Power Metal darlings BATTLE BORN are going from strength to strength. They released their debut album Blood, Fire, Magic & Steel earlier this year which was promoted by one of their most anticipated UK tours to date. Rock Out Stand Out’s Lotty Whittingham caught up with lead vocalist Jack Reynolds a couple of months after the tour to speak about it, the album, mental health and of course, something related to video games.
Hello Jack, how are you?
I’m great Lotty, how are you?
I am well, so the last time we saw each other was at the Southampton show of the latest Battle Born tour. You’re were ill if I remember correctly.
That’s right, it became a little bit difficult to get through the end of that tour. I think it was around show number eleven or twelve, we were starting to feel it and I started to come down with something but managed to get back on the road for Southampton and the final show in London.
Speaking of the tour, the Southampton show was amazing. How did the rest of the tour go? It looked like it went really well.
Yes it did, I am so happy with how it went. It was great fun. I think Southampton might have been my favourite date if I had to pick. I mean it’s the closest we got to a home town show, some of us live or have lived in Southampton. It was a wonderful crowd. There were a lot of highlights, it’s not easy to pick just one.
It was packed to the brim in Southampton which was great. One of my personal highlights when you were posting about the tour was that video from I think Edinburgh; you and Charlie with that street performer promoting your show.
Yes, he was an awesome guy. In fact he came along to the show that night. It was a bit harder to spot him as he wasn’t in his attire but we could hear him at least.
If you did recognise him, would you have invited him on stage?
It’s tricky one as there wasn’t really a stage in Edinburgh, it was a smaller room and I’m not sure if it’s usually used for DJ/Club nights but it was a bar at one end and they had a PA and monitor system. We were at the same level as the audience so we had to create the stage with our monitor set up and all the equipment we lug across the country. It was great, intimate gig and it was fun audience to have in that kind of room.
Which tracks did you find went down best with the crowds? I enjoyed Power Force and Bring The Metal Back always goes down a treat.
So those ones you mentioned never fail to hit the mark, they are always a lot of fun. I feel like those were the ones where we knew they would be a lot of fun.
We played Meridia a bunch on the tour, for a while we wondered if it was a good fit for the album, let alone the tour. It was only when we started showing it to our friends and getting second opinion on things, we had been working on the album over a year by this point and we were very close to it. With Meridia, we felt it wasn’t your usual power metal track but people really seem to dig it so we took a swing at it live and it went down well. That was one that became an unexpected high point for me of the set.
Meridia has lots of different voices as well. Would there be a point if you went out on tour where you would have all those voices with you on the stage?
Whilst that would be amazing, the logistics of sorting out a tour is quite a hassle without having a choir with us as well. If we could ever do that, that would be terrific. We’re in the fortunate position where there are essentially five vocalists in the band so you can make a huge moment like that. On the album, there are a lot more voices and different types of voices on some of the parts.
You had a special guest on the stage for the Southampton show, was that the same for the rest of the tour?
No, it was only on the Southampton date of the tour. The guy we had on stage is a very good friend of ours who is also called Will, he is a very lovely man. With this being the first show where I was back in rotation, he reached out to us to check with the situation where I was ill and if we needed a hand, he could step in and help. First we thought that sounded like a lot of fun and it helped a lot, he came on for a couple of songs and we shared out some of the lyrics. It made it much easier on the voice when you’re about fourteen shows in.
This tour was promoting your debut Blood, Fire, Magic & Steel. Brilliant album by the way. It looks like it’s been received very well by fans and I haven’t seen the critic reviews yet.
I haven’t seen negative responses. To be honest, we put a lot of effort into following what the fans think and that goes into the tour as well. Chatting with people after the show, that’s a huge thing for us. I guess we’re less on the ball when it comes to googling and finding the reviews. Everything I have seen has been positive, I have no complaints there.
There’s a couple of songs I want to talk about. One of them being The Endless Grey. It’s a beautiful track, I want to know what that track is about. The lyrics touch upon loosing someone or part of yourself so I would to know more.
Absolutely, I remember when we were writing the track there was some serious debate in the Battle Born camp about whether the correct number of ballads for an album is zero or one. It came to the point of picking the album songs and we worked on this one a lot, the quality of it made it an easy decision to pick the song for the album. Part of it was the lyrics in terms of making that decision.
The lyrics; how do I start. I think we started by sitting down and thinking what the saddest quests in Skyrim were. We had a bit of a replay and hunt around, there’s one quest line called The White Vial. It’s a story of a mentor and an apprentice in a potion shop, the mentor is dying from what seems to be an incurable illness and the only hope in saving him is the healing properties of this legendary vial that no-one knows really exists. That’s the target of the quest is to receive that vial but the real tragedy of the story is that you’re successful and get the vial but you’re ultimately too late. The mentor dies and you miss his death. It’s not a happy ending.
The lyrics in The Endless Grey can relate to a real life situation of loosing someone.
Absolutely and there is a sense of powerlessness around it which is relatable for anyone who has lost someone they care about. You also got to remember we wrote this song during the height of COVID so there were plenty of people loosing loved ones and either there wasn’t anything they could do or they couldn’t be there with them in a lot of cases.
