It’s ‘A Sign Of Things To Come’ For Sylosis
Josh Middleton is a busy man. His band Sylosis are touring the world on the back of their storming last album A Sign Of Things To Come with visits to US and Australia planned after a decade absent, he has recently released his drum plug in MDL Tone, there is writing for a forthcoming album in the works and he has just moved house. Phew! Fortunately, he does have time to have a chinwag about all that and more.
‘The new stuff just goes down so much better because it’s been written with playing live in mind. I think even those fans that might love our first or second album the most, might also agree that as much as they might like those albums, the new stuff when its played live is just way, way more intense, way more fun and translates better because it’s just how it was intended to be. Playing live now is so much more fun because the new stuff just sits better in a live environment. Aside from that, I think I’ve come a long way as a front man and vocalist, so my confidence on stage is just better as well. So I feel like we’re playing better than ever and the new stuff, yeah. I just love playing it.’
On this five date whirlwind tour of Australia with Sylosis is Angelmaker, a death-core band from Canada.
‘I think it’s kind of ideal to put together packages where all the bands don’t sound the same and offer a bit of variety for the audience, it’s good to try and attract fans from all over the place. At the same time, there’s not many bands that, to me weirdly, that sit in with Sylosis because I kind of see Sylosis as a metal band. If you think about new bands that are just straight ahead metal, it’s like there’s none. So we just try and find bands from different genres and mix things up.’
Soon to venture into America for the first time in eleven years, it’s also inexplicably just as long since the band graced these shores when they were part of 2013’s incarnation of Soundwave. Although we do know Josh has been here when moonlighting in Architects, so while five shows in six dates seems insane, it’s something he is fully aware off.
‘I dunno if we’ll have much time there. I mean I really hope to when it comes, we haven’t looked at the flights yet, that we need to allow ourselves at least a day to get past the jet lag, which yeah, is tough. It is going to be pretty gruelling. The thing with touring Australia is obviously you fly everywhere, you don’t really do buses or vans because it’s so big. So it’ll be a lot of play a show, go try and get some sleep, wake up early, go to the airport and fly all your gear. So it’s going to be tiring. But I love playing in Australia. I think it’s my favourite place to tour! Food, coffee, weather, people. As you probably know, it’s probably the closest to the UK in terms of personalities and sense of humour, that sort of thing. So yeah, I love it over there. I just hate the flight over there or flights!’
Middleton doesn’t rest though and there is work on a new album already in the pipeline.
‘I actually had the idea that we’ll see about using various producers, maybe just do a bunch of songs with each one, maybe only even for a pre-production element – so in terms of the songwriting and arrangements, that kind of thing. Then we’ll probably just record it with one person, but I would like to get a lot of outside perspectives all this time, but hopefully Scott Atkins will be involved as well.’
‘There’s some songs written obviously. And lyrics. I mean it’s not going to be like a concept album, I think I never really know what a song’s going to be about until I start sitting down being like, right, I need some lyrics and just whatever comes to mind. But as much as the pandemic and what was happening was a bit more volatile, a lot of world or social activities are still prevalent and still exist, so it’d probably be some sort of continuation on, I guess, which is quite just a broad outlook at the world. I guess I can’t divulge much just because there aren’t many lyrics at this point. It’s mostly just songs and riffs.’
Did I say Josh is extremely busy? A couple of months ago he released his own drum plug in, MDL Tone, and that has been quite the success.
‘It is mainly just for my own benefit. I do a lot of mixing work for bands and that sort of thing, and I mix obviously the Sylosis stuff. So I wanted to just build up my own library of drum samples, then it turned into making this thing where I could make something that people could use programmed drums and have my drum sounds. I was just frustrated as someone that’s really into production, I just couldn’t find anything out there that sounded good, mix ready and sounds like a finished drum sound. Just to make my life easier when I’m writing because I like stuff to sound good. The only reason I really got into production was because I wanted my demos to sound good. So when I presented my ideas to the rest of the band, it sounded like a finished record.’
‘Sometimes when you write stuff, especially if it’s really simple, sometimes you need it to sound good to convey like, oh, it is going to be cool! If it’s recorded poorly, it might just sound a bit boring. Simple stuff, like the ‘Walk’ riff by Pantera, if you just demo it, it just sounds crap, people might just be like, ‘I dunno!’ But when all the elements are there and it sounds weighty and heavy, then you’re like, alright, I can see the appeal of this. So that’s sort of how I got into production, just wanting to try and make my demo sound good when showing them to the rest of the band. At this point I want my demos to sound good, so I feel like just more inspired when I’m writing to what I’m hearing back as I write and demo stuff just sounds like a finished mix. So yeah, that’s how it kind of started and that’s how it’s ended up. Yeah. So yeah, it’s going really well.’
Interview By Iain McCallum
Catch Sylosis on the following dates, tickets from The Phoenix…
