Before KINGSWOOD’s set at FOTSUN, LOUIE SMITH quickly catches JEREMY ‘Mango’ HUNTER to talk about their upcoming album and not sounding like Korn.
You’ve been working on an album with Vance Powell, is that finished? How’s it going?
It’s 95% done. We’ve done all our parts we’ve just got a few mixing tweaks and it has to be mastered. We probably won’t release it until next march.
Will you be playing ‘Sucker Punch’ tonight?
Yeah we’ll be playing that and probably two or three others off the new album, just to give them a trial run I guess.
A lot of people have described it as very Queens of the Stone Age. Have you sort of channelled QOTSA?
Yeah, well the guitarist and I are pretty heavily into QOTSA. They’re an amazing band so it’s one of those things that you don’t mind getting compared to. Like if someone said we sounded like Korn or something I’d be like ‘ohh’.
Haha, you definitely don’t sound like Korn.
It’s not what we’re going for, not that Korn are a bad band. If people can hear some of our influences in our music then it’s kind of a good thing. I mean you’re always going to be influenced by someone.
Yeah I wouldn’t be complaining.
And they’re pretty unique in what they do, there’s not too many other dark stoner bands with a pop element to them that are going around.
I had a chat with The Beards yesterday have you felt a bit of beard pressure?
Nah I’m ok, I’m growing mine out at the moment. We played a festival with The Beards in Coolum about a month ago and they’re good dudes. They appreciated that we have beards even if they’re tailored a bit or trimmed regularly.
So you’re on the road for most of December and January with Calling All Cars and BDO?
Yeah it hasn’t really started yet but it’ll be good to get out on the road. We’re sort of doing a regional coastal tour, which will be something different. Get to see some new towns and some new fans hopefully.
I guess it’s a little pre promo for the album.
Yeah so it’s good. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of time off over summer but it’s good being out there playing and we should get good crowds because it’s holiday season. There’s not much else to do in some of those towns so yeah hopefully a lot of people come down to the pubs.
Are there any bands on the line-up tonight that you’re keen to see?
It’s good to watch all bands. We try to get down to festivals early to check out every band and you might find something you haven’t heard of before that you like or get a bit of inspiration or something. But I guess The Rubens will be good. Ash Grunwald’s always good. He’ll go down well with this sort of crowd I think.