Interview with Ghouls

Described as “An infectious blend of punk and rock driven by a horn section, they always get crowds on their feet and whipped into a frenzied party“, London five-piece Ghouls have got that Americana meets outrageous British punk style down to a t and it sounds great.

We spoke to Ghouls to talk albums, influence and an awkward tour encounter…

Can you tell us a bit about how you met?

We all met through each individually moving to London from the towns we grew up in. We all met through various things, mainly music based. Either through Uni or playing and going to shows, and then Maz we met through a terribly written Gum Tree advert.

For those unfortunate souls that haven’t had the chance to listen to you yet, how would you describe it?
Well, this is one of those questions where I would just say take a listen and decide for yourself. It’s definitely punk rock based, and then we have horns added to the equation. We’ve found ourselves in lots of different genre brackets but if you’re a fan of punk rock/pop punk then you’ll probably like us, probably.

If you were offered a slot on the mainstage at Glastonbury but you could only play if you all swapped instruments, would you do it?

Well playing mainstage Glastonbury would be really cool but in all honesty the nerves and stress that would go behind us playing our actual instruments would be enough so god knows about us playing each others instruments. I guess it would depend on who played what. Anyone but Maz on sax would make some interesting sounds…

Can you talk us through your songwriting process?
Usually I (Benedict) start with an acoustic/vocal skeleton of a song and then I bring it to the rest of the band and we work it out from there. Sometimes we play it and it doesn’t sound to different from the original skeleton, then sometimes it goes in a completely different direction to the original idea.

What are your biggest musical influences? Are they all similar?

Definitely not. Even just as an individual I draw influence from all over the place and then each individual band member has their own array of bands/artists/things that influence them. I would say that as a band, the reason we produce quite a unique sound is because we all bring in our own influences to the sound from those things that influence us (I hope that makes sense).

Can you tells us your top 3 favourite albums ever?
This is difficult because its sort of forever changing but these are 3 albums that I never get bored of listening to:
1. Take Off Your Pants And Jacket – Blink 182
2. Dawn Of The Dog – Riskee And The Ridicule
3. What You Don’t See – The Story So Far

What would you say is the best show you have played so far?

I think so far, Main stage at 2000 trees is the highlight show. It just took us by surprise at how many people came to watch us, how many people knew who we were and how many people knew the songs! It was crazy!

Can you talk us through your funniest ‘On Tour’ story?
There are so many. Tour for us is just one funny story. Our booking agent and good friend Yerry told us we need to start making more friends with bands. We recently played a festival called Jera On Air in the Netherlands; the show we played was rad, we had a crazy time and we just really enjoyed ourselves. As we were leaving the festival we realised that we’d had no real attempt at making any friends with bands and had instead made friends with a load of dutch locals. For one last desperate attempt, as we drove away, Maz spotted Rou from Enter Shikari walking along. He scrabbled over the car seats, tried to wind down the window but the window got stuck, so poked his head out of the small gap that was open and in his raspy/hungover tone he muttered ‘hello’. Rou turned around and looked horrified as the car drove away. Safe to say we aren’t friends with Enter Shikari yet.

If you could choose one musician dead or alive, famous or not famous to join the band, who would it be?

I’d probably want O.T Genasis. The guy is clearly a lyrical genius with his smash hit ‘CoCo’. But seriously we’re always blasting that song on the way to shows and on tour.

Do you have anything exciting coming up that we should be looking out for?
We are currently writing some very exciting songs, things will be announced regarding that towards the end of the year/start of next year. We also are announcing some tours very soon!