An interview with Broken Hands

Broken Hands - a refreshing addition to new rock music with heavy, urgent and intense growling guitar riffs and catchy lyrics with occasional distorted whirring space sounds adding a sense of uniqueness to the band. With their recently released debut album - Turbulence, the five piece have embarked on their headline tour across the UK.
   I went to go and watch Broken Hands at The Sunflower Lounge in Birmingham last night due to front man Dale Norton very kindly inviting me along to the show. I can honestly say that it was undoubtedly one of the best live performances I've ever seen; as soon as the set had finished I was left wanting to see them again. The whole show sounded colossal. I'll definitely be around for the next time they come to Birmingham as I know they'll be selling out bigger venues for sure as the rather intimate size of The Sunflower Lounge did not stand a chance against the enormity of the sound that they were emitting. The band were truly captivating to watch onstage, with each member putting on their own individual show and fully getting into the music. It was difficult to break yourself out of the mindset that you weren't actually travelling full force, hurtling through space; with everything from the sketchy flashing lights erupting in sequence alongside the almighty bass lines that pulsated throughout the room, the background covered in what looked like aluminium to the band's spaced themed blue boiler suits contributing to the undeniable futuristic feel.
   I also managed to have a little chat with Dale about the band's music before the show. Have a read of what he had to say below:

You've just got back from touring in America, how do you find the US audiences in comparison with the UK ones?
"People in America seem to have taken to us pretty good. We've only done six shows out there and we only played New York so progressively I think people are tagging on. It's almost like playing your first gig all over again. It's hard to tell but generally speaking we seem to be going down quite well. We're going back there soon too so we'll see."

I've heard about the price of touring in America being really expensive now, what's that about?
"One of the main reasons it's so expensive is because there's five of us in a band so to play/work out there in the U.S. it's £700 for a visa each; so you've got that before you've even started thinking about touring costs. You need to be in a position where someone can back you to get to that point. You can actually go and play a showcase which is good if you're a new band cos it's what we did at the start but you can use an ESTA and you can do up to three shows if you're not being paid. So that's a good bit of info for anyone trying to get out there. SXSW is especially good if you want to start playing out there - it's one of the first things we played there."

The album cover for Turbulence is rather distinctive, are the symbols representative of anything?

Photo credit to www.brokenhands.co.uk

"It's a bit of a concept which is a bit of a dirty word on our record, each song has a symbol and the main cover is just all of them put together; like the cover for one of our singles - Meteor, that has a symbol on it there so that's one of the ones that's been put together on the album cover. A graphic designer did it called Stuart Ford - who works at the label. Because we had quite a strong idea of what the music was about and all of the themes were in the titles and the lyrics, cos it's about a flight taking off, it was easy for him to portray his own take on it. It's made the whole process easier as when we first started we didn't really know what we wanted to do, we were just playing to figure out how to get better and to build a fan base. It got to a point where we were a bit disillusioned and we were semi copying off other people and it wasn't getting us anywhere so we just thought we'd do what what we wanted to and that's how the whole idea came up."

How do you want people to perceive your sound?
"Someone asked me the other day 'how successful do you want to be or do you just want to sell your records' but if people get the idea of the concept that it's a big analogy for coming up and taking off and the paranoia of coming down and weather they like it or not, I'll be chuffed. That's all we've tried to say, that's the whole conversation of the record so if they get that then I'll just be proper chuffed. Sometimes, I'll get a review and people are just like 'they've worked with Royal Blood's producers so they just sound like Royal Blood' - we do sound similar because we're a heavier band but if people gave it a bit of time and understood the concept then our job is done weather they like it or not."

Is there a message that you try to get across in your songs or is it more about the sound?
"Yeah, I think there is a message. Like I was saying when we were a bit of a loose end and we were just copying other bands at the time, we kind of got to the end of the road. I was dropping off a few friends at the airport, this was when we were thinking about maybe stopping it, but I sat down and basically as I was coming down I dropped them off which is weird cos have you ever dropped someone off at the airport? It's fucking bollocks because they go off to have a nice time and you get really excited but it's like 5am and you've gotta go home. But anyway, as I was dropping them off I thought - fucking hell, everyone I know is getting on a plane and going abroad or travelling and all in their early twenties so they were gonna get absolutely wrecked and 'expand their minds' and all that. But I saw a correlation; the idea of flight and travelling and the idea of actually going up in your head so I think the message is about us trying to get out and see a bit more. The only reason we started playing music was that so we could go round and get a free pass to travel - which sounds bad but I'm sure most people have thought that."

Myself  and Dale

How does your songwriting come together?
"For a long time I wrote all of the songs and then when we came up with that concept I explained, we all moved in together to try and make it work and that was when we started writing together more. Half of the record is written by me and the other half is a co-write between us all. Because we had this idea of what we wanted to say planned out, it made it easier for us. But, co-writing has been wicked and I hope that we do more of that on the next records. It's a bit awkward sometimes in bands if there's just one person who writes all the stuff because it's a bit awkward for the other members to try and approach it. Sometimes I used to go up to the boys with an idea and they wouldn't really agree; it's like you can be best mates but it's like an elephant in the room - you can't really say you don't like it. So having a joint idea and direction made it easier to talk about."

What do you think is influencing you right now?
"It's a bit weird because the whole record was about getting on a flight and taking off so getting on a flight and taking off now is a bit weird, and when we actually play the music now it's like 'this is great'. I was actually really stressed out because the last time when we were working abroad before the album came out I was thinking - fucking hell imagine if we all crashed and died and we've made this whole record about it - it would be absolutely dreadful! But at the moment, we've been really interested in kirlian photography; it's when they load electric into different items and it shows you where the energy fields are. So, for the next album which we're already writing, it's going to be based on plus, minus, magnetism and the relationship between people, so I guess it's a relationship record."

You can purchase Broken Hand's album - Turbulence on Itunes by clicking HERE

Or, you can buy a physical copy by clicking HERE


Written by Rosie Mulhern