Live music and touring have been on lockdown and fans as well as artists are going through withdrawals. We wanted to come up with something fun to help bridge that distance between fans and artists right now. What we came up with is something called The Lockdown Lowdown and it’s a Q&A session with fun questions for artists to answer. They’re not your typical interview questions, so it gives you a peek inside of the artists themselves. We’re big music nerds here at I’m Music Magazine and we love learning things like this about the artists that we love. We’re pretty sure that you’ll get a kick out of these, so we hope you’ll take the time to read them. In this installment, we sat down for a fun Q&A session with Matt and Conor from the UK band Next Stop Olympus.
How have you been doing during the pandemic and how are you spending your time?
Matt: Yeah not to bad thank you, luckily I live with Conor and my girlfriend so I was lucky not to be on my own during it all, Conor and I were always doing band stuff behind the scenes whilst we were preparing for our new EP ‘Heart, Mind & Hell’ release, other then that I was reading a lot, played some games, got back into drawing and exercise again.
Conor: Well I have been pretty lucky that I have worked throughout most of it, I did have two and half months that I was on furlough and that was cool for around three weeks and then it really sucked! To be perfectly honest I managed to keep it all together thanks to Matt suggesting that the three of us make Fridays and Saturdays mean something…aka getting drunk together.
Have you been working on new music?
We’ve just released our new EP ‘Heart, Mind & Hell’ in April, which we are incredibly proud of, we ended up sitting on it for quite a while due to pandemic so it’s incredible to finally have it out!
5 albums that changed your life:
Matt: Reckless And Relentless by Asking Alexandria, The Union Of Crowns by Bury Tomorrow, Let The Ocean Take Me by The Amity Affliction, Long Live by Atreyu and Dr. Feelgood by Motley Crue, I’d have to go for these albums because the first four are my favourite or first heard albums by my favourites bands and I’ve been obsessed with them since I first heard them and Dr. Feelgood because it was the album Conor showed me that got me into 80’s hair metal.
Conor: The City Sleeps In Flames by Scary Kids Scaring Kids was the album that got me into heavier vocals so that has to be mentioned along with Meet Me Half Way At Least by Deaf Havana for being the album that I used to teach myself to scream. A Lesson In Romantics by Mayday Parade is an album that I think is flawless from start to finish (well it’s the first of a three album cycle of perfection by them). Youngbloods by The Amity Affliction and Take This To Your Grave by Fall Out Boy also have to put in here because I think they might be two of the albums I’ve listened to most in my life!
5 artists that influenced you as a musician.
Matt: Asking Alexandria, The Amity Affliction, Atreyu, Bury Tomorrow and Motley Crue again if I think about it, I think its a safe bet to guess most peoples favourite bands are what influence people the most so I take inspiration from them all and Motley Crue is the one that’s a bit different because we try add that old school rock ’n’ roll vibe to our music.
Conor: Scary Kids Scaring Kids for introducing me to the style of screaming I do. After them I guess I’ll just name four bands that have inspired the ways that I like to write lyrics and also how to structure a vocal pattern because it can be tough to make screaming easy to understand, those bands would be The Amity Affliction, The Maine, Def Leppard and A Skylit Drive.
Your 5 favorite live albums:
Matt: I honestly think the only live album I can name off the top of my head which I like is Journey – Captured so I’ll go for live DVD’s for the rest instead, Asking Alexandria – Live at Brixton, Escape The Fate – Live at the Roxy, Avenged sevenfold – Live at LBC, A Day To Remember – For Those Who Have Heart.
Conor: I only own Fall Out Boy Live In Phoenix, I don’t often listen to live albums or even watch that many live DVD’s so I’ll just reel off some live performances I’ve really enjoyed watching on TV/YouTube in the past…Elvis Presley (the 68 special), Enterprise Earth in Ohio, AC/DC and Oasis. I don’t recall the specifics of the last two other than I remember watching live shows on TV with my dad and older brother respectively.
Life on the road; 5 of the craziest/funniest/scariest tour stories
We had a show once when Conor got lucky after our our set and came back after the show with something up his shirt… after laughing for a fair amount of time he then got the nickname Cum stain McEniry for a while.
When we went to record the new EP Harry and Josh stayed down the road from the studio the night before in Josh’s van in the middle of nowhere with no lights near them and they got a bit sketched out by that.
We played a show in High Wycombe once when there was a power cut (thankfully after our set), the power cut itself wasn’t funny but the landlord/ owner shouting “I don’t want any f*cking health and safety issues, everybody out” made us laugh just because of the way he said it, it’s probably more of one of those you had to be there situations.
The funniest show we played was one of our first ever shows that we played in a skittles alley, which we were told had been advertised really well, we later found out the only advertisement other then us for the show was an A4 piece of paper inside the entrance of the pub, we played really well to all 2 people that were there that we brought with us and the headline band were fairly old and we genuinely thought the drummer was going to die halfway through their set and they stopped playing early because the guitarist got a tiny cut on his finger, we mainly found this funny because Matt used to hurt himself all the time like an idiot and bleed all of his bass.
For a nice wholesome last one, for us a really crazy thing we’ve thought about is that we’ve played or are playing stages where we go to see bands we love, that’s always pretty nuts in our heads.
5 favorite movies:
Matt: Grease, The Outsiders, Rock Of Ages, La Bamba and any of the Harry Potter series.
Conor: Goodfellas, Spider-Man 2 (Sam Rami), Batman Returns, Dodgeball and Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring
Best and worst advice you ever heard:
Matt: Best would probably be no matter what you’re doing just try to enjoy yourself and the worst is difficult because normally if I hear bad advice I forget it soon after.
Conor: Best advice I’ve ever had is a tough one but I think I’ll go with “You get out what you put in” which it’s so true, the more effort you put into something, the more rewarding the outcome will be. The worst advice I’ve had is probably from Matt and involving something related to a night out…probably something like ‘oh mate, you do not want to do that’ and well, all I can say is “yes I do!”
Strangest thing you ever autographed
Matt: I don’t think any of us have signed anything strange yet, just cd’s and picks I think.
Conor: Tits…if only!
If music was over today and you had to go into professional wrestling, what would your wrestling name be?
Matt: The human spider, just so I can hope I turn into Spiderman after!
Conor: I actually did train to do a spot of professional wresting and the name given to me at the time was AJ Slater because I looked like a weird lovechild of AJ Styles and Heath Slater.
