Breed 77, Live at Nottingham Rock City, Thursday 26th November 2009.Guitarist Pedro Caparros, tells us about the band’s new album INSECTS.

You guys are a band with a very established history…

Yes, we formed back in 1998, and put out our debut in 2001, and this is now our 5th work, we also have a wealth of singles and other releases. It’s been, well a decade really, it’s one of those cycles really, it’s a long story I suppose, it’s interesting (laughs). We came here and opened doors in the British market and in the Spanish market as well, and slowly it’s settled down for us, which is really good.

You guys have come through a lot of trend and style changes within the metal/alternative genre, from the likes of Nu-metal through to the hardcore and Emo movements, and are still successful. What do you think has been the key to your longevity?

Actually I’d say it’s our fan base. Our very first album was in that nu metal era when bands like the Deftones and Korn where going strong. We’ve never really been a Nu Metal band, but at that time, we had to look around us and see what was going on and be like ‘Ok, we need to do what we do’, and try and fit it in with what was then you know. But the key to our success I think, was from that album onwards, we did what came naturally to us, mixing our roots, with what we have been listening to since we where kids. I remember being one of the first bands to play guitar solos, and at the time of CULTURA (Breed 77, 2001) no one was touching that shit. But we believe that if your honest with yourself and your honest with others that come to gigs, the fans, it builds a strong relationship.

Has your writing style ever been influenced by what’s been considered the “latest Trends” over the years?

Well, once again I think the best qualified people to answer that would be our fans. From the inside we try to remain clean in terms of influences, but at the same time we are not blind, we like to know what’s going on in metal. Sometimes it helps if you have something you worked on in the past and suddenly you’re like, ‘hey man maybe now we should bring in that stuff we where working on…’ you know. For me, for a band to succeed, you need to make your own space, your own atmosphere, create something that sounds individual. I think we have achieved that, up to this day, absolutely. I mean we are not Machine Head (laughs) we don’t play huge shows on our own. I mean we have played mainly 300 - 500 capacity venues for most of our career, but we are happy to do that, as long as people keep coming to the shows, we are happy to do that.

You guys have played some quite large festivals and shared the stage with some massive artists, do you prefer the smaller shows, or are you more partial to big gigs?

The thing about the big shows and the festivals, is that your adrenaline is rushing. When we played a festival in Portugal 2003, we played to 30,000 people, I was like fuck man, I was shitting my pants walking to the stage, but you enjoy yourself so much, the atmosphere, the crowds. That’s what you miss at the more intimate shows, but at the same time, with the smaller shows, what you get from the audience is what you give to them. If you’re playing a festival on a day where your playing below people like Trivium, Slayer, and Metallica, you will have say a certain amount of people who came to see you, but a large part will be there for the other bands, but the interaction relationship between you and the crowd is ever the same. It’s always nice to have a small amount of people banging to your music, I’m not sure of the whole band would agree, but it’s always nice to play with other bands either way. Machine Head especially are really cool guys, who helped us out a lot at that time in our career, and hanging back stage with James Hetfield was one of those experiences that was out of this world.

How does it feel to have come from where you started to having the fan base you command now?

We are musicians, and when you see your work, after a bit of time, and when it communicates the way you wanted, it’s just like having a child, and nurturing it and watching it grow, it makes you happy. It’s the reason we play.

You guys covered The Cranberries “Zombie” back in 2007, quite a bold move considering the popularity of the track…

Yes it was around then we started playing it, I have no idea why (laughs). I mean everyone it was like, ‘you guys should do a cover’, I mean I don’t really like to play covers, but if we do, we twist it upside down. Some of the band were a bit yes, no, yes, no, but like you said, you may have answered the question, it was a bold move, it was going to provoke a reaction. We didn’t want to do a classic track, like say Metallica or something like that, we wanted to do something risky, and it was when you think about the true metal heads, and we have a bunch of those (smiles), we are such a diverse band. It turned out to be quite a success, that song ‘Zombie’, ‘La Ultima Hora’, and the ‘The River’, those are tracks that we will always have to play from now on, due to their individual successes. But we enjoy playing them, and they each have unique styles with the arrangements and the Spanish guitars, our style I suppose, it works, I think (laughs).

Are there any stories to the writing of some of your songs, both from the old right up to going into the studio for INSECTS?

