KOYO: 'This band has taken us to places and made memories that we’ll never forget'

When your self-titled debut arrived, the band were music students (albeit incredibly competent ones) throwing all your collective know-how at the wall and finding a common influence. Second album You Said It suffered, as many at the time, of lockdown stifling touring and promotion, and this new album Onism sounds like the music and direction you always wanted to go. More direct, more raw and guitar driven which seems to be your wheelhouse. Are these fair assessments and how do you feel about the roll out over the years?

Yes, I’d say they’re fair assessments. I think events leading up to this record made me realise guitar is my wheelhouse. When I was a kid, it was always me and my guitar. That’s the instrument I fell in love with and played incessantly and used as a vehicle for writing. With the last album I leaned more into the vocals and then I did my solo project where my whole thing was to try not to use the guitar at all as an experiment. But ultimately, it just made me see that guitar is just the thing I love the most. It wasn’t as fun doing it without.

I always sang because growing up I could always sing better than anyone else in the bands at the time, so I just stepped up. But I’ve never really considered myself a singer. I’m happy for someone else to sing if they can! That’s not to say I didn’t take the vocals really seriously on this new one. More so than ever. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of them becoming an afterthought. I’ll often write something on guitar with a vocal melody in mind and if I can’t hear one I don’t really follow it through anyway. Yes they feature less than any other album but when they do, I made sure I rehearsed them to death so I could come in, lay them down in just a few takes and really get the performance and emotion across. With previous albums I’d have the melody and lyrics straight away but I’d only actually rehearse them at the last minute and record them in dribs and drabs and then when we’re out gigging I’d be like, damn, I can sing these so much better now! So with this one I made sure I had them on lock.

As for whether Onism is the direction we always wanted to go, I’d say it’s more like we had two directions we could’ve gone in after the first record, one is You Said It and the other is Onism. And we’ve explored both now. We wrote a bunch of songs that leaned even deeper into the direction of You Said It before scrapping them and going for this because we felt like we were straying too far from what this band was about in the first place. I think we went as far as we could go with You Said It and anything more would be too much like a different band. So yeah, what Onism eventually became is a reaction to that and 100 per cent the album was we needed and wanted to make at this moment.

The debut album garnered interest from the likes of BBC 6Music, saw you record a six track live set at RAK studios and had you play at Download festival. Looking back at the early career what are the highlights of that time?

Some of those things you’ve mentioned there are definitely highlights. Download was just awesome. We’ll never forget that. It really felt like things were catapulting and everything was going our way and we were just really giddy. RAK was a fantastic experience and we made some great connections. Some of the other festivals like Reading and Leeds, Ramblin’ Man were great. This band has taken us to places and made memories that we’ll never forget and for that we’re grateful.

The band has seen a few line-up changes since the early years. Who are the new members and how has the dynamic changed performing and recording?

We’ve had some awesome musicians coming and going and offering great things to the band over the years that I’m super grateful to have worked with. When you look back though the core has always been there. Me, Jacob and Tom. Me and Jacob started it, Tom came in just before we did the first record so that first album was literally just the three of us for the first two sessions (six tracks) and then Dan came in and played bass on the last four tracks.

You Said It was that line-up and by which point Dan had really stamped his personality into the mix plus Seb who also gave us great flavours. Now it’s just the three of us again with Layth our new bassist.

I think because the three of us started it it still feels like Koyo, just on a new adventure. Adding Layth into the mix has been awesome. It doesn’t feel that new as we’ve been together for a while now but we’re sounding like an absolute unit. There’s more space as we didn’t bother replacing Seb long term which is a great direction for us and feels great to explore. It feels like every member is really holding their corner down and Layth’s style really compliments the new direction and naturally played a major factor in the road we’ve gone down.

Of the new album, what tracks are your highlights and which have received the warmest responses on the road?

