Music Q&A:
Cut Yourself in Half

The Bradford band have risen from the ashes of well-loved hardcore bands to produce their debut album, Mekkanizm, which it out at the end of April. A healthy mix of Black Sabbath and Queens of the Stone Age should see them right.

Was it hard to decide what made the cut on Mekkanizm?

The tracks we have chosen we felt properly represented us as a band. The order of them was much more difficult, as getting the ebb and flow that everyone liked was crazy. Let’s just say it was well fought and thought over.

Did you find the scene in Bradford and Leeds encouraging?

With the strength of the heavy Leeds bands currently plying their trade, the northern heavy scene has never been in ruder health. Bands like Pulled Apart by Horses, Black Moth, Hawk Eye and That F*cking Tank have really shown the strength of what’s up here and it’s impossible to not be encouraged by that.

There are little reminders of early QOSTA/Screaming Trees in your songs, are your influences from a certain time and place?

Our influences are not really from any specific time or place. Certain elements of our songs will scream one band while other elements will bring to mind a different band. We all have slightly different musical backgrounds as well, which makes for a heavy riffing cocktail.

Do you prefer to have more melodic singing vocals to keep the contrast against the heavy guitars?

We like to keep melody in our songs. In a heavy band you could be very tempted to scrap it all together and go completely cannibal corpse but aggressive vocals display a certain emotion and texture. Its right to have the contrast as that gives a song the balance it needs.

Where’s the most exotic place you’ve gigged?

Well, we definitely have not played many exotic gigs but one of the strangest is when we played in Liverpool at a place that used to be a gym. Needless to say, we didn’t do any working out while there.

Are you hoping to play festivals?

We would love to do some festivals and we imagine playing Rock Am Ring and Download would blow our minds.

Lianne Steinberg