Jona Weinhofen - I Killed The Prom Queen (15/12/2013)
Hey Jona, how’s it going? I'm Jonty, thanks for chatting to The 59th Sound.
How you going mate?
Yeah pretty well. Just to start off, you teased us last year with ‘Memento Vivere’ and decided on the massive Australian ‘Rampage’ and ‘Weekend Warriors’ tours instead of releasing any more material, what was the basis of that decision?
Basically we hadn’t written much more music than a couple of songs, so we didn’t have all the material ready for the album. But it’d already been a long time since we’d released anything, so we decided to record a demo version of a new song, in this case ‘Memento’, and sort of put that out there with a live video we’d put together. We just hoped that would tide over the fans a little bit before we actually had a chance to get into the studio and finish the writing and recording.
You actually announced today that you’re new album is coming soon in 2014 with a teaser that sounds pretty brutal, should we expect the whole album to be that heavy?
Yeah I’d say so. Obviously it’s hard to get an idea of how an entire album is going to sound from just a minute’s worth of material, but there’s so many elements on there. It is a heavy album; there are a lot of melodic elements, even a little bit of symphonic kind of stuff. So yeah, it’s pretty diverse, but we’ve definitely kept the heavy in there.
Excellent. You’re going to be showcasing a lot of that material on your upcoming tour, and the highlight of that seems to be ‘Noisefest’. It’s absolutely packed with local Australian metal, is it still weird headlining these sorts of gigs you used to be supports for 10 years ago?
Yeah, it’s definitely a compliment to be asked to headline a gig like that, when, as you said, a few years ago we would’ve been opening or supporting internationals or a bigger Aussie band. It definitely makes you feel cool and, from everything I’ve heard so far, the show sounds like it’s going to be really awesome, you know, plenty of good Aussie talent combined with a pool party basically.
Sounds like a pretty good way to spend the day really.
Yeah I don’t have a problem with it.
*laughs*. Do you ever go on stage and think “I never want to sing songs like Say Goodbye or Sharks in your Mouth ever again”? Do you get sick of them, or did the hiatus make you want to get on stage and sing them all again?
I guess it varies from day to day really. Those songs get such a good reaction from our crowds, so it’s not like we’re grumbling and groaning about songs people love to hear. I think if we’d been playing them non-stop for the past 6 or 7 years it might get a bit old, but since we’ve had the break it’s fine, and now we’re starting to get into it and mix some new songs so it keeps it all fresh.
Two weeks ago you announced that you’d signed to Epitaph, with your experience with the label, you must already know almost everyone there?
Yeah, I’d previously worked with Epitaph when I was playing with Bring Me the Horizon, and I did meet quite a lot of the crew then. So when Brett (Gurewitz, Bad Religion and owner of Epitaph) and I opened up communications to discuss the deal for Prom Queen we actually had a few other offers on the table, and we’d pretty much already known we were going to go with Epitaph.
Alright, with Parkway already on Epitaph, it’s like Brett’s started a collection of Australian metalcore pioneers, will we see a Parkway and Prom Queen collaboration on a track in the near future? I’m sure a lot of people would be looking forward to something like that.
I have no idea man; we did the split together as their first release back in the day. I guess definitely, anything’s a possibility. We’ve definitely talked about doing it together, Parkway have offered us a couple of tours since we reformed, and due to a few of us being too busy with other projects we had to turn them down, until the Atlas tour last December. We’re really hoping they chuck us a few tours here and there, maybe in Europe or in the States. We’d be stoked to head out with them again because we’re all really good mates.
You mentioned touring overseas, you recently had your first ever tour in Russia. Do you find you have a massive fanbase in countries overseas that you would never have dreamed of?
I wouldn’t say we have a massive fanbase in places like that, but the fact that we were even able to go there and draw some people, you know, that’s good enough. The shows weren’t ginormous, but the fans were really enthusiastic and since they’d been waiting a bunch of years to see us, you know, that was good enough for us. Plus, we got to see some cool places that we’d never been before.
Alright, just to focus back onto the new album, this will be your first major release in 6 years, with Jamie on vocals, how did you decide that he would be the right fit for your big return?
We’ve all been mates for a long time and we’ve all been playing together in different bands for the last 7, 8 or 9 years. So obviously we knew Jamie really well from The Red Shore and I did a little bit with them, helping them out with management kind of stuff for a while. We had talked about him becoming a part of the band way back in 2007 and that was kind of when we decided to take the break. So, basically, the whole time we were on the break and when we started discussing ideas about reforming, Jamie was the obvious choice.
You just mentioned reforming the band, the lineup of the band has changed so much over the years, how have you managed to keep the ‘Prom Queen’ sound over the years when you’re now the only original member?
