Tom Weaver of Casey: “I’m dipping myself back into this world that I said I wasn’t comfortable being in anymore.”
South Wales, Post-Hardcore band, Casey, have been quiet for a considerable period of time, but I managed to catch up with vocalist, Tom Weaver, to discuss what led to and followed the bands’ hiatus, their upcoming UK/EU tour, how Tom translates lived experiences into music, and if they’ll ever write a happy record [Spoiler: they wont.]
Hayls: Well, thanks for doing this for me.
Tom: No worries, Pal.
Hayls: Thanks. Well, you look really fucking bright right now. What are you doing?
Tom: It's because I keep changing what's on my second monitor. Hang on. There we go.
Hayls: Yeah, keep it there. You're not bald.
Tom: I'm not bald.
Hayls: I was expecting bald Tom today.
Tom: No, no, yeah, it will get to that point. I'll just wake up one morning and think, "It's not worth it," and then I'll just be bald.
Hayls: Alright, let me sort my wires out so I can actually read. I can't read. It's too small. I need my glasses on, but I don't even think my glasses are the right prescription, so.
Tom: What do you mean “read?” Read what?
Hayls: Certain things. I have asked - I do ask people what they want to ask, because sometimes people know things better than I do. Like, my best friend is your biggest fan.
Tom: Okay-
Hayls: Literally, you've met-
Tom: Doubtful, doubtful. But-
Hayls: Okay, maybe not like that in terms of maybe your friends and your family.
Tom: No, my parents have never been to see Casey. My parents have never seen us perform.
Hayls: Have they listened?
Tom: I don't even think so, no. I'll tell you what they're competing against, though. There was a kid from somewhere in Italy who- you're familiar with what scarification is, right? He scarified the “Love Is Not Enough" duo into his thigh, like a full thigh-length scarification of that pair. So when people say, "I'm your biggest fan."
Hayls: Yeah, but you're not, you're not that guy. Okay, well, he might be your biggest fan that doesn't-
Tom: Doesn't mutilate himself.
Hayls: Yeah, oh my God. Yeah, no, because you've met him before. I was like, he's been to, I think, pretty much every single one of your Glasgow performances.
Tom: What, all two of them.
Hayls: Yeah. So he's like a super fan, see? That's unmatched. Yeah, we forgot that Casey fucking hates Scotland.
Tom: Not as much as Scotland hates Casey.
Hayls: We're going to talk about the tour that you're going on next month, the one that doesn't come to Scotland.
Tom: It doesn't come to Scotland.
Hayls: So you're making all of us Scottish people travel three hours to Manchester.
Tom: If it makes you feel any better, no one ever comes to Wales either, so.
Hayls: Wait, where do you? Yeah, but where do you play in Wales? Do you play in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere?
Tom: Rich coming from a Scot. Yeah, you play Cardiff.
Hayls: Oh, but why does no one come there, then?
Tom: I mean, Swansea also has an arena. Swansea's got a 5,000-person arena.
Hayls: That's a lot of people. You could sell that out twice.
Tom: Who? Me?
Hayls: Yeah.
Tom: If you gather up everyone who's ever attended one of our shows.
Hayls: I want to talk about the supports. Obviously, cool bands. I've never heard of Mirrortalk, so I'm interested to see what they're like. But Lastelle I've heard of. How did the lineup come about? Do you guys have a say in who comes on tour with you?
Tom: We get to pitch bands for sure. It's a bit of a difficult one because of our personal life commitments. That's why the tour is so staggered. So we do three shows, and then we'll have four days off, and then we do another three shows, and then we'll have a week off, and then we go out to Europe. And it's a little bit more condensed in Europe because once we're out there, we kind of have to stay out there till we're done, whereas in the UK, we can do bits and pieces. So it's sort of impossible for us to reach out to US bands or Australian bands and say, "Hey, do you want to come on tour? But by the way, you're going to have nine days off where you don't get to play any show." I mean, they supposedly could play shows, but it's kind of difficult.
Yeah, it's tough. So we knew that we were sort of limited to UK, Euro bands. And then we started asking around. We're really good friends with Lastelle. Mike [Hayden], the drummer, works with Adam [Smith], and we love those guys, and we love them as a band. So they were a pretty easy choice for us. Mirrortalk were a suggestion by our label, though. I don't know whether they've... I might be leaking something here. I'm not going to check on my monitor because it'll fucking blow my face up.
Hayls: You're going to get flashbanged if you do that.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, literally. I mean, I've been calling... I've been saying whenever I've talked to anyone else about it, they're on Hassle Records, so they're on the same label as us. So our label managers were like, "Hey, we've just signed this new band. They're pretty cool. Would you guys be interested in taking them out?" So we said that we would take them out for as much as they could do. They weren't able to do the Euro shows, so we were like, "Well, if they just do the UK ones."
And then Watch Me Rise and Sonya, who are doing the Euro shows, I think they both came from our Euro booking agent because we weren't really familiar with what opening level… because we knew Lastelle were going to be main support for the whole thing, but we weren't familiar with what one of three size bands were up and coming through Europe. So our booking agent was like, "Here's a..." I think they sent us four or five over, and we listened through them. We were like, "Oh, these guys are cool." And Sonya, they put out a new music video recently that was really cool, so we were like, "We'll go with these guys."
Hayls: That's cool, then. You've got a helping hand from your label being like, "Oh, these guys are pretty cool. Do you want to take them out?"
Tom: I'm so out of touch. I'm so old.
Hayls: Yeah, we know. We know.
Tom: Yeah. I really struggle with whenever we get asked about, "Oh, who do you want to tour with? And who do you want to take on tour?" There are loads of bands that I would love to tour with, but they're from really far away, and then it's really difficult to justify the expense of... we wouldn't be able to give them enough money to make it fiscally viable to them, particularly with how expensive touring is these days. But Second Harbor are a good recent example, a really sick American post-hardcore band, but bringing them over to Europe would cost them so much money, and it doesn't really make any sense.
So we've got to be realistic in who we approach and stuff. But yeah, we get a say in it, and then we're more than happy to kind of take on recommendations and stuff.
Hayls: That's cool, though. And like you said, touring is expensive. Me and- I did an interview a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about how there's just no money in it, and bands basically aim to break even. And crazy stories of where bands sleep and stay and having to share gear, not that kind, but instruments. It's insane, and everyone just thinks you're all minted. I think that's why people get so upset when you don't go to their city.
Tom: It's not even that, to be honest, but there's so much that goes into the logistical side of touring that just is so boring and bureaucratic that it doesn't bear going into on a public domain. But even things like venue availability where people don't realize how far in advance venues get booked. And so unless you can- that's the reason that- I mean, what's our tour routing? Because there's some not great routing on ours. Oh, yeah, we do London, Manchester, and then Southampton. So we literally go Southwest, Midlands, South. In an ideal world, obviously, we wouldn't do that because it's inefficient.
Hayls: No, that's silly.
Tom: But it's nothing to do with us. It's just because that was what the venue availability was, and if we wanted to play those cities, that's just how we had to make it work, so.
Hayls: So people basically need to stop whinging unless they want to go be a tour manager or...
Tom: Unless they live in Scotland, then they can just understand that we don't want to be there.
Hayls: Yeah. And if you whinge about it, you get blacklisted from all future Casey shows.
Tom: True.
Hayls: It's me. I'm not even allowed to go Manchester. They're going to see my name, and they're going to be like, "No, you're not coming in."
How are you feeling about the tour that's coming up? Because you've been on a break for... you've not done anything for a very long time bar a couple of shows here and there.
