Their new single ‘American Made’ is set to be released on March 8th and their brand new album A Deadset Endeavour will soon follow. The Fallen State have gained even more success thanks to their super hit ‘Nova’ and after supporting huge acts such as Black Stone Cherry, Halestorm, Tremonti and 3 Doors Down to name a few. As if that wasn’t enough these very talented British rockers have recently signed to Last Man Music and are ready to delight their fans with their new exciting work. Tonight they are supporting the amazing guys from Pop Evil at Islington Academy in London and we caught up with guitarist Jon Price, vocalist Ben Stenning and bassist Greg Butler to talk more in depth about A Deadset Endeavour and their next plans.
RAMzine: Hi guys, are you all ready and excited about tonight?
Jon: Definitely, we’ve been here before with Puddle Of Mudd and now we get to do it again. It’s gonna be fantastic!
Greg: We love playing in London, that’s where our main fan base is. We played here a few times and it’s good to come back. We are looking forward to tonight’s show!
RAMzine: And how’s touring with Pop Evil?
Jon: I like it!
Greg: Awful (laughs). No, they are absolutely fantastic. Really nice people and a great band. They looked after us and showed us a few things, you know. I like to think we are good friends now, we got on really well.
RAMzine: What excites you the most about playing in London?
Jon: You are playing in the capital aren’t you! You are playing in the place where everybody wants to be and where everybody wants to go out to. Each city has its flavour and London definitely has the one that we enjoy.
Greg: I agree. And many amazing bands have played in the same venues as us, so we are fortunate to walk on the same stage that they have. Everyone wants to play in London. We were talking with the Pop Evil guys and they were all looking forward to London the most.
RAMzine: London is always London after all.
Greg: Yeah.
RAMzine: So, the new single ‘American Made’ will be out on March 8th, what can we expect from it?
Benjamin: Expect a catchy record with heavy riffs. We wanted to say something with the songs and make a statement with the album. It’s not just about one single song, there’s a theme going on in this album.
Greg: A lot of people think that in the song ‘American Made’ we are saying we are American made but once you listen to the lyrics you understand that this is not the meaning of it.
Jon: It’s like that stamp, isn’t it? The stamp ‘American Made’ that people put on things, we won’t give too much away but if you listen to the song carefully you’ll get it.
RAMzine: ‘American Made’ is also part of a new forthcoming album called A Deadset Endeavour, can you tell us anything about it?
Jon: We absolutely can. We’ve spent five years moving to this point and the album is coming out on April the 12th, so you’ve got a stunning exclusive on that. Rather than going straight into it, we kinda pursued the plan of writing a succession of EPs, so we did five of them. Each one wasn’t able to progress further, up until last year when we were finally in a place to do this album fully. We didn’t lock ourselves away but now we are ready to go out and give our all.
Benjamin: We really had something to say in this album. We wouldn’t have written a full album that didn’t have any meaning to us. We’ve finally reached that point now in which we are comfortable with writing that amount of material. Like Jon said, we wanted to evolve before we knew what our sound definitely was and so this is it. This is our album, we are really proud of it. We can’t wait for people to hear it.
RAMzine: Great stuff, looking forward to it! ‘Nova’ was one of your biggest hits, do you ever tend to compare the success of that song to your newest work?
Jon: It’s all continuous, we tour and then we create song after song.
Greg: ‘Nova’ did so well to us so hopefully we’ll have that kind of response in the future again. We don’t wanna do the same song over and over again, definitely not going down that route, but we always hope for a positive reaction.
RAMzine: Throughout your career you’ve also supported some amazing bands, which tour made you particularly proud of yourselves?
Jon: There’s gonna be an individual one for each innit (laughs).
Greg: I think all of them. You can’t really choose one because every single one has taught us something and has taken us to a different path. For example thanks to 3 Doors Down we played Hammersmith Apollo, Tremonti took us out and we played Shepherd’s Bush plus it was fantastic because they have such a loyal fan base. Blackstone Cherry took us to Ireland and Pop Evil gave us the chance to play in Europe which we’ve never been before so each headliner gave us something important and something that we will remember. That’s why it’s hard to choose, although I think everyone has got their favourite show.
Benjamin: I know Dan will definitely say Tremonti ‘cus he’s a huge fan, so for him it was a big thing. For me probably would be Halestorm as it was our first big tour and we were all excited about it. We made friends with all those bands so it’s one of those things where you can’t really choose easily. Of course there are specific shows we’ll never forget.
RAMzine: What’s one thing you look forward to when going out on tour?
Greg: Just playing and meeting the fans. Whether it’s people we’ve seen before or people who haven’t seen us and you get to meet them for the first time. The best feeling is winning over new fans.
RAMzine: Must be very rewarding for you.
Greg: Absolutely. There’s nothing like playing a good show and seeing a great reaction to it. That’s definitely my favourite thing.
Jon: Sometimes it’s always one show and you can’t predict what show is gonna be but we just end up having a great night and that brings you higher.
Greg: And we like trying different food.
RAMzine: Especially in Europe right?
Greg: Yeah loads of great stuff.
Benjamin: And cheap cigarettes.
RAMzine: So are you saying that was the best thing about Europe?
(Everyone laughs)
Greg: Germany is great for beers too.
RAMzine: And it’s quite cheap as well.
Greg: Yeah.
RAMzine: And talking about touring, what’s your ideal future tour?
Jon: Well, I thought we’d start at Wembley then possibly the Rose Bowl (laughs).
Greg: Definitely a big headline tour where we can play across Europe and America, if we get to that point I think that’s what we’d aim for.
Benjamin: And for me it would be ideal to have one day on and three days off.
RAMzine: Just enough time to recover.
Benjamin: Yeah, just taking it real chill.
RAMzine: What’s the next big thing for the band?
Greg: There’s the new album then hopefully we get to go out and play some more shows and everything that comes with it. We got Ramblin’ Man, one of the festivals that’s been already announced and hopefully there’ll be others. We can’t predict the future but we hope to keep going and keep doing what we are doing.
RAMzine: Leave us with a message to your fans and to the people that want to know more about The Fallen State…
Greg: To our fans, thank you so much for supporting us, sticking with us and spreading the word ‘cus that’s very important too. To anyone new, come and check our shows, come and meet us, we’d love to get to know you. Check out the new album and if you like it, you’ll be very welcome to join our family.
