You might have noticed that we like Britain’s Telepathy quite a bit; at points, we’ve pegged them as one of the most important young post metal bands in operation today. We even ran their tour diary. We originally had the idea to do that because we were fascinated with their approach to DIY touring and recording. Now, a few years after, their latest album Tempest has garnered them more widespread success. It has taken them to new places and new listeners, sparking a broader and more fleshed out tour across Europe as well as a working relationship with great labels (in this case, Golden Antenna) and some of the best festivals in the genre today.
To celebrate this, the band have recently released live footage of “Celebration of Decay” from one of these said festivals, Dunk!Festival. You might recognize the name from our seemingly endless coverage of bands which operate in the sphere of Dunk!’s influence, seeing as they are one of the lodestones of post-rock and metal today. Their presence immediately sparked our fascination and once again pointed to their rising popularity, drawing us towards the performance and how it was received. It also helps that this is one of the best tracks on Tempest and that the performance is top notch. Put all of these things together and you get this post, which, beyond including the clip from the performance itself, also has a brief chat with Richard Powley of the band about this show, the future of the band, what comes next and how they feel about what’s happened for them so far. Read on below for excellent post metal and an interesting peek into its European scene!
Hello Telepathy! You’re fresh off tour. It’s something of a habit for you to do things DIY; was this the same way? Did you find it was much different in that regard to the tour you did in support of 12 Areas? Maybe your renown in the genre’s circles is more felt these days? Or were things pretty much the same?
We’ve been back just over a month now after 90+ shows over the last 12 months in support of Tempest. So yes, it’s been an incredibly busy year for us since the release and things could not be going any better. We’re incredibly thankful!
From the beginning of the band until the end of the 12 Areas cycle we were, by most measures, a completely DIY band and I (Richard) was handling all of the booking myself. Just before we released Tempest we teamed up with with Doomstar Bookings (Godflesh, Pig Destroyer, Abbath et al) and Golden Antenna Records which has been great for us and afforded us way more touring opportunities that we may have struggled with alone.
Things have grown exponentially for us since the release of Tempest and it’s wonderful to now be considered worthy of playing the likes of Roadburn Festival, Desertfest, Dunk!Festival, Arctangent Festival etc. and count some of our favorite bands as peers and tour mates.
On the whole, we couldn’t be more stoked to play these shows and tour our asses off, we live for these moments and I think growing attendance at the shows and the support of these great festivals shows that hard work, dedication to doing things our own way and sincerely loving what you do will pay off.
It’s safe to say that Tempest is an ambitious record, taking your sound to new places and levels of execution. How do you move forward from there? What’s on your mind as you survey the future and think about the next piece of music?
I think if you see the difference or growth between those two records it should give you an idea of where we are going, but what I can say is that the material kicking around the jam room is a lot darker, heavier and more expansive in both its scope & textures.
Touring so much over the last year has really given us a great insight into where we want to push things and where our collective brain is at in terms of what we want to do (or don’t want to do) with this next record.
That’s about all I can say at the moment without ruining any surprises or jumping the gun. We’re still in the early stages of writing.
Can you share the most memorable moment that happened off the stage of this tour for you? Obviously the show above from Dunk!Fest seems amazing but is there any moment between shows, en route to somewhere, or with fans that will really stick with you?
Our last tour of Europe was a pretty life affirming experience for us. On the last day of tour we were very humbled to be asked to play Pelagic Fest in Berlin with a tonne of other amazing bands. Before our set we bumped into Walter Roadburn, he’d booked us for Roadburn 2017 but missed our set so he came down early specifically to catch us play. For me that was huge; having this enormously influential guy who everyone knows and respects – who also just happens to be massively responsible for the healthy state of metal on this side of the Atlantic – actively seek us out was incredibly rewarding and to get to hang out with this gentle and incredibly knowledgable music fan was a great way to end this tour.
That festival was also pretty special as we got to hook up one last time with our buddies in Rosetta & The Ocean who we’d done a few dates with earlier on the tour, and link up once more with a few old friends and hang with our breakdancing booking agent Florian, well into the early hours.
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