With Sean, Rhys, Snoz and Matt
Where did you get the name The Blackout from? Helen (26)
Sean : We kind of picked it out of a hat. when we couldnt decide on one name as a collective.
Snoz : Errrr, it was kinda from, i think, when New York had that Blackout, and we thought how cool it would be if we were called “The Blackout”, because someone had a “I survived The Blackout” t-shirt on, meaning we survived one of our shows, because we are intense, booooooooosh! But we just picked that one out of the hat at the time!
Rhys : It was the last name left after picking out of all the names in the world.
Matt : It came bout after the black out in NYC and just seeing the words in all the papers for days kinda just stuck in our heads i guess. Me and gav were out there a few days after it happened and they had these awesome i survived the blackout tee’s which i wish i’d bought now !
If you were stranded on a desert island, which of your band mates would you eat first? Gemma
Sean : Probably Snoz cos hes the biggest so we wouldnt have to eat anyone else for a bit. then i guess they’d choose me (Sean) but let me just put it out there im all muscle so id be crap and chewy so i wouldnt bother eating me if i was one of the others.
Snoz : Errrr, i think id get chosen first, no doubt, because im a big boy! but who would i eat first? if im hungry, they can all look out, let me tell you, i aint fussy!
Rhys : I’d go to a dessert island, then id probably go in search for a cheesecake before i killed anyone then to be frank.
Matt : I’d probably sacrifice myself coz i’m a pretty fussy eater, so i’d probably only moan anbout having to eat one of the others anyway
If there was a complete blackout during one of your shows, how would you bridge the time till the current was back on? Melanie (19)
Sean : Either tell jokes or play the game ‘whos in my mouth?’ where u have to guess who in your mouth.
Snoz : Ahh, no doubt we’d get the comical tagteam duo that is sean and Bob, plus the wacky sideshow that is Rhys and Gav to go through thier repitoir of comedy sketches and rubbish jokes to keep everyone happy! or they will just play “whos in my mouth” which always seems to be a favourite when the lights are off :-S
Rhys : Memory problems.
Difficulty making decisions.
Inability to concentrate.
Confusion.
Seeing only the negative.
Repetitive or racing thoughts.
Poor judgment.
Loss of objectivity.
Desire to escape or run away.
Moody and hypersensitive.
Restlessness and anxiety.
Depression.
Anger and resentment.
Easily irritated and “on edge”.
Sense of being overwhelmed.
Lack of confidence.
Apathy.
Urge to laugh or cry at inappropriate times.
Headaches.
Digestive problems.
Muscle tension and pain.
Sleep disturbances.
Fatigue.
Chest pain, irregular heartbeat.
High blood pressure.
Weight gain or loss.
Asthma or shortness of breath.
Skin problems.
Decreased sex drive.
Eating more or less.
Sleeping too much or too little.
Isolating yourself from others.
Neglecting your responsibilities.
Increasing alcohol and drug use.
Nervous habits (e.g. nail biting, pacing).
Teeth grinding or jaw clenching.
Overdoing activities such as exercising or shopping.
Losing your temper.
Overreacting to unexpected problems.
Matt : I’d get Snoz to play a drum solo, coz it’s the only thing you can hear ! Or Bob to do some standup coz he’s a pretty funny guy !
If you weren’t in a rock band, who do you think could just as easily be a hired assassin? Betty Boo
Sean : Gavin. guns are in his family. plus he loves a good sniping game on the xbox/ps2/commodre 64.
Snoz : Rhys, without a doubt! saying that, aint you getta be able to climb shit? so Gavin then, with his array of amour from his dads shed, he’d be fine!
Rhys : Seans got a gun!!
Matt : Gavin, coz he’s already got a sword. Or maybe Sean, coz apparently he’s got a gun.
Who would look best in a French Maids costume?
Sean : Rhys. girls body.
Snoz : Wow, thats a toughy! errr, i think we would all look good, because we are fine young men! haha, what the fuck!
Rhys : I’ve been made up to look like a woman when i did my film degree in art college. i usually look like a girl, but on this occasion i looked like a blatant man. so god knows with the rest of them. id get sean to do it and make his huge balls hang out the bottom of the skirt.
Matt : Rhys, he looks awesome dressed up. He looked good in a football kit once !
What can we expect from the new album?Kiri (14 )
Sean : Riffs,choruses, screams, slow songs, fast songs. everything you could want from one album. (no rave) yet!
Snoz : Fun party happy time song! thats japanese, but in english, i think you can expect metal, pop, “emo”(what ever the fuck that is) chants, singalongs, gayness, toughness, epics, some drums saaaaaannnnnn, bass, guitar (x2), sing, shout, harmonies, middle eights, intros, outros, solos,bleeps and blops(haha, thats a lie, its nonsense), blood, sweat, tears, good times, comforting times, happy times, gay times, the times, high fives, rap, ska(thats a lie), but all in all, a fucking good album!
