who’s who in allergo? were you all friends to begin with and how did the band start?Allergo consists of myself - Graham Motion (drums), Tom Mitchell (guitar), James Fleming (Bass) and Matt Evans (vocals). We started out in late 2001, like almost every other band in the world, as 3 friends at high school, (tom, matt and i) all drawn together for the love of music and because we pretty much have the exact same sense of humor. Tom and I had been playing our instruments for a few years but we were all kinda randomly jamming around with different bands until our old bassist, Johnny, rounded us all up to his house for a jam. Things took off from there really, and we wrote about 2 songs which we thought kicked ass within the first hour or so. We kicked Johnny out because he never came to practices and couldn’t really be bothered with the whole band thing, so we were a 3 piece for a few months writing and playing horrible grind songs but after a while of searching for someone we finally found a bassist in the form of Tom’s nextdoor neighbor, James, and he pretty much started playing the bass as soon as he joined the band.
does the band name mean anything, why did you pick it and do you still get referred to as allegro?
We were called allegro for about a week or something, but when we got our pal Ewan to design a logo for us he mis-spelled it, and nobody really noticed haha. We found out about a year later or something that the name has something to do with a heavy metal toxin which can be injected into the blood stream, it’s also some kind of pharmaceutical company from Germany. People alllllllways still say it or spell it wrong, it used to be a bit annoying but we’re just used to it now, we’re just sick of people saying “what’d you call yourself after a shite car for??!!!!”
what bands have been the biggest influences on your sound and what record first made you want to play music? what pigeon hole/genre would you describe yourselves as?
I think when we first started, the 2 bands that influenced us most was The Deftones and Slayer. We loved the melodic and epic parts and the screamy vocals of the Deftones but the brutality and the speed of Slayer so we tried to merge them together in our own way. As a drummer i’ll always remember the night i saw the video for “Seasons In The Abyss” by Slayer on “SuperRock” or something like that and just being blown way, then asking for a drum kit about 5 mins later, only to get it 2 years later. But “back in the day” i don’t think we had very many songs that sounded the same, we just tried to write everything we could and put plenty of variety into each song and it drew in a lot of people for us. But we’re a much more mature band now and i’ve no clue what to describe us, i usually call us “Fast Technical Metal Mixed With Frantic Jagged Hardcore” or something really wanky like that, but i prefer finding out what others describe us as.
is matt hyperactive with epilepsy or do you guys wire him up to the mains before you play? is he like that at practice/all the time or is it just reserved for gigs?Hahaha im sure when he was younger Matt used to take “calm me down” pills, he’s pretty much like that 24/7 especially before gigs or when we’re all together, we’ve had to calm him down at gigs a little bit though because things usually get broken.Theirs soo many stories and stupid things the he’s done it’s hard to even remember most of them. I still think he’s a comic genius as well, some of the stuff that he comes out with when we’re joking around is sheer brilliance.
you played at t in the park and were on tv, how was that as an experience? did you notice an increased interest in you from audience/labels? did you get to schmooze with rock stars backstage? also did you get to make any outrageous demands for a rider, if not what would you ask for on a rider?
TITP was amazing, still hasn’t really sunk in that i was on the BBC doing a nation wide live interview about Allergo! When i think about it all i can do is laugh in disbelief, i had no idea it was going to be shown out live or anything. We played a cracker as well and we managed, somehow, to get the whole tent absolutely packed, from front to back, which was incredible to view, so many people there to see us, Oh and we gota huge cheer when we walked up on stage, VIP treatment, Backstage passes everywhere, getting to meet sponge bob square pants, free red bull, beer and irn bru it was good to be a rawk god for a day. We met a few “famous” folk, Fedirico from Big Brother 4 fame!( i kinda felt sorry for the guy, everywhere he went he’d get hassled..funny though), Nikitah from T4’s Popworld! (the one that always wears her skirt half way up her arse), and in the bit where we usually went for a seat on the grass there were numerous amounts of guys with tight jeans and denim jackets with really bad hair-do’s all from bands most likely beginning with “the”. I also asked Katie Melua (closest thing to crazy) “where the fuck” she got her sponge bob square pants Frisbee from, not knowing she was famous or anything.