We did have a lot of lineup changes, like if you look at the Wikipedia page it’s got this crazy graph that shows who’s been in the band and when. But most of those lineup changes happened quite early on, and we had a pretty steady lineup between the second release, the EP, and the second album we did. Basically Kevin and I have written most of the music for the band since the second release we ever did, the split with Parkway Drive, so we’ve been writing together on that. Then on the first album ‘When Goodbye Means Forever’ and the second album ‘Music For the Recently Deceased’ and now the third album, and we’ve had Jamie and Ben and Shane on board right at the right time at the start of writing that album so everyone really had a hand in writing it. But it’s definitely got the same ‘Prom Queen’ flavor in there, since Kevin and I have been in the band most of the time.
Yeah you mentioned the lyric writing, what was your inspiration for the lyrics on the upcoming album? Can you give us any hints what you’ve been writing and singing about?
Like anyone we have a bunch of varying themes for the lyrics, but most of it is inspired by our personal lives I guess. You know, everything from being on tour, being away from your family a lot, getting to go see new places, things like some of our lifestyle and culture choices. We’ve got a song on the new album that deals with animal rights that we’ve never had before, we’re all vegan and vegetarians in the band now. We didn’t want to necessarily be labeled as a vegan band or anything like that, but it was something we felt strongly about so we thought “Why not write about it?”.
That’s pretty interesting to have a heavy metal song about animal rights, you might be one of the first bands ever to actually write something like that.
There’s a few out there, but maybe not so many in the Australian spotlight.
Mmm. So recently, the band asked for a few volunteers for a music video in Melbourne to get dirty. Can you give us any hints as to what song or what we can expect from that video?
It’s the same song that was featured in the first teaser, so anyone that’s seen that teaser video when we signed with Epitaph will have heard some of the music for the uh… single, I guess we’re calling it. Other than that, I can’t really announce too much about the song but you know, everyone’s gonna find out a bunch more in the next week or two.
Sounds pretty good. Now, Bring me the Horizon gained a lot of Australian support when you joined the band, is there any chance we’ll see a Bring Me and Prom Queen tour in the future?
Yeah I guess that’s also a possibility. We’ve already toured together a couple of times as the two separate bands before. The first time was in 2007 in England and then we took them out on the ‘Say Goodbye’ tour back in 2008, so who knows what’s gonna happen? We’ve had a bunch of fans telling us what their ultimate dream tour lineup would be and it involves those bands and Parkway Drive and The Amity Affliction. So, it’d be a massive tour, that’s for sure.
I’m pretty sure that’d sell out in a couple of minutes. Also, ‘Say Goodbye’ ranked number 5 in the recent ‘Best South Australian songs’ poll, was it surprising that such a heavy song was voted for so highly in a mainstream poll?
We were pretty surprised, a few weeks ago they featured the top 100 songs which I guess were picked by the newspaper or the advertiser itself, and just the fact we made it in there without any kind of order was pretty wild. Cause there’s a quite a few songs from there obviously, and when people actually voted for the song and we came out so highly ranked, it was pretty surprising. It’s good, I think the fact that heavy music in Australia is stronger than ever and that’s just another kind of testament to show that.
Well for example, The Amity Affliction topped the Aria charts with ‘Chasing Ghosts’ at one point, a couple of years ago that wouldn’t have ever happened, like when Prom Queen started out. Do you think that’ll just continue and Australian metal will get bigger and bigger?
I like to hope so. I mean, if history’s shown anything, it’s that heavy music’s only gotten more popular and unless something goes drastically wrong, I think it’ll just get stronger. This type of music is only gonna get more exposure, especially in the mainstream, and heavy metal fans seem to be the kind of fans who stick with a band for a long time, they don’t just move from one thing to the next all the time.
Yeah true, are you hitting up Soundwave next year, or will you be out on tour?
We’re not 100% sure on what our plans are around then, if we are home then we’ll definitely be around and out there. We’ve got a bunch of friends playing, but yeah, we’re still kind of penciling in all our dates for next year.
Oh okay, will we be seeing another Australian tour next year or do you have a couple of places you’ve never been to that you’re going to check out?
We’re looking like we’re going to head out to Europe, the US, like obviously we’ve toured those places before, but we really want to get over to south east Asia and do a pretty big tour around there. We’ll definitely be doing a big tour in Australia on the home turf as well though.
Alright, also, do you have a favourite show you’ve played in the past couple of years, maybe the return shows in your hometown?
I guess the show with The Amity Affliction on the Destroy Music tour was a memorable one. It was the first time we’d played Thebarton theatre and for me that was a personal goal that I’d achieved, I’d always wanted to play that venue, and we got to and it was a really cool vibe, so it’d be that one.
Cool, unfortunately I think we’re starting to run out of time here, but thanks so much for talking with the 59th Sound today.