Rhys : A dreadful title, riffs and high fives (litterally).
Matt : It’s pretty mixed so far, some fo the songs are heavy others are quiet. Some of the songs we’ve written are my favourites out of all our songs so far, so at least if no one else likes it i will !
What celebrity do you think you must look like? A few of us thought that Sean looks like Tom from McFly. proof It seems the pink bit is the only part which distinguishes you from him. Abby, 15
Sean : Thats not proof. i look more like Brad Pitt or someone really really sexy. Bob looks like Freddie mercury. Rhys looks like Arnie, Matthew looks like Hitler, Gavin looks like Gwen Stefani.
Snoz : Ohhh, he’ll batter you for that! naa, i think Sean looks for like Robert Goulet, fo’ sho’! if you have seen the pic on our myspace of me and my mullet, you would know im more like meatloaf, booooooooooooom! Rhys looks like John Travolta in greese, Gav looks like Patrick Swayze in road house, Bob looks like Henry Rollins in bad boys 2 and Matt looks like Ivan Drago in rocky 4(the best rocky i might add)!
Rhys : Sean looks like lil dai from son of dork according to some london scally, Bob looks like apollo creed, Matt looks like mr t, Snoz looks like Ivan Drago, Gav looks like tommy gun and id be that other guy.
Matt : A few ppl said i look like Stu lostprophets so i’m going with him.
Being a new up and coming band, does the prospect of becoming successful scare you at all or is it something you embrace fully and hope for? Zara (19)
Sean : We’d love to be the biggest band in the world. if youre in a band and say you dont like/want to be popular then its either a lie or your stupid. i dont think we’ll ever be big tho.
Snoz : I think if becoming a big band scared anyone who is in a band, theres no point in doing it! everybody thats in a band, wants to be as successful as they can! weather its a pub band playing covers, a band like ours who play their own stuff, or a band that claims to be DIY, dont matter who you are, you want to strive to do the best/be the best you can! we, like all bands when they start out, want to be the best band in the world, no doubt! if we can make a living out of doing this, something we love with all our hearts, that would mean the absolute world to us! for us, where we come from, its either, stack shelves, work in a factory, on the dole, or a smackhead! just for us to show we have the bottle to get ourselves to this level, shows our hunger and desire to be as big and successful as we can!
Rhys : The bigger the better. theres no point putting yourself out there if you dont want anything back.
Matt : We never really thought we’d get to the level we’re at now so anything else that comes to us we’ll just takes as it comes. We’d love for this band to do as well as it could and watching other bands that we’ve been lucky to support have a huge full of room people singin back to them kinda drives you on.
What would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall asleep again? Melanie (19)
Sean : Same thing any boy would do…..
Snoz : Well, i normally just watch a dvd or play Pro Evo on the playstation!
Rhys : Swear a lot, quietly
Matt : Pick up my ipod most probably or maybe watch some crappy telly
What is it that inspires your music? My-Lan LĂŞ age 16
Sean : Day to day things. relationships, other bands. Quincy the TV show.
Snoz : Err, other bands has a lot to do with it! we can go watch anyone from Lostprophets to someone local down the pub, and we will see things and be like, ahhh, thats wikkid! we dont copy like, its jus seeing the way others do things with music bradens your mind! also, euroerotica inspires us, tv, laughs, life, bitchiness!
Rhys : At the moment i guess wanting to make songs to rock out to live. but we’ve started to write songs that are a little more deeper than that.
Matt : Everything i suppose. All the music we listen to good or bad, coz it kinda makes you think in a certain way, or pushed you away or towards it. Bands like Faith No More who wrote what ever kind of music they wanted to makes us pretty open when writing, coz we always end up thinking that they could write songs of different genres and stick them next to each other on an album then so can we
What is your REAL opinion on Ian Watkins? Chris DelGobbo, 19
Sean : As much as it hurts me to write this, He is a lovely guy. people get the wrong idea about him. just cos hes confident in talking to people and standing up for what he believes in people label him arrogant. but actually hes top banana. As with the rest of the band, i’ve known them for a while now and ive never seen them being dicks or acting like rockstars. i feel unclean after writing that.
Snoz : Ohhh, hes a bottom burp, no doubt! haha, naaa, you know what, that guy gets some serious, serious shit from people who have never even met him like, and that sucks! hes a fucking really nice, genuine guy who always has time for anyone he meets! ive seen us walk only, say, 10 yards in like an hour before, because he was signing so many things for his fans!he never turns down the request of a photo, autograph, speaking to someones friend on the phone, anything! thats the thing, people say he’s arrogent, yada yada yada, but ive never seen a famous person like him make as much time for people in my life! the kids a fucking legend!
