Phil: Like a lot of bands, Final Coil started out as a few friends, having fun and playing the music we loved. We dealt in energetic, grungy noise influenced by the likes of Nirvana, Alice in chains and Sonic Youth and, although our roots are still very much with those bands, I think we’ve expanded beyond our chaotic origins to create something that’s more unique to us. Shows were short, loud and shot through with feedback and flying instruments. A few of my older guitars still bear the scars of our early enthusiasm although I guess, in that sense, little has changed as Rich (who has been part of this trip since the beginning) still has to pick my hair out of his headstock after most gigs (and still moans like hell while he does it)!
Phil: The real genesis of Final Coil as we are today would be 2008 when Rich and I started developing the band in a more structured way. One thing that really moved us forward was when Jola joined as bassist. She very quickly made a huge contribution thanks to her background in jazz, not to mention her incredibly diverse musical tastes, and after that it was simply matter of finding a capable drummer who could match our ambitions. It took a while, and we’ve worked with a number of great (and not so great) drummers before finally settling on a fixed line up.
Phil: Over the years we produced a few EPs, the first being ‘Live with doubt’, which we recorded in 2011. The EP features a number of tracks which showcase our heavy, grunge roots and ‘Endgame’ remains a key part of our live set today. Of all of our older material, I love playing that song the most and it’s always a huge adrenalin rush to play it live. The follow-up, recorded in the absence of a drummer, was ‘Somnambulant’. Released in 2014, it features a host of acoustic (and not-so acoustic) tracks, including an early version of ‘myopic’, a track that would eventually end up in heavier form on our debut album. It’s a funny EP, but I’m really proud of how it turned out and it has a strange atmosphere, somewhat reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘still’ which I am really happy with. Then, in 2016, we produced the ‘closed to the light’ EP. It helped us to reach a whole new audience and it also attracted the attention of a producer in Italy who introduced us to WormHoleDeath. I already knew about the label thanks to Way of Purity, an awesome band with very strong ethics, and I was stunned when the label offered to take us under their wing.
Phil: Since then, we have had the opportunity to travel to Italy, where we recorded our debut album, Persistence of Memory. The album was a real labour of love and we had an amazing time in the hills of Parma, putting it all together. Thanks to the amazing crew there, as well as the support of the label, the album has received considerable acclaim and we’ve been blown away by the response.
2. What’s the origin of the band’s name?
Phil: When I first came up with the idea for the band, I was studying literature at University, a subject I loved, so I guess it is natural that I would be heavily influenced by the works I was reading at the time. The name Final Coil basically came about as a result of my reading Shakespeare and Dante. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, depicted hell as being made up of a series of concentric circles with the ninth circle being reserved for the treacherous. It is here that the damned suffer torments unnamed, for they are frozen and unable to speak. It’s a tremendously dark piece of imagery, although being Dante it is written in the most elegant manner (even in translation) and so, there’s one influence: The final coil – the gateway to hell – it seemed dark and foreboding and I felt it suited the somewhat claustrophobic nature of the music.
Phil: Shakespeare, meanwhile, referenced the idea of shuffling “off this mortal coil” in Hamlet. Obviously, there’s already a band called This Mortal Coil, and I can’t imagine they’d take to kindly to us pinching their name, but, again, the metaphorical finality of the phrase struck me. That’s the great thing about literature, you’ll find yourself finding and remembering all sorts of phrases and ideas, and, over time, they become a part of your existence. In fact, the title of our debut – persistence of memory’ – was much more heavily influenced by literature (in this instance Stephen King), than by the Dali painting of the same name.
3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?
