If a ‘prophet’ is defined as a person gifted with heightened powers of expression, then Luke Johnson, drummer for Welsh band LostProphets, should be hailed chief spokesperson for all things rock. Endearingly unassuming, for the entirety of our interview he is a fountain of anecdotal hilarity delivered with a large dose of Brummie exuberance. The group’s latest member, he joins one of Britain’s most popular rock bands that has toured the globe, selling over 3.5 million albums worldwide, an impressive figure set to increase with the release of their fifth studio album in twelve years, Weapons.
Not many would have predicted that way back in 1997, in the small Welsh town of Pontypridd, a group of lads calling themselves “The Bum Mules” would ever make it big. Now re-branded the more cosmopolitan LostProphets, this is a band that has grown alongside its loyal fan base to command commercial success, stacking up over a dozen top 40 singles and six Kerrang! Awards.
With their past success, all eyes were on the Welsh rockers to deliver with Weapons a record that could maintain the same uncompromising sound of previous albums. Yet far removed from the glamour of their current California homes, it was in a small Norfolk village that the group embarked on penning this eagerly anticipated album. “This is the funny thing, right,” comments Johnson, “we decided the best bet for the first writing session would be to put ourselves in a little bit of isolation, in a house where we could all have a bedroom each. We wanted to take our time over the process, I mean we were in there for over a month!”
But worldwide fame and a hardcore fan base have their drawbacks when you’re trying to compose a record slap-bang in the middle of a Norfolk high street. “Some local kids found out we were staying in the house and word spread through the village and the schools, so after a week we had forty, fifty kids stood outside the door chanting ‘LOSTPROPHETS!’ The doorbell kept on going… so we disconnected it. It ended up that we made the most of it; the kids would be knocking on the door and we’d hide in a bush, then jump out and scare them, just for a laugh. It was a real good time and there were definitely some good memories.”
With all the terrorising of local neighbourhood children, you may have thought the band had little time to actually write the album. However, it seems to have inspired them; There’s an energy inherent in every track of Weapons and fans of their previous LP The Betrayed will be pleased to know that the grungy riffs and hooks that permeated those songs have carried through to such fist-pumping melodies as ‘Bring ‘em down’ and ‘Better off dead’.
“We kind of walk that line,” Johnson explains, “we’ve never been held to ransom by radio or record labels. We’ve always done our own thing. We always make the choice to be like “Do we want to make a real pop song and stand out?” and we’re like “Yes, we do, because we want to. Not because we’re told. Not because we need to.”
However, Lostprophets have constantly struggled to keep the vast extremes of their fan base happy: those who favour their more mainstream, pop-punk tracks and those audience members who want to mosh to a hardcore British rock band. A fan war has erupted on the YouTube video of their featured Weapons track, ‘Bring Em Down’ where one fan complained, “New album is weak and way too dumbed down for a mainstream audience. Bit of a shame.” Despite such negative feedback, Johnson is optimistic.
“We see that a lot. There’s a lot of hardcore fans, who were super into the band on the first and second records that then didn’t like the third or fourth. And that’s the thing, you can’t take that like a punch in the balls. You can’t keep everybody happy. You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs and at the end of the day, we just do what we believe in. I would say that general consensus is that 80, 85% of the time people are happy with what we do. There’s always going to be those online haters.”
Clearly, Lostprophets know more than most that the charts can be a tough environment for a rock band. “Young kids just don’t have any patience and music’s become so disposable. They want an instant sugar rush and that’s why you get loads of bands making electronic music with a really quick chorus in 30 seconds, but it’s just a complete sugar kick.” Despite having over 450,000 fans on Facebook alone, Johnson maintains that the band have to constantly battle the percentages. “I heard that Urban stuff, your Hip Hop, R+B, Dubstep, whatever, it’s 70% of the music market. So, if you think rock and everything else is 30% it’s insane.”
So when Weapons entered the UK charts in the Top 10 in April, holding its own against the likes of Labrinth and Nicki Minaj, it was a significant victory for the Welsh rockers. For Johnson, the music industry is very much that: an industry in the gritty business sense. As such, he believes it should be approached with a level-head. “Excuse the term but you’ve got to know your enemies, you know what I mean? And I don’t mean that every other genre of music is our enemy, but they are our competition. If we’re putting a record out on Monday I want to know who’s releasing on that day so I know who we’re releasing against and what the odds are, what the market is.”
This rebellious streak is vividly apparent in many of their recent tracks, from the grungy riffs and hooks of The Betrayed to the recent, disillusioned lyrics of Weapons. For a band that generates such extremes of devotion and dislike, Johnson remains surprisingly realistic.
“My entire opinion of music is that it’s an art, and if you’re an artist whether it’s a painter, a street artist, a sculptor, musician, film etc. you make something – for instance we made Weapons. We were in the studio making that album and it’s ours. They’re our songs. But there’s that moment when that’s expanded. They’re no longer yours any more, that’s taken away, when they’re released and they’re your fans’. It’s out there in the public domain and at the end of the day if you make an album as a product, as a finished piece of art, you’re asking for an opinion. Sometimes you might not like the opinions you get, but you’ve got to have courage in the convictions of your own art”
It’s a very fair and open-minded view, but everyone else’s opinions aside, are the group happy themselves with the art they’ve created? “There’s always room to improve. And I don’t think that any artist that’s worth their salt, whether it’s canvas, celluloid, CD or whatever, sits at the end of their project and goes ‘Yes, this is perfect. I’ve done awesome’. You know, we’re very happy with Weapons but there are still things that we think “Ah man, I wish I could have done that!”.
Clearly, LostProphets know what they want to deliver. With fifteen years of experience, a new record label and Weapons at the ready, this is one rock band that’s set to attack those chart percentages and smash their way to the top.