Interviews: Muscular Child

In this new occassion we have had the opportunity to interview the Hardcore/Jazz/PostHardcore/Rock band Muscular Child, from UK. Check out this band and give them a like on their FACEBOOK PAGE.

1.Where did you get the idea for the band name, you planned it or came out just like that? 

We are all big fans of playing the band name game, essentially we constantly come up with the most terrible band names possible to try and bum each other out and make ourselves laugh. Muscular Child came about in a particularly boozy weather spoons breakfast I believe? You know the drill Bloody Marys and the band name game.. other hot contenders included The Flaming Moe’s and Gothic Midnight, I think we knocked it out of the park with Muscular Child.

2.Why did you want to play this genre? 

We’ve all played in heavy bands before but I don’t think any of us had been in a band with straight up screamed vocals like Norma Jean or Every Time I Die, which is odd because we all listen to and love those bands. I think the opportunity came up to do something spontaneous without any rules so we just gravitated to riffs and screaming.

3. Did you know each other before the band was formed? 

Me (Matt), Adam and Jake were all in the band Versus Ursus together before Jake left to pursue clown school. Even though we still play in Versus Ursus an opportunity came up to jam with Jake when he was back from Canada so we recruited Alex a long term friend that we knew ripped at drums and the rest was history as they say.

4. Each band member favourite band? 

I don’t know the specifics but I do know the sorts of bands that we were all collectively listening to around the time that we recorded and those are Converge, Narrows, Norma Jean, Every Time I Die and The Color of Violence. Hopefully we don’t sound like a rip off of any of those, oddly enough I don’t really think it ended up sounding like any of them! Oh.. and there is a random Surf/Black Metal influenced track on there as well… I have no idea where that came from.

5. Who or what inspires you to write songs? 

From a musical point of view I get a huge amount of satisfaction from completing a project and having the finished product at the end, I feel like I’ve actually made something and contributed to the universe in some way, so I suppose that’s what motivates me to write music. Where I get my inspiration from is probably just a combination of everything I’ve ever listened to in my whole life, I like writing challenging music that people have to make the effort to enjoy, although that can be like shooting your-self in the foot in a lot of respects because you end limiting your audience! Maybe I’ll smash out some club classics soon.

6. Where was your last gig? 

This release is kind of a studio project as Jake our guitarist lives in Canada and our drummer lives in Switzerland, we are hoping to do some gigs or a weekender when they are in the UK later this year, so look out for Muscular Child coming at you late 2017! We would love to play this stuff live so we will see what we can do about organising that.

7. Where would you like to play? 

We’d be happy to play anywhere, small club shows are usually the most fun or DIY shows in weird venues. But if this a fantasy question where we can say anything, I’m going to say we would love to play the whole Vans Warped tour!

8. Whom would you like to feature with? 

Biffy Clyro? Or maybe someone completely different to us like Tame Impala, that would be an interesting line-up ha ha.

9. Whom not? 

I don’t think there is anyone who we wouldn’t want to play with, the great thing about playing with other bands who you don’t like is that encourages you to play better.

10. Any of you has ever suffered from stage fright? Any tip for beginners on how to beat that? 

Just do it, the more times you have done it the more it will feel like second nature, everyone gets nervous before playing, that’s part of the reason you feel so good and get such a rush after you finish!

11. What bands have inspired you the most? 

In terms of what got me to start playing it was definitely Nirvana and Green Day.

12. What do you think of our site? 

Breathing the Core seems like a great site with a great range of content and in international outlook, I like it!

13. Something to add?

Thanks for the chance to do an interview on our latest release, people can check out the record over at www.muscularchild.bandcamp.com or on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Mp3 etc…