Massive stories, well believe me as a writer and the rest of the band, we all bring our individual ideas to the collective, so in that sense, I guess there is a story to all of them. But one that I think comes to mind most strongly, when we started writing and recording ‘Worlds on Fire.’ Half the band were like yeah yeah, and some other band were like fuck off you know, nothing serious. But it’s one of those debates you have to have as an artist, and as a band with 5 people, but it did so well for us, we weren’t sure if it was going to go down very well at the time, but it ended up working very well for us. Other than that, ‘The River’ was out ticket to the new place that was new for us, the mainstream, and the top 40. I mean it charted at 39, then the next week ‘Worlds on Fire’ was in at 41, I mean for a metal band like us to chart, going in with flamenco ballads was always going to be risky…

Coming of the success of 2007’s UN ENCUENTRO, what evolution where you looking to bring to your music going into to writing INSECTS?

We definitely wanted something heavier, we are not a progressive band, but we wanted to bring a more elaborate song writing approach to our music. We didn’t want any outside influence from the label, because they are like you have to do it like this and like this and have a verse, chorus, verse and it has to be this long and so on. So we said fuck you, and we did it ourselves, we weren’t thinking whether it was going to be accessible or not, or that it was going to be our heaviest. We did this on our own label, we kept a few people who have been working with us over the years; the real true and loyal people; who work with us and for us, and it’s much better doing it yourself.

We try and write interestingly, but we got tired of the same old song writing formula - some of the new tracks on the album have like 6 or 7 different parts, and they end completely differently to how they begin. At the same time we still have a couple of more accessible metal/rock style tracks, there was always the intention to make much more interesting music.

Do you and Danny Felice ever argue over who gets to do the guitar solos?

(laughing) No, not really, we are both good players, and good writers in our own sense, and he is completely different to me, but at the same time we fit together really well. There is never any aggression between us, sometimes it like, ‘hey man we’ll do 2 solo’s’, but we play different things at different times, and we always keep it within the context of the song. I mean if a song calls for a solo, or 2 solos we’d do it, but this time around on INSECTS, most of the songs they called for solos, we love the harmonies in the music, and I think the audience will too.

You have the end of tour party in Croydon tomorrow night, you looking forward to things winding down after such a busy period?

Well Croydon is alright you know. Maybe not the best place (accompanied by dodgy look and some serious amusement), I mean no disrespect, it’s all good but we are based in London, and we have a lot of friends there, but yeah Saturday I think we’ll be out in London, whether we are tired or not, and get absolutely, well…

On tour do you guys like to party a lot?

There are a lot of stories from the tours man, a lot of morning-after tales. I think one of the best was touring in Mexico in Leon, with a huge band over there, huge sold-out arena. We had been having a good time all day, after the show we went to the hotel, it was a beautiful hotel with this huge pool, but at night they cover it with this huge piece of plastic. But we where so drunk we didn’t even know, so Stuart (Cavilla, Bass) he says ‘oh let’s go for a swim’, and he runs and jumps then…BOOM, flat on this plastic, so instead of doing the sensible and
helping him, we are all like, running as well and jumping trying to break the plastic, but we all almost ended up drowning because this plastic wraps you man, it was hairy, but one of quite a few tales I think. Mexico is always crazy though (smiles).

Ok, so just to change the mood and get a bit topical, as professional musicians who earn their keep through the band, what kind of effect has the influx of the digital music revolution and of course more recently the recession, affected you?

Absolutely it has affected us, when the internet hit, and the Mp3, and the recession, everyone was always going to be uneasy. I remember from CULTURA, it did about 4,000 albums in its first week, and this album we have done maybe 1,500, so you can see straight away there, sometimes you go some places and you have huge audiences but you don’t sell as much as you’d like. For a band like us, we have our desired target around say 50,000 units across the board. I mean for a band like Metallica to not reach their targets and sell say only 5 million albums, that’s still 5 million albums you know, but for us to sell say a ¼ of our desired target, it’s a big thing, and that contributed us to doing it on our own; you have to do what is necessary to survive and keep touring and to still be around. It’s a pain in the ass really because you end up spending more time making phone calls and paper work than you do playing music, but that’s how it is with a business, when you work for yourself. If it goes well it goes well, if not, erm, well, you are fucked, but luckily right now, we are well… (singer
Paul Isola walks in), and here is Paul, (laughs), but we are happy to be good.

Finally the new year is approaching, 2009 has been a good year for Breed 77, what do you think 2010 is going to hold for you guys?

It’s an open door, we are looking to have more releases globally, which should be in place by the beginning of next year, and then hopefully back to South America, we have quite a large fan base over there, and also try and get as many slots as possible on the festivals across the world. We will definitely be touring by late next year again and just keep going, keep up this process and maybe we will have a new album at the end of next year.

Breed 77’s 5th Studio offering is out now .

Interview by Ade Perrie