When LostAlone took to the stage at The Ironworks last year they were very much playing second fiddle (although you couldn’t tell it from their performance) to the legends that are The Darkness.
April sees the band return, but this time as headliners, we managed to catch a few words we spoke to frontman Steven Battelle before they visit Inverness again as part of their ‘Shapes of Screams’ Tour.
The band are no strangers of high profile support slots having played on the same bill as Paramore, My Chemical Romance and Thirty Seconds to Mars. We wondered how The Darkness tour compared with the others. Steven was clear to emphasise that they were not similar to previous experiences;
“Very different actually, we didn’t have as much interaction with the band and crew as we’ve had on all of the other tours we’ve done. Having said that when we did run into the band they were great chaps.” However there were clearly advantages “Audiences were superb, I especially remember the Inverness crowd to be great, hence the return! :)”
LostAlone’s support come in the form of The First, who have toured throughout the UK and Europe and release their second album ‘Take Courage
The band are renowned for their huge sounding tracks, surprisingly Stephen denies that this is the intention, more a positive side effect; “We never try to be anything, the music comes from a very natural place and with no thought of how it will come out in terms of sound. Its cool to be referenced in a stadium way as I guess that’s a compliment but its not something we’ve aimed for.”
Another reference you will see a lot about the band is the strength of influence that Seventies and Eighties rock, but which songs would Stephen most like to call his own, he’s not greedy, “probably all of the Queen back catalogue, Meatloaf Bat Out of Hell, Michael Jackson (his Quincy Jones trilogy) and a selection of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin songs.”
Despite their freshness on stage and their continuing enthusiasm it’s easy to forget that the band have been on the go for (nearly) a decade although Steven feels that it has been a little shorter ; “Its weird when people say that , I guess its kind of confusing as we weren’t really this band until 2009 in our eyes. We did have LostAlone going but it only really came proper in 2007 and then when Alan joined on Bass in 2009 that’s when we felt the band really got together.”
Over that time there have been ups and downs, “Biggest achievements would be our new album , biggest disappointment would be too numerous to list, this is the music industry! :)”
There is clearly a lot of pride about forthcoming album ‘SHAPES OF SCREAMS
Renowned for the intensity of their tracks we were curious to know what Steven felt was the most poignant tune “easily goes to a song called “Requiem” written at a very low mental point but responsible for uplifting everything around it.”.
For a chance to win a pair of tickets for the gig , you need to answer the following question:
What is the name LostAlone’s new album?
In order to win you must be on our mailing list (you can join here) and send an email with your answer, contact number and address, the email must have the subject heading “LostAlone Competition” to invernessgigs@gmail.com. The winner will be picked at random on the 3rd of April at 8pm, with the winner being contacted shortly after that.
LostAlone will play The Ironworks on the 17th of April, 2014, If you don’t want to leave it to chance you can buy your Lostalone tickets via The Ironworks website.
