What better way to spend a weekend afternoon than by checking out a new band? North-eastern noise merchants Ruled By Raptors are today’s targets…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We’re all from just outside of Newcastle (Blyth, Ashington and Bedlington).
How did you meet?
Nick randomly turned up to Chris’ rehearsal rooms for a practice that hadn’t been booked in. Matt answered a musician wanted ad having been a fan of the previous band we were involved with Digits but we’ve known Matt for a few years now. Chris and Will have known each other longer as Chris is engaged to Will’s sister.
How long have you been playing as a band?
Three years in total, we spent 2 years as Digits and have been working on Ruled by Raptors material for a little over a year.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
We spent 6 hours throwing names at the wall and seeing what stuck, but more importantly something that was memorable and not already taken. Will blurted it out as a bit of a laugh and it stuck.
What are your influences?
God don’t get us started! We could go on forever here, but I suppose Biffy Clyro, Rueben and Jamie Lenman, Deftones, At The Drive In, Brand New, Glassjaw, Hundred Reasons to name but a few.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We’re like every other band but with dinosaurs! But seriously, we aren’t afraid to try something new, and we aren’t afraid to stick an oddball song in there if we think it works. We don’t like to box our sound in at all.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
We try to cover a broad range of topics that are drawn from events going on around us at the time. This EP is quite political but does also have songs written about people we know and the internal struggles that come with age.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
Live shows are a mixture of Chris ducking and dodging Nick and Matt’s guitars trying not to fall into something expensive on stage, Matt inevitably invades the crowd and Nick has a habit of falling off something high, mainly the stage. Very few as Ruled by Raptors but collectively we’ve played countless gigs having over a decade of gigging under our belts each.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Hands downs the wildest thing we’ve seen was at a gig we played in Paisley, a crowd of 40 people and 10 of them started to crowd surf in one of the smaller venues we’ve played.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
We will be doing an in depth rig run down soon over on our YouTube channel. But in short we use Fender guitars, Fender/Orange and Mesa Boogie amps, Stingray bass guitar, Peavy bass amp and Tama drums and Meinl cymbals. But really if it sounds good we use it!
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
Have you met our lord and saviour Fireball Whiskey? (Fireball helped us out and sent us a load of cool swag and booze, cheers fellas!)
But in all seriousness we’re promoting our new EP Ouroboros which is coming out very soon.
What are your plans for 2019?
We have our tour supporting MC Lars throughout March and April, but we will be back out later in the year touring and in the studio recording our next EP so watch this space.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
We would love to support Enter Shikari, they’re stage show is fantastic and the experience for us would be amazing! And we would love to have our friends in Kkett to open for us, they’re all fantastic people and the music they make is incredible.
We have the premiere of Ruled By Raptors’ new video coming your way on May 28th!
