We caught up with vocalist Liam Guinane and drummer Chris Lalic from Windwaker while they are on tour with Resolve. During our interview, we discussed how the current tour is going, especially as it is their first time playing in the UK, their love for rap music, how they want their must to be portrayed and what is in store for them in the future (even teasing about a new album and music).
This will mark your 12th show of the tour. How has it been so far, and has it met your expectations?
Liam: Yeah, I think it’s exceeded my expectations, and that’s not even to say I had low expectations going into it. I just think I’ve just been blown away by each city and the energy that the crowds have had and the level of knowing the words to our songs, especially like last night in London.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the craziest thing for us, I guess it’s taken us quite a long time to get here, but the fact that we’ve waited so long, there’s been so many people that have been waiting all of these years that have just brought 110% of their energy every night and it’s just been crazy, like how many more people knew us than I think we expected them to.
How does it feel to finally perform for the UK audience? What are you looking forward to most tonight?
L: Yeah, I’m completely excited to be playing finally in the UK. It’s been a dream of ours to finally make it over here. So, it’s a great feeling to finally do it. Yeah, we’re really looking forward to Manchester. A lot of great bands that I’ve loved, you know, all my life that have come from here and it’s, you know, the first time I actually, even,not even on holiday, but actually being in Manchester as well. Like it’s cool to actually be here.
C: Yeah, we’ve only done the one show in the Uk so far, London last night, but it was like the craziest wild show UK show of the tour so far. Like mainly in Europe was amazing, but there was something about the UK. The UK definitely was just so loud and so rowdy and so much fun. You could tell that it was really like we’re home here.
You’ve toured with bands like Northlane, I Prevail, Enter Shikari, Caskets, and so on. Can you share a memorable or humorous experience from your time of being on tour that really showcases the band’s personality?
C: Hmmm…
L: Put me on the spot here.
C: I’m trying to think of what one of the better ones are. I think there was a time where when we toured with Northlane. We had this little bit of an inside joke, that our old singer Will thought he got mixed up and they were playing a Periphery song over the PA during a changeover. And Will said to the Northlane guys, “why are they playing you guys in changeover?” Then we toured with them again like a year later and a lot had change in that time. We’re at a completely different lineup, much more like the one we are on now and we went and taped Periphery on the back of Northlane’s bus.
L: We just wrote in tape ‘Periphery’. I’m trying to think of a memory as well. I mean, similarly, I don’t know if it was on that same tour, but it was one of the times we did tour with Northlane. Every night, we’d have like a ceremony, like a line of us just giving them a massive cheer and round of applause. As they’d enter their green room and they got so sick of it every night because it was like 20 shows or something like that we’d done together. Every night we try and up it and make some stupid prank, basically. As part of our little ceremony as they come off stage. But I don’t know. We always just try to make a lot of fun, especially towards the end of a tour. When you’ve like been on the road together. We toured Make Them Suffer earlier last year. And we’re like on the last show, we’re just playing pranks on each other. Like we send an Uber driver, delivery drivers on stage to like deliver food and just like dumb things. Yeah, can mess with each other a little bit.
In the past, you’ve spoken about your love for hip-hop, and you especially Liam, have mentioned Childish Gambino as one of your favourite artists. If you could cover one of his songs with the band, which one would it be?
L: Ooooh! [gets excited at the question] Oh I don’t know.
C: Which one are you allowed to cover?
L: Yeah, haha. That’s very true. Which one do I have the least amount of replacing words? I don’t know. I really, I love every single album that he’s ever put out. I think I really, I don’t know how we would do it. But I think it would be really cool to do a Me And Your Mama cover from Awaken, My Love!. I think that there’s some sort of rock elements to it. It’s so jammy. Yeah, but I don’t know. I could do To Be Hunted from the Atavista record.
C: I think it probably wouldn’t make that much sense, but I can just hear how we would execute it musically, but like This Is America would be very crazy. It’s obviously very political, there’s probably a lot of problems with doing that song maybe, but I just feel we would do something like that song. The darker, moody vibe of it would just translate so well to our music, doing it with guitars and stuff.
L: I know Connor [Robins, keyboards] has like pushed for a Sweatpants cover as well, but yeah, I don’t know. It would be cool. Name a song, I’d do it [laughs].
Are there recurring themes or messages in your songs that you consciously try to express? How do you decide on the stories you want to tell?
