Monster Truck did a grand job of demolishing the main stage at Donnington this year, their groove heavy rock earning them many new fans whilst the faithful were rewarded with a batch of awesome new tunes from the forthcoming (and much anticipated) ‘True Rocker’. We caught up with the band’s guitarist Jer back stage for a quick chat on how the band have progressed since the blistering ‘sittin’ heavy’.
It’s been about three years since ‘sittin’ heavy’ and you have a new album ‘true rockers’ coming out later in the year…
September 14th…
September 14th… So, can you tell us a little bit about tracking the new album?
Yeah, it was a bit of an adventure again. We finished, or at least we thought we finished it, in October. Then we sat on it over the holidays and then decided that we really wanted to do a couple more songs, so that was what we did over the spring. Then we picked through all the music and picked what we thought were the best eleven tracks and now we’re underway, we’ve got two singles out and we’re going to drop it in September.
Cool. Obviously one of the cool things about the last album, was that it had a really cool flow from start to finish did you work on the sequencing this time out to get a similar journey?
We did, but not as much as we did with ‘sittin’ heavy’ because of the fractured nature of the recording process which, actually we did on ‘sittin’ heavy’ as well, although I think there was a bit more time put into the sequencing. We tried to make it all flow together and I think it… was kind of one of those things where didn’t put as much effort into it, but when we were done and listened to the master, it actually did come together really well, so I don’t know if we got lucky, or if we just have gotten more efficient at building a structure, but at the end of the day, I think we’re in that same spot where you can listen to the album from beginning to end and really get that flow going.
Over the years, you’ve had quite a lot of songs placed in games – it’s harder for a band to make that jump to the international scene – how much has that placement in games helped you? Are people aware it’s you playing in the background?
It’s all good stuff, like getting your song into a TV show or movie. Video games are the biggest form of entertainment in the world and being a part of that is hugely beneficial for us and, if you see in the YouTube videos, in the comment section, you’ll see people saying that they found our music in this game or this TV show or this movie and I think it’s a huge part of being in a band and being sene and getting placements these days.
I know that for Monster Truck it’s really important to be out on the road, and I’ve seen intervies in the past where members of the band have said albums are cool, but they’re a tool to get on the road…. Is that still the case?
To me, it’s not really about what I enjoy. I do enjoy the recording process a little bit more than the recording process and I still believe that rings true in the fact that the album really is a tool to get the band on the road and that’s where the majority of the work is done and where a lot of the fans are made, so nothing’s really changed in that regard. We still put just as much effort into making a record because it’s that important to get it out there and I enjoy that more, but this is where the work gets done.
In terms of the Download experience – festivals like this are obviously a great chance to get exposure to a whole new audience… what do you feel are the differences between playing a festival crowd and playing your own headline shows?
With download, like you said, you’re playing in front of a ton of new people. We always end up playing the bigger stages at the earlier time, so we get people who don’t really know the band as much, so really, it exposes us to a bigger market and allows us to do bigger headline shows. We did electric ballroom last time we were in London and that was a huge shock to us to be able to do a thousand people there and I know a lot of that was off the back of the work that we’d done at Download, so it’s all part and parcel and they’re all kind of interacting with each other and helping out each other.
Do you tailert the sets differently?
Yeah, we really leave the ballads behind. We bang out three-minute rockers over the course of half an hour. We put one of our ballads in and the next thing you know you’ve lost three songs out of the set. It doesn’t really give us much of a chance to showcase the different music that we have over the three full-lengths that we have now, so yeah, we really just stick to the quick and gritty and get it done and then, if people are really into it, we can design a bigger set for the headline show and people can see all the different vibes we’ve got going on over the albums.
John is the key song-writer in the band, when it comes to writing songs and working them up as a band, how does the interaction work? Does he prepare full demoes for you, or is it a matter of the band bringing riffs…
The songs come together in two ways – John works on his own a lot of the time on complete ideas and then a lot of other work happens with me writing out a bunch of riffs or parts and then bringing them to him and having him add the vocals to it. Those are the two kind of ways that we put the music together and, once we have the shell of it, we kind of bring it to everybody and start bringing everything together, fleshing it out and arranging it.
The last album seemed to focus, lyrically, very much on living in the moment. Is that still the case on the new record?
Yeah, but there’s also a little more diversity as far as the theme on the album and I think you’ll get that as you listen to the record. The underlying core of what we’re trying to do is there, where we’re trying to really invoke a sense of fun and enjoying yourself, but there are also a couple of other themes on the album as well.
‘Sittin’ heavy’ was a very well-reviewed and received, was there any sense of pressure in recording its follow up?
The sense of pressure is always instilled upon us by ourselves. We really want to be proud of the album that we put out, and we put that pressure on ourselves. We know that sense of anticipation is there within the crowd that we have and they’re always very vocal when we decide to delay a record to add more songs or whatever, and it’s always disappointing to drop that news on people, but at the end of the day a lot of our fans know that, whenever we do that, we do it for a very good reason and then when we drop that record, they’re usually quite happy with the result and understand why we take the time that we do to make sure it’s as good as it can be.
The final question is that you won a Juno award for the first record…
Yeah, we actually won it before the first record came out, which ended up really helping the marketing campaign for the first album because we’d just won the Juno and then the album came out.
The Juno seems to be a great platform for really great artists – it seems that the Juno awards are a great test of what’s making waves in the Canadian scene and, I guess, it helps you spread the word…
Yeah, certainly. It really showcases talent in Canada, but at the same time you’ve always got to take the awards with a grain of salt because there are great artists that get overlooked and there are some artists that… when we won, I think the band that lost on our side of things probably deserved to win more than we did if I’m being honest. But at the end of the day, that’s not always what it’s about and we’re obviously very grateful to have won the award and it’s one of those things that you have fun with. It’s really about the Canadian music community getting a chance to all come together and hang out for once because a lot of the time we’re all over the world and it’s more about that and the interaction with everybody and having a good time than it is about the award itself.
It does seem that the Canadian scene is making much better headway at getting out onto the international stage these days….
Yeah, I think it’s always something that people have commented on and maybe it’s been reaching the UK more recently, but there’s always been a strong music scene in the last couple of decades and it’s always impressive to see all the different artists coming from the country.
Awesome. Any final words for your UK fans?
Just, we’ve just dropped a new single today called ‘True Rocker’ featuring Dee Snider. It’s available on Spotify, Apple music and so on – check it out!
