James caught up with Zico Chain in Birmingham before their headline show at the Flapper to talk about what they have been up to for the past couple of years, their new album and much more.

We last spoke back in 2009, what have been some of the big things you’ve got up to since then?
Paul: We made a record, and it’s brilliant! It’s called “The Devil in your heart”, its out April 16th, we’re made it ourselves by self financing it and what have you and we’re really proud of it so you should all go and buy one haha.

What can you tell us about the album then?
Paul: it has 11 songs on it

Chris: We worked our asses off on it, did it in sort of derelict buildings. We didn’t have any money to go into the studio after the last record so we made it ourselves on laptops .

Ollie: We live in central London and we couldn’t play our instruments, we could rehearse or write and it started pissing us off so we found this derelict building in the middle of some sort of roundabout in Milton Keynes where nobody could hear us, we had electricity, we could shower, we could cook and play our instruments which is all we really gave a fuck about. Then we started recording it and realised we could make a record there so that’s what we did, we bought a load of studio stuff and mics, laptop and just did it.

Paul: We borrowed a lot of stuff actually we’re really grateful to everyone that lent us equipment, we tried to work with a few people but it just didn’t feel right.

Chris: The point was we didn’t know how to make a record at all, we had a bit of experience with various people so we learned along the way.

Was it an easier experience not having and label deadlines to meet and things like that?
Ollie: We pushed ourselves in that respect actually.

Chris: What happened is we realised we were on our own and we didn’t do anything for like 18 months which was nice and fun at first due to the past couple of years being hectic but after that we all felt pretty depressed and realised we had to get of our arses. Since that realisation we haven’t had a day off in 2 years its been pretty frantic.

What’s been your best moment as a band?
Ollie: I personally think it will be when our album drops April 16th that will be the best moment because its our own blood sweat and tears in there, we made it ourselves every single aspect.

Chris: Highlights for us have to be Bilbao festival when we played with Metallica, both years we played at download but especially the main stage, the Velvet Revolver tour was pretty magic, making a record in LA as well because we were babies back then, we’ve had a good run you know.

Alright what about the worst?
Ollie: Leaving the record company.

Chris: It wasn’t even that it was just letting us get into the state of dysfunction we got into after it, we weren’t even a band. We were still living together but we had no songs, no music, no confidence nothing. Thats my lowest point there not even just in the band in my whole life.

Paul: There was 2 shitty years there 2008 and 2009.

Why did you leave the record company?
Paul: You get record deal in options, the next option was up. They offered less and wanted to start taking half of everything we’d ever earn, it’s about the time that 360 deals started coming into common effect.

Chris: We didn’t take their offer to put it simply and they didn’t expect us to because it was really low, instead of writing new music and going to get a new deal though we sulked haha.

With social networking and online media was it really that hard to keep going without them?
Chris: That wasn’t that big at the time it was all still MySpace back then, Facebook only just came about. We didn’t know what to do next to be honest; we needed to figure out ways to make this record ourselves. We had big ideas though you know, we wanted to record orchestras, which we did, we wanted to use Howie Weinberg who mastered Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and we did, we managed it all from our bedroom. So the point is... I don’t know, I got all excited I can’t remember what we were talking about.

Ollie: I think it just comes from drive now a days, if you’re good enough and you’re music is good enough it will be heard eventually. Just keep promoting yourself and getting yourself out there and it will happen for you.

How have the dates gone down on this tour so far?
Chris: We had to book all this ourselves because our agent was backpacking in Cambodia haha, we didn’t want to wait till she got back and she told us to just get on with it and do it ourselves. It wasn’t a nice experience and my routing has been terrible, we’ve been up and down the country no end.

Paul: Long drives, definitely one of the hardest tours so far.

Chris: But the gigs! The gigs have been amazing! I got ill for a couple so we had to cancel some stuff but for example we’ve never sold a ticket in Manchester, but it was heaving the other night, Nottingham was bouncing , we went down to this little place in Weymouth, hundreds of kids their going crazy, it’s been great.

How does it feel having all this, and achieving it all on your own?
Ollie: We were quite surprised at the start, we didn’t expect to see that many people in Manchester at all.

Chris: We also put together an amazing team around us; our press agent, booking agent, TV/radio, we couldn’t have a better set up if we were on one of the biggest labels. If this record has the capabilities to take us to the next level we’re more than prepared for it.

If you could pick a dream line up with any bands, who would be on it?
Chris: The big boys, bands with super front men. There’s an art in itself to people that can work stadiums full of people like Billy Joe and Dave Grohl. I’d love to go and watch those guys and learn how they do it, if Freddie Mercury was still alive I’d definitely watch him, any band with a super front man I want to watch and learn, that’s what the guy from My Chemical Romance did he went on tour with Greenday and studied Billy Joe for a while, he turned out pretty great in the end.

Any summer festivals planned this year?
Chris: we’ve got 2000 Trees at the moment in Cheltenham

Paul: The plan is to build up to the bigger ones next year because it just makes more sense with the release date of our album because obviously other bands have had albums out for a lot longer now.

Chris: We were desperate to get on Donnington and Reading so we spoke to our management and they were like calm down, haha when we got booked for main stage at Download we got told in January of that year, this year it was already 2 months past that asking for a slot to it was a bit scrappy. We’re going to go off and tour the album, do some bigger supports and hit it next year.

What are your plans for the rest of 2012?
Chris: Recording a video for our next single, we just released “Evasion” to radio and we’re going to release a new single after that. Can we say?

Paul: I don’t know, we have decided though haven’t we.

Chris: Anyway we’ll release the new single and then record its video, the best part of that is we don’t know if we’re going to make it here or in Vegas. So we might be off to Vegas to make the video, either way it’ll be fine and then some tour supports for the end of the year. Get ourselves back out there to sell the record.

Ollie: We’re hoping to do a run or 2 of Europe in clubs like we’ve done here because we haven’t been there since 2006 with disturbed. The press and radio still love us over there though so we hope to get a big support over there later on too.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a zebra or Giraffe which one would you be and why?
Chris: I think I’d be a giraffe, but I don’t know why. Probably because I only ever see zebra’s getting eaten by lions.

Paul: I’m gunna say ditto.

Ollie: If you’re both going to be giraffes I’m going to be a zebra then so I can eat the leaves off the floor and you can have the stuff higher up so that way we both get fed.

Chris: Awww that’s nice I like that.

Ollie: Plus your feet smell so it’s probably best that your heads far away from them.

Chris: I think that’s unfair haha.

Thanks for your time, is there a message for your fans reading the interview?
Chris: Whatever you’re doing go for it and put everything into it, 18 months ago we really didn’t think we could get this band off the ground again, but we worked our arses off and we’ve done it and feel we can do anything so go for it.

Ollie: That’s one hell of a message right there.

Chris: Good ain’t it. Better than don’t eat yellow snow ennit.

Interview by James Webb