Kiwi chameleons
Shihad have done it again, shaking off their past style to produce a moody mélange of sinister power pop, surging arena rock, and stirring ballads on album number seven
Beautiful Machine. Hyperactive singer Jon Toogood refects on their musical ADD.
Beautiful Machine seems like more proof that Shihad can't stick to any one thing.I think the one thing we did stick to was our constant need for reinvention. If you go back through all the records it's really no surprise.
So inconsistency is your only consistent quality?All my favourite artists… like Bowie from
Hunky Dory right through to
Scary Monsters – that motherfucker changed every time and thank God he did because every one of those records is special. And The Clash, when
London Calling came out it was completely fucking different from the punk beforehand. But thank God they came up with it because it's fucking great. As for us, I'm not comparing us to those acts, but it's another way to make a different fresh rock album.
It also strikes me as more diverse song to song.We reveled in our time in the studio and enjoyed what happened on the day. Say 'Rule The World' is based around this loop, which I would described as like something from
Dark Side Of The Moon, and we end up writing a Gary Glitter-on-steroids riff over the top of it. We could just experiment.
I get the idea that the band are more comfortable and open with each other.For sure. We've known each other for twenty years now. We've all got our quirks and personality disorders – especially me – but this time around we're fucking all that off. I've got an idea that sounds like New Order, have a listen and see what you can do with it. Just because we had the environment to do that we could share everything with each other. It was interesting to find out that things that were exciting us personally, we were all into.
There must've been points where these songs could've gone either way, you could've pushed them up into big meaty stadium rock tracks. For sure. That's default Shihad. The idea was to lyrically articulate some of the things I've been talking about from the word go: religion, human beings and the way they relate to each other. But do it on a canvas where you can actually fucking hear what I'm saying. Plus, get that melody that tingles your spine. The melodies were paramount and that's what we concentrated on for this record.
I was trying to work out the ratio of hope versus despair on this record.There are some dark fucking moments on this record. 'The Prophet' and 'Waiting Around For God' are pretty good. The difference between this and
Love Is The New Hate, which was spitting out a lot of bile and anger, is that I realised I didn't have the answers on this record either. There's a lot less finger-pointing.
There's a more palpable sense of vulnerability which is refreshing.I did have to be honest. And to tell you the truth, bro, the output of music was so full-on I was having trouble keeping up. The lyric writing and singing for me is the thing that does not comes naturally, I have to work at it. It's also the thing that, which it comes out right, is the most satisfying. I worry about it and sweat on it. With this one I thought 'I don't want to be singing something I don't believe in'.
It's interesting that this is the first Shihad record without swearing.I didn't need to. These lyrics are powerful enough. 'Fucks' for me are exclamation marks. I think what we were talking about on this record, I didn't need to use so many. I wanted to see if we could get through a record without using 'fuck' and just use the power of the words.
This is probably the most accessible album of the bunch. Will that favour airplay?If that does occur to people, they've (got) the motivation wrong. It was to come up with a new sound for this band. We realise some of the melodies are really strong but they're the melodies that moved us. If it so happens that we get airplay then that's a byproduct of what we were concentrating on.
Do fans trust you?I think it's the same with every record; we lose some people, we gain some people, it's changing constantly. Maybe we're making our jobs way more difficult than they should be but we do this for us. I'd consider doing the same record over and over a living hell. We wouldn't be together after twenty years in the band if we didn't have that change.
Andrew Tijs