For those of you unfortunate enough to have never heard of the brilliant up and coming indie rock band, JUDAS, boy do I have a treat for you today. We sat down with the London based foursome and talked everything from their incredible (as of yet) unreleased track; Wonderland, all the way to Grinder and foreplay. Here’s what the lads of JUDAS had to say when we caught up with them before their Stoke performance on the Mallory Knox tour.
As a band whose roots lie firmly within the genres of indie rock and alternative, Judas offers something to fans that many bands seldom do, a true sense of originality and self. Having seen these guys before, and knowing just what Judas are capable of as a band, it was great to have an opportunity to chat to them and find out more about the lads behind the stage presence and soaring riffs. With so much chemistry on stage, it might shock you to discover that Judas wasn’t actually raised in the womb together. Rather amusingly, all bar one actually attended the same college together, but they never got to know each other.
In this strange turn of events how it was that Judas came to be, you may ask. “We met online. Very 21st century, it was Tinder. Grinder actually. We all just swiped right. Love at first sight, y’know, it just felt right.” They joked, “It was on a band finding website. John (the vocalist) just found me on this website that I forgot I’d signed up for, when I was like 12, ‘Join My Band’, and I just got this message saying, ‘Do you wanna come and have a jam’, and I was like ‘Yeah, sound’.”
Since the early days, the band say that; “We’ve kind of worked out who we are, and I think that we’ve had time to do that, especially when we put the band together, we didn’t even know each other, but after a while, you sort of work each other’s strengths out and you all become your own person within the band. You add your own spin and your own identity to make one cognitive being.”
Whilst the previously mentioned, Twenty-One Pilots may not seem like one of the bands most obvious and key influencers when you listen to their sound, elements and aspects of Twenty-One Pilot’s electronic vibe can definitely be seen in the bands most recent track, ‘Big Mouth’. The altered repeated voice found embedded within the track definitely sounds similar to the effect used throughout Twenty-One Pilots last album ‘Blurryface’.
This can also be said about John‘s sometimes gravelly and powerful vocals that seem to heavily take inspiration from The Kings of Leon’s sound. In this case, the influence is far more apparent. “I think that your voice has that Kings of Leon sound, so I think that’ll always sort of stick.”
That shared passion and brash nature between the two bands definitely seems to affect the sound of Judas, creating an infectiously original but familiar sound that you can’t help but be drawn in by – something I look forward to hearing a lot more of, and according to the lads, thankfully there won’t be terribly long to wait.
Besides the further upcoming tour dates (which yes, yes, we’ll get to, be patient); is a more present thing to get excited about, which is the fact that within the next month we could also potentially have even more Judas coming our way in the next few weeks!
“We’ve got another track, ‘Wonderland’, and another video for a really big song. It’s probably the best song we’ve ever written to date; Its Mallory Knox’s favourite as well.”
“We’re really proud of the ones we’ve just released, so ‘Big Mouth’ and ‘Wonderland’. We recorded them in Abbey Road, and it was such an amazing momentous few days, and it was such an amazing experience, and to take all that in when we got to the end and we’d finished it was kind of a real proud moment of ours. It’s the fact that we actually made something that we feel is actually like gonna be identified as us as well, it’s something to listen to and actually hear and go ah that sounds like that band.”
As far as what we can expect from a studio release of ‘Wonderland’, the band gave us a glowing endorsement coupled with a slightly alarming health warning. According to them; “Your mind will be blown across the floor, it’s gonna be twice as sticky. You’ll have to wear a hat so your head doesn’t explode!”
Well, at least you’ve been warned. I for one am ready to face the mind-melting consequences if it means that we get a little more Judas in our lives in the nearby foreseeable future. So, with new music and a video on the horizon, is it safe to say that where there’s smoke there’s fire, or in this case, where there’s singles there’s… an album? Soon perhaps?
“In the near future, we’ll say. I think we need a few more singles and then we’ll be ready for an album. We’re still growing, and we still need to grow our fan base. Doing this Mallory Knox tour has been the best help we’ve ever had to be honest. It’s our first support tour with a substantial band really, and when we’re doing our own headline tours, it’s only really our fans that know us. I don’t really think that it’s our — our problem is that people who support us don’t think we’re the best band. It’s about persuading people who don’t know about us why they should come out to a show.”
“When they come to gigs everybody loves us, so it’s trying to play in front of audiences that have never seen us, and that we’ve never met before. So that’s why it’s great to do this support tour, and we’re so grateful to Mallory Knox for having us, so we love you guys, great band.”
And finally, for those of you who may not have experienced the spectacle that is Judas live, in the bands words, here is what you can expect from one of their shows; “Excitement, a really energetic show. We never take it too seriously either, so come and chat to us afterwards, and we always have time for all of our fans after the shows because we wait around until the end and we chat to every single person and give everyone an equal amount of time, and we want people to feel part of JUDAS as a thing, a movement. A JUDAS fan club that we’ve started ourselves, Sam’s the president of it. Just come along and see it for yourself and have a good time.”
Having seen these guys before, I’ve got to agree that if you manage to get tickets for one of their shows, you’re definitely in for a treat.
As a band with so much to offer in terms of their raw musical talent, stage presence and – not to mention their wicked senses of humour, what’s not to love?
As a fan, I personally can’t wait to see just what the indie rock foursome, Judas have in store for us in the future. But one things for sure, it’s bound to absolutely blow our fucking brains out!
