Interview with CALLUS

Dave speak to guitarist and vocalist Louis Clarke from CALLUS about the new album, what he’s listening to right now and what makes a good start to the day!

Dave: Thanks for giving up your time to speak to us, how you doing today?

Louis: Very well thank you, any day that starts off with Quaker Oats and Paracetamol is a good start.

You recently brought out your new album ‘Through blood, sweat, piss and pain’. What’s the response been like?

We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from peeople who have take the time to check it out so we honestly couldn’t ask for anything more! (And we hope you guys like it too!)
We are really proud of it and wanted to make smething with longevity and I think we’ve done that particulary by teaming up with Mark Johnson at Akkadian Studios. 
In short I think its been one of the best things we have done as a band and it feels like a checkpoint for us of sorts.

What was the writing process like?

It always starts with a riff.
Writing for us always begins at home really. Ben and I will write riffs for days and when we meet up and jam we work together to form songs. We then go away and come up with other sections and think about lyrics to add to the mix at the end once a song has musically been completed.
With this project we already had the songs written and have been playing them for a few years before hand, there wasn’t any writing in the studio involved it was literally just a case of going in there and committing it to tape… so to speak.

How about the recording process like?

The recording process was staggered over multiple weekends over a few months which was a little bit unfortunate, plus having a lineup change partway through slowed down the progress a bit which was regrettable. 
But we managed to power through and finish the project no matter what was thrown at us or how difficult it was… Hence the naming of the EP “Through Blood, Sweat, Piss and Pain”. 
I think the things that got in our way and made it more difficult made the project better in the end, it injected a bit of extra venom (not the band, ha ha) into what we were screaming about… im really proud with how it tuned out.

In terms of actually how it was recorded, we individually tracked everything along to a guide guitar track that I laid down weeks before. Doing that gave us the space to really focus on getting each element to the project sounding as best as it could. Once we had all the instrumental tracks down we then went into the booth to bellow out our vocal tracks before it was mixed. 

How would you describe yourselves to people who haven’t of you?

Best way is I would say its an intense blend of Thrash / Stoner and Doom. We love the faster really intense sound, we also like more progressive stuff and dingy time signatures and more mid-pace sludgyness. If you like your heavy, there is something in there for everyone. 

You recently got announced for Hammerfest! Bet youre excited?!

We did indeed, we are looking forward to that one like its Christmas fucking morning… except one where Santa is real and he has good treats for us.

Have you got other shows lined up?

In terms of other shows we have a quiet few months to the end of this year while there is a new arrival in the family, but we are in the process in booking a bunch of headline gigs for early next year. 
Lancaster, Preston, Manchester and Whitehaven are the first up on our hit list and we will post those dates as soon as we can!

What can we expect from your live shows?

We want it to be an assault on all of the senses, the focus is always on the live delivery of the songs its pretty full on and we like to get people involved and make some noise with us. We enjoy what we do, anyone who has seen us can probably agree that we get pretty stuck in when we play.
We are putting alot of time and effort into the shows we have coming up, doing everything we can to enhance the experience for all involved. We have started using extra lighting, burning incense, we finally got a backdrop we want to create a memorable and immersive experience. 

What do you outside of performing?

Unfortunately we cant do this full time at the moment but we do hope that day comes we keep plugging away at it and doing all we can when we can. 
In the meantime we all have jobs to do plus family and relationships to look after… and bills to pay! I Personally enjoy reading crazy shit like HP Lovecraft and Stephen King novels when I get the time.

What’s in your stereo at the moment?

I’ve had Boss Keloids first album on repeat “The Calming Influence of Teeth” as well as  Mastodon’s new EP “Cold Dark Place”.

What’s next for Callus?

We have already started to roughly plan out or next studio project which we are hoping will be a full length album release in 2018, and we absolutely want to be able to spend a full week in the studio with no interruptions this time

Anything else you want our readers to know?

If you haven’t listened to our EP yet then what wrong with you? Do you want to hurt our feelings? Go on give it a shot at least… or better yet keep an eye out for the list of shows we will be announcing soon, come along and get stuck in, all welcome… come get your heavy on.
Thanks for reading if you got this far!

You can check out the EP ‘Through blood, sweat, piss and pain’ here

You can read our review of it here