Words: Tom Willmott
Drummer Chris Steele of Exit Ten discuses their second album ‘Give Me Infinity’ which was released last month on Deep Burn Records.
The new record Give Me Infinity is finally out now. Has the reaction been positive?
Yeah, it’s been really positive. We knew a few people had to take a little time with it because obviously it is quite different from the last one, so we expected people to react in different ways to it, but on the whole everyone’s really kind of got it , so we’ve been really pleased with the reaction so far.
Are the new songs as well received live as the older material?
Yeah. We’ve been playing some of them live since last year before we even recorded the album, so they’ve been well rehearsed and we only recorded the songs that we kind of road tested first anyway. But the thing with all of our songs really is about people having to learn the lyrics and learn the songs. They get integrated into people’s minds and they can enjoy them live. It’s always difficult playing new songs for the first time but at this point in time tour, people have familiarised themselves and they’re getting involved.
It’s taken a while for this record to come out. Was it a case of making sure it was just perfect or were there any setbacks?
It took a while to come out just because of what happened on the back of the last album. We had to kind of get ourselves in gear with that and there was a lot of junk we had to deal with the last one. It was just a case of getting round to saying we’ll forget about that for now, go
away and write some stuff. That’s the main reason it’s taken as long as it has done.. We were going to release it earlier in the year and it didn’t make a lot of sense with touring-wise so it’s been a while coming but I think we wanted to make sure everything was right before we released it and didn’t want anything going wrong again. We want to make sure it’s going to stay in the shops this time round.
Was it frustrating to find that your first album was no longer getting pressed due to your label going bust?
It was frustrating but at the same time it was like you either dwell on it and don’t do anything about it or the only thing left for us to do was to go and do another one so that’s what we’ll do. We won’t worry too much about what happened last time. We’ll just go and write some songs and just try and do another one basically.
Were you worried that some fans might have forgotten about you during your absence?
Yeah some people probably have done but it’s about us getting back into people’s faces really. The only thing we could control was trying to do a good album and the rest of the stuff would take care of itself . What we were concentrating on up until this point was we
wanted to do another album and we wanted to release it. After that, anyone who has anything to say or any opinions after that is secondary to just getting it out and touring basically.
The new record sounds a lot more accessible than the debut. Was this a sound you had been aiming for, for some time?
We always felt that we had it in our locker. People liked to class us as a metal band back in the day anyway, even when we had songs on the first album like “Fine Night” and “Warriors”. We’ve got a guy like Ryan who has a different kind of voice anyway, so we always had that, but to be honest, people have to realise that if it hadn’t gone wrong with “Remember The Day”, there probably would have been an album between then and now, so it might seem like a bit of a jump in sound to some people but it was very natural for us. A lot of songs got written in that period of time. These were the songs that made sense to us to put on the album basically. There wasn’t any real like “Oh we’re gonna go away and write this particular kind of album.” It just sort of happened really.
How did you come up with the title of the record?
To be honest, it took us a long time to think of a title for the album. We had a couple of things flying about. It’s a quote from a film that we kind of liked, and it had some strange resemblance to how we felt we were having a hard time with things and like someone had asked us to get down and give us infinity press ups like “Go away and work really hard for it”. It means more to us than it would to anyone else, so anyone else just has to think at least it sounds quite cool, I suppose.
One of my favourite tracks on the album is Mountain. Any chance you guys are fans of Pearl Jam because that’s the first thing that came to mind when listening to it?
Yeah very much so. Big influence on us and we’d never really got the point or chance to write anything that had a little bit of a Pearl Jam tinge to it until this time round. The riff from Stu kind of came about and was like “That sounds like Pearl Jam”and then when we
started to write the song around it, it sounded more like Pearl Jam and then Ryan’s putting some vocals down, it sounded more like Pearl Jam! We’re more than happy with people to say that sounds a bit like Pearl Jam because Pearl Jam are awesome! So yeah, totally that’s our nod to Pearl Jam!
So how’s this tour with Fei Comodo and Never Means Maybe going so far?
It’s going really well. They’ve been around a couple of years like the same as us and we’ve bumped into each other and always really liked both bands. It made a lot of sense for us to tour together this time. It’s working out really well so far. Obviously it’s early days here in Guildford but they’re good guys.
Who have been your favourite bands to play with since you started up?
Well supporting wise, we had a really good time on the Every Time I Die tour. We loved supporting Deftones in Manchester so that was really good! Those two stand out. We had a really, really good time with 36 Crazyfists as well. They were really into the band as well
and really positive about our stuff. Generally, we’ve had really good experiences with other bands. We’ve never really had any horrible stories to tell!
What music are the band digging currently?
We’re really big fans of Elbow. We really like the new Mastodon album. It’s always been very, very broad. In the van, we’ll listen to some Jimi Hendrix and it changes every time but we have such a broad range of stuff. And a little bit of Opeth here and there.
Finally, what can we expect from Exit Ten in the new year?
Lots more touring! We’re planning to do a lot on the festival circuit. Hopefully we’ll get out of the country, get over to Europe and this time round we don’t want to let the momentum slide like it did with “Remember The Day” when that came out in the shops. We want to
make sure we have a full year’s cycle on this album and just keep pushing it in people’s faces really. That’s the plan!