Rhys : Funny, handsome, hard working, awesome frontman, thinks of others and not just himself. he’s helped us out a great deal because he’s knows what its like to start from scratch.
Matt : Ian’s awesome.
If you could choose any band in the world to perform with you on stage, which band would it be? Maria Vuorinen, 17
Sean : Glassjaw, just so i could get to see them fuckers play again!
Snoz : well, for me that would have to be Metallica! but, as luck would have it, i doubt thats gonna happen!
Rhys : The Blackout. the rest of them wouldnt let me have the beastie boys.
Matt : I think we been pretty lucky already to play with some of our favourite bands. Lostprophets and The Used were both amazing to play with coz we’re such big fans of both.
One of my favourite songs is ‘Hard Slammin’, where did you get the inspiration for that song, and others? Lara (15)
Sean : Where we come from people dont congratulate you for being noticed or doing well, they’d rather just bitch about you and make shit up. so we wrote that song about them and whatever they say/ do we’ll be right here playing whether they like it or not.
Snoz : Haha, its all in the title! naa, that whole song is about how, through out our years in this band, we have always had people slating us, putting us down, telling us we will never amount to anything! its just a big “fuck you” to all those people really! you should never give up on your dream, like we didn’t, because you never know when you’ll get a fucking break!
Rhys : A name of a porno dvd i saw at 3am in the a service station on the top shelf and the struggle we had around that time to push ourselves out of our local town into the big wide world.
Matt : The lyrics of hard slammin are based on all the ppl that have put us down over time, but despite it all we’ll still carry on. The name comes from rhys’s favourite porn film tho.
Will you ever come to America? Chris (19)
Sean : WE WOULD LOVE TO! buy us a tour out there!
Snoz : Fuck me, that would be a dream for us! we would love that soooo much! hopefully, maybe in the future, we will be there! fingers crossed!
Rhys : Touch wood (keyboard), yes please!
Matt : Hopefully ! We were hoping to record out there but we left it too late to sort out in the end. We’d love to play in the states tho, i’d be a dream come true
Is it true your not going to play wild nights and fist fights anymore, if so how come? Kiri (14)
Sean : That song is dead and buried. sorry. that song is older than this band. we wrote that as our old band and we never ever wanted to record it but we kind of had to. the last time we played it was 13th may 2007 in kings college london on our first ever headline tour.
Snoz : Ahhh, wild nights ehh! i think that song is gone for good like! we first did that like, 3-4years ago, and we feel as if we have evolved as a band so much in that time, that the song is no longer us, and is not as strong as our new material and shit! i know a lot of people like that song, but, as of april 13th 2007, that will not be played live, ever again! sorry!
Rhys : We said about a year ago we’d never play it again and then we did it again at one of our biggest headline shows to date so we most likely will. but if we do there wont be any bass sound mind.
Matt : Yeah probably. We were talking about this earlier and Go Burn is probably gone for good too. The time the album comes out we’re gonna have another 10 new songs to play, so we just won;t have the time to play either of them
Sean, Ian and pink pants…just WHAT is the deal with that?? Andie
Sean : We share the one pair so we can feel each other all the time.
Snoz : Hes a bender mun aint he, he cant help it!
Rhys : Is that a fantasy of Andies?….. or undies WWWWheeeyyyyyyyy!!!!
Matt : Pink goes with everything !
Who cooks the best BBQ? (can you do 1 at Ponty so we can gatecrash and say thanks for answering the questions????) Helen (26)
Sean : We were gonna do one at our dressing room at the full ponty anyway! bobs on duty that day.
Snoz : Haha, that would have to be gavs dad i think, the fucker loves cooking meat, hes a legend! if we do have one, your invited!
Rhys : If the weather is great then 100% yes. bbq-ing is pretty much standing around poking your meat so we’re all pretty good at that! WWheeyyyyyyyyyyy!!!
Matt : Me !
Do you have any juicy backstage gossip from any gig? Mickey Mouse
Sean : Yeah Mickey Mouse was there and we gangbanged him.
Snoz : Mickey, what the fuck son, i thought we would never talk about that cucumber incident again, for fuck sake like!
Rhys : We’re hoping to drink all the booze on our rider on our next tour, so we’ll hold onto that question for now!
Matt : Nah none really. GIAN was fun playing football with aiden and watching them go wild but thats been about i can think of !
We’d just like to say a HUGE thank you to Snoz, Sean, Rhys and Matt for being such good sports and taking the time to answer the questions. And of course, thanks to all of you that sent questions in, and well done to those of you who were picked. Without you this wouldn’t have been possible. We hope you’ve all enjoyed reading it as much as we have putting it together.
Once again, thanks to the guys for their time and most amusing answers!!
xxxx