Tom: Yeah. That, I mean, is sort of just a consequence of my health. It was really frustrating, to be perfectly honest. Obviously, we had a really busy year planned in 2024, and then we were doing the US tour with Holding Absence, Acres and Capistan, and that's when I got ill. And then that just totally blew our Europe because we had to pull a bunch of Euro shows that we were supposed to be doing, which was the original version of this tour. And then we had to cancel Australia with Dayseeker. We had another US tour that we hadn't announced that we had to cancel, and then more Euro shows planned for the end of 2024. So we had almost 100 shows booked in 2024, and we had to cancel 80% of them.
Obviously, I had my surgery, end of 2024 in November and then we basically had a discussion amongst ourselves, and we were like, "There's no point in us just blindly rebooking a bunch of stuff because if I don't recover as quickly as I'm supposed to or there are complications or if anything else happens and we have to cancel again, people are just going to get fed up with it,right? There will come a point where people are like, “Yo, fuck this band. If they just kind of keep canceling shows, I'm going to stop buying. I'm going to wait until the day before the show to buy the ticket because otherwise I risk having it cancelled." And so we were like, "We're going to wait until the only two shows we did book were the two shows that we did with Funeral for a Friend last summer because we had a conversation with- we were good friends with a promoter. He's a guy that we've known for a long time, and when he approached us about it - was before I'd had my surgery, even.
And we accepted the offer on the premise that if I wasn't physically able to do the shows, if I wasn't feeling fit enough to do the shows, we would pull, and it would probably be a relatively short notice there, within a month of the show. And he was like, "That's totally fine. Just kind of keep me up to date and be honest about it." But fortunately, they went ahead, and then after that, we could then think about planning more shows. And so that was last June, June or July, maybe. I can't remember. And these shows were originally supposed to be February to March. I can't remember why they ended up getting pushed back a month, but that was the lead time on booking venues. So we started booking this tour last June, and this was the earliest availability that we had.
Hayls: Jesus.
Tom: But that's how touring is most of the time now. You have to plan that far ahead. And so it's unintentionally been... we've played two shows... well, no, we did a few in Italy in the summer of that year. We've played less than 10 shows in two years, but that wasn't our intention.
Hayls: It's not like you decided, "No, we just don't want to tour at the minute."
Tom: Obviously, we just put out a new record. We had a bunch of shows booked, and we were like, "Oh, cool. This feels like we're actually getting some momentum and doing stuff again." And then all of it just got kind of swept away. But yeah, we're feeling good about it. It's a bit of a, I mean, as a consequence of that, it's a bit of a weird time because this tour is technically the album release tour for an album that came out two years ago. And so it doesn't feel like an album release tour, but we're sort of in limbo a little bit of- we didn't want to just move on and release new music and be like, "Oh, yeah, forget that record. It's in the past," because we thought it deserves to have some sort of recognition.
So yeah, we felt the need to- obviously, we want to play more shows and stuff, and because we haven't done anything in so long, it's really difficult for us to pitch ourselves for any support tours and stuff because the first thing the booking agents want to know is, "Well, how many tickets do you sell as a band?" And we're like, "We don't know because we haven't played headline shows in two years." So yeah, it's sort of reestablishing ourselves a little bit with this tour. And then we have some more stuff arranged for later in the year that we'll kind of follow up from this.
Hayls: No, I see what you mean, though. Like you said, you released that album two years ago, and you've not really had a chance to play it for anyone. So I suppose people will still obviously understand that this kind of is a release show because we're going to get to hear these songs live for the first time.
Tom: There's three songs in the set that we're playing live, I think, for the first time.
Hayls: So I was going to ask about the setlist because you put it on your socials, asking people what song to fill out a Google form. That is the most unc thing ever.
Tom: I didn't do that, to be clear. It wasn't me.
Hayls: It's still unc.
Tom: I'm going to hold it [his phone showing the form results] back here so that you can't see it. But this is the final vote-in. So we did actually use this to make the setlist.
Hayls: I was going to say, did you actually take that into consideration? Because you're saying it wasn't you, but whoever put it up on socials saying, "Pick the songs that you want to hear on the setlist," there was a little note saying, "And don't pick Little Bird." And obviously, I wound you up.I was like, "Little Bird times 10, just play that song."
Tom: Little Bird had 671 votes.
Hayls: And what's that in terms of?
Tom: It was the most voted-for song.
Hayls: See, well, that's your fault.
Tom: I mean, but there were 11,000 votes in total, which is sort of ridiculous.
Hayls: That's nuts. So why do you hate Little Bird?
Tom: No, I don't hate that song. I really like that song. I like playing it.
Hayls: Why did you not want it?
Tom: But we're obviously going to play that. I was like, "We're obviously going to play that. We're obviously going to play Hell." There are just certain givens that we're definitely going to play.
Hayls: I just thought it came across like you hated that song.
Tom: No, I hate Teeth.
Hayls: Why? Okay, no, no, no, no, no. Now, why? Why do you hate that song?
Tom: Because it has the word crazy in it.
Hayls: Is that it?
Tom: Yeah.
Hayls: Well, I suppose you're an eloquent man. You say words that not even me in my own 30 years have ever heard. So I suppose crazy probably feels like a step down.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. In retrospect, it just feels like a moment of intellectual weakness.
Hayls: You could just freestyle it. You could still play it, but just freestyle that word. Just put a different word. Fuck it. Change the lyrics.
Tom: Who's the singer for Arctic Monkeys? Matey Boy.
Hayls: Oh, you've asked me too-
Tom: Alex Turner.
Hayls: Yeah, Alex Turner.
Tom: Yeah. Where he just intentionally changes all of the melodies to all the songs so that people can't sing along. I'm just going to do that.
Hayls: Does he do that?
Tom: Yeah, yeah. It's really funny. If you watch any of their live videos from the last two years, whenever they play any of their older stuff, he intentionally changes all the melodies.
Hayls: Used to be a massive fan of Arctic Monkeys. Never seen them live, so I wouldn't have known that. Fuck that, though, that would wind me up.
Tom: I played them yesterday somewhere.
Hayls: What were you listening to, though?
Tom: Back to 505?
Hayls: The best album’s one with a black and white one, early, early one with Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured.
Tom: I'm not a big Arctic Monkeys fan. Yeah, I don't mind them, but I wouldn't put them in my top 10 or anything.
Hayls: I'm sure Alex Turner's going to be heartbroken you said that.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, when he definitely watches this, he's going to call me immediately and demand an apology.
Hayls: He's like, [deuces] "That's to you because Casey are in my top three. But no, I'm not even in your top 10.” And now we're going to have internet beef between Casey and Arctic Monkeys, nice one.
Tom: That would be the biggest thing that ever happened to our band.
Hayls: So you've got your setlist sorted. It's sorted, yeah? It's not going to change like the tour routing changed:
Tom: No, no, it's sorted.
Hayls: It's sorted, and you're happy with it. And even though this is, like you said, it's kind of like an album release, and you said there's three songs off that album.
Tom: No, three new songs.
Hayls: Wait, what?
Tom: We're playing six songs off the new record altogether, and then the rest is older stuff.
Hayls: You're not going to tell me which six are you?
Tom: No, what I will say, though, it is the first setlist that we've ever played that isn't in chronological order in the sense of whenever we've performed before, we've always done newest songs at the front and then worked our way backwards, ending with the oldest songs. So it's the first time that we've had a mixture through the whole night.
Hayls: Oh, any reason for changing that up if that's how you've always done it?