L: Yeah, I mean, I am really fascinated about the tribalism that sort of happens in the world. You know, it’s kind of this very much like us against them sort of thing. I think we’ve been trying to find the right way of expressing that. It’s very all relevant. In the world, you know, you name a country and name an issue. Whether it’s online or offline, you know. I think there’s always this competitive conflict that’s always happening no matter what it is. And so especially on Hyperviolence, we’re sort of focusing on a lot of the external and the internal and the fight between those two things. But yeah, there’s always some sort of conflict and that’s sort of a theme that I tend to come back to, whether it’s personal. It’s hard not to be like this in this day and age. You’re so surrounded by it. Yeah, I think maybe as time goes on, we become more avert with it, but it’s just fun to kind of just put messages in there. And if people, you know, people discover them, then that’s great. If they don’t, then they can still enjoy the music anyway.
C: It’s almost impossible in the way the world is right now, to not have little nods to it, right? Because it just is so part of everyone’s day-to-day life. The politics of the world, just affect us more than they probably ever have for our generation.
L: I think the thing that I’m really determined to do as we go on, is just to kind of create like the unification, rather than like the verses. Yeah, the division part of it. I want to try and inspire a unification for, especially the people. You know what I mean?
What do you do when you hit a creative block? Do you have specific methods that help you push through?
C: Ooh! I feel I only have creative blocks when I am trying to do something entirely on my own. I feel as soon as there’s the pressure of someone being in the room with me, when I’m writing something. I kind of just start to deliver something and it kind of, sometimes the initial idea isn’t even the winning idea in the end. It might just be the gateway to the winning idea. Yeah, I think it’s a lot of the time it’s better to just keep going. You know, sometimes we’ll scrap an idea and we’ll start again. But I think, I think for the most part, as long as we don’t lose our motivation, we will, we get past that.
L: Yeah. So, I’m sort of on the same wavelength, but also sort of on opposite ends with Chris because, I mean, Chris is a producer outside of our band. So, he’s recorded and written with a lot of other bands. Whereas I’ve kind of I’ve grown up as an only child and done a lot of stuff on my own. So sometimes when we’re together and we’re in a bit of a block. We can kind of sometimes, I can find it easy to go off on my own and just sort of meditate on something. But I think, I agree with Chris as far as, you know, just making a suggestion and not getting too in the editorial part of it before, the idea is even executed. And just kind of going with an idea because it could be just the gateway to, and, you know, a finished idea. You know, I realised idea. It might not be the idea you go with in the end, but it might have taken you on that journey to get to there, you know?
C: Yeah, I think it’s good to just adapt to, okay, the thing we’re doing right now is not working. Let’s change the way we look at it. Let’s even go off separately. Or sometimes if we’re separate working separately, it’s like, oh, I think I need some help with this. Go to one of the other guys and be like, “Yo, how would you start this? What would you do with this? Exactly. And in our case, everyone in our band does write to some degree as well. So, it’s not like we’re not a band where there’s like one person doing all of it or anything like that. And then when they’re stuck, the whole operation stops. It’s usually someone can pick up the slack for someone else.
L: And the great thing is we, our strengths and weaknesses kind of match each other. So, if I’m weak in an area, you know, Chris has probably got a strength in that and or vice versa. Or you know, it’s it works out well for us.
With the rise of AI in the music scene, what are your thoughts on its use in music creation? Do you see it as a helpful tool, or do you think it poses risks to genuine artistic expression? Especially being an independent band.
C: This is an interesting one. I don’t even know if we’ll say the same thing about this one. I think obviously the kind of AI where it’s like someone punches in a prompt and it generates a song and they release it on Spotify and get money from it, that sucks. I feel most people, definitely musicians will agree that, that sucks. But there’s a degree of it, where it’s making—and this is the thing that’s always been happening, right?—it’s become easier and easier for people to start making music. Uh, with technology over the years, like back, tens of years ago, you really needed the label money to be able to get into a real studio and record and now we’re at a point where people can have a laptop and they can figure out how to do things that they never could have done. And now AI is making it even easier to do that that. You know, someone, maybe across the world in a much less fortunate situation than us, might be able to use these tools to be creative. In a way that, you know, they can’t do the same way we do. They do it a different way. They have to learn to do it a different way because they don’t have the resources we do. They don’t have nice recording equipment and stuff like that. And I think it maybe levels the playing field in that way as well. So, I can see the good and bad in it, right?