No worries mate, appreciate it.
Jonty Simmons
How you going mate?
Yeah pretty well. Just to start off, you teased us last year with ‘Memento Vivere’ and decided on the massive Australian ‘Rampage’ and ‘Weekend Warriors’ tours instead of releasing any more material, what was the basis of that decision?
Basically we hadn’t written much more music than a couple of songs, so we didn’t have all the material ready for the album. But it’d already been a long time since we’d released anything, so we decided to record a demo version of a new song, in this case ‘Memento’, and sort of put that out there with a live video we’d put together. We just hoped that would tide over the fans a little bit before we actually had a chance to get into the studio and finish the writing and recording.
You actually announced today that you’re new album is coming soon in 2014 with a teaser that sounds pretty brutal, should we expect the whole album to be that heavy?
Yeah I’d say so. Obviously it’s hard to get an idea of how an entire album is going to sound from just a minute’s worth of material, but there’s so many elements on there. It is a heavy album; there are a lot of melodic elements, even a little bit of symphonic kind of stuff. So yeah, it’s pretty diverse, but we’ve definitely kept the heavy in there.
Excellent. You’re going to be showcasing a lot of that material on your upcoming tour, and the highlight of that seems to be ‘Noisefest’. It’s absolutely packed with local Australian metal, is it still weird headlining these sorts of gigs you used to be supports for 10 years ago?
Yeah, it’s definitely a compliment to be asked to headline a gig like that, when, as you said, a few years ago we would’ve been opening or supporting internationals or a bigger Aussie band. It definitely makes you feel cool and, from everything I’ve heard so far, the show sounds like it’s going to be really awesome, you know, plenty of good Aussie talent combined with a pool party basically.
Sounds like a pretty good way to spend the day really.
Yeah I don’t have a problem with it.
*laughs*. Do you ever go on stage and think “I never want to sing songs like Say Goodbye or Sharks in your Mouth ever again”? Do you get sick of them, or did the hiatus make you want to get on stage and sing them all again?
I guess it varies from day to day really. Those songs get such a good reaction from our crowds, so it’s not like we’re grumbling and groaning about songs people love to hear. I think if we’d been playing them non-stop for the past 6 or 7 years it might get a bit old, but since we’ve had the break it’s fine, and now we’re starting to get into it and mix some new songs so it keeps it all fresh.
Two weeks ago you announced that you’d signed to Epitaph, with your experience with the label, you must already know almost everyone there?
Yeah, I’d previously worked with Epitaph when I was playing with Bring Me the Horizon, and I did meet quite a lot of the crew then. So when Brett (Gurewitz, Bad Religion and owner of Epitaph) and I opened up communications to discuss the deal for Prom Queen we actually had a few other offers on the table, and we’d pretty much already known we were going to go with Epitaph.
Alright, with Parkway already on Epitaph, it’s like Brett’s started a collection of Australian metalcore pioneers, will we see a Parkway and Prom Queen collaboration on a track in the near future? I’m sure a lot of people would be looking forward to something like that.
I have no idea man; we did the split together as their first release back in the day. I guess definitely, anything’s a possibility. We’ve definitely talked about doing it together, Parkway have offered us a couple of tours since we reformed, and due to a few of us being too busy with other projects we had to turn them down, until the Atlas tour last December. We’re really hoping they chuck us a few tours here and there, maybe in Europe or in the States. We’d be stoked to head out with them again because we’re all really good mates.
You mentioned touring overseas, you recently had your first ever tour in Russia. Do you find you have a massive fanbase in countries overseas that you would never have dreamed of?
I wouldn’t say we have a massive fanbase in places like that, but the fact that we were even able to go there and draw some people, you know, that’s good enough. The shows weren’t ginormous, but the fans were really enthusiastic and since they’d been waiting a bunch of years to see us, you know, that was good enough for us. Plus, we got to see some cool places that we’d never been before.
Alright, just to focus back onto the new album, this will be your first major release in 6 years, with Jamie on vocals, how did you decide that he would be the right fit for your big return?
We’ve all been mates for a long time and we’ve all been playing together in different bands for the last 7, 8 or 9 years. So obviously we knew Jamie really well from The Red Shore and I did a little bit with them, helping them out with management kind of stuff for a while. We had talked about him becoming a part of the band way back in 2007 and that was kind of when we decided to take the break. So, basically, the whole time we were on the break and when we started discussing ideas about reforming, Jamie was the obvious choice.
You just mentioned reforming the band, the lineup of the band has changed so much over the years, how have you managed to keep the ‘Prom Queen’ sound over the years when you’re now the only original member?