Tom: We've always done it until this point because the newest stuff is more clean vocal forward. And I've always found that as soon as I start screaming, I can't then do the highest bits of the choruses and stuff. But it's just where I've got better at that over time. And also, the other reason that we've always done it in the past is that until this tour, so for the last 11 years, both guitars have been in a different tuning. And then not only that, all three albums are in different tunings as well. So there are technically six tunings.
Hayls: Oh, yeah, because then, yeah, in between.
Tom: Yeah, we've had to change guitars and stuff.
Hayls: Yeah and that's a ball lake.
Tom: And now we've changed it so that everything is played in the same tuning.
Hayls: I see, logistics are coming together.
Tom: We should have -I mean, that's just laziness on our part- we should have done that years ago. We just didn't.
Hayls: It's not like anyone would notice anyway. People don't even notice if anyone messes up.
Tom: I had this conversation with Toby [Evans] recently, actually, because we were looking at- we have the desk recordings from when we did the two final London shows before the hiatus where we played “Love Is Not Enough” and “Where I Go” in full over two nights. We recorded them both to the mixing desk, and we still have the audio from it. So we were working out whether it was of a good enough quality to do anything with that in terms of releasing live recordings of stuff. As we were listening to it, Toby's very, very particular - he's a big perfectionist in the best way, he has very, very high expectations of himself and the way that we sound, which has always been good for us because it holds us accountable.
But we were listening to it, and he was like, "Oh, I think my guitar's a little bit out, and I think that we're a little bit fast in this section." And then I listened to it, and I was like, "It sounds like a live show, man. It sounds like a band playing their songs live," which is great because the number of bands that I've been to see over the last five years where I can't tell what's on a backing track and what's not.
And I had a conversation with a musician friend about this recently because their band uses a lot of processing and a lot of backing tracks. And their opinion was, he was like, "There’s musicians, and then there’s performers. Their audience isn't there to appreciate the musicianship. They're there to be entertained. They're there for a show, and how you deliver that is irrelevant. But because of the TikTok era, they expect perfection. They want to go to a show. And if you sound like a person playing it live, they think that that's bad because they're so conditioned to expect record quality.”
Hayls: Yeah. Well, those people are silly because obviously, it's not gone through heavy mixing and heavy processing and mastering.
Tom: That’s the way of the world, though, unfortunately. We have pads and stuff on backing tracks and synth and stuff. Actually, no, that's not true, we have resorted to using in the case of where Liam [Torrance] hasn't been able to make it to a show for whatever reason, or Adam has had to miss one or two shows, and so we've had the bass on a backing track, or we've had Liam's rhythm guitar on a backing track. When we've all been present, we don't add anything like that. And we've never used any kind of vocal processing, mostly because obviously, the way that Autotune works is that you have to get close to the note to know how to drag you into pitch. And the number of times that I'm not close to the note, it would just drag me to something completely different and sound dreadful. I'm like, "It's not worth us using Autotune."
Hayls: That's bizarre. Obviously, you have Counterparts who use a bass backing track because they don't have a bassist. And Brendan argues his point beautifully on Twitter because it's very-
Tom: As he always does.
Hayls: So I get it in that sense. To some extent, I can understand why people go to shows and they want to see a performance. But to expect that from bands below stadium and arena [level], bizarre concept.
Tom: But also, if you think about it, the industry has perpetuated that expectation, right? Because that degree of processing that was once reserved for stadium show pop production-style kind of events is so accessible now. Again, I know a friend's band that- so I was talking about what we've always had to structure our setlist in a certain way because of guitar changes, right? Where there's tuning changes. Where their band, they have one guitar, and then they have their quad cortex on stage, and they use the quad cortex's transpose function to just change the note that the guitar is making. So they play everything in drop B, but if they have songs in drop C or drop A, the quad cortex just pitches it up and pitches it down for them.
Hayls: See that’s smart, and that's time-saving.
Tom: Very. I mean, it's something that obviously wouldn't have been capable years ago. They have songs where the tuning changes halfway through the song. And I'm like, I feel a little weird. Personally, obviously, if other bands want to do it, that's totally their prerogative. But I would feel odd about writing something that I'm, as a human being, technically not capable of performing.
Because if you give me an acoustic guitar, I couldn't play the song. I'm relying on a computer to do it for me. And it reminds me of, I went to see Veil of Maya, this would have been fucking 9 or 10 years ago. It would have been quite a while ago. And they played three songs, and then their MacBook died and they were like, "Oh, we can't play the rest of the show." And I was just like, "What do you mean? You've come all the way from America. What do you mean?" And they were just like, "No, the MacBook's dead. Show's over."
Hayls: Yeah. When you're so heavily reliant on a laptop, to that extent, that's a bit embarrassing for you as a touring band. Sit and do that in your studio, yeah, calm, crack on. I'm not going to say my opinion on Veil of Maya - I am going to say my opinion on Veil of Maya, actually, I don't really care. They've got one good song, and it's Mikasa, the rest of them - in the bin.
Tom: That's just completely wrong. Completely wrong. That's the worst take I've ever heard. The “Common Man's Collapse” is one of the best modern metal records of all time. But yeah, their earlier records are insane. They're so good. And even “ID” was really good, the album after “Common Man's Collapse.” Oh, wait, was that the album? No, “Eclipse” was the album after, then “ID” was after that. They're all great records.
Hayls: I tried. Trust me, I tried because I put that take on Twitter and obviously, you've probably seen me get absolutely cooked on Twitter for my opinions most of the time.
Tom: I don't use Twitter.
Hayls: No, no. We never see you.
Tom: I think I've posted once in the last two years.
Hayls: And then we had the band tweet that came back and made that joke that we didn't feel like we could laugh at, but we knew that you were making it. And it felt really, really bad. And it was kind of like, "Have they really just said that?" “Band's not dead, and neither is Tom.”
Tom: Oh right, I mean.
Hayls: Yeah, but that felt like- I get it, it’s an inside, you guys can say things like that. I felt offended reading that.
Tom: I think I'm the only one with a Twitter login for the band. So whenever there's a tweet, it's me.
Hayls: I'm surprised you can get in.
Tom: Oh, yeah, to this one. The other one got stolen by some crypto bro.
Hayls: We're going to move on. What are your top three Casey songs to play live and that have been written?
Tom: To play live, I'm going to go Phosphenes, Haze, and I Was Happy When You Died. I would say that I Was Happy When You Died is probably top three favourite songs all time anyway. So that one is the intersection, Great Grief, and The Funeral.
Hayls: I'm not surprised at one of them.
Tom: One of them, one out of six.
Hayls: I'm not surprised at Phosphenes.
Tom: Okay. Phosphenes is fun. We're playing it on this tour, and we haven't played it in ages.
Hayls: I like that one. Watch, you're going to take it off the fucking setlist now because I said I liked it.
Tom: We've made the show file with all the click tracks. We've got to keep it as it is.
Hayls: Do you want to know my top three Casey songs? Phosphenes, Sanctimonious, Fade.
Tom: Just after the first chorus into, as far as the second chorus in Sanctimonious, is one of my favorite passages on the new record.
Hayls: Well, at least we know we're getting Phosphenes there. That's it. That's all we're getting. And oh, yeah, and Little Bird, even though Tom hates it, but he won't say he does.
Tom: True.
Hayls: Yeah. You're going to retire that song one day. Do you think you will?
Tom: I don't think we can, unless we write a song that's bigger. If we write a song that blew up on TikTok, then maybe.
Hayls: Casey are going to become a TikTok band in 2026.
Tom: I say that there are so many alternative bands that didn't intend to be TikTok bands, right? If you look at Superheaven, have you been to a Superheaven show in the last two years?
Hayls: No.
