Broken Links were kind enough to furnish us with a track by track feature for their album Conflict::States earlier this year. With a new video out, we decided to do the full Headline Act on them. Mark Lawrence (vocals / guitars) takes up the reins…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Eastleigh, Hampshire, UK. Just north of Southampton, we have an airport, but Southampton stole it from us.
How did you meet?
School. Lewy and Phil were in the same year, I was 2 or 3 years above them, but Phil’s is one of my friend’s brothers. We all messed about in our own covers bands at school, so we were arguing about who’s band were supposed to have the practice room booked on a Wednesday night.
How long have you been playing as a band?
We’ve been going since 2008. We spent the first year just practicing building up to our first gig, then the next one or two years was spent trying to find our sound, releasing a few EPs here and there. After that we’ve just been self-releasing albums and trying to scrape as many gigs as we can here and there!
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
It came from a whiteboard in a practice room. We simply wrote a load of words we liked down on the board, joined some up, then picked Broken Links from the shortlist. It had a ring to it… like we had heard it before. Yeah, iffy websites and 404s! It didn’t occur to us at the time, and I was working as a web developer!
What are your influences?
Historically its spending most of our lives growing up listening to Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Metallica, Manic Street Preachers, Bowie, Aphex Twin etc. Then also going to festivals and getting messed up in the dance tent at 3am. After a period of not a lot, there are now a few decent bands starting to get more recognition and I guess their drive influence us a bit.
For our latest album, we tapped into what’s going on socially in the UK, but also in ourselves, there’s a bit of anger & frustration at how life pans out. This is all in our sound currently I think.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We’re a kind of crossbreed of grunge, prog rock, electro, industrial, goth, and pop. Of the music that’s popular at the moment, there’s not really anyone flying the hard, distorted guitar, rock flag. The in thing right now is the post-punk sound, which we don’t quite fit into. A lot of people have a hard time pigeonholing us, we get the usual band names which we sound similar to, but the range we get is vast!
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
At the moment the lyrical themes are very much about what’s been going on in my life recently, and the world around me. I tend to not focus on good things, only the things that piss me off. Music should be honest and should try to trigger emotions, we are not Chris De Burgh, so we don’t waste time singing about lovely stuff. We’re a bleak band, singing about bleak times.
If you like what we do, consider joining us on Patreon for as little as £1 per month!
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
At the time of writing this, we’ve played 140 shows across the UK, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Czech Republic. We think people get an extremely tight, energetic live show from us, and now for extremely good value as at our most recent gig we played 18 songs!
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
I’ve seen a burlesque belly dancer breast feed a snake at a gig. Once you’ve seen that, it never leaves. It’s great!
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
Line 6. Literally everything is Line 6, my guitar is a Line 6 Variax plugged into a Line 6 X3 Pod Studio. Lewy on bass plays a Schechter, plugged into a Line 6 POD. Phil has a Pearl drum kit. It’s deep purple.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
We have just released the final single, “Fatalism”, from our recently released album Conflict::States. With its release comes another one of our DIY videos which we all star in! For this one we got thrown out and banned from our local shopping mall! [Scroll down to see it – Mosh]
What are your plans for the next 6 months or so?
After the next single, we’re actually going to release a remixes EP of some of the tracks from Conflict::States! A number of different remixers across the world have had a stab at turning our tunes into absolute bangers. So, we’re looking forward to sharing those with the world!
After that, we’re just going to try to get as many gigs as we can. The new album has found us many new fans so we’re getting a lot of requests to play certain towns/cities, so we’re going to do our very best to play them!
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!
The headliners, just because it would mean that this gig would be in an arena & we can nick their fans, Depeche Mode. Then we’d have ‘Down From Above’ along to play also, as they’ve just put us on for a gig in London, so it’s our turn to return the favour!
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Check out 2021’s Headline Act Playlist on Spotify and YouTube
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