Aug 115 min read

LOKUST Interview

I had a chat with LOKUST guitarist Jeremy, after their headline tour, about life on the road, and the bands upcoming hometown show.

Hey, hope you're well! Could you start by introducing yourselves and your roles in LOKUST?

Thanks Kayleigh. I'm Jeremy - Alexy and I formed the band and both play guitar. Alex is our singer, Euler plays drums and Patryk plays bass.

You guys are just off your first headline tour, how was it?

It was awesome! We played 9 shows around the UK over 10 days, finishing up headlining Aberdeen Metal Fest which is where you saw us! We've done some shorter runs around the UK and Europe but this felt like the first *real* tour, and we feel like we learnt a lot from it - tightened up our playing and developed a new level of intimacy, coexisting in a van for 10 days, for better or worse!

How did the headline spot at Aberdeen Metal Fest come about?

We have Drew Cochrane, the organiser, to thank for that - we've been friends for a while and he entrusted us with the headline spot, which meant a lot as it was our first time playing that far North! But we had a great time, it's a killer festival and it was a great show to end our tour with!

If I'm right, this tour would've been LOKUST's first time in Scotland, how did you guys find it here compared to playing down South?

In all honesty the Scottish shows were our favourite of the whole tour, we played Glasgow the night before and that was an absolute blast as well! It seems like the Scottish metal scene is in a real healthy state at the moment!

What would you say the perks of doing a headline tour are in comparison to playing a supporting role?

It occurred to me over the tour that by the end of August we'll have played 16 shows in the UK in the year since launching the band, and the only one we haven't headlined was Bloodstock Festival! It's a bit unorthodox for a new band to go straight into headlining - and to be transparent we have been trying to get more support slots too! Headlining puts more pressure on us in terms of promotion and pulling crowds, and also in terms of the performance and the standard that's expected as a headlining act. But I think we've really benefited from that pressure - it was one of the big focuses of this tour, to bring a headlining level of confidence and consistency and energy to every single show and raise our own bar on that front.

While on the road what do you guys do to keep yourselves entertained?

Even though not all of us live in London, that's where the band is based - so just getting the hell out of the city was a big source of sanity for us on this tour! We snuck in some beach days, playing places like Bournemouth, and had a little detour to see Stonehenge... I guess we're hippies when we're not onstage screaming about Satan.

What's the go to tour snack?

The snack that was most endorsed on this tour was probably strawberries, I'm proud to say! We seemed to keep a pretty steady stream of them on the go - one shop gave us about 3 boxes worth that were going out of date! Unbelievable success.

You guys have a hometown show coming up at the end of the month, why should people be buying tickets for this one?

Yes, we're playing at the Camden Assembly in London on the 30th of August with Karybdis and Roet - both of whom are absolutely sick. This show is just over a year after our very first gig - the 'Infidel' album launch, also in London - and it will officially mark our first year as a band, and how far we've come from that first show until now. It will be a culmination of all we've learnt playing around the country as well as briefly in Europe, and including this headline tour! And it'll be our longest setlist to date, which means we might have to include some non-'Infidel' material to fill the time...

Since its release last year, what song from your debut album 'Infidel' is your favourite to play live and why?

I know it's cheesy to say, but we're still pretty infatuated with the whole set honestly - we spent a lot of time in studios and rehearsal rooms putting 'Infidel' together, and the catharsis of finally getting out and playing this stuff live hasn't worn off at all! A song that does stand out for us live is 'Jinn' - it's a slow, vibey one that really breaks up the rest of the set. We've been playing around with the live arrangement of it too on this last tour - there's a bit more space than the rest of the songs to play with certain elements live, which is fun.

Looking into you guys I saw that your lineup wasn't completed until 2023, how did all of you come together to form this version of LOKUST?

Alexy and I first met in 2016, and by the time we found our drummer Euler in 2019, we'd already released some videos online and had written basically all of 'Infidel' as well as a few more songs that will be on our next album. By the end of 2020 we had recorded all the guitars and drums for the album and had been working with Patryk on bass parts remotely due to lockdowns, but finally met up and finished the instrumental side of the album in 2021, which is when we started working with Alex - after a pretty exhaustive process of auditioning quite a lot of different singers. We went into the studio to record Alex's vocals in May 2022, and then had another traumatic process trying to find the right person to mix the album, but eventually went to Mark Lewis who did an awesome job mixing & mastering. It's been an extremely frustrating sequence of processes, but it's fueled the album (on a thematic level as well as cathartically) and I'm extremely proud of the result - not just 'Infidel' itself but the whole lineup and what LOKUST has ended up being.

If you could steal any member of another band to play with you, who would you take?

The five of us is plenty as it is, to be honest! Maybe a Nu Metal DJ could be the missing piece we never knew we needed??

I always end with a few this or that questions so, Meat or salad?

Red meat, the healthy option! Coffee or energy drinks? You'll cause a schism in the band with questions like that, but I think the coffee drinkers win on numbers!

Live in a haunted house or be abducted by aliens?

Aliens! I think we'd have a lot in common.

Thank you so much for your time! Is there anything else you would like to add?

Just that we'd love to see everyone reading this come out to our headline show at the Camden Assembly in London on the 30th of August! We're also hosting a Guitar Clinic in Camden a few days earlier for any riff-enthusiasts! Find us @6lokust on social media for all the details and links! Thanks for the questions and see you soon!!

Interview by Kayleigh McKenzie