Tom: It's mental. They will play their entire setlist, the crowd will just be milling around being like, "Oh, yeah, this is great, yeah.” Jumping around, whatever, and then they'll play Youngest Daughter, and it is the loudest thing you've ever heard because it's all just TikTok heads there. They've practically come out of retirement, and now they can tour the world in 2,000-cap venues because of TikTok.
Hayls: I mean, I guess that is a great thing. But again, kind of going back to the other interview that I had, we had that conversation where it was like Doja Cat apparently hates her fans because there'll be people there, exactly like you said, won't know 90% of the setlist, and then they'll know something from just a 30-second clip. And it's like, one, why are you there if you don't know 90% of the songs? That's a waste of money, in my opinion. But that's me. But also, two, it's like you've not even then delved into the rest of this artist that you're going to see.
Tom: I get it. But at the same time, I made this point on stage a few times when we did the Impericon shows the year before last because we were sandwiched- I'm sure that we were between Dying Wish and Nasty or something. No one wanted to watch us. We were by a million mile- it was like Dying Wish, us [Casey], Nasty, August Burns Red, Terror, As I Lay Dying. No one was there to watch us, particularly not us performing the new record. But on a few of the shows where I could tell that people really didn't give a shit, I was like, "I don't care. If you want to go to the bar and get a drink, if you want to stand around and have a chat to your mate, that's your prerogative. We get paid the same way. We're not paid for crowd participation. If you want to sing along, if you want to help out, that's awesome. Go off.” But I'm not going to stand here and throw a hissy about you not enjoying us, particularly on a show like that.
I mean, I'm not going to go to a Casey headline show and be that dickish about it. But we were on a metal festival, and I was like, "I don't know why we were booked either, man. But we were and so we're going to show up, and we're going to play the songs to the best of our abilities and if some of you enjoy it, that's awesome. Cool, we would love to have a chat to you. But if you don't enjoy it, fair enough.”
Hayls: I see in that sense, like you said, those bands at either side of you are absolutely, completely different.
Tom: Particularly in the last quarter of our set where you would just get these jacked, topless German dudes walking into the crowd, ready to just caveman some people to death. I'd be like, "Dude, I know you don't want to listen to Little Bird. We have 40 minutes to fill, and so we're going to play for 40 minutes, and then we're going to leave and then the thing that you want to watch is going to come on, and your day will get better from there. But in the meantime, you're just going to have to deal with it." I've definitely had people come up to me after Casey shows and been like, "Oh, I only knew two songs before coming here, and I enjoyed myself." I'd be like, "That's awesome." But I would never stand on stage and be visibly upset, or I would never get on Twitter and be like, "If you don't know at least 10 songs, don't fucking come to our shows." You want to buy a ticket? Buy a ticket.
Hayls: I'm going to clip and edit that down now so it looks like you are saying that. Tom hates his fans. There's a qualifying period to be able to get into Casey shows, and you have to know 10 songs.
Tom: Yeah. If you don't know the deep cuts, just don't turn up. Yeah. I think as an artist, that's a ridiculous mindset to have. I think that you should just be grateful. I mean, I suppose somebody in Doja Cat's position, there's always going to be more people to take the spots of the fake fans, right? There's always going to be more people that want to go see them. From our perspective, if you've never heard of us, and we just happen to be in a local venue to you, and you just pick up a ticket on the off chance, and you come in, if you know nothing, and you stand there, and you don't nod your head, if you stand there with your arms folded at the back of the room for 45 minutes, awesome.
And I've actively kind of expressed that idea on stage where I'm like, "You should be free to enjoy yourself in whatever way that you see fit, providing it doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of others. You should feel comfortable. If you don't want to flail around and cry and scream and be squished into other people, if you want to just stand right against the back wall and just nod every now and again, sick. That's what you should do. You shouldn't feel obliged to conduct yourself in any particular way because of how others are doing it." Again, I've got nothing against bands that tell the crowd to do stuff and get on the floor, or, "I want to see stage divers and all that," but it's just never been us. We've just never been that band. I would feel uncomfortable trying to instruct people on how to enjoy their night.
Hayls: Could you imagine Casey asking for a circle pit?
Tom: Yeah, yeah. “Circle pit. This one's called Bruise.”
Hayls: You should just do it once and just see how people respond to that.
Tom: I should ask for a wall of death for Bruise, but make people wait two and a half minutes until it drops.
Hayls: Yeah. There you go. The setlist has changed slightly because we're going to be getting a wall of death.
Tom: We have the world's slowest wall of death in the middle.
Hayls: Yeah. Oh, that'd be fucking awesome. I'd get involved if it was a walking one because I'm too old for all this shenanigans now. I am one of those people that stands out to the side with my arms crossed.
Tom: I can't remember when it was. I went to see, I'm sure it was Lorna Shore in The Fleece in Bristol. Hang on. I'm going to have to look up when this was- It was 2022, and I can't even remember why I brought that up.
Hayls: No, why did-
Tom: What was I saying before that? Oh, it was the first show I've been to in eight- it would have been the first show I've been to post-COVID. There we go. Ages since I've been to a show, and I went and watched all the bands. It was them- I'm sure it was them, Distant and Cabal, maybe one other. It was the first time that I'd stood still for three and a half hours in almost four years, and I just felt awful from standing for that long because I'm so old. My leg and my back and I was just like, "Oh, my God. I can't believe that I used to just go to shows and stand there for hours at a time, and my body would just be fine with it."
Hayls: I hate that as well. But if I was to get involved, I know I'd hurt even more.
Tom: Yeah, I feel worse.
Hayls: I would 100% cause an injury to myself, not to anyone else because I'm dinky, and I'm not doing no damage. My first show back after seven years of not going to shows was 2024. It was Bring Me [The Horizon], Bad Omens, Static Dress.
Tom: That's an arena, though.
Hayls: Yeah, it was an arena, but you still got to stand there. I still got to stand.
Tom: That’s not a real show.
Hayls: Oh, don't start. You sound like the people that are like, "Oh, Hayls, you’ve got to go to local shows more often." But yeah, so that was my first one back after seven years, my previous one being in 2017, and that was Logic. And I remember, so it went, oh, Cassyette. That was it. It was Cassyette, Static Dress, Bad Omens, then Bring Me. And by the time Cassyette was finished, I was like, "I need to sit. I need to sit down." But I'm like four rows from the front. I can't sit down. I don't get seating. I'll stand. But I'm going to whinge about it.
Tom: I do. Wherever possible, I will buy a seated ticket.
Hayls: No, no. See, I'm one of those who's going to buy a stand- I will always get standing. I don't care. I don't want seated. But I'm going to whinge about it the whole time. By the time Cassyette was finished, so obviously, what's that, half an hour after doors, I was stood pulling my legs up into a weird- I looked like a contortionist. I was like, "No, I don't know if I can do this." But I was like, "Oh, my fucking God. How did I used to do this?" And then I did a three-day run back in November, I had a show on the Monday, the Tuesday, and then the Wednesday.
Tom: Because for the last six months, I've gotten into running, I thought that you literally just meant that you were doing an ultramarathon.
Hayls: Oh, I was running?!
Tom: You'd been running for three days. And I was like, "Holy shit. That's impressive."
—
Hayls: Do you know what I don't like?
Tom: What?
Hayls: I'll tell you what I don't like. You use big words - words that I don't know what they mean.
Tom: You should be thanking me for that.
Hayls: No. What? Do you think I'm sat there pausing the song every time you say a word I don't know, and I'm pulling up Google like, "What's this mean?"
Tom: Why not?
Hayls: Do you think I'm doing? No, I don't do that.
