RED METHOD DISCUSS THEIR YEAR-LONG LADDER TO DEBUT ALBUM
Tammy spoke to vocalist Jeremy Gomez and keyboardist Alex Advis about their year-long climb from banding to debut album.
When you take members of the brutal Meta-Stasis, the underground ambience of Ted Maul and the band championed as the “the saviours of U.K. metal”, The Defiled, and throw them into a melting pot of genres the result is a blood bath of colour. More specifically, it’s U.K promising metal outfit, Red Method who have been smearing the venues with their bold, vibrant shade since their late 2018 inception.
Taking a break from their duties with quarantine, we spoke to vocalist Jeremy Gomez and keyboardist Alex Advis about their year-long climb from banding to debut album and national tour.
Having met whilst touring with their respected bands, Gomez and Advis knew instantly that they had to work together.
“Me and Alex have always wanted to do a band because we’ve always toured together back in the day with our bands The Defiled and Ted Maul, our other bands, because he comes from a very industrial background and electronic music and our bands had that cross over with the genres, and since then I’ve always been like ‘let’s do something together’ and I think it was the right time,” Gomez says.
Not only the right timing, but the right methodical formula went into establishing the Red Method and a major ingredient to that was 90’s flavouring. The band cite Gojira, Alice in Chains, Metallica, Pantera, Nine Inch Nails, and Slipknot amongst their spectrum of musical influences, majority of which thrived in the 90’s, helping shape the gritty metal sound of the decade.
“I think the 90’s were when I became really passionate about music and it left a mark on me definitely! The 90’s were dope man! The best bands come from the 90’s so why not sound like the 90’s,” explains Advis.
Gomez agrees, “For me as well, the 90’s were the best time where you had these massive bands mixing music and crossing over all of these genres and I think that impacted me massively as a musicians and the style and the substance behind the actual music was new and fresh and the sound were great.”
“It’s the decade that music got disgusting and it’s lovely!” Advis laughs.
That influence is as clear as day on their debut album, For The Sick, across their singles ‘Cycle of Violence’, ‘Split’ and the mammoth track, ‘The Absent’. Moreso, it comes in the form of a ‘Heart Shaped Box’, with the cover of the Nirvana hit closing out the contagious album.
“That was a massive hit in the 90’s but lyrically it made a lot of sense for us to use it in the album as well, the concepts behind it and the emotions behind it and how it fit in with what we were writing at the time,” explains Gomez.
“I covered that song when I was a teenager because I was obsessed with Nile at the time so I did a Nile version which was ridiculously fast and basically got elements from that but kept it similar but made it how it is now with the electronics on top.”
“The perfect marriage; can’t argue with that. It’s not a cover anyone was expecting us to do but when they heard it they understood,” assures Advis.
While the album has now been circulating the music stratosphere for a couple of months, it was almost perfectly times for the current global health crisis, and eerily fitting title-wise. Their partnered national tour, however, has been terribly impacted but the outbreak.
“It’s delayed us massively and it will delay any other band,” says Gomez.
Advis inserts, “But the band is definitely not going to fall apart! We’ve released our album For The Sick just in time and hopefully people can listen to it. It might kill some of the momentum for this album but we are in this band until the end!”
Once the pandemic is over, the boys will be back to play to their huge following of ‘nutcases’, as Advis explains.
“Oh my god, we’ve got some nutcases following us around so it’s been really good! We are good at winning over crowds and by the time we’re finished you’ll know we’re fucking serious about what we do, when we’re sweating our fucking asses off and injuring ourselves. We’ve amassed a bunch of lunatics.”
For now though Gomez and Advis encourage everyone to stay safe and leave the following advice:
“Do it For The Sick! Light a fucking candle and listen to our album!”