Kerrang - March 12, 2016

ACTUALLY HAPPY,
EVER AFTER
WITH LOADS MORE KILLER BANDS BEING ANNOUNCED TO
PLAY SLAM DUNK, WE CALLED UP AS IT IS FRONTMAN PATTY
WALTERS FOR A HIGH-KICKING CATCH UP…
WORDS: AMIT SHARMA PHOTO: GETTY
ONLYTWO-AND-A-HALF months
to go ’til Slam Dunk Festival and they’ve
just announced even more bands!We
can exclusively reveal that As It Is,
Young Guns, coldrain, Trash Boat, WSTR,
King Prawn, [spunge], Heart Of A Coward,
Astroid Boys, The One Hundred and The
Qemists will be joining the line-up. With As It Is
gearing up to write the follow-up to 2015’s Never
Happy, Ever After, we caught up with frontman Patty
Walters to ask how happy he is to be playing Slam Dunk,
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ALRIGHT, PATTY! WHAT ARE YOUR
FAVOURITE MEMORIES FROM SLAM DUNK?
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living, breathing fans of Slam Dunk – we love it! And
the bands that play it, they are the ones that inspired
us to play this kind of music!”
ARE THERE ANY OTHER BANDS YOU’RE
LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING?
“I am soI\GMXIHXSWII8LI7XEVXMRK0MRI&IWX3J
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Playing a festival with them, let alone sharing a stage
with them, is an honour beyond my wildest dreams.
Something I never expected I’d be able to say. I’ll be
watching their set all three days!”
LOOKING BACK ON THE NEVER HAPPY,
EVER AFTER CYCLE, WHAT’S BEEN YOUR
BEST MOMENT SINCE IT CAME OUT?
“So much has happened since then!We released the
album, went on Warped Tour – which was a huge
milestone for us, as a UK pop-punk band to do the
entire tour. It was fantastic to meet all the bands
we looked up to and now call them friends, as well
as people you wouldn’t expect at all. It was a huge
opportunity for us, we’re really privileged to have
done it and hope to do it again in the future!”
“WE’RE LIVING,
BREATHING
FANS OF
SLAM DUNK!”
PATTY WALTERS
AND WHAT’S NEXT FOR AS IT IS?
“We just did a music video for our new single,
Winter’s Weather, which is a bonus track on the
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wrote that song as a closing chapter for that
album, to summarise what it was about and the
things that mattered. Now we’ve just hit the road
with Sleeping With Sirens, which has been exciting.
Then for the n
coming month
be writing albu
number two, and
already made some progress in creating it.We a
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we won’t write the same record again.We’re going
to write about things that are much more personal
and honest, and I’d like to think that record was
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really gonna push ourselves to make something
that we can be proud of at the end of the day.”
AND – DO TELL – WHAT IS IT SOUNDING
LIKE? IS IT ANGRIER, HAPPIER…?
“We’ve been talking a lot about the progression
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Jacket and the self-titled album, and how much we
loved the maturity and growth in songwriting in
between those two albums. Most especially, how
much darker the band got. And it’s very possible that
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poppy songs on that record, but they all have this
sinister, dark twist to them. So, it’s very possible for
us to make a darker album, though kinda hard to say
at this point. From the little we’ve done so far, I’m
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For full Slam Dunk details
see the Gig Guide
08 KERRANG!