Tom: Educate yourself. On the second record, I can't remember which single it was that we released, but somebody commented on one of the videos, and they were just like, "Why do you use such long words?" Similar to the sentiment you just expressed where it's like, "Oh, I would love your band if you didn't use such long words." And I was just like, "Pick up a dictionary, brother."
Hayls: That's not what I said.
Tom: You go everywhere with an incredibly powerful computer in your pocket. Just take it out and look the word up.
Hayls: I think the reason why I don't look up actual definitions of words is because in context, you can tell. You can tell what that means.
Tom: Sometimes.
Hayls: Well, no, all the time because if it wasn't contextual, then you would have been using the wrong word, no?
Tom: Let's quiz you then. If that's the case, second verse of The Funeral, I say, "Hesitant, I acquiesce to the softest embrace of your bed." What does acquiesce mean in that context?
Hayls: Okay, well, then out of that context, and you got to take the hesitant at the beginning. That's not a good word. Embrace is a good word. So you fucked me there. Next question.
Tom: See, look it up.
Hayls: Wait, say it again.
Tom: I say, "Hesitant, I acquiesce to the softest embrace of your bed."
Hayls: I feel like you're reading smut to me right now.
Tom: That is probably as close as I've gotten to baddiecore.
Hayls: Is it you basically saying you don't want to get into bed with someone? I don't know what acquiesce means, though. I can't figure that out because you've got a negative and then a positive, and that's throwing me.
Tom: To a degree, acquiesce, a synonym of acquiesce would be to submit to something.
Hayls: Yeah. Okay, so I was right. So basically, you just didn't want to get in someone's bed because they didn't have Sleep Token bedding.
Tom: Yeah. That's what the line of the song is. Yeah.
Hayls: Yeah. See, honestly, I can decipher lyrics like it's no one's business.
Tom: Honestly, I think if I showed up at someone's house, if I'd gone on a date with someone, I'd got back to their house, and they had Sleep Token bedding, I probably would not go there. I think I would sleep on the sofa or something.
Hayls: Oh, you'd still stay there, though.
Tom: I mean, that's contextual, isn't it? If I could reasonably get back to my own house, I would go back to my own house.
Hayls: Yeah. Right let's go back to you then, I suppose, you and your band.
Tom: If we must.
Hayls: Okay. So you guys have been going since 2014, '15. How do you always find something new to write about?
Tom: I would say tonally, it's similar throughout, but thematically, it's varied a little in the sense of so the first record [Love Is Not Enough] was obviously all about various forms of relationships and different types of love and how that changes your view of the world and self-perception and various obligations and things and how it's occasionally illustrated as a coverall solution to problems that are actually far more nuanced than that. And that's what the first record was about.
And then the second record [Where I Go When I Am Sleeping], a lot of it was about my various medical endeavors over time and a feeling of hopelessness and kind of helplessness around wanting to look after yourself and better yourself but being held back by things that were outside of your control.
And then the new record [How To Disappear] was about an existential crisis that I had during COVID, basically, where there's a poem by a 20th-century Russian author called Yevgeny Yevtushenko. So the original poem was in Russian, and it has been translated in various ways. It's called “People.” The general consensus is the idea that as you live your life and as you experience the world, you basically gather up all of that stimulus that exists on a world that lives inside of you and that when you die, this world dies with you, and it takes with you all of the experiences you had. But in contrast, you exist in other people's worlds. And yeah, you exist in whatever form that you have interacted with the world. You exist in the worlds of everybody you've ever met in various degrees. Some people, it's just going to be a passing glance and other people, it's going to be a significant impact you've had and so on and so forth.
And I had this mad existential crisis where I was like, there are going to be people that exist whose only experience of me is through the music that I've written -and by that definition- hold me within this world that they hold within themselves as this just severely depressed, miserable bastard who does nothing but complain. And the idea that I would die and have people who live beyond me who hold this opinion of me just haunted me for two or three months. I was really tearing myself up over it because I was like, that's such a depressing thing to think about, and I just could not get away from it. And it made me reevaluate the relationship that I had with anyone that I'd ever met, all the people that I've ever met that have now died, how I think about them and the memories that I'd held onto and kind of what parts of them had survived their passing and so on and so forth. And that's what the majority of the new record is about.
And so I think that tonally, it's all relatively bleak stuff. Thematically, it's not like, I'm not writing “Love Is Not Enough” one, two, and three. It shifts and I think that that just comes with life experience. “Love Is Not Enough” I wrote when I was early 20s, and I was a much more volatile person and emotionally, particularly a much less kind of stoic person and that record was then just the product of that frustration and that emotional turmoil. And then once I'd written that record and got all that out, it came time to write the second record.
And it just so happened that at that period of my life, I was going through a lot medically, and it made me reflect on all of the other medical struggles that I've had because I've been ill chronically in various forms since I was a kid. And so I've had a lot of medical experience that a lot of people wouldn't have necessarily and it's kind of given me that feeling of it doesn't really matter how I try and look after myself, something bad is always just going to happen. And I was like, “I think that makes for interesting subject matter, I'm going to explore that further on the record.”
And then with the new one, like I said, it just so happened that we took a break, and in that break, I had a fucking meltdown. I'm just going to have a write about that. We've been doing it for over a decade, and it just so happens that in that decade, shit's happened.
“It just so happened that we took a break, and in that break, I had a fucking meltdown.”
This is why, coming back to your point about my three favourite Casey songs for live and just in terms of writing, the reason that Great Grief is one of my favourite, my top three written songs is that when we came back from the hiatus, the way that it came about, Liam texted me, and he was like, "Hey, man, could you listen to this demo?" And I was like, "Sure, why not?" And I listened to it and within about 15 seconds of listening to it, I was like, "This is a Casey song," because he'd been writing and posting stuff to his Instagram and whatever in various styles. He'd been writing stuff that was more grunge forward in that kind of Superheaven vein and other stuff that was a little bit heavier and whatnot.
But I sat there and listened to this demo, and I was like, "This is written with the intent of being a Casey song." And I just knew it as soon as I started listening to it. So I texted him back, and I was like, "Are you asking me to listen to this for critique, or is this an invitation, or- what are you expecting back from me here?" And then he responded and said, "Oh, well, actually, yeah, I didn't write that myself. That was me, Toby, Adam, and Max [Nicolai]." And I was like, "So what are we saying here?" And he was like, "Oh, well, would you want to sing on it?" And I was like, "Are we making a new band, or is this as Casey?" And he's like, "Oh, it'll be as Casey." And that's how the reunion, that's how it kind of started happening.
My initial thought was it was like, "Oh, I don't know whether I want to do it again, and I want to have a think about it." And then when we went back and forth with each other a little bit, and I was like, "Oh, actually, it would be nice to do it again and write some more stuff." And then the realisation hit me that, "Oh, my God, I've got to write another song." And I hadn't done it for three or four years, and I was like, "Oh, my God, what if I've just got nothing to talk about? I'm out of practice. What if I try and write it, and it's just shit?" And I had writer's block for probably two or three weeks where I would go back and listen to it, and I just could not get anything going at all. And this feeling of imposter syndrome just kept building and building and building where I was like, "Oh, my God, the rest of the guys have put so much time into this, and it sounds so beautiful, and it's the perfect canvas to come back with, and I'm just going to fuck it. It's just going to sound dog eggs." And then eventually, I can't even remember how.
