When did the initial idea for your latest single come together?
It was one of the first songs we wrote for our latest album. I had demo’d the first half of it when we were together our last album, ‘The New Identity of Sidney Stone’, but as it was a fast song, we felt it would’ve unbalanced the album with too many trashers, so we started working on it more when we began writing for ‘The Ashen Child’.
How would you describe the track, to a reader that is unfamiliar with the band?
The song is a fast and furious thrasher with a blistering opening from vocalist Stevie. It’s one of my favourites of all the songs we’ve done. Perhaps if you mix some frantic Soilwork with Kobra and the Lotus, you probably wouldn’t too far off the mark.
Can you tell us a bit more about the meaning behind the track?
Refuse of the Past is based on the 1971 film, The Omega Man, which is another spin on the classic ‘The Last Man on Earth’. Something resonated with me in regards to that film, I’m not sure what, but I love the concept and especially the quote, ‘Refuse of the Past’.
How would you say that the track compares to anything you’ve done before?
I think it fits right into to our sound and direction. What we tried to do with Refuse of the Past and with the rest of the songs on our latest album, The Ashen Child, is to take our blueprint from the first two albums and just stretch it a little, for example, make the fast songs a little bit faster, the slower ones more epic and to try and get to the end as quickly as possible without throwing out any of the ideas. The main difference is our new singer Stevie who adds power, sass and soul to the song, she really is a powerhouse.
What was the hardest part about putting it together, and why?
Probably the speed of it as it’s not that easy to play, but also the backing vocals went through many iterations, what to put in and what to take out. It’s easy to over egg the pudding, but I think we got the balance of blistering thrash and melodic vocals just about right. In fact, at the very end the backing vocals singing, ‘he can save you all’, appear later than they do at the end of the first chorus. This was done in error because when Katy and I were putting the vocals together, we did a demo of the backing vocals for the first chorus and then I copied and pasted those tracks to the second chorus just to see how it would sound not realising I had pasted them in the wrong place. But, when we played the track back, the sing and repeat idea worked a treat so we left it as it was. The lesson here is not every idea is intentional, but you have to be wise enough to spot a positive accident and be flexible enough to change the original idea.
Why should a reader check out the track?
I don’t think there are many fast, blistering, thrashy, metal tracks with a soulful, sassy vocal in this world and I think it may be worth your time checking it out.
What else can you tell us about the track, that we haven’t covered in this interview?
It did have a thirty second intro with a sample from film The Omega Man, but it had Charlton Heston in it and we thought we may get copyrighted so we decided to take it out. After we took Charlton Heston out, the start seemed a bit empty, so we shortened it and Stevie sang the last line of the chorus instead and it’s sounds so much better now.