We’ve only really played Mechanical Bull live and this bonus track called Existential Crisis but both have gone down incredibly well. People seem to really get blown away by those two when we play them live and are just like “what the hell was that?” in a good way! They’re always the one’s that get mentioned at the end of the set. So that was a good sign and I’m sure they’re gonna love the album.

For me the highlights change all the time but one that remains to be pretty consistent is Electric Eel (the next single). People love that one. It’s still heavy but it’s more melodic than some of the others and everything kind of just comes together during the chorus melodically which feels needed at that point. Also I don’t play this one as much because it’s super long and more of a commitment but when it is on "Is This Real" is a personal highlight too. It’s the most epic thing we’ve ever written and probably the guitar solo I’m most proud of ever!

You’re playing/releasing the album on Halloween in Leeds. As a hometown show and given the date, do KOYO get dressed up for the occasion?

100 per cent. We’re batting around the idea of dressing up as an equivalent member of an established band i.e. Tom’s talking about going as Joey Jordison! I’ll leave the others as a surprise but you get the idea! Feel free to fire some ideas at us.

Will the album be released physically on record and if so, how important is it to you as music fans as well as a band that your music be released on that format?

Really important. This album wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for our Kickstarter backers who invested in the project last year and really we needed to offer something tangible, something real and attractive to really convince people to put their money into it. We couldn’t ask people to pledge just for some MP3s or something in their email and a Spotify link. Also, this is a body of work and something we’ve invested so much energy and time in to, it’s a part of our lives. It needed to be real. We had to hold that vinyl in our hands and say, we did this! Also I’m an avid record collector (CD and vinyl) so that helps!

Are there any unfulfilled ambitions for the band that you would like to do? Collaborating, dream support acts, famous venue?

Loads! We’d love to go on tour outside of the UK. That’s the big one for us. Europe would be nice. We’ve never played outside the UK, so that would be really special.

If you could be in any band current or historic, what would it be and why?

I think I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t say Guns N’ Roses. I can name a million bands I adore but for most people there’s probably only a handful of bands you really fanboy over. And they’re one of those bands for me. So I’ve got to say them, anyone who knows me knows that. However let’s be honest I could never be in Guns N’ Roses. Opposites attract and I think the reason I loved them so much as a kid is probably because I could never be them. Although I don’t think I realised that ’til I got older. I’m way too clean cut.

Do you find it easier to draw up a set list now you have a back catalogue to cherry pick from? Which songs have you dropped in favour of another and do you ever tire of a particular track?

Yeah, definitely. It’s nice to have loads to choose from so we can mix it up now. We want to play as much of the new album as possible on this tour but ultimately we want the set to flow as well as it can live so if that means chucking in some old one’s we’ll of course do it. And it’s nice just to easily be able to do that. We can select one or two from each album and be like cool let’s chuck that in tonight and not even really need to rehearse it. We can play Jettisoned and You Said It in our sleep at this point!

But ultimately it does mean dropping a lot of stuff off the first two. But that’s refreshing for us and we’ll probably just mix up which old ones we include each night.

I’m sure the lads would disagree with me but we clearly don’t tire of Jettisoned cause we’ve played that song basically every time we’ve played a show. But we definitely don’t need to rehearse it any more. That would be tiring. We can just give it a quick raz just before the gig and be like cool let’s chuck that in.

Finally, are there any particular people that you wish to acknowledge or thank who have joined you on the journey and which venues do you want to shout out?

Our Kickstarter backers. We literally couldn’t have done this without them and yes the venues we’ve confirmed so far for the tour!

Onism is released on November 1.

Tour dates

Wednesday October 30 - Fulford Arms, York

Thursday Oct 31 - Duck & Drake, Leeds

Saturday November 2, 1pm - HMV, Blackpool

Saturday November 2, 7pm - Bootleg Social, Blackpool

Monday November 4 - The Castle Hotel, Manchester

Tuesday November 5 - The Victoria, Birmingham

https://www.koyoband.com/