M: Your new album, Total Obscurity , is out on Friday, 7th November, and I've been listening to it pretty much all week. Could you describe what lessons you took from your previous album, Darkness In My Home , when going into this new record? J: I think we stopped thinking in the box. Like, we wanted to defy expectations. We did away with the mentality that “it needs to have a specific structure, or maybe this is too simple, or maybe that's too complicated”. So, we kinda dropped all of that, and we just went in with what we wanted to play and what felt right at the time. You'll see that most of the songs are not that long, like previous albums. We just wanted to play the songs naturally, and after we felt that it was ready and we liked it, we just stopped. We didn't have to put extra effort to make it more interesting or whatever, you know. It just felt right. M: Would you say that it was like restricting yourself that made this a bit more of an open record? J: Yeah, it...
I was in two minds whether or not I should even write anything. I mean, it’s not like I knew the man personally. However, the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I needed to say something. Ozzy Osbourne was such a cultural touchstone of my life. He was ever present, be it in music, TV or Film; the man felt like he was everywhere. I guess I just wanted my chance to say goodbye to a man that shaped my life, even indirectly. I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11, when I first came across a band called Black Sabbath on my Dad’s computer; along with names like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Dio. I heard the crazy man with a worbled voice singing over dark-infected blues music, and I knew that I wanted nothing more than to listen to this type of music forever. It led me into the weird world of heavy metal. Not just a genre, but a culture, one that accepted me, a culture where I found my friends and a world I felt at home. It wasn’t just in the world of music when I heard Ozzy. The Osbournes w...