L: I think I have a really broad stance on, and sort of probably more of a harder stance on AI because, I do see it as quite a threat because of the lack of legislation that kind of comes with it and it being such a new technology. And I don’t even necessarily think it’s just in creative industries. I think it’s a threat to middle and lower classes as well because there’s this replacement of jobs and people, and there’s almost this ignorance from people that are higher up that are kind of like, “oh, well, you know, it’s not affecting us. So, like this is a good thing, right?” Yeah. And there won’t be a problem until it does start affecting those people’s jobs. But I guess keeping it in the confines of music, yeah, I think there’s ways of using it that are a tool. You could be a really detailed prompter, and I think that that’s something that could be, you know, respected. But at the same time, I, until there’s some proper sort of legislation or, you know, restrictions on it. Maybe, I don’t know, this is just off the top of my head, but maybe the prompts need to be embedded as metadata in the song. So people can understand that there’s like real creative kind of use in it rather than, “Hey, AI, generate a song for me”, you know, and not really have any parameters because there is a certain level of skill of kind of knowing exactly what you want in real great detail. But I think that there’s also the possibility that people will just kind of take and run this idea of, “Oh, well, I’ll just use generative AI” and it’s sort of like in, whether it’s music or visual arts, you know, and it’s just going to kind of generate some kind of slop. To be perfectly honest. So, I don’t know, I don’t particularly advocate for the use of it because I do believe in like human expression. And I think there is a little part of me that hopes that there is people that can kind of distinguish the difference as well. I mean, it’s getting harder as well. But there is also, I’m seeing a great pushback on AI as well online, which is good. Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of tech companies that creating these like kind of AI music generative software’s that are like, “Oh, it’s, you know, trying to take the pain away from creating music”. It’s just like, well, if you find making music painful, maybe you shouldn’t be making it in the first place. Leave it to the people that want to kind of sacrifice their lives and creative energy to, you know, mastering their craft. So, I don’t know, that’s kind of where my stance is on it.
If you could have your music featured in a video game, which game would it be and why?
L: Ooh! That’d be cool. I don’t know.
C: I would definitely say League Of Legends because I just think they’re so, I’ve never played the game myself, but I think I, some of so many of like their soundtracks have just been like iconic tracks for me. I just think they, their music has this cool triumphant quality, and we’ve definitely got songs on Hyperviolence where I was listening to lots of that. You probably hear that in. I just think they do a cool combination of this pop modern thing that we like with a bit of like aggression and darkness to it. And I think our music would fit it really well.
L: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think our music could suit, you know, the sort of NBA or the sort of sports game kind of soundtracks and stuff. Yeah, like a FIFA or something like that. But I sort of, I guess a fun one that I would love to do because I know that they do really great artist collaborations is like Fortnite. Fortnite would, you know, you’re having playable characters and, you know, little emotes and stuff like that. I think that would be really cool. Exactly, having skin in Fortnite would be amazing, you know? So, I think that would be like the final answer, I suppose, for me.
C: Yeah, we did have one EA landing where we had a song on NHL 23.
L: Yeah, the hockey game.
C: That was a pretty cool thing to get. Yeah, it was an entirely metal soundtrack as well. I can see it, as it is a pretty aggressive game.
If you could travel back in time to witness any live performance from history, which one would you choose?
L: Hmm. I have sort of two answers in my head because there’s the— I’m here in Manchester and I think it would be amazing to go back in time to like, I don’t know, early ‘80s and see The Smiths. You know, Johnny Marr, Morrissey on stage together. But then, sort of the more broader one I like, he’s no longer alive, but Jeff Buckley’s one of my favourite singers of all time and to get to see a concert of his.
C: I feel like one of the iconic ones to say, you would have been able to have seen, would have been Queen at Live Aid as well. Yeah, that’s like a crazy one that obviously we’ll never get to see.
Looking ahead, what are your long-term goals as a band, and what can fans look forward to in the future?
L: I mean, I would hope that we are doing this like full-time and sustaining ourselves and being able to sort of have like a really stable life along with touring. You know, getting to do that worldwide more and more. I think I would love to. We’re definitely going to be doing, we’re going to have a lot more new music in five years’ time, you know, like we’re not really stopping on that. But I don’t know.
C: Yeah, I feel like we are continuing to hone the whole thing in and just be like, we’re more on the same page about the music we want to make every time we do a release. And we think that that means we make better music. I think across the board in every aspect of the band, we’re just trying to hone everything in and get closer to this perfect version of the band that we have in our head that’s ever changing. I think when we get on to the next cycle, you’ll hear it and you’ll say, “oh, they found it even more”.
L: Um, new music this year, maybe next year. I don’t know. We’re very close to finishing our album, the next album.
C: There will definitely be new music coming soon-ish.
Words by Zena Morris
Windwaker’s album ‘Hyperviolence’ is out now.
