “Yeah there’s been a few changes in the band;  the problem was from our first EP to our first album, there was quite a lot of upheaval in the band – three or four members changed and basically a lot of the  original viewpoint of what Martyr Defiled started out with got lost and we ended up turning into something we didn’t intend to sound like, for instance when we released ‘Collusion‘, it’s a very tech death really fast album and  production wasn’t particularly anything of what we had done before. It did suit the album but it didn’t really suit what Martyr Defiled was about; we kind of lost our way and fell off the train a little bit, it definitely was a really hard time for us especially for me. Then as we came onto the second EP we reunited with some of the old members, like our original drummer is back in the band and we sort of went back to what we started off with;  looked back on where we went wrong and to be honest its taken us further than that. When you listen to it, the album stylistically, does stick out by itself, and you  go ‘this is well diff to anything else they did’. We’re so much more meticulous and we’re so much more prepared to wait and make sure that what we’re releasing is perfect because we know now the problems of releasing an album that isn’t really what you’re about.”

These lads have done a good number of tours in their few years as a band, and one of those tours last year was with our very own Thy Art Is Murder. You could hear the admiration in Matt’s voice when I mentioned the band and he had lot’s to say about it. “That was probably the biggest learning experience for us because the thing with Thy Art and with that tour was that we had heard of them before but ‘Hate’ hadn’t come out at that time. But once that album was released and then literally three weeks before our tour they signed with Nuclear Blast, we knew that it was going to be insane! We turned up to the first show and it was sold out with like 600 people there when we were expecting about 100. Those guys are just super professional, I mean their knowledge of gear, knowledge of their music, knowledge of production and what they’re doing they really took us under their wing. We’ve got really strong ties with that band, they’ve really helped us out and we talk to them quite regularly about things like perfecting our sound, just taking parts of a song and working on it. Every time you go away with a band on tour and you do 35, 40 shows consecutively, you sort of begin to pick apart their music  and go ‘ that’s how they do that, let’;s turn that and see if we can make that into our style’!  It’s always a great learning curve when you tour with another band but Thy Art was probably the biggest for us!”

No Hope No Morality

Martyr Defiled are bringing this new album to Australia in October for their very first tour in the country and Matt was beyond excited about the whole thing and was certain about the fact that this tour is going to be one of their best! ” Yes! we’re really stoked about coming there! We actually took Boris The Blade out on tour in Europe with us along with another band called I Decalre War and it was awesome, I mean we really share a bond with those guys. we talk to them on a daily basis we’re actually supposed to be doing a US tour together as well and when that was getting sroted, they asked us if we wanted to come along on tour in Australia! In the last 5 years we run our own big cartel its got to a point now where every time we’re printing out labels, 25-50 % of those labels are going to Australia so we’re definitely confident that it’s going to be a positive tour there’s going to be not a lot but I’m sure quite a few of our fans who have been waiting to see us for a while. We’re going to bring out some of our old stuff, stuff we haven’t played in a while, also given that it’s our first tour of Australia   we can show people not just what we are now but stuff from back in the day as well. I’m confident that we’re going to have a good time. I  know for sure we’re going to get absolutely smashed with the boys from Boris!”

On that exciting note, I wished Matt and his band the best of luck for their tours and he passed on this message to all of Martyr Defiled’s Australian fans. “We’re going to bring the party guys, whatever show we play, whether there’s 4 people there or 4000, you’ll never see us slack, we’re going to play the exact same show wherever we are. If you’re going to come down, which you should,you can expect to have a good time, expect to get moving and expect to see a lot of what you want to hear from us! It’s going to be mental! See you soon!”

Catch Martyr Defiled at one of their Australian shows which kicks off on the 3rd of October in Adelaide! Details below!

Friday 3rd October: Adelaide – Fowlers Live Lic AA
w/Isolated & Overlord
TIX: http://www.moshtix.com.au/v2/event/the-spring-rage-tour/72834
Doors 6pm

Saturday 4th October: Melbourne – The Reverence Hotel 18+
w/Architects of Evolution
TIX: http://thearteryfoundation.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx
Doors 8pm

Sunday 5th October: Melbourne – Wrangler Studios AA
w/Bury Tomorrow (UK), Reigner & Epimetheus
TIX: http://thearteryfoundation.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx
Doors 1pm

Tuesday 7th October: Canberra – Magpies Lic AA
w/City Lit Skies, Inhuman Remnants
TIX: http://thearteryfoundation.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx
Doors 6:30pm

Wednesday 8th October: Newcastle – Cambridge Hotel 18+
w/Of Divinity, The Sign Of Four
TIX: http://www.bigtix.com.au/products/940-boris-the-blade.aspx#.U_roEoC1Yp0
Doors 8pm

Thursday 9th October: Brisbane – The Brightside 18+
w/A Night In Texas
TIX: http://thearteryfoundation.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx
Doors 9pm

Friday 10th October: Brisbane – The Lab AA
w/Enfield
TIX: http://thearteryfoundation.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx
Doors 6pm

Saturday 11th October: Sydney – Wasted Years 18+*
w/To The Grave
DOOR SALES ONLY
Doors 8pm

Sunday 12th October: Blacktown – Masonic Hall AA
w/Semper Fi & Double Chamber
TIX: http://thearteryfoundation.oztix.com.au/Default.aspx
Doors 1pm

About

Prarthana is a vegan, Indo-Aussie, heavy music addict, fluent in sarcasm and metal. Traveling is an obsession as she enjoys taking in the history of various countries and following her favorite bands. She's either eating, teaching grammar or learning an instrument, when not occupied with windmilling in the faces of other humans.