The other track I want to talk about that’s on the other end of the emotional scale, Power Force. You did a video for us explaining about it so for those who haven’t seen the video or those who need a refresher, tell us about Power Force.
I’ll be honest, this song took me a while to win me over. For a long time, while we were writing the song; Power Force was the fun, dumb song and that’s all I saw it as. Eventually I came to see inside this big, dumb song there was an important meaning. On the surface, it’s about being strong, powerful and not giving a damn. If you listen closely, it’s about the transformation into someone who feels strong, powerful and doesn’t rely on the approval of others. It’s a subtle difference but that’s when it clicked for and I started to love it.
The other track I would like to talk about is Skyguard, the last track on the album. In terms of vocals, they take a different turn. You can really hit those high notes.
We spent a long time in the studio really nailing that one. I think it’s probably more than any other song where delivery is super important on what the song is meant to feel like. To an extent, that’s true for all of them but for a whole bunch of songs on the album, it’s like this should have strong power metal vocals and that will do the trick. There’s a bit more to Skyguard and there’s more range. I see this song as split up into two parts; you have the chorous and the verses. The verses are from a third person narrative describing what’s happening and the choruses are much more focused from the perspective of the main character, especially on the promise they are making. That perspective change really drove the different vocal tones that come into the song.
Do you already have in mind what vocal tone you’re going to do for each song or is it a case of singing out and seeing what works?
It’s a bit of both. I mean it does start with having the lyrics in front of you, which you’ve slaved away over and then you starting them then seeing what feels right. So there is that little bit of organic nature to them I guess. That is something why earlier in the process than when we’re in the studio. By the time we’re actually recording it and the red light is on, it gets given a lot of attention and we know exactly how we want it to sound.
What was the most challenging track to record?
That’s a hard question because we didn’t record the tracks one by one, we focused on getting the lead vocals nailed for each of them then filling out the backing vocals. We did that in a sharing around fashion as Tom [O’Dell] does a lot of the backing vocals and Charlie [Lamacraft-Perrett] does them as well. So keeping making sure all those sounded fresh was quite a challenge.
The hardest time I would have to say is the track When Empires Die and I think that’s because of the end. At that point, we had gone through a few key changes and getting into stretchy territory, that songs ends very big with very long, high notes. That was a tough one.
As you know, Rock Out Stand Out’s mission is to keep the conversation about mental health going. Your album has certainly helped me through a lot. Have you had messages from fans telling you what songs helped them?
Definitely. The most recent one was about Meridia; which wasn’t a song I related in my mind to being that supporting song. There is something there, I guess it’s about restoring some sort of natural balance and undoing a wrong. This was another one that came from a specific Skyrim quest and it’s a very uplifting one. There’s something about that in bridge as well just musically when the choir all comes in. That’s one of my favourite moments on the album for sure.
With regards to your own mental wellbeing, what’s the most important lesson you’ve learnt?
Probably the most helpful thing I have come to realise and this does relate to making the album in a way, is to make sure I make time to not be working. Whether that’s the day job or band stuff such as writing, preparing for a tour etc., just making sure there’s time to not be doing any of that. That was something I had to realise and had to learn, there was a while where I was in the mindset of ‘how many things can I get done before I go to sleep’ and I was working on that mode for a few months. I felt better when I stopped doing that.
I do think there tends to be a lot of emphasis of if you’re busy, you’re productive but then actually it’s OK not to have those productive days. It took me a while to learn not to feel guilty for not being productive.
I absolutely hear what you mean on that. You can have time where you think ‘right I’m not going to do anything’ but when you have a to-do list that can get you down. Do you really want your life to be at the grindstone all the time? Is that the life you would wish for yourself?
You and I have both moved to new places, a huge life change. What would be your advise on dealing with huge life changes?
I moved straight after the tour and I think what got me through that was that I gave myself every comfort and treat to make this as nice as it can be. So do that, if you’re going through a change that’s going to be stressful, give yourself some treats.
With every Battle Born interview, I like to add a video game related question. Which five characters would you like to see in a reality show? So those where they get voted off.
Am I in the house with them? As that will really effect my answer.
Actually yes, you are in the house with them.
So, I would pick Spyro The Dragon and I would hope he would go all the way to win the competition because he’s my boy. I would pick Cratos from God Of War but the most recent one, Dad Cratos who can sort everything out for us. Lydia from Skyrim, she seems like the easiest person to get a long with but also she can carry everything for me. I think a normal character from The Sims, they only speak that language they speak and if they’re hungry, you can see the icon above their head. The last one I would pick is Aloy from the Horizon series as she is really cool.
I would watch that.
If I was in the house, I wouldn’t want to leave.
I’d have Crash Bandicoot in the house.
That would be chaotic.
It would and also entertaining. One last thing, do you have a message for Battle Born fans and Rock Out Stand Out readers?
Thank you for all for the amazing support you have given us with the tour and the album. Rest assured we are not taking our foot off the gas just yet, we are hard at work on the next album and future plans. We can’t wait for you to hear more from us and we can’t wait to see you soon.
Thank you Jack for talking with Rock Out Stand Out today and look forward to hearing from Battle Born soon.
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