On Thursday we showed you the brilliant video ‘Snakes’, the new single by UK underground hardcore sensation, Giants. Here’s what we found out when catching up with Giant’s Jack to discuss our shared passion for skateboarding and music.
So it’s no secret that you guys have huge amounts of love for skateboarding and music, would you say that each of those passions cross over into the other?
Yes definitely. It is no secret at all that most of us would say most of our musical background comes from skateboarding, watching skate videos as kids with your mates and hearing so many different styles of music for the skaters sections, finding out what bands they were and getting into them from that etc. But I am not saying that is the only way all of us got into music haha!
You’ve listed Skateboarding as your only influence on your Facebook page, would you say that that really is the only influence on your music or do other things come into play when writing?
No it isn’t our only influence, we’re mainly influenced by everyday hardships, things that piss us off, positive times, memories, nostalgia etc. I think I put that there as it’s more to the fact that that is how we all met really.
You guys have done a few tours this year; do you guys take your boards with you on tour?
Yes! Half our time on tour is spent looking for skateparks, some that we could never travel to when we were younger, we skated Stoke Plaza a few times last year which was rad.
What has been your favourite place to skate when you’ve been on the road?
I think as a group probably Stoke or Bristol, but recently we visited a plaza in Mansfield which was amazing! So many intelligently crafted little lines, it was sick!
Apart from a couple of rolled ankles or heel bruises not so much really! It’s always a bit of a worry as that sort of injury to hands or feet could prevent us from touring.
Probably a tough question, but if you guys had the choice between making a living from music or making a living from skateboarding, which would you choose?
Haha, that is actually probably the toughest question we’ve ever been asked. Erm, I am not sure. I would say it’s a lot harder to earn a living off of skateboarding, especially if you’re trying not to “sell out.”
You recently headed out to mainland Europe, the beer is cheap there and the scene even more crazy than ours… any interesting stories to tell us?!
Europe was one of the single most amazing experiences of our lives in this band, we had never been treated as kindly as we were out there. You can tell the passion for music out there is so strong. It still means something to the kids out there, they all help each other and are genuinely grateful that 5 smelly dudes playing in a punk band will cross an ocean to play in a room for them. There were so many funny stories from this tour, like we got so drunk on the first night after the first show as the venue manager gave us four crates of beer that our van got towed without us knowing. Also being our first time over there, with only one of our crew spoke very broken German, the language barrier presented so many funny situations… like when some Police officers told us we couldn’t skate in their car park as we will “make an accident on their cars.”
So what’s the latest on new material from the GIANTS camp?
We are releasing a mini-album entitled “These Are The Days” on the 17th of September, it will feature 9 tracks of our newest and best material to date. We have taken real time on these songs; we didn’t just write them in a month and record it the month after, some of them we have had with us for about a year. We’ve learned that you can only get to know your songs properly by playing them live extensively on the road, seeing how people react to them etc. If you liked our debut EP you will like this record a lot, the songs are faster, the riffs are bigger, the heavy parts are heavier but, we’ve taken into account what we’re best at and what we’re not and have therefore excluded the unnecessary.
We looked to our roots of whilst writing for the record, old skate-punk bands that we got into by playing Tony Hawks games like Pennywise, Offspring, Good Riddance, Rise Against as well as the modern hardcore/punk we’re all into like Comeback Kid, Pour Habit, Stick To Your Guns etc. and we feel that these songs reflect our band for what it is.
Neil D Kennedy and the guys at The Ranch Production House have done a sterling job with it, this record sounds exactly how a Giants record should sound.
You’ve got some dates lined up with We Are The Ocean, they have a slightly softer style, how are you going to win over their fan-base?
The lads in We Are The Ocean have been our best friends since school days, they live down the road from us and we both played our first shows together in different bands. To tour with our long time mates that we go to the pub with every Friday is going to be such a great experience we hadn’t really thought about this! I guess We Are The Ocean used to be a post-hardcore/screamo band, most of their fans are always asking for them to play the older material so I think we will do ok! Kids usually go mental for the heavier band on the bill at shows. Great Cynics are also an awesome punk band on that tour you should check them out!
Grab a free download of Giants anti-Scooter track ‘Snakes’ here.