Having finally left the world of UK pop and immersed himself up to his bollocks in all things ‘rock’ Charlie Simpson is currently enjoying his first UK tour with bandmates Omar Abidi, Alex Westaway and Dan Haigh as Fightstar. Planet Loud caught up with the guys before their Aberdeen Lemon Tree date.

Planet Loud - So, how is the tour going so far ?
Fightstar - Awesome man ! Best gig so far was Leeds met, the crowd was absolutely fucking crazy, 1400 people or something. Last night at King Tuts in Glasgow was great as well.

Planet Loud - Is it good to be gigging away from London eventually ?
Fightstar - Oh yeah, because for the last year or so we’ve just been playing sporadic gigs in London so it’s so cool to finally be playing other places. We’ve done a couple of gigs abroad in Amsterdam and Dublin supporting Taking Back Sunday so that’s just been awesome.

Planet Loud - How was that, were you big fans of Taking Back Sunday ?
Fightstar - Massive, massive fans and the weird thing was that after the gigs we chilled with them and these guys are like our heroes !

Planet Loud - I interviewed Mark O Connell a few weeks ago and he said that he was looking forward to hanging out with you guys in Amsterdam and making you do some ‘crazy shit’ – did he keep his promise ?
Fightstar - Marks a legend ! Yeah, we built a city out of bread……and cheese and ham……and then Eddie from Taking Back Sunday came and destroyed it !

Planet Loud - You’re down for playing T in the Park this year – are you looking forward to it ?
Fightstar - Oh yeah, and we just found out that the Foo Fighters are playing as well so that’s going to be awesome !

Planet Loud - Are you playing any other festivals ?
Fightstar - Yes, V – and possibly Reading and Leeds.

Planet Loud - That’s a notoriously tough crowd at Reading and Leeds……
Fightstar - Yes, but it would be a smaller stage if we did play. Right now, the only ones confirmed are V and T in the Park. We’ll just find a sausage stand and play there ! It’s always a really cool vibe just seeing other bands and hanging out with them.

Planet Loud - Your obsession with Chuck Palanhiuk is a reccurring theme, what is your Project Mayhem manifesto that keeps getting mentioned on the website ?
Fightstar - Aah, its about doing some crazy shit – most of it has already been done but people just don’t know. We can’t really speak about it……but there has been a flurry of activity. The new single, Palahniuk’s Laughter, is about the concept that a lot of TV programmes still use canned laughter that was first recorded in the 1940’s so actually a lot of the people laughing on modern comedies are now actually dead, which is very weird.

Planet Loud - You (Dan and Al) were involved in the direction of the video….were you behind the whole concept ? What was your involvement ?
Fightstar - Dan wrote it, directed it and edited it – and Al is responsible for all the artwork.

Planet Loud - Is this something you plan to do with every video ?
Fightstar - We’re going to try to – it might get to the stage where we want to hand it over to someone else but at the moment we like having creative control over everything.

Planet Loud - So, the EP is 5 tracks……
Fightstar - Six ! There’s a sneaky sixth hidden track……

Planet Loud - Six tracks…….was it a conscious decision to make it ineligible for the charts and why ?
Fightstar - Fook off charts ! (laughs) No, we just wanted to release the EP, just get it out there. Any chart position we got would’ve just been judged. Basically we’ll release this, then hopefully sign in March, we have the festivals in the summer and then we’ll release the album in October – can’t wait for the album, man.

Planet Loud - And how does the songwriting work, is it a group effort ?
Fightstar - It is a group effort but we don’t really have any set formats for writing, sometimes I’ll just be jamming on an acoustic and we come up with the riffage first – just depends, we just wrote two songs on the bus !

Planet Loud - Is that how you’ve been passing time on the bus ?
Fightstar - Well, the bus is packed – there is fourteen of us on the one bus but we’ve been subjected to a lot of death metal videos ! Plus we watched that Pantera video twice yesterday !

Planet Loud - It’s not a democracy then ?
Fightstar - Well, we get to have chilled out days and then heavy days !

Planet Loud - Do you all have the same influences, the same taste ?
Fightstar - Not at all ! We have the same vision for the bands music but our individual tastes are different - Al’s a big Jeff Buckley fan, Omar’s a drum and bass kid…..

Planet Loud - You have been covering Hurt by Nine Inch Nails……why that song ?
Fightstar - Well……because it’s the best song every written and we just love playing it. Even Johnny Cash has covered it and his version, I think, even rivals Trent Reznors. At the end of the day, if anyone says the don’t like it we just think ‘who the fuck are you to say that we shouldn’t cover a song ?’ I don’t think we do it any harm, if we got feedback that said we were doing it harm then we’d probably stop playing it but we have had people coming up to us afterwards saying it was really cool.

Planet Loud - And would you call yourselves an emo band or do you think that’s a word that gets thrown about too easily ?
Fightstar - Yeah, I mean we’re a rock band and emo does get chucked at bands so easily. Personally I think we would veer more towards post-hardcore than emo but at the end of the day we’re just a band that play rock music. On our album theres going to be some songs that are super-chilled and some that are quite heavy.

Planet Loud - You’ve been gigging a lot over the last few weeks, do you think that you’ve managed to get rid of a lot of the anti-Fightstar heckling, do you feel like you’re having to prove yourself ?
Fightstar - We’re always having to prove ourselves, more than other bands would have to prove themselves in this position. Obviously it wasn’t timed that well in hindsight, I mean Busted split up and then we were straight on tour but we’ve had people coming up to us after every gig saying ‘I really didn’t want to like this – but I do’ – which gives you the ultimate sense of achievement if people are coming expecting not to like it and then do.