We did have a lot of lineup changes, like if you look at the Wikipedia page it’s got this crazy graph that shows who’s been in the band and when. But most of those lineup changes happened quite early on, and we had a pretty steady lineup between the second release, the EP, and the second album we did. Basically Kevin and I have written most of the music for the band since the second release we ever did, the split with Parkway Drive, so we’ve been writing together on that. Then on the first album ‘When Goodbye Means Forever’ and the second album ‘Music For the Recently Deceased’ and now the third album, and we’ve had Jamie and Ben and Shane on board right at the right time at the start of writing that album so everyone really had a hand in writing it. But it’s definitely got the same ‘Prom Queen’ flavor in there, since Kevin and I have been in the band most of the time.
Yeah you mentioned the lyric writing, what was your inspiration for the lyrics on the upcoming album? Can you give us any hints what you’ve been writing and singing about?
Like anyone we have a bunch of varying themes for the lyrics, but most of it is inspired by our personal lives I guess. You know, everything from being on tour, being away from your family a lot, getting to go see new places, things like some of our lifestyle and culture choices. We’ve got a song on the new album that deals with animal rights that we’ve never had before, we’re all vegan and vegetarians in the band now. We didn’t want to necessarily be labeled as a vegan band or anything like that, but it was something we felt strongly about so we thought “Why not write about it?”.
That’s pretty interesting to have a heavy metal song about animal rights, you might be one of the first bands ever to actually write something like that.
There’s a few out there, but maybe not so many in the Australian spotlight.
Mmm. So recently, the band asked for a few volunteers for a music video in Melbourne to get dirty. Can you give us any hints as to what song or what we can expect from that video?
It’s the same song that was featured in the first teaser, so anyone that’s seen that teaser video when we signed with Epitaph will have heard some of the music for the uh… single, I guess we’re calling it. Other than that, I can’t really announce too much about the song but you know, everyone’s gonna find out a bunch more in the next week or two.
Sounds pretty good. Now, Bring me the Horizon gained a lot of Australian support when you joined the band, is there any chance we’ll see a Bring Me and Prom Queen tour in the future?
Yeah I guess that’s also a possibility. We’ve already toured together a couple of times as the two separate bands before. The first time was in 2007 in England and then we took them out on the ‘Say Goodbye’ tour back in 2008, so who knows what’s gonna happen? We’ve had a bunch of fans telling us what their ultimate dream tour lineup would be and it involves those bands and Parkway Drive and The Amity Affliction. So, it’d be a massive tour, that’s for sure.
I’m pretty sure that’d sell out in a couple of minutes. Also, ‘Say Goodbye’ ranked number 5 in the recent ‘Best South Australian songs’ poll, was it surprising that such a heavy song was voted for so highly in a mainstream poll?
We were pretty surprised, a few weeks ago they featured the top 100 songs which I guess were picked by the newspaper or the advertiser itself, and just the fact we made it in there without any kind of order was pretty wild. Cause there’s a quite a few songs from there obviously, and when people actually voted for the song and we came out so highly ranked, it was pretty surprising. It’s good, I think the fact that heavy music in Australia is stronger than ever and that’s just another kind of testament to show that.
Well for example, The Amity Affliction topped the Aria charts with ‘Chasing Ghosts’ at one point, a couple of years ago that wouldn’t have ever happened, like when Prom Queen started out. Do you think that’ll just continue and Australian metal will get bigger and bigger?
I like to hope so. I mean, if history’s shown anything, it’s that heavy music’s only gotten more popular and unless something goes drastically wrong, I think it’ll just get stronger. This type of music is only gonna get more exposure, especially in the mainstream, and heavy metal fans seem to be the kind of fans who stick with a band for a long time, they don’t just move from one thing to the next all the time.
Yeah true, are you hitting up Soundwave next year, or will you be out on tour?
We’re not 100% sure on what our plans are around then, if we are home then we’ll definitely be around and out there. We’ve got a bunch of friends playing, but yeah, we’re still kind of penciling in all our dates for next year.
Oh okay, will we be seeing another Australian tour next year or do you have a couple of places you’ve never been to that you’re going to check out?
We’re looking like we’re going to head out to Europe, the US, like obviously we’ve toured those places before, but we really want to get over to south east Asia and do a pretty big tour around there. We’ll definitely be doing a big tour in Australia on the home turf as well though.
Alright, also, do you have a favourite show you’ve played in the past couple of years, maybe the return shows in your hometown?
I guess the show with The Amity Affliction on the Destroy Music tour was a memorable one. It was the first time we’d played Thebarton theatre and for me that was a personal goal that I’d achieved, I’d always wanted to play that venue, and we got to and it was a really cool vibe, so it’d be that one.
Cool, unfortunately I think we’re starting to run out of time here, but thanks so much for talking with the 59th Sound today.
No worries mate, appreciate it.
Jonty Simmons