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Artist Interviews
Q&A: Lostprophets
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 26 January 2010
Formed way back in 1997 by vocalist Ian Watkins and guitarist Mike Lewis, and taking influence from the likes of Pantera, The Cure and Metallica, Lostprophets have released four studio albums and thirteen singles. The band’s second album, ‘Start Something’, entered the UK album chart at number five, and they went on to grab the number one spot with their third album ‘Liberation Transmission’. With their latest album ‘The Betrayed’ out now, we caught up with guitarist Lee Gaze to ask the Same Six Questions.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Originally, I wanted to be a drummer, but the trouble was that I lived in a small house and drum kits are noisy! So, I moved on to guitar. Someone actually gave me their old acoustic guitar to begin with and I was hooked from then on. It was a massive commitment, I put in eight hours a day when I started out, but that was cool, when you’re a teenager that’s all you want to do, you know?
Q2 What inspired the latest album?
It was wholly inspired by our personal experiences; everything we have learnt in the last ten years is in the new album, ‘The Betrayed’. This is the first time that we totally self-worked the album, used my own guitars, my own pedals – everything. This album is purely us, through and through.
Q3 What processes do you go through when you’re creating a track?
It’s a mixture really. I am constantly writing so I will write a large part of a track, play it to the guys who will have their own ideas and we pick and rearrange it all together. When we all get together ideas flow so we can create songs from scratch or continue to work on our existing ideas.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
We like bands like Pantera, The Cure, Metallica, The Police, but although we like what they do we don’t want to be them. We always wanted to do our own thing, not recreate what someone else created.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Our music can be full-on heavy, then border on a ballad and become Brit-pop, the variation in there is massive.
Q6 What are your ambitions for the latest album, and for the future?
We want as many people to hear it as possible and tour it around the world to as many people as we can. In the future, we want to keep being ourselves. We’ve had an amazing time so far, so we want to keep doing exactly that!
MORE>> www.lostprophets.com
