Truth & It’s Burden are back with a vengeance as they take on a nationwide tour that kicks off this weekend!
See what Vocalist, Ashley had to say ahead of the IRON & FIRE TOUR.
Firstly, I’d like to thank you for giving me this opportunity.
The most obvious question: How do you feel about this amazing tour (IRON & FIRE TOUR) that you are embarking on?
We’re super excited, and for a multitude of reasons. We have a new bassist Sean and this will be his maiden voyage with us. We released an album we’re still promoting and songs we just love playing. We’re playing with so many cool bands and friends along the various shows and we’re getting to play some new venues in the mix, which is enough to have any band on cloud nine.
So, guys, introduce yourselves to your fans. Who does what, and a little bit about who you are? If
any of you have day jobs, we’d love to know what you musical geniuses do behind the scenes.
Truth & Its Burden is Ashley (me) on vocals, screams, 10 minute long speeches: I run a design agency Capture Creative Design. I have a wife Kathryn and a 2.5 year old girl, Elizabeth.
Calvin on guitar and backup screams: Calvin runs a branding company called Colourco while he teaches guitar as well. He’s married to Carla and they have two Labradors.
Sean on bass: Sean works for SABC studios. He has a girlfriend Emily, and no pets or children yet.
Matt thrashes the drum kit: Matt is partner in Sonic Sounds Music School, and he is also engaged to Monique. They take care of a mean spirited dog named Max. (hahaha).
Is there a particular venue that you are exceptionally keen to play at? Be it during the IRON & FIRE TOUR, or in future?
Well, we’ve played at a few of the venues before so we have a general idea on what to expect in those cases. There are 3 new venues we’ve never played at before so we’re probably most excited to see how those pan out, Aandklas, Surfarosa and The Hive.
If you could tour with any band in the world, who would be the ideal?
We’d love the opportunity to tour again with Ghost Inside, and of course when they do fully recover to a touring state we’re going to invite them again and try and make that tour happen.
As kids, what music did you all listen to? Did any of those early tunes influence your current playing style?
We all had various influences as you can imagine, especially the age gaps… You had influences from Metallica, Guns n Roses to August Burns Red, Underoath and such. It’s hard to say these directly come out in our music today, but there are probably elements or ideas that stem from how we have grown from those interests.
‘Dead To The World’: What a powerful song. I resonated with it immensely.
Can you tell me what inspired this song of pain and resentment?
The song is about having our hearts broken by our previous record label. We put everything into our band, everything into touring and we got heavily screwed over by them. Unfortunately, such was the case for many bands on that label. It nearly broke us and was certainly a part of the reason we took such a long break. We had to rebuild our souls after that knock. After all the hard work we’d put in over the years, we returned to playing shows and we just felt dead to the world, so to speak. We trusted the wrong people and came up last.
Inspiration behind the album art for ‘I Labour’?
We just wanted the music to do the talking and be the draw card really. We decided on taking a “non-descript” approach to the visual art on the album, so that the music would shine brighter than anything else. Of course we are happy with the artwork so it’s not a diss against that. It’s more of a point in saying there was no inspiration other than to not have it be the important part of the release. It worked out great though and we feel the mess of it adds to the mess of life and how we’d experienced it for a while.
Can you tell your fans something about the band that they would have never normally known?
Nothing really comes to mind here, we’re usually pretty open in terms of sharing haha, sorry. If there’s anything people wanna know specifically, just ask.
Marvel or DC (it seems appropriate to ask IN LIGHT OF RECENT MOVIE RELEASES :P)
Both are cool to be honest. I don’t know that anyone in our camp is seriously into comics to have a heavy opinion about this.
Where can your fans download your music, and find you online? Any other tours in the pipeline?
Our music is all available on bandcamp, itunes, spotify, deezer, amazon, google play and pretty much any online platform you can think of.
We’re currently scheduling a much larger co-headline tour for South Africa. News on that is in the post.
Thank you so much!
THE IRON & FIRE TOUR KICKS OFF TOMORROW NIGHT AT RUMOURS ROCK CITY, MAKE SURE YOU DON’T MISS OUT!
Interviewed by: Caid Pontus