So I have a habit where I don't typically start writing a song at the start. What I'll typically do is write from- I'll start somewhere in the middle and expand outwards in both directions. I'll arrive at a statement of some description and then think, "How do I want to arrive at this statement? And then where do I want to go from this statement?" I think the first line that I wrote for Great Grief was the pre-chorus where it's, "After all, don't I deserve to be happy too?" I wrote that line. I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's great. So what's the setup to that? How do I get to that point?" And I was like, "Well, to get to that point, I need to address this idea that in the closing statement of the band, I'd obviously said that I don't feel the same way about our music anymore. I don't feel the same way about performing it anymore. It's going to feel really weird to come back and just ignore that. So I need to address it." I was like, "Cool. So I can use the first verse. I can address that and acknowledge this idea that, yes, I know that I'm dipping myself back into this world that I said that I wasn't comfortable being in anymore and so on and so forth." As soon as I kind of wrapped my head around it, I wrote it in 35 minutes. I just sat down and just wrote the whole thing. I've always been that way where I won't write stuff for ages and ages and ages. And then as soon as an idea really clicks, as soon as I really believe in an idea or as soon as I think that idea is really good, I can just go forever. So, “Where I Go When I'm Sleeping” I wrote the whole record in a night.
Hayls: Really?
Tom: We were in Mono Valley Studio in Monmouth. We'd flown a producer by the name of Brad Wood over. He does Touché Amoré, and he's done, Say Anything, and he does a bunch of stuff. He does a lot of Sony Atmos stuff now, so he does a lot of classic, The Temptations and a bunch of other stuff. But he does Veruca Salt, and he's done The Smashing Pumpkins, and he's done so many cool records, and he's a really, really nice guy, very, very interesting. He flew over from California to do this record with us, and we got there, we had 15 days at Mono Valley. One day was supposed to be pre-production to just get everything set up, and then we had 14 recording days. And on the pre-production day, we got everything set up and ready in the live room, and Brad sat down on a stool, and he was like, "Right, we're not going to use a metronome for any of these songs. I want you guys to just play them as you would naturally. I'm going to make notes on tempos on a sheet, and then we're going to use the natural tempos to record everything." Little did Brad know that we'd only wrote two and a half songs. Started playing, and we got to it might have been Phosphenes and Fluorescents that we'd written, and we played through those two, and then we started playing the part of the other one that we had written, whichever one that was, and then we sort of petered it out halfway through, and Brad was like, "Oh, is something wrong? What's going on?" And we were like, "No, that's it."
Hayls: Yeah, “That's all we got.”
Tom: Yeah and I didn't sing over either those songs either because I hadn't written any lyrics to them. Brad was obviously confused and said, "What do you mean that's it?" And we explained. We're like, "Oh, well, we've got the rest of it in ideas, and we know what we want to do with the rest of the record - we've got bits and pieces of all the other songs written - but those two are the only two complete finished songs." And he was furious. He was so annoyed. And he was like, "I've just flown 13 hours to be here, and you are going to just waste my time." And he was like, "I'm going to go to the pub. I'm going to get a drink, and I'm going to have some lunch. And by the time I come back, I need you to demonstrate to me that you are capable of writing music that's worth recording in this environment, because if you can't, I'm going to book myself a flight home."
Hayls: Oh, my goodness.
Tom: And we were just like.
Hayls: “Oh, shit. That's us told.”
Tom: And he went out, and he came back, and we'd finished the half of the song, and we'd started putting together a fourth song. And he was like, "Right, okay, if we're going to do this, the next two weeks, recording starts at 10:00 AM. It finishes at 6:00 PM and outside of those hours, all of you need to be in this room finishing this record." He's like, "Tomorrow we're going to come in." He said, "The rest of the day today, you're going to finish off another one or two songs. Tomorrow we're going to record four songs on drums. You've then got tomorrow night to do the rest of the songs." He said, "The minute that you run out of things to record because they're not finished, it's over." Obviously, we finished the record. We did it.
The whole time, every day, he would come into the lounge room, and I would just be on the sofa in my pajamas playing Half-Life 2 on the Xbox 360. Every day, he would come in and be like, "You written the record yet?" And I would just be like, "No." And he'd say, "Are you going to write it today?" And I'd just be like, "No, not at the minute." And he'd just be like, "So when are you going to do it then?" And I'd be like, "Oh, as soon as it's all finished." And I kept saying, "I know what I want to write about. I know what the record's going to be about. As soon as it's finished, I'll write the record." And he was like, "Allright, man." At this point, he was sort of just like, "I'm going to leave these guys to it." I think he was sort of giving us enough rope to hang ourselves. He was just like, "I'm going to let you guys coast on this complacency almost until the point that you can't coast anymore, and then I'm going to pull all of this out from underneath you."
It got to the evening of I want to say it was the evening of day 10. Brad came into the lounge, and I was sat in the lounge, and I was watching fucking Eurovision or something. And he was like, "Right, we've got half a song worth of lead guitar left to do, and then all the music is done. So tomorrow afternoon, I want to start preparing mics, getting tones together for vocals, and then tomorrow afternoon, we're going to start recording vocal. When are you going to write this record?" And I was like, "Oh, if you just go and bounce all the MP3s for me and email them to me, I'll write it tonight." And he was just like, "Whatever."
Hayls: “Yeah, whatever, mate. Yeah, sure you are.”
Tom: Yeah, literally. He was just like, "I don't believe you." And the following morning, came down, 10 o'clock, slapped a bunch of paper on the desk, and I'd written the whole thing.
Hayls: And did any of it change? No, that was it.
Tom: That was it. And he sat there, and he read through it, and he was just like, "Fuck off." He was just like, "There's no way that you wrote this last night." And I was like, "Well, the songs weren't even finished fucking a week ago, so there's no way I could have written it a week ago." And he was just like, "You're such a piece of shit. There's no way." And then we recorded the record and did all the vocal. And then the last song that we recorded was Wound. Obviously, at the end of it, there's the fade out and then the spoken word bit, but there wasn't spoken word originally, I hadn't written that bit. And then Brad was like, "Record can't finish like that. I can't finish on that instrumental, it's not strong enough. It needs something else to go with it. Tom, what are you going to do?" And I was like, "Oh, go make a cup of tea, and I'll have a think." And he was like, "Alright, fine." He left the control room, 15 minutes, maybe, and then came back, and I'd written the spoken word and just did it in one shot. He's just like, "You're such an asshole."
Hayls: You're his worst nightmare.
Tom: He came back in. Once we'd finished, we all sat in the control room because he was taking it back to California to mix it. He was just recording it here, but he did some preliminary tweaking to make it sound like a record. And we sat in the live room or sat in the control room, and we listened through it on the console speakers, and we were all really happy with it. And he turned around, and he was like, "I've recorded so many albums." And he was like, "And I've recorded punk albums where it's the same three chords over and over, and there might be six or seven lines of lyrics that are just repeated, and the songs are only two minutes long, and even that has been rushed in two weeks. So the fact that you've come in here without being prepared, without having any of this stuff written, and you've pulled this off is unbelievable, and I hated it."
Hayls: He's so valid for that. I'm on his side.
Tom: I get it as well.
Hayls: Especially like you said, he flew from California.
Tom: I think it was that he was stressed on our behalf because we weren't stressed is the problem. We were so assured of the idea that we will just get this done. And so all of us were just very nonchalant, just having lunch with each other and having a laugh and stuff.
Hayls: Playing Half-life.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. “These guys are morons. There is no way they do not understand how in over their heads they are.” And then we got it done, and he was just like, "I hated every-" Literally, at the end of it, he was like, when he sent us the record, I'm sure there's probably an email somewhere from him where he was like, "I love this album. I think you've done an incredible job, and I will never work with you again."
Hayls: That's fucking awesome.
