DragonNinjaDotCom

Author: Recoil
Date: 4th April 2002
Link: Recoil

Growing up together in a small town in the U.K., Lostprophets has gone from an introverted group of friends who hung out together and jammed to somewhat of an overnight music sensation. After being signed by the first label they ever sent a demo to – the only label address they had – the band’s first album, The Fake Sound of Progress, has already gone gold in the U.K. and American audiences are just beginning to eat it up. boarded Lostprophets’ tour bus, made them turn off The Osbournes and spoke with the band as they prepared for their second Grand Rapids show at the Intersection.

Recoil: Tell us about the origin of the Lostprophets.
Ian Watkins: We grew up together. We hung out, we were all friends. We played in the band in between watching movies or playing video games. We weren’t interested in going out drinking or anything. We just kind of kept to ourselves. And it came from there. We never really played proper shows, we’d just play for friends or play at a friend’s party or an odd gig to help a friend out if he needed an extra band. We’d write songs for fun. We were all going to college as well. After we all graduated we decided to see what would happen if we put our minds to it and actually focused on it and took it seriously.

R: Jamie Oliver has been quoted as saying he sees Las Vegas as everything that is wrong with society. Could you explain that and explain why you shot your new video there?
IW: It was for the song “The Fake Sound of Progress,” so we just thought, ‘What’s the fakest place in the world?’ That would be either L.A. or Las Vegas.
Stuart Richardson: Plus we wanted to see if the record company would actually send us there.
IW: (Laughs.) Yeah, we should shoot the next one in Hawaii. The video for the song, “I Love Hawaii.”

R: Could you explain the album title, The Fake Sound of Progress?
IW: When we were writing the album, we’d read about all these bands in magazines where the bands would say they are doing something really new, really pioneering. And we’d go out and buy the album to see what it sounds like and it was just the same crap. We were just sick of hearing [bands say], ‘Yeah, yeah, we’re kind of punk but we grew up on hip hop, so we’re combining metal and hip hop…’ It’s like, ‘Look around you and see how many other bands are doing the same thing.’ And there were also bands coming out with their second album and saying quotes like, ‘Oh, the new album is just going to destroy people. The heavy parts are heavier and the melodic parts are more melodic.’ That was literally a quote. And there were like twenty bands basically saying the same thing, preaching about their new album. You’d buy the albums and it’s all the same. So that’s the fake sound of progress – there is no progress. And we also knew that when we came out, people would say the same thing about us.

R: If you didn’t play live shows much before recently, how did you develop your live show?
IW: It’s still developing. We did the album before we’d ever toured. We played a handful of gigs before we did the album, and that’s why a lot of people when they see us live they say we sound much better now [than when recording the album]. We were really young then and didn’t really know what we were doing on the album. And the album was never supposed to come this far.
SR: The album was supposed to come out in September of 2000 and it was supposed to be finished [being promoted] in February.
IW: [The idea was to] sell ten thousand copies and maybe, hopefully get signed to a bigger label. But it just kind of took off. And this is an album we thought we’d sell ten thousand of. Kind of cool but kind of scary. We want to show people now what we can really do.

R: And, of course, the big question: What is your favorite Faith No More album?
IW: Everybody says Angel Dust, but there’s a naivety on The Real Thing that’s more straightforward and it’s not [singer Mike] Patton being a fucking cock or trying to be funny. He didn’t know what he was doing and I like that. Patton’s become too predictable now. You know what a Patton record is going to sound like. If he put out a straight pop album, he’d fuck people’s minds up.