The Safety Fire are the coolest band around. It’s not an opinion, it’s fact. Just check out their live show in which the band wear Hawaiian shirts, or their video for ‘Yellowism’ in which members of the public discuss who’s the hottest. And despite being a super cool band they actually make some radicool music, because they are actually a band and not just 5 cool dudes who look awesome.
Proggressive metal with some ambient and djent influences is the name of the game on their latest release ‘Mouth Of Swords’ which is out on the 2nd September on InsideOut Music. I managed to capture Lori and take him to a secret room to learn all about The Safety Fire and the likes of Eggheads, astrophysics and Breaking Bad. (This was all done via email so I never actually ‘captured’ Lori, just to clarify. Oh, and this was before the previous episode of Breaking Bad has aired! It’s all getting a bit tense!)
Already Heard: Good day Lori! Let’s discuss ‘Mouth Of Swords’ then, seeing as it’s released on the 2nd September. It certainly feels like a natural progression from ‘Grind The Ocean’ (and a good one at that). What’s been the influence behind ‘Mouth Of Swords’ and how do you feel it’s progressed?
Lori: Hello Mikey! I like your enthusiasm. Essentially we are tired and getting old so we wanted to make an album which would sell in the millions, but instead we wrote this and doomed ourselves to a life of being poor but doing what we love everyday. Mouth of Swords is a much more focused product than Grind the Ocean, mainly down to the much shorter time frame within it was written, and it is all the better for that.
AH: This year you’ve toured with mighty prog-metal gods such as Between The Buried And Me (who you guys also wrote about in a Versus feature of ours, so thanks again for that!); do you think touring on the road with them shaped The Safety Fire in any way? As a band, as people, as musicians?
Lori: The other day Jo said to me “When we first sat down and listened to Alaska, did you ever imagine we would be going on our second tour with BTBAM, let alone across America AND count them as friends?!”. Those guys were, and still are a favourite band of mine, and personally as a musician watching them play every night made me more committed to work hard and reach their level both in a live and recorded setting. Those guys, along with other bands we have toured with such as Gojira, Protest the Hero and Periphery, are an example to all young bands, that hard work and a solid group can take you to places you could only ever have dreamed of, and we hope to emulate that with this and future records.
AH: With prog-metal gods in mind, or possibly not, what would be your ideal touring line up? Feel free to headline of course, that’s more than allowed.
Lori: Easy one this;
Tool
Deftones
The Safety Fire
Mastodon
Circa Survive
Karnivool
I am a member of the humblist movement so I decided to fit us in our proper billing location. It will take at least another few months before we are bigger than Deftones, and maybe a year until we can outsell Tool.
AH: One question I’ve always been dying to ask, right, is that you guys don’t seem to take yourselves to seriously, which I do love. Is this intentional? If so, why? Following on from this I’d like to know how/why Hawaiin shirts fit into this. It was one of the compliments I paid to Sean after I first witnessed The Safety Fire at Hevy Festival 2012.
Lori: I wouldn’t say that it is intentional per se, we just try to be ourselves I suppose. What people often don’t realise is that we are friends who started a band together, rather than musicians who joined a musical project. Due to this we have all grown up together and have a similar sense of humour and are constantly joking around, I suppose we just try to let our fans in on this, rather than being something we are not. I wouldn’t want to be in a band who were all about being ‘cool’ or being ‘METAL’, there is no fun in that at all. As for Hawaiian shirts, well they are just stylish mate, got to look fresh at all times.
AH: You competed on the BBC show Eggheads! That’s certainly a unique one; how did that go (i.e. did you win?) and who is the brainiest of the bunch and who thinks they’re the brainiest of the bunch but isn’t?
Lori: I am one poor guy right now, but whether we won or not is a different point. I have just bought some sweet new high tops, a sick gold chain, and some Faberge eggs for our next video so maybe I used my Eggheads windfall to buy said products.
Calvin. He is both the smartest and the dumbest guy I have ever met. He not only graduated from Bristol University in Astrophysics, he also managed to keep his wallet on the floor of our car ‘for safe keeping’ on the last US tour, and thought that someone wouldn’t kick it out. Needless to say, Calvin himself kicked it out of the car on a highway somewhere in the Arizona desert.
AH: And in a very topical question, assuming that you do watch the greatest TV drama on this planet, what do you think will happen with Heisenberg in the final episode of Breaking Bad?
Lori: Well, something is clearly brewing and Hank isn’t the danger here. He is the red herring, the McGuffin. I think Hank is about to descend into a dark place as he attempts to pin it on Walt, but as has been made clear, the evidence really isn’t there. The viewer is clearly being led down a path where we are being told to believe that Walt is going to go on the run from the police, but I think there are more sinister forces out to get him, and while I want to say it is Lydia and Todd, something tells me that there may very well be another twist before we see who Walt is really running from.
Enjoy the record everyone!
‘Mouth of Swords’ by The Safety Fire is released on 2nd September on Inside Out Records.
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Words and questions by Mikey Brown (@MIkeyMiracle)