Tom: When we went to Los Angeles on the Holding Absence tour, he came to the show, and it was the first time that we'd seen him since recording the record. And we got to hang out with him for the afternoon and catch up and stuff, and it was really, really lovely. But yeah, I don't blame him.
Hayls: That's just stressful, like you said, stressed for you. But hey, you literally answered a question that I was going to ask, like, what is your writing process? But clearly, it's just fucking chaos.
Tom: I mean, to be fair, with whatever we do next- [shows lyrical prompts on phone notes app] -so whatever we do next, I have actually written.
Hayls: Oh, you are prepared for the next one.
Tom: None of that is attached to music. That is just me.
Hayls: Brainstorming.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, feathering out ideas, getting an idea of what I want to write about.
Hayls: So does it come from, obviously, like you said, the three albums, they've been focused around major, major things that have happened in your life and how that's shaped you as a person and your perspective on things? So is that how you pull up your topics? Is it you'll have a mini meltdown one day and then just open the notes app and be like, "Yeah, I'm going to write about this"?
Tom: I make a habit of not writing about things as they're happening. So the new record, for example, none of that - I didn't think about that musically as I was happening. I wasn't having a crisis thinking, "Oh, my God, this will make a great song one day." I was just having a fucking, I was just having a mare. And it wasn't until after the fact that I was like, "How did I feel about that, and how has that impacted me as a person? And how would I explain that situation to someone else?"
So Unique Lights sort of sets up the theme of the rest of the album, where it's this idea of what parts of me are going to survive beyond my obituary? What are people going to hold on to after I'm dead? How are you going to remember me? Should I even give a shit because I'm going to be dead anyway? So who gives a fuck what people think? Those are the major thematic points of the rest of the record or the strings that tie everything together. And then the rest of the record is discussing the people that I've known who have died or this idea that Sanctimonious, for example, is actually based on a love letter from it's another author that I can never remember the name of off the top of my head, but they wrote it from Achilles to other ancient Greek named woman. It's the idea that even if I were to die, I'll find you in the next lifetime. Nothing will keep us apart. Even death will not keep us separated. That kind of idea. And so that's another piece of this whole, well, once I've transcended the barrier of death, this is what I'm going to do with my next life.
Those That I'm Survived By is this idea that if I don't get to say everything that I want to say throughout the course of if I don't tell all of my mates that I love them enough and if they don't know how I feel about them, Those That I'm Survived By was intended to serve as I need you all to know that I do love you a lot, I just don't get to say it very often. And then How to Disappear, the title track is about how do I kill myself without disappointing everyone I've ever known? How do I get out of this with a good death? How do I die and not have people be upset or disappointed? Because it calls back to I Was Happy When You Died, which is about my nan.
So my nan was my first intimate experience of death in the sense that she was my first close family member that died in my lifetime. And I was probably eight or nine, something like that. I remember still being in primary school. I've got a lot of cousins on that side of the family, it's a very big extended family on that side. A lot of us are within quite a tight age dispersion, within sort of three or four years, either side of me, I probably got 15, 20 cousins.
So what ended up happening was that all of the parents on that side of the family, so all of my nan's sons and daughters, basically decided amongst themselves that they weren't going to tell any of the younger kids immediately because this is obviously pre-smartphone, right? This is pre-social media. I saw my nan maybe once a fortnight, and if I didn't speak to her in between the times of seeing her, that was completely normal. I would talk to her on the phone very rarely, but more often than not, I would see her if I went to her house or she came to our house for Sunday lunch.
They all decided, "Oh, we're not going to tell the kids immediately. We're going to do our grieving in private. We're going to make all the arrangements necessary for the funeral and stuff in private." And what they ended up doing was that they threw a- party's probably not the accurate term for it, but a gathering. They got all the kids together. They got a bunch of my nan's friends together, all extended relatives and stuff, and they delivered the news to everybody in one go to let all the younger kids know that she died. But the prevailing theme of the event was that she's died, but here are all these people that loved her very much, and they're going to all tell you these amazing stories about her, how they knew her and the experiences that they had in their lives. And they'd gather together objects of sentimental value that had stories behind them and stuff. And so it was this idea that, yes, she's gone, but we want you all to remember her in this positive light through these positive stories and stuff. And it felt like such a natural way to find out that someone had died as a child, making sense of it, because obviously there's this immediate, "Oh, I'm never going to see her again. Oh, but she's had such a positive impact on the world, and everyone clearly loved her, and she made people's lives better and stuff. And that's how I'm going to remember her for the rest of my life."
And it wasn't until I was in comp that one of my friends' relatives had died, and they came into school after finding out that they'd had a day or two off or whatever to grieve. And they came in, and they were like, "Oh, sorry, I haven't been in boys' my granddad's died." And my immediate question was, "Oh, when's the party?" And they were just like, "What the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean?" And I was like, "Oh, the party where they get everyone together and they tell you all the nice stuff about them and share all the stories and show you all the cool stuff that they owned." And they were just like, "That's not a thing." And that's when I learned that that isn't a normal thing.
I Was Happy When You Died is written about that party. It's this idea that the chorus even is like, "We've got to ask if could you feel it as you left? Cause there was laughter from another room, a warmth imbued in everyone you knew.” as you were when you died. She died in hospital. This idea that immediately after your death, we weren't all depressed and grieving. Obviously, knowing now as an adult, the adults had done that bit. My mum and her brothers and sisters had done that part in private. But this idea that after you died, we all gathered and we all had a good laugh about your life, and we all shared stories and we were all happy. And it's this idea that, did that follow you into the next life or whatever? That was then this part of the record where I'm talking about how do I achieve that? How do I die and have people react in that way about my life? But also, how does it change if I want to kill myself? And yeah, it's all a bit fucked, but.
Hayls: That's interesting because I genuinely didn't know that that's what that song was about. I thought it was a really horrible way of saying I was genuinely happy when someone died.
Tom: I wanted to call the record that, but the boys were like, "We can't call the record that."
Hayls: What? No, you could have done.
Tom: We could have.
Hayls: You could have.
Tom: I was like, "It makes for great clickbait."
Hayls: You'd expect a proper angsty, hate-fueled record from that, and it's not. It's just really, really sad, boy.
Tom: My first port of call, whenever I listen to a record, I'll always- so I have Tidal up conveniently. The last album that I think I listened to front to back for the first time was probably “Flesh Stays Together” by Dying Wish. And as I listen to it, I literally just pull the genius page out, and I will sit there and I will just read through the record as it's happening and try and piece together what they're talking about.
Hayls: See, no, that comes later for me. On a first listen, it's just a first listen. I'll just listen as it is and hear the sounds and stuff like that. And then, because I might not be interested in the record from the first listen. So why am I going to spend time and energy and brain cells learning what it's about? I might not fuck with it when I'm finished.
Tom: I'm the other way around, where if I'm not interested in what you're saying, it doesn't matter how you say it. But I don't necessarily- I don't need every record to be a lyrical masterpiece that's pondering the depths of human existence and that kind of stuff. I want it to be more than something superficial. I want it to have some human element to it, some human experience to it.
Hayls: Language is interesting. I do like people who can use big words. And obviously, like I said, I'll usually take it in context, and I can be like, "Well, I can kind of figure out what that means."
