You’d have to search the UK underground pretty hard to find a band more dedicated than Obsessive Compulsive. On the typical day SinZine caught up with them, the Manchester foursome were in Camden to play not one, but two, gigs. Fusing elements of punk, rock and metal, and going from opening for metal supergroup The Damned Things, to headlining an acoustic night in a matter of hours, they’re hard to tie down to any one genre or scene, but wherever they appear they never fail to impress.
You’re in London tonight for a bit of Download warm-up. The big show is of course, opening for The Damned Things at Dingwalls, what drew you to that band?
Kelii (vocals): We got asked to do it! But yeah, they’re a pretty cool upcoming band, but they also got some heavyweight names with Scott Ian from Anthrax and all the rest. We think we’ve got a similar heaviness to them and we think we’ll go down well with their crowd, so it should be good!
Not content with just one gig, you’re popping down the road for a stripped down acoustic set at The Worlds End after. Was one gig not enough for the night?
Kelii: No, we’re just greedy!
Giz (guitars): It probably would have been easier just to play one gig, but we’re not really known for doing things the easy way. So we’re going to leg it up the street with our acoustic guitars after this show and do some unplugged stuff.
Kelii: And depress everyone in the venue! They’re going to have some good time rock n roll with Heavens Basement and Skin (we’re quite gutted we’re going to miss that) and then we’re going to come on and do loads of morbid depressed songs about how rubbish life is.
Has it been hard to put together an acoustic set?
Kelii: It’s been a huge challenge. It’s not something we’ve every really considered doing before, but we got offered a slot on the acoustic stage at Download and we couldn’t pass up that kind of opportunity. So we’re rising to the challenge, as we always do.
Giz: It’s really good to be put in a different situation, it’s really healthy to do something we’re not used to doing, that you’ve got to adapt to. It’s really good for you and people should do it more often.
Kelii: We’re well out of our comfort zone on this one!
Giz: We got asked to do it and it was only about three hours later we realised we didn’t even have any acoustic guitars!
You’ve recently put together a video piece, Transmissions, about the band and made it available online. What was the thinking behind that?
Giz: When people see a video or hear a song, that’s great because that’s what it’s all about, but it’s also interesting to see what happens behind the scenes. Hopefully there’s going to be more of these to come.
Kelii: That’s the plan! Youtube and video in general is really big now, and it’s a really accessible way for people to discover a lot about a band really quickly, so we thought we’d better move with the times!
Obviously video is going more the way of the key promotion for a band than radio these days, is that something you’re going to start pushing more?
Kelii: We have loads of fun making videos. We’ve not got much money, so we’ve not had as much opportunity to make the videos we’d like to make, it’s very expensive to realise the ideas you want on video. We’re working a lot with smaller companies who are starting out, trying to get good deals, but also get their work seen too. It’s helped us a lot.
With the album Dreams Of Death And The Death Of Dreams having been out a while now, do you feel you’ve achieved what you hoped to with this record?
Kelii: In some ways yes, it’s been a really good vehicle to progress. But with downloads being so huge, and everyone being so skint (which we can relate to!), it has sold really well, but it’s not really been enough.
Giz: We’re DIY and we’ve put this together ourselves, we’re not rich people and we’re not making money out of putting an album out, but that was never the intention. But as far as getting our music out there, getting people to listen to it and hearing their responses, it’s been great. We’re really proud of the album and what we’ve achieved with it.
What ideas do you have floating around for the next record, and where are you going with them at the moment?
Kelii: We’ve started to write some songs, though we don’t tend to think in terms of an album, that’s not how we write really. Not doing many gigs early this year, we had a chance to do some creative thinking rather than constantly touring, so we’ve started doing a bit of writing and its sounding cool. It’s early days yet though.
Giz: We’ve not got any plans for definite of times to go in the studio, we’re going to take the next few months however they come and just keep writing. We’d like to get something out there really soon, but it would be really nice to get out on the road more soon, as we have had a few quiet months.
You’ve always been a very driven band, always pushing for the next thing, to do whatever you can to get out there to new people. Do you ever get tired of pushing yourselves so hard?
Giz: Sometimes it can be hard, and it would be nice to have a bit of help from people, because this is our life, this is what we do and this is us 24/7. We love what we do and it’s always going to be that way, but sometimes doing all this and having to pay the rent and survive, it can be really hard. At the end of the day though, I don’t think any of us would change it for the world.
Kelii: We have our moments of weakness, but it’s literally moments, we love what we do so much, we’ll always work as hard as it takes to get our music out there.
Do you think you’ll ever reach a point where this ceases to be important to you?
Giz: I don’t think music will ever cease to be important to us, it’s such a massive part of our lives. Whether there will be a point in time where we decide we’re not going to write songs together as Obsessive Compulsive I don’t know, I hope not, but music is such a big part of our lives I don’t think that will ever leave any of us.
Kelii: If we were going to quit, we would have quit by now. I think there’s a lot of bands that have got to the low points that we’ve had and called it a day, but for us whenever we feel like that, we just remember that there’s nothing in life we’d want to do more than this.
Dani (drums): I don’t think anything’s really going to change. I’ve been doing this since I was eleven or twelve and it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Like Kelii says, if we’d wanted to quit, we’d have done it long ago.
Find out more at www.obsessivecompulsiveband.com
YouTube links : Autopsy
TRANSMISSIONS - Part One 'A Brief History' (behind the scenes intro vid)