Phil: Final Coil hail from Leicester, in the United Kingdom. It’s a relatively small city but it has a thriving music scene and a number of great bands. Off the top of my head, bands that I would recommend include the tech-metal loons, Monachopsis, the dark bringers of sludge Temple of Lies and Mage, rockers Midnight Dogs and Beckon Lane and the super heavy sounds of Internal Conflict and Blood Oath. They’re all very different to us (we probably fit, stylistically, with ToL, Beckon Lane and Mage most closely), but they’re all bands who bring their own unique take on a genre and they’re all cracking live. There are so many bands out there with whom we’ve had an opportunity to share a stage, so that question is always difficult to answer, but there’s no doubt that there are plenty of great bands in Leicester, and across the UK, just waiting to be discovered.
Rich: As Phil said, we're based in Leicester in the UK which also lies within touching distance of Nottingham, Sheffield and Birmingham and other Midlands towns. There definitely are cohesive scenes about, though seemingly more on the death metal side which, while we have some friends in those areas, doesn’t really fit in with our sound. I think the best fits for us over recent years have been bands such as Beckon Lane and This Elegant Chaos who both fit our melodic yet heavy ethos.
4. How would you describe your style?
Phil: This is such a difficult question because we rarely contemplate genre and every review comes up with something different. We’ve been called doom, stoner, grunge, post rock, prog rock, metal… I can understand all of those tags, but genre labelling bothers me because it necessarily pushes people to have specific expectations of how we should sound and that’s something I’m keen to avoid. Speaking for myself, I love to find an album about which I have no expectations one way or the other because it’s so exciting when you find something that’s new and different. On the other hand, if you pick up an album that’s labelled ‘epic doom’ or ‘the next Nirvana’ or whatever and it doesn’t meet expectations, then that feeling of disappointment lingers whether you mean it to or not. That was one of the cool things I liked about David Bowie – whenever he released a new record you’d check it out completely unsure of what was coming at you, but it was almost always great.
Phil: Rather more broadly, we do fall into the heavier end of the musical spectrum. Some of our influences include Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree, Alice in Chains, Katatonia, Anathema, Massive attack, Radiohead and Paradise lost and from those you can clearly see an alternative influence, albeit on a pretty broad specturm, and I guess it’s that diversity of source material that reviewers pick up on.
Phil: We definitely like to deal in big riffs, but there’s a melodic edge to the vocals that tends to push the music in different directions, and we like to employ different structures, rather than just deal in verse-chorus-verse… Oh dear, this is turning into a rather long answer isn’t it?!?
Rich: It doesn't matter how we describe ourselves, people always seem to hear different things that we'd never have thought of (or in odd cases even heard of!) I think our basis these days is rooted somewhere in those heavy grooves from the heavier 'grunge' bands such as Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, but with more proggy traits in keeping with say A Perfect Circle or maybe even Deftones. More electronic elements are finding their way into our songs too, so Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails influences are in there too.
5. What have you released so far and what can someone expect from your works?
Phil: We’ve produced three EPs thus far (all available for free on our Bandcamp page) and our debut album.
Phil: In each case, we worked very hard to sequence our work and make the music flow – we’re all fans of the album rather than simply releasing a collection of songs, so although our back catalogue does not contain conceptual works as such, there are thematic and musical links that make them worth listening to in order.
Phil: In terms of our debut album, Persistence of Memory, I wanted it to take the listener on a journey. It’s an eleven-track trip that ebbs and flows over the course of its sixty-five-minute run time. At the album’s heart is ‘failed light’, one of our longest songs and a track with more than a hint of the Floyd about it. It’s a piece of which I’m particularly proud, not least because I wrote it in a dream (no really!) and, when I woke up, on e fine Saturday morning, I just had the damn thing in my head. I headed straight into the spare room, much to the consternation of my wife who isn’t used to me leaping anywhere at half seven on a Saturday morning, and, over the course of eight hours, recorded the whole damn thing.
Phil: That odd moment aside, your readers can expect towering, metallic riffs, off-kilter vocal harmonies, memorable melodies and a dash of the unexpected!
