It’s that time of year where we set out to interview as many of the Sophie, New Blood, and Jager bands as we can in the lead-up to one of the most anticipated festivals of the year, Bloodstock. Answering our questions here are Existentialist who play the New Blood stage on the Friday.
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We are based in Essex/Suffolk.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
The band line up was completed in 2019, but Jonny and Olly have been playing together since 2015. We played our first show in 2021.
Where does the name of the band come from?
As we were writing lyrics and the concept for our debut album, we imagined a nihilistic approach to the message we wanted to portray. Whilst Nihilism is cool, it’s also super unproductive as you’re essentially mired in depression and despair. Existentialism on the other hand is the acceptance of everything being pointless, so why make the most of this fleeting futile existence. Existentialist was born from this.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
During the writing of our debut album Prophet of Ignorance, we found what we consider our sweet spot when we brought in our sixth (to thirtieth) layer of instrument, our orchestral sections. We take influences from across the metal genre: black metal, death metal and deathcore and slam but really wanted to create an emotion to the music which we feel we have achieved when mixing the blackened guitar sounds, death metal-esque drums and brutal deathcore vocals with the symphonic orchestral sounds you expect to hear when listening to Existentialist.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
We like to bring a lot of energy to our performances, something you can really bang your head to one minute and circle pit another. We hope to create an ominous, atmospheric and brutally heavy environment for anyone who catches our set.
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
This will be our first trip to Bloodstock – and we cannot bloody wait!
If you like what we do, consider joining us on Patreon for as little as £1 per month!
Which M2tM region did you win, or did you come through other channels?
We were the M2TM Winners of Essex county.
Can you put into 10 words or fewer how it felt when you realised you were heading to Bloodstock?
Honoured, proud, excited, delirious… All the emotions!!
What sort of setlist can we expect?
We will be playing a few songs from our debut album Prophet of Ignorance including our main single “Systematic Failure” – we will also be showcasing some new songs from our upcoming second album due to be released later in 2022.
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
We are playing on the Friday and there are some sick bands playing that day. Sleep Token, Party Cannon on the Sophie will be great, of course we are stoked to see Behemoth – and we will be there to support our neighbours, and Kent M2TM winners FyreSky.
What are you working on at the moment?
Album Two is in the final stages now – all recorded and ready for mixing and mastering. We have been working on this album since 2021 and have been in the studio for large chunks of this year laying down ideas and bouncing off our amazing producer. The second album will be a 10-track story, and we can wait to start telling it!
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
We have played to some absolute awesome crowds, some violent, some just hyped up and giving everything – we’ve been very lucky. We played with Paleface in London, which was probably the craziest – crowd surfing, circle pits and general violence – but probably Patty (our vocalist) splitting his eyelid on stage recently on tour by headbutting a guitar headstock gave the darkest, and coolest look for us. Bleeding from the eyes made for some sick photos!
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fired up before going on stage?
Minus the beer 3/5’s of us consume, I would have to say we need to start looking for a sponsorship deal with Monster. The amount this band consumes is actually laughable. If the band career fails, I am sure we could all work as Monster reps!
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