Ben caught up with Matt and Adam from Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows to talk about how the band formed, their success so far, plans for the future and much more.

Your UK tour begins today here in Manchester, what are your expectations for the shows?
Adam Russell (Bass): Awesomeness! Based on our first tour in the States we expect this to be pretty insane, kids went ape shit, they were learning the songs on YouTube and everything.

Have you been looking forward to coming over to the UK?
Adam: Yeah, for sure.

You’ve been over here with your previous bands (Chiodos, From First To Last, Story of the Year etc), so you enjoy coming over here?
Adam: It actually took me a while to warm up to the UK, the first few times I was here it was cold as shit and we were in those double decker buses and I kept hitting my head on every fucking thing! So I was just pissed at the UK for a long time. Then one time we came over and it was Spring and it was beautiful, we were on a badass tour and I was like, “This is awesome, I love it here!”

Do you find touring over here much different from the States?
Matt Good (Guitar): Yeah, anywhere you go where you’re not a commodity people are more excited. Over there playing a show is real easy, but over here it takes a lot of time and a lot of planning, but then it means more I guess.

Your debut album was released last month, I imagine things have been pretty crazy since then?
Matt: Yeah, we’re in the Billboard top 30 which is pretty cool.

Adam: Yeah, it’s selling well already, the label’s happy and we’re happy. We’re glad to finally have it out.

Were you expecting the overwhelming support you’re receiving, from fans and press alike, so quickly?
Matt: There was a part of me that was thinking that we all have prior bands, so it would make sense if people caught on to it early, but I never go into anything with expectations. I go in thinking that it could be awesome, somewhere in the middle or really bad, but either why I’ll be stoked. This time it has turned out awesome and I couldn’t be happier about it, and it’s even better because I didn’t have any expectations.

Do you think most people are checking out D.R.U.G.S because of your previous bands?
Matt: Yeah, I would think that anyone who was a fan of any of our other bands would at least be a little bit interested to listen to us.

The album has quite a broad range of sounds, how would you describe the overall D.R.U.G.S sound?
>Matt: We’ve been going with Slipknot meets Harry Potter lately, just because it has those little Harry Potter sounding moments, but it has its heavy parts too! I feel like it’s just a modern, alternative rock record. Our tastes are very broad.

You’ve all got a wealth of experience with previous bands, but are you all on the same page musically?
Adam: I think we are when it comes to this bands music, but we all listen to a lot of different shit, it’s a really broad spectrum. I joined the band and put on nothing but hip hop in the van for about six months.

Sometimes this can create something more interesting…
Adam: Yeah, I think so.

Matt: Yeah, we definitely listen to a broad range of things. There’s an overlapping of tastes within the group, but as far as one band that every single person in this band likes, there’s very few! It’s cool, I feel like that creates that diverse sound, everyone’s putting in their own input and I guess that makes us what we are.

How did the band initially come together?
Matt: When Craig (Owens) parted with Chiodos he decided that he wanted to start something new, he just wanted to find people that were experienced so he wouldn’t have to start from scratch. He wanted to find people that he could rely on, veterans in a way I suppose. He started reaching out to people, so he got Aaron (Stern) our drummer, Nick (Martin) on guitar, and they started writing. I talked to them at one point and expressed that I was interested, I was still in From First To Last at this point, so after our tour finished, which was great and awesome, I left and went to the studio. There we met the producer who was friends with Adam, so he hooked us up with him, he came down and we all got on great, so yeah, that’s pretty much it!

Do all members see the band as a fresh start?
Adam: For sure, it’s really refreshing and exciting to be at the beginning again, kind of at the point that we were ten years ago! We’ve now got all the wisdom that we gained through years of being in bands and in the industry, I think we all feel lucky more than anything to have survived this long in such a volatile industry.

Matt: I would never expect anyone to totally disregard our pasts by any means, but I feel like the more we do this the more people will focus on the now, we’re not trying to run away from who we were, but I like to look forward.

The acronym D.R.U.G.S is quite a risky name, is this what you wanted to achieve?
Matt: Yeah, originally the band name was just Drugs, but then we decided that it should have more meaning because that seemed like too much of a gimmick, y’know? The meaning behind it is actually really awesome for us, it kind of states who we are, where we’ve been and what we’re aspiring to do. But the name itself, D.R.U.G.S, it just sounds really cool. When you say it to people it evokes some kind of emotion, be it positive or negative, it’s something you never forget. If you have a band name that people don’t have to ask you twice about then that’s cool.

Were you worried that some people might have preconceptions about a band named D.R.U.G.S?
Matt: A little bit, but at the end of the day the way I think of it is that if this band goes places and does really well then that’ll be like the biggest “fuck you!” to the world! Like, “Hey, I’m in a band, we’re fucking legit, we’re doing really well and we’re called D.R.U.G.S”, it’s kind of rad!

Adam: After a while it just becomes a word, when I first heard that the band name was D.R.U.G.S my first thought was, “Fuck no dude! How am I going to be in a band called D.R.U.G.S?”, but it wasn’t long before I started to love it. It’s a fucking great name, it’s memorable, it evokes emotion, it has all the qualities of a good name and it’s one syllable, how many good one syllable names are there left?

Everything has happened relatively quickly, have you had chance to stop and take it all in?
Matt: We just had some time off, and in that time the record was coming out and you could kind of see the online hype bubbling, getting bigger every day and that was really cool. But now that we’re going to be on tour constantly then we’re kind of living in the now, for the moment, so we don’t actually have much time to sit back and think, so I’m actually really looking forward to the next long break that we have so that I can sit back and look at everything that we did.

Finally, what’s next for D.R.U.G.S?
Adam: It’s going to be busy for sure, we finish this UK run in about a week, then we have a week off at home and then we start the AP Tour, so it’s just going to be more and more of the same. We have some very exciting tours coming up.

Matt: Busy is good!

Interview By Ben Connell