By Socratos
The Young Guns are a band who have enjoyed a rare fast track to success from playing small gigs in 300-capacity ‘shacks’ to the main stage at Reading and Download festivals to crowds of 15,000 within 3 months. Their rise is a wave of success mainly encouraged by the release of the band’s first album entitled All Our Kings Are Dead.
I spoke to frontman Gustav about his philosophy behind the naming of the album;
It was some thoughts that arose within myself which I then thought could be applied generationally. Just a sense of lack of direction, mainly because we don’t have any leaders or role models in the traditional sense to look up to as we once might have had. So that leads to a lot of confusion and not knowing what to do as expressed in sons of apathy. So that’s what that is all about, all our kings are dead. I tried to write an album that broke down the barriers and spoke about things that that a lot of people could connect to.
My conversation with Gustav took place as the band was between tours having some down time. They are currently working on their second album when they get the time. I asked if they were looking forward to unleashing some of the new songs live during the tour.
We have a very perfectionist thing going on within our band, we like to keep the songs underwraps before we unveil them live. It’s nice to take some time off touring to be able to be in that headspace for writing.
Seeing as so much of your success has rested upon the first album do you feel anxious about changing or wonder about the direction of the band during the cross over to the second album?
We just let whatever comes out be and we focus a lot on making the album sound as good as it possibly can so in that way we are very commited in that way, it’s nice to have the time to concentrate on it. It’s nice to have something that you are passionate about in your life. I think that to be on that main stage infront of all these people you have to have a sense that that is where you are meant to be and a belief in it that makes it all come about, so I try not to think about how we got there so quickly in such a rush because it blows my mind a little bit!
Do you feel as though you are part of a scene of related bands in England or over in Europe?
Not to sound wanky as much as we love to play with other bands its nice to be able to be a part of the scene and then get away from it. There are a lot of young up and coming rock bands in England at the moment that we feel a part of like we are the ocean who we are heading to Australia with for Soundwave.
So far the highlights of our career are sharing the main stages at all the big festivals like Download and Reading and when we are over there we are sure that being on tour in Australia will probably be the high point.
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