Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on the Everblack podcast, My Dying Bride guitarist Andrew Craighan opened up about recruiting touring vocalist Mikko Kotamäki (Swallow The Sun) and the band’s plans for new music. Notably, the band already have “bits of three songs” for their next album.

Craighan said the following about Kotamäki:

“Basically, it was fairly easy. All we did is ask — via Facebook, of all things… We just told him that we need a vocalist for these upcoming shows. We didn’t give him any ins and outs of what was taking place. [We just asked], ‘Are you available?’ And he just said, ‘Yeah, I’m in. I’ll do it. Whatever you want, I’ll do it.’ And we’re, like, ‘Fucking hell. That was easy.’ He then flew over to England a couple of weeks later and we rehearsed and it was easy. And we thought, ‘This is easy.’ So that was pretty much it.

When we got him in rehearsal and we were playing some of the older stuff, he just knew [the songs]. There was just no drama. And we were, like, ‘This is gonna be all right. He knows the songs.’ Now, don’t get me wrong — he doesn’t sing quite like Aaron does or would, but what he’s done is done absolute honesty to the albums, but with his nuances, let’s say, his sort of characteristics, but not losing anything, or anything at all, actually.”

He also added the following about new music:

“We’re always writing. Well, I’m always writing. We were in a little mini studio recently in Huddersfield. It’s a great place called Vibration, and we put some new stuff together there just for fun. And we we’re just sort of toying with ideas of where we wanna go next. I mean, it’ll still be us, of course; we’re not gonna be breaking out into any strange hip-hop or anything like that.

We’ve nothing to lose — we’ve really nothing to lose at this stage — so we are kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So we’re thinking of maybe even going back to, say, bringing back some of the early death metal stuff off the first album. Maybe do another ‘[The] Barghest [O’ Whitby]’ where we deliberately write a song so you can’t have a B-side because it’s 30 minutes long and we don’t like B-sides…

But, yeah, I’m certainly always writing, and I’ve got plenty of ideas. And there’s some riffs that didn’t quite squeeze on to the last album that for some reason just didn’t make it on that we can always use those to springboard the next session of writing. So, short answer is yes, we’re writing. There’s nothing complete — maybe bits of three songs. But I wouldn’t wanna play it to anybody right now because it’s too soon.”

[via Blabbermouth]