It’s not just the year that’s passed since Devil Sold His Soul released Loss, their first in a whopping nine years. It’s also been a whole five years since their last headline tour, the shows celebrating their debut A Fragile Hope’s 10th anniversary where for the first time, they went out with two vocalists. Ahead of their upcoming April tour that hits Nottingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester and London from the 4th to the 9th, we caught up with both vocalists Ed Gibbs and Paul Green.
So, how’re you both feeling?
Paul: “Yeah, pretty good, actually. I feel like I’ve been ill for most of the year so far but I’m finally starting to see some light at the end of it. Now the tour’s coming round, hopefully the stars all line up and we’re all in a good place.”
Ed: “Yeah, weirdly the same. I’ve been ill for the past month and the timing is so dogshit!”
Paul: “We’ll be alright vocally but we’re going to crash harder after each show (laughs). We’re probably going to be asleep a minute after set time!”
You did a show recently late last year with Rolo Tomassi but this is your first proper tour in a long time.
Paul: “Five years! We did a couple of shows in Japan, which we’ll call a tour. That’s one of the things that’s a bit strange, mentally going on tour is something that feels so alien, when it used to feel so natural. I’m sure we’ll click into gear straight away but at the moment, I can’t even imagine being in a sprinter van driving round the country!”
Ed: “I think the weirdest thing is that we put out the record a year ago. It feels like… You put a record out then do a year of absolutely fucking nothing!”
Paul: “I’ve missed feeling that connection of music in the room with everybody… But we have been really busy in the background, like tour management is just a slog. It’s been carnage the past couple of weeks. We’re in tour mode, just not physically in the room yet!”
You’re self-managing this entire tour then?
Paul: “We’ve got our agent Liam over at Atonal [Music] Agency; I do most of the day to day and tour pre-work… But it’s been juggling that with work and life and stuff, it takes its toll on your time. But it’s because we’re not a proper touring band in terms of doing a hundred shows a year.”
Ed: “All of us have pretty time consuming jobs, so it’s making time for it. It’s different, less easy than it used to be.”
Paul: “I think we struck a balance as individuals. We’ve been going a long time as a band… but we struck a good balance with everything correct. We still write good music and we still put everything into our releases, when we tour we give it everything and nobody misses out.”
Are there contingencies or things you’ve had to consider that maybe before you didn’t?
Paul: “I don’t think we’ve got a backup for another band, I think we’re royally screwed if anyone pulls out (laughs). Everybody is so committed to this, Forlorn are really, really stoked to be on the tour…Urne are available, have been the whole time. [After Frontierer had to drop out] we spent about a week or so trying to figure out what it is we wanted to do with the lineup.”
You made the most of a bad situation. Does it feel weird, touring a record that’s a year old?
Ed: “It feels like you’re coming out of nowhere. It’s not that we’re not prepared – because we are, we started practising in January for this! But it’s mentally… I mean, it was really tough anyway putting the album out and then nothing. It’s kind of heartbreaking in a way.”
Paul: “It’s momentum, really. You’re not rolling off the back of week one of release where everybody’s still talking about it and you’re buzzing.”
Ed: “We spent months getting ready and releasing… It’s really exciting to go out and play some songs!”
Is there anything like with the older songs, you might change up a bit to suit the dynamic of having two vocalists now?
Ed: “We’ve been trying to put in some harmonies and stuff on some songs.”
Paul: “We’ve added more to the new songs to be honest! We’ve got older tracks in there, also ‘Signal Fire’ [from Loss] there’s some harmonies that weren’t there before that sound wicked. I wish we’d done that on the record! Doing a couple of the older tracks I haven’t done before has been challenging to remember the lyrics, but I’m just excited to be adding more to the catalogue that we can do live. ‘Crane Lake’ will be super fun!”
Ed: “There’s actually a bunch of songs that we’ve added in that we haven’t played for ages. We’ve kind of put a bunch of the sort of regulars to bed – well, not to bed. But we’ve kind of put them in the drawer for this tour and tried to pull out some songs we haven’t played for ages.”
Paul: “We were getting to the point where some of the tracks that we played a lot, I didn’t feel as sincere singing them. I felt like it was almost a press the button, go and I never want to feel that way when I’m singing a song. I always want to feel the passion behind it and the emotion. So like ‘Time’ – I wrote it about my grandad who died, and it started to not feel as emotional singing it.”
Ed: “You get so used to it. When we first put A Fragile Hope out back in 2007, we had that and four songs. We just played those songs to death. And I remember when we came round to putting together a set I never wanted to play like any of those songs ever again. And it’s nothing to do with whether or not I like the songs, it’s just we just absolutely hammered those songs because that’s what we had. It’s weird. You just need to change and it’s nothing to do with the songs and if you like them, you just need a change.”
Coming off a five year lack of touring, you don’t want to slip back into being comfortable, you wanted to drop a few surprises and play things people aren’t expecting?
Paul: “There’s only one song that survived our last tour, because it’s a really dynamic different track moodwise for the whole set. We can change it out to anything, but I still like that song a lot.”
Ed: “We’ve probably got close to 60 songs, so picking a ten song set is quite difficult!”
What are you most looking forward to playing, other than the new songs?
Paul: “The new ones are very exciting because of course, they’re new but also the dynamics in them are really cool. I’ve always wanted to play ‘Crane Lake’ too. When I was writing other things, I was using that as a reference because I loved it so much when it came out. So getting that opportunity now is going to be wicked!”
Ed: “The start of the set is going to be really cool too, we’re doing the start of the album basically. It’s gonna kick off the same way [as the album] which is gonna be really fun, I think. We can’t wait!”
See the full dates for Devil Sold His Soul’s upcoming tour below.