Rich: So, our first full length album, Persistence of Memory, is out currently and hopefully will take the listener on a nice moody journey through some heavy bombast and melodious spaced-out contrast. Sometimes all at once. Also available from our bandcamp site are the EPs Closed to the Light and Somnambulant; of which the former is a little doomy and groove based and the latter is an acoustic(ish!) project which is quite proggy and soundscapey.
6. Do you have any new music in the works?
Phil: Yes! Alas, I can’t speak about it too much at the moment, but we’ve been working very hard on a piece of music and we’re going to be releasing information pertaining to that very soon. I’d love to tell you more, but our management are very strict about such things and have threatened to remove certain, fleshy parts of my anatomy if I go around shooting my mouth off…
Rich: We have a few things coming through the pipeline in terms of new material, but nothing we can share as yet. It will definitely be a progression from previous records because what's the point in repeating yourself?
Phil: We certainly don’t want to be repeating ourselves(!)
Rich: Indeed, repetition is bad.
Phil: This interview could take a while…
7. How about playing shows and touring, have anything planned out?
Phil: Well, because we’re busy writing (not to mention a few other, behind the scenes changes of late), we haven’t played too many shows. We have a great hometown show in Leicester on July 14th with Witchtripper – always a great band to play with – as well as a show in Sheffield on October 13th and a special show on December 6th at the Musician, once again in Leicester. That aside, we’re aiming to get ourselves out on the road as soon as is humanly possible.
8. What plans do you have for the future as a band?
Phil: I don’t know that we really have long-term plans as such. Obviously we have a plan for the rest of this year (OK, OK – put the heated curling tongs down – I’m not going to say anything…) Sorry, management are getting threatening again. So, yes, we have a plan for the rest of 2018, which we’ll reveal soon but, longer term, the plan is to get out on the road. We are especially keen to head out to mainland Europe because the audiences there are just great and, if it were in any way possible to get to the US then we’d pretty much sell our families into perpetual slavery (not you, mum!) to get out there because that would be a dream come true. For the main part, though, we just want to keep playing music. I absolutely love having the opportunity to play in a band where the defining principle is creative freedom and I’m so grateful to the people who listen to our music and share our work around. It’s just amazing to me.
Rich: I think we have plenty to work on for the future. I think that, even now, we have loads of ideas to explore, so hopefully things will continue in a way that we're able to do that, and with a bit of luck other people will be interested too. Then world domination. Ahem…
Phil: Oh, yeah. World Domination. I always forget to mention that…
9. Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
Phil: Well, our earlier material was self-released via Bandcamp – so you can head to www.finalcoilrock.bandcamp.com . There, people can find all of our early stuff for free (yep – FREE people, head there and download it) as well as our debut album. That’s not free, I’m afraid, because the record label gets upset with that sort of thing, but you can buy it direct from us and then, maybe, we’ll be able to eat next month(!) You can also find out about us from our website: www.finalcoil.com and our album was released, worldwide, via WormHoleDeath / The Orchard on Deezer; iTunes; Amazon and Spotify (and pretty much every other streaming and sales platform you can imagine).
10. What is it you’d like a listener to remember the most when hearing your music for the first time?
Phil: That’s a great question! Certainly, when I think about our music, I think about it as the sort of music that you need time to absorb and reflect upon. It is heavy (and live it’s super-heavy), but I guess it’s not so much a matter of remembering as feeling. I’d like people to feel the passion and emotion that went into making that debut album. When we recorded Persistence of memory, it was in a studio on a hillside in Italy. Most of the time it was shrouded in mist, but every day there’d be a few minutes when the sun would break through and you’d see the Alps. That eerie, misty, occasionally beautiful quality is what we strove for. If people feel that, then we’ll have done our job.
Rich: I would hope that when someone listens to any of our works that it takes them on some kind of journey. We always try to put things together in a way that it makes a cohesive piece of work, so you just hope that other people go for that too. My favourite albums are the ones I listen to and I keep noticing new things even now, so hopefully somewhere people are doing that with ours.
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