Tom: When I really, really gravitate towards an artist, it's normally for one of two reasons. It's normally either that they can express a very, very simple term or a very, very simple sentiment or feeling or whatever in very complex language, or it goes the other way where they take a very, very complex idea and they're capable of breaking it down into very, very simple terms. Those are the two extremes that I tend to gravitate towards. So for example, someone from the first camp would be Aaron Weiss from Me Without You, where his songs read like thesis, the most language-dense, reference-filled transcripts you've ever read. And then on the other end of that spectrum is someone like, there's an Australian band called Middle Kids, and I can never remember their singer's name, but she's really, really good at breaking down what amount to quite complex feelings or situations that are fairly everyday, but just breaking them down in very simple, eloquent language. And I admire people that- because I can't do that, I can't break down- I could never take what I wrote about on How To Disappear and put it into a pop song, for example. It just wouldn't work because it wouldn't come across the way that I feel it needed to, even though there definitely are simpler ways of saying the things that I said.
Hayls: I'll tell you who I think's a really good lyricist is Jack Murray from 156/Silence.
Tom: I listened to them for probably the first time yesterday, I think. It came on after I was listening to “A Heart Is a Heavy Burden” by Heavensgate. That EP is incredible.
Hayls: That is a great EP. But yeah, no, Jack Murray is a great, great lyricist. It's kind of like you. Some of the words that this man puts into lyrics, I'm like, "I ain't got a fucking scoob what that means." But contextually, I can figure out what he's trying to say. But then also, like you were just saying there, someone who can take something that's so, so simple but then kind of complicate it, but in a good way. Jack's really, really good at that. And yeah, no, you should listen to more 156.
Hayls: Someone wanted you to rank the Funeral for a Friend albums. Go from worst - I know that's a really bad way of saying it, but go from least favourite to best.
Tom: They're going to go in, I guess, just reverse chronological order. “Chapter and Verse” and “Conduit” I never really listened to. I listened to them when they came out, but I never went back to them. And then “Welcome Home Armageddon” I enjoyed a bit, and then “Memory and Humanity,” I enjoyed. Oh, I suppose those two I would switch around. So it would probably go “Chapter and Verse,” “Conduit” would be at the bottom by default just because I don't remember much of them and I never went back to them. Then it would be “Memory and Humanity,” “Welcome Home Armageddon,” “Tales Don't Tell Themselves,” “Hours,” “Casually Dressed.” I don't have any spicy takes. What I will say is that my mum owned “Tales Don't Tell Themselves” on CD. She went out of her own way to buy it. She's bought more of their music than she's bought of my music.
Hayls: Maybe you should start channeling your inner Funeral for a Friend.
Tom: We'll never write a record as good as theirs, but.
Hayls: I was going to ask that earlier. Do you ever think that you'd write a happier record?
Tom: I can't do it. Can you think of any good, happy post-hardcore albums?
Hayls: Oh, fuck.
Tom: I can think of what I would describe as hopeful post-hardcore records. If you think of Stick to Your Guns earlier records and stuff, they're trying to inspire people, but I don't think that it's necessarily happy. A lot of it is like, “Yes, the world is shit and people are horrible to each other, but you can be the difference that you want to see.” That's the kind of attitude that a lot of them take. None of it's like, “Oh, my life is great. I'm having an awesome time. I love this.”
Hayls: Fuck it. That's a question to everyone now. Give me a happy post-hardcore record.
Tom: I don't think you're going to do it because I don't think I've ever listened to one. If you can think of any happy anything at that end of the genre spectrum, any metalcore, post-hardcore, screamo, emo, any of that stuff, I don't think that they’re two things that go hand in hand.
Hayls: Oh my God. Now I've got to think of a happy album. Does it have to be an entire record, or can it just have some happy songs?
Tom: I would say a record.
Hayls: Oh, fuck.
Tom: I don't think there are that many.
Hayls: No one wants to talk about the good shit. What's going on?
Tom: Yeah, it doesn't make for compelling listening, particularly unless you're listening to it- the closest that I think that you're going to come is Bilmuri. That's the line between alternative music and positivity, I think. But a lot of it is just like, I don't want to listen to some dude telling me that his life is great.
Hayls: No, actually, no, I get that. But I want to listen to that.
Tom: Good for you, brother.
Hayls: Yeah, there's probably only 11 months out of the year that I can listen to this. No, there's one month out of the year that I can listen to this. The other 11 months, I'm going to-
Tom: I don't want to hear it.
Hayls: Yeah, fuck off with your positivity.
Tom: I might have just thought of one, actually. Maybe “Flip Phone Fantasy” by Ocean Grove.
Hayls: They're talking about happy things. Okay, I might have to go and listen to that and see if the theory is true, is that, well, it's not compelling, so I'm not going to like it. My other sad boy record is- well records is anything by Too Close to Touch. That's my favourite band in the world.
Tom: I like that band.
Hayls: That is my favourite band in the world. I couldn't tell you- because I have a miserable fucking time listening to them because all I want to do is start crying. And also some of Scary Kids Scaring Kids old stuff.
Tom: Really? That's a fucking throwback.
Hayls: Yeah, off the white album. Was it fucking called again?
Tom: It's self-titled. I really liked the record before that. That was like.
Hayls: Oh, what's that one look like again?
Tom: It's two people holding hands. It's called “The City Sleeps in Flames” it's just like a city that's on fire with two people holding hands. But it had a song called The Holy Medicine, and it was like that Taste of Ink by The Used, early Funeral for a Friend, Hawthorne Heights, all of that kind of stuff was coming out at about the same time, and that really shifted the direction of the music that I was listening to at the time. That Scary Kids Scaring Kids record would have came out the same year that I went to see Funeral [for a Friend] for the first time, and that was my first alternative concert.
Hayls: We're going to do a generalised question, and then I'm going to let you go, old boy.
Tom: Go on then.
Hayls: Right. It's probably a tricky one because no one seems to be able to answer this straight away. But what is one album, any genre, any year that everyone needs to listen to at least once?
Tom: “On Letting Go” by Circa Survive.
Hayls: That's a brilliant one. I'm so glad that you answered that quickly.
Tom: Oh, I want to change my answer, but I won't.
Hayls: No, no, no. If you want to change it, change it. No, no, no. Go on.
Tom: I mean, I could give you 10 albums that people I think people.
Hayls: Okay, give me three. There you go. Give me three.
Tom: Okay, “On Letting Go” by Circa Survive is definitely there, “Monolith” by Sights and Sounds, I think, is definitely there. I'm going to give you five. The “Self-Titled” by This Will Destroy You, “Dust Jacket” by a guy called Joel Preston West, and I'll be very selective about this last one otherwise I'm going to change it and give you 10.
Do you know what? I'm going to throw a controversial one out here, but it's going to be “Emotion” by Carly Rae Jepsen.
Hayls: Oh, no. What the fuck? Okay.
Tom: I'm going to stick to it.
Hayls: Okay. You doubled down on the Carly Rae Jepsen.
Tom: It is just the best, I would say, arguably one of the best pop albums ever made, and I think it's criminally underrated.
Hayls: What? I will check out the others, but I'm not listening to Carly Rae Jepsen.
Tom: No, do you know why I think you should,right? And I can articulate this. It just perfectly rides the line between being positive pop without being super cheesy. It's very, very good, feel-good pop music, but you don't feel shitty listening to it.
Hayls: Right, Tom. I'll see you in March.
Tom: You will see me in March.
Hayls: I'll see you in March.
Tom: Can't wait to blank you in person.
Hayls: Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to do anyway. I was just going to be like, “Actually, I don't know who I'm here for. I just stumbled upon this venue.”
Tom: Yeah, stumbled from Scotland.
Hayls: Yes, I fucking bum-shuffled down the M6, and somehow I've ended up here. It's been fun. Thanks for doing this.
Tom: You're more than welcome.
Hayls: I'll see you later.
Tom: Ta-ta.