Interviews

 

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE

 

Words: Rod Yates

 

Health issues threatened to end BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE'S career before it had truly begun. Now, with those problems behind them, the Welsh quartet are ready to take on anything, as bassist Jay James tells ROD YATES.

 

As a teenager, Bullet For My Valentine bassist Jay James used to sit in his bedroom in South Wales, slavishly learning the basslines to Iron Maiden songs. To this day they remain his favourite band. Imagine, then, how he felt upon discovering that Bullet For My Valentine had been asked to support Maiden on a European tour in 2006, not to mention when he found himself in a pub after the first show of the tour sharing a few pints with his idols.

 

"We went to the pub and we were drinking with [Maiden vocalist] Bruce Dickinson and it was like, okay, just chill and have a pint and just answer his questions and try and keep a conversation going," he chuckles. "And then [bassist] Steve Harris came in and I just went to pieces. He asked me a question and I was stumbling my fucking words. He basically asked me how the sound was on stage cos he had a pretty bad show as far as the speakers went, he couldn't hear things right, and as a matter of fact that happened to me and I agreed with him on something and I was like, 'Wow!' I was well chuffed over it!"

 

Such encounters have become the norm for the Welsh quartet, who since the release of their debut album, 2006's The Poison, have found themselves sharing stages with the likes of Metallica and Guns N'Roses while headlining their own shows in all corners of the globe. It has, admits James, been a steep learning curve.

 

"The biggest thing we've learned off the bigger bands we've toured with is probably stage presence and how to handle yourself on the road," he starts. "Cos when we first got signed it was free beer and parties all the time and we just ran ourselves into the ground until we came to a point where we thought, Right, we've got to grow up on the road now. So we learned that off them. And Iron Maiden, we just watched them and how they worked the stage and just took pointers."

 

The fact that Metallica personally asked the band to support them at Wembley Stadium last year suggests they've learned their lessons well, and said gig was set to be the highlight of the band's career-to-date - until, that is, vocalist Matt Tuck was forced into surgery to operate on his vocal cords, giving the band no option but to pull out of the gig and throwing their recording plans into disarray.

 

"It was a bit of an eye opener cos we hadn't stopped playing and touring since we got signed," explains James. "That was the first time that this machine had stopped, Matt was in hospital and we were like, 'Oh my god, what if this is it?' It really opened our eyes and we appreciate what we've got more than ever now cos we were so scared of losing it. And now we're back on the road we're just so happy to be back, we appreciate what we've got much more."

 

What would you have done if Matt hadn't been able to sing again?

 

"We probably would have got another singer in. We couldn't have let it just stop. He would have still been the singer-songwriter as such and we just would have got someone in to sing his parts."

 

Luckily such a process wasn't necessary, and Tuck recovered in time to begin recording the band's second album, Scream, Aim, Fire, late last year. Relocating to a huge pecan farm in El Paso, Texas, which bizarrely also doubles as a studio, the foursome reteamed with producer Colin Richardson after his work on their debut. Given that The Poison established the band as Britain's most promising new metal talent, the pressure was on to prove the hype was warranted.

 

"Cos we haven't had to write a second album before, we didn't know how to do it, we didn't know the feelings that came with it until we were in the middle of it and we were like, 'Oh my god, this album's got to be really good!'" laughs James. "But we just wrote the songs as we always do, we didn't change nothing that we've ever done, and I think that's the secret. You don't try too hard, you just do what you do and see what you come up with, and I think that's worked."

 

The pressure of creating their sophomore album wasn't the only psychological hurdle the quartet faced during the recording. The isolation of the pecan farm - which was located "in the middle of the desert", 45 minutes from El Paso, confining the band there for the entire session - resulted in what drummer Moose has ominously described in the press as "some really bad days." James, for what it's worth, thinks of it more as an extreme case of cabin fever.

 

"We'd probably just had enough of being around each other," he offers. "Cos it's like, you've only got a certain amount of rooms you can go in, and we need our own time. There was nothing around, it was three miles to the nearest shop and that was a beaten-up garage. We wanted to go to this studio so we didn't have any distractions, but at the same time it was really boring, so we got some quads in and some motorbikes to try and pass the time."

 

Did that frustration ever boil over in the studio?

 

"Not really, we're all really good friends, we've all been friends since we were three or four years old, we've all grown up together, so that's a really good place for a band. So no tempers flared up in the studio, it just gets monotonous waiting to get your parts done, and if you don't get it right you've got to do it until you get it right."

 

Given how proud James is of Scream, Aim, Fire, the hours of boredom and the suffocating isolation encountered while creating it were all worth it. Two albums into their career, Bullet For My Valentine are one step closer to matching it with their idols.

 

"We've got harder hitting songs this time, it's a little bit more metal than The Poison," he concludes of the album. "Faster beats, bigger solos, more riffs, it's like proper old school Metallica and Iron Maiden coming out. I think it's a lot more metal. I think it's going to blow The Poison out of the sky."

 

WHO: Bullet For My Valentine

WHAT: Scream, Aim, Fire (Sony)

 

 

 

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