Karlie caught up with Adam from Romeo Must Die to talk about their debut album, tour with the Defiled and much more.

First of all can you give us a brief history of the band?
Ben, the bass player, and myself, were in a band called Stamping Ground for about 10 years, and when we split up, we just sort of came to the end of the road, me and Ben wanting to carry on touring and playing music, so we started looking for kick ass musicians and it took a little while fine tuning the line-up, and that was in mid-2007. We recorded an EP at the end of 2007 and released it in mid-2008, called ‘Define by Enemies’ and we’ve been playing since then basically. Before the EP came out we did a headline tour of eastern Europe, that was pretty good, then we did a couple of tours with a Dutch band called Textures, in the UK and Europe, Damnation festival, then we started writing this record that record that recently came out. The reason it took so long for the record to come out was because we kept getting, betrayed, basically. Aaron, our guitarist got hit by a truck, head on. He was put in intensive care for a few months and had to have brain surgery. While he was in hospital we built a studio to record in. A friend of ours called Scott Atkins who used to be in Stamping Ground produced our new album. While we had a bit of down time and we waited for him he recorded Sylosis and Cradle of Filth. Then we went in and recorded and the CD we gave away with Metal Hammer about 2 months ago now, which was cool, it got it out to a lot of people. Although there’s something weird about working that hard on something then just giving it away, although nowadays everyone nicks it anyway so why not, and it’s a cool magazine so we thought we would do that. Then the official release date was Tuesday just gone, and now we’re on tour with The Defiled.

How did you come up with the name Romeo Must Die?
We basically wanted a character. With Stamping Ground, every time you get around to doing album art or t shirts, I would always get jealous of bands like Iron Maiden with Eddie, I know it’s cheesy but we thought it would be cool to have a character. So that’s where it came from. It makes it cool for videos and things like that, it gives you somewhere to start from.

Who would you say your main musical influences are?
As a band it’s pretty varied. Myself, it’s early 90’s metal, like Pantera, maybe a bit of late 80’s like Suicidal Tendencies, and also a lot of the early 90’s hardcore scene, not the English scene, mostly the American, like Earth Crisis, Integrity stuff like that. I don’t really listen to that sort of stuff anymore but it’s definitely shaped my musical taste. As far as the rest of the guys go, yeah, fairly varied metasl, hard rock in general. We try to be as organic as possible, whenever we write we don’t try to pigeon –hole ourselves and think ‘we have to sound like this’ we just go with whatever feels good.7

You’ve already talked about giving away your new album ‘Hardships in Season’ with Metal Hammer, how did this come about and how successful do you think it’s been?
They asked us, and we said… yes. That’s about it. As far as success I’m not sure yet, it was only 2 months ago. I think there’s a lot of bands nowadays so if you’re a punter, how do you know where to start? So I think giving people the opportunity to hear it for free, instead of them having to search out is being put on a plate for them, which I think is a good thing. It’s song based, so it’s not intense in that way, but we’re a pretty aggressive band and I think that might put off little kids, you know, they might see us as a macho contest. Hopefully giving the CD away will get us fans we wouldn’t usually get.

The album has just gone on general release; does it feature any extra material to entice fans to buy it who might have already snapped up the Metal Hammer Deal?
Yeah, we put out the debut EP ‘Define by Enemies’ as a bonus disc in there. I think on Play.com it’s just under 8 quid, which isn’t bad for an album and an EP. We tweaked the album a little bit, having a month or so to hear it there’s always something you wanna change. We were happy with it originally but we made the guitars a bit more jar-y. Also the new inlay has got LOADS of boobs. On the Metal Hammer release we had to cover up the nipples. We wanted more tits, so the boobs are back!
?
Obviously it’s only been a week, but have you had any feedback from the album so far?
As far as from our distributors and things like that, no, not yet. We’ll hear in about 6 weeks we’ll hear our sales. From the messages I get online and things like that it seems like it’s going really good.

What’s your favourite song from the new album and why?
I have two, I think the first one is the 2nd track, ‘Time the Great Vivisector’ and lyrically, I’m a Pink Floyd fan, you know Dark Side of the moon, you know the song ‘Time’? Listen to it, and read the lyrics, and this song is basically my interpretation of their subject matter. Their song begins with a load of alarm clocks going off, our song ends with clocks, decay. I wrote it lyrically as if it could be a part two to their song. I don’t think metal kids with get the reference or even care but for me it was a cool thing that I wanted to do. There’s that and a song called ‘Fifteen Minutes of Shame’ which is basically about all these dumb-arse celebrities which are famous for doing nothing, and I don’t get it. It’s kind of aimed at them, But more so at the people that are letting them survive. Like the people that go and buy these shitty magazines, they’re feeding it, and giving it your time; why? Surely your time should be more precious and you could be spending that time that you’re reading that stupid magazine or watching Big Brother, you could be having your own life or making someone else’s life better. To be self-righteous, you could be working in a soup kitchen, or even investing a bit of time in yourself, like learning another language or learning an instrument, or doing something cool. Don’t watch someone else doing fuck all, it really irritates me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the most productive person in the world, I’m not having a go at people. But at the same time, I think it’s such a waste. Usually, your parents have spent time and money bringing you up, hopefully they thought you were going to do something rather than sit around and watch a load of cunts on telly. I think it’s disrespectful to your parents and to yourself. It’s a fucking waste.

How did your tour with The Defiled come about and how are you getting on so far?
They started playing shows with us about a year and a half ago now. A friend of mine who manages them, Adam, called up and said there’s this great band, they look kind of odd, but they kick arse. We got on really well and played loads of shows together since. After The Defiled did their tour with the Murderdolls their profile has really shot up, and they asked us if we’d like to do a proper tour with them. We said yeah, and I couldn’t think of a nicer bunch of guys to tour with. It’s cool for us to play to a different audience as well. It is a different crowd that they’re playing for, we’re both energetic but we come from two completely different schools of thought. It’s nice to try and win people over and it seems to be going well.

What have you guys got planned once this tour is over?
We are starting to write our new record straight away, we’ve got Bloodstock coming up.Have you got any other festivals lined up? I don’t know, everyone wants to play all the festivals, including us. All you can do is try. If you get asked, fucking fantastic, you get the opportunity to go and prove yourself. If you don’t you have to wait. At this point we haven’t been asked for Sonisphere or Download or anything.

What’s your take on the digital revelation with downloading music?
I don’t know if I’m really out of touch, but I really of the generation that enjoys going and buying a physical product. I don’t know if it’s just sentimental bullshit really. Maybe it’s a good thing. When we played in other countries where we haven’t got good distribution, we could turn up and there would be a few hundred kids there. If it wasn’t for the internet that wouldn’t have happened, so it’s cool in that way. The other thing obviously, means it’s a lot harder to make a living that way. It’s swings and roundabouts. For me, I have never downloaded anything. Not because of some fucking high-ground, I just can’t be bothered. I want to hear the CD drop on the matt! We really try to make the physical product of our album cool, a twelve page booklet, tits. When I get a record home I want to see some cool stuff, it’s all part of it to me.

Where do you hope to see Romeo Must Die in a year’s time?
Hopefully we’ll be doing another interview with you, in a jacuzzi on a massive tour bus, headlining our own tour. We just want to do as much as we can.

One question we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or a giraffe, which would you be and why?
I’d be a giraffe. Fucking full on head-banging.

Thank you for your time, is there a message you’d like to leave for your fans reading this?
Keep checking your social network sites [laughs]. Just come and check us out.

Interview by Karlie M