We tried asking for sandwiches, warm towels and some cats. But none of our rider demands were met, we were furious.
We got some interest from a couple of labels and promoters, nothing major though. Weirdest and most surprising thing that happened was a few months after TITP. I was staying with my sis for about a month without going to my mums, i had no calls or mail or anything like that for me. The day i go back i get a phone call from the Parlaphone Records A n’R Dept, asking me what the band was up to, if we had any new stuff recorded, if we were coming down south anytime soon etc and to send them down a demo, which was rather nice. HeadHoncho promotions also offered us a PR campaign which we turned down.
what releases have you done? has it just been demos so far and how can folk get hold of your stuff? what label/s would you love to see allergo on and why?I think we’ve recorded about 6 demos or something since we started, the first cd we gave out to friends was a little 6 track thing we recorded off of Tom’s video camera which also contained a dodgy cover of raining blood, the whole thing was horrible, i cant even listen to most of the stuff we’ve done apart from using it for comical value. The first one we recorded in a studio had about 16 songs or something ridiculous on it. I think demos are a great way of bookmarking yourself as a band, if you listen to it a while after its done and say to yourself “god this is awful”, then its just another way of realizing how much you’ve improved not only as a band but as a musician as well. Just now labels and business stuff are the last thing on our minds and always has been really, we’re not really fussed yet, but i wouldn’t mind seeing us on Reflection, Relapse or Dischord or even Victory if they kicked off half the crap on it, i think we’ll get in Ferret and Roadrunner for the clichééé sell-out 3rd album.
If anyone wants a demo get in touch with Tom at allergonoise@hotmail.com or me at allergodrumbum@hotmail.com and we’ll send ya one. Or come to a gig.
have you played outside of scotland yet? where would you dream of playing and who with? what’s been your favorite gig so far and how do audiences usually react to you?We’ve still to play in England or outside Scotland, the main problem being that we’re all lazy 17/18 year olds who can’t drive, but it’s always been a big goal for us and we’re definitely determend to go down, rock out and reprahhzent. Reactions towards us are either 10 or 0, but no matter what we always get appreciated, even for the stinkers we play, but in terms of “crowd interaction” gigs with us are either us and the crowd going ballistic or everyone just standing staring with a drink, which im not bothered about, in a way i respect it more, because people are actually taking the music in and properly listening to us. But nothing beats seeing matt running along a ceiling, with everyone holding him up and chanting at the same time. (that’s pretty much every Perth show we play). I always wanted to play King Tuts in Glasgow up until we did play it for the TITP finals, it was great they set up my drum kit for me, and if we were to tour with any band anywhere it’d be The Fight Back.
what’s your favourite mosh move to bust out?
Haha! That’s a toughie i have a few, “back in the day” when there wasn’t much dancing at gigs and loadsa room to move i’d usually pull off my “signature” spinning round house kicks into windmill combo, not done that one for a while now as there’s no room at gigs anymore and i’d probably end up smacking someone by mistake. I usually just tend to stomp it up and floorpunch, trying to look like the dude from the Circle Jerks logo. And then theirs the classic pop crossover dances, such as the “macaCOREna” which is pretty much doing the macarena during a beatdown, and who can forget, hill billy moshing, in which 4 people or more smash into each other whilst manic barn dancing...kinda like a hick version of a wall of death, only with less brains.
owt else the world needs to know about allergo? future plans?
Nothing exciting is happening just yet, we’re still busy trying to write a whole new set for gigs and a new demo, next gig is in February in Aberdeen we’re playing with Bleeding Through and Cult Of Luna, so that should be a cracker. We’re really missing playing gigs already and we’ve only took a month off without playing, so expect even more energetic performances.