BLACK COAST

Taking some inspiration from our very own Ocean Grove, UK nu-metal band Black Coast changed up their sound and the result is impressive to say the least! I was so captured by this band and their latest single ‘Paradise’ that I couldn’t turn down the chance to have a chat with them, so here is my first international interview featuring Black Coast’s guitarist Scott Pinnington.

So your new single Paradise! Holy shit. When I first put it on I got excited because of the Alice in Chain vibe and then Charlie opened his mouth and for a minute I thought it was Chino Moreno singing! What is going on here???

We have had a lot of that to be fair. Alice In Chains is a massive influence on each of us. As a band we all have separate inspirations and influences but Alice in Chains, Deftones and Limp Bizkit are probably our three main influences that have brought on this newer style. And a band from Australia, Ocean Grove. They were a big turning point in this sound, from what we were before to how we are now. The first time we heard Ocean Grove we were recording one of our EP’s Ill Mind. We were there recording, and Charlie played us Ocean Grove and none of us had ever heard of them. He was like “Listen to this band.” We just sat in the van listening to this album just going ‘Yeah we don’t want to record.” The day of recording our EP and we completely had no interest in what we were about to record. We just thought we need to change the style of music; Ocean Grove are one of the newer bands that gave us a lot of influence to change.

That would have been The Rhapsody Tapes?

Yeah that was The Rhapsody Tapes.

I actually own a test press of that album. It one of the albums that got me into metalcore.

The new album is great as well, but I just think that The Rhapsody Tapes was so good, so different.

It was a game changer for the scene here. It’s an iconic album.

Like I said the new stuff is great and Sunny is such a good song. Sunny is one of my favourite tracks off the new album, it has such an Oasis feel to it and I’m a big fan of Oasis. I was really turned on to that catchy side of the song. As for the whole riff side I would say Rhapsody Tapes is just too good.

Absolutely. Your new single Paradise has been pretty well received because you are popping up everywhere.

We are just completely blown away. We knew we had a good song, not sounding biased about it at all. But when we go from what we have done with Ill Minds to what we have achieved with Paradise its completely turned the tape for us. Our vision of what we wanted to happen with the song and the music has happened with the first single off the album. We have a few more to be released before we drop the album. What happened was we went in January 2019 to start writing and preproduction for the album with a local producer named Sam Bloor. We went in with one song which we played for Sam, he basically said he didn’t like any of the song, but he liked one tiny little section. That ended up being the main riff for Paradise. Once the switch flicked in our brains, of this idea, it just spawned a whole album of songs. We were just on a roll. The thing that made it really change for us was when Charles sang. That was the one thing that really opened the door for us.

Everyone I have shared Paradise with have been blown away by how good it is. I think you guys are destined for big things this year.

I hope so. I really so. We have had a lot of set backs and stuff and we have worked so hard writing this album for two years. We did two tours at the start of 2020. One with a band called The King is Dead and another band called Ground Culture. When we did the Ground Culture tour it seemed like there was a lot more people turning up to the shows and this was before we released music. It was nice and we started thinking that 2020 was going to be nice. A week after we came off tour we went into lockdown. Everything that we were working towards got stopped. At the same time it has done us a favour because the songs are kind of timeless, there is no time restriction on the music. Like Ill Mind it was very Stray from the Path kind of feel and sound, which don’t get me wrong, is great but for us that music felt a bit dated to how we feel about this. We’ve all said it wouldn’t matter if this new stuff came out this year or next year it would still feel like it has a fresh sound of our own. Like I said when we dropped Paradise it was great because it was just doing its own thing without us having to push it. It’s circulating itself; the music is just running its own course which is great. It’s what w3e wanted form the music. We are really proud of ourselves, not going to lie. It’s something that we have worked really hard on.

You have some festivals lined up too? Fingers crossed.

We have a local one in July called Your City which I would say will be our first gig back after lockdown. We are headlining that with a couple of other local bands.

You have Burn It Down too with Hacktivist, Palm Reader and Wargasm

Yeah there are some sick bands on that line-up .We have played shows everywhere in this country. We have driven hours and hours to play in smallish places and played to nobody. We’ve put the miles in, played shows on a Wednesday night in the middle of nowhere to nobody. It will be nice to actually go and play to people who are coming to see us. You know ‘Oh Black Coast are coming and hey have new music’ which is cool. SO we have the two festivals and hopefully something else comes through. We come out of lockdown May/June so I’m happy to just wait and see what comes. Hopefully be June we will have released a few more singles. Hopefully a few more people will get switched on to Black Coast.

Hopefully you will be able to get to Australia.

I would love to. We have had a lot more coverage of the song in Australia than we have over here. We are completely blown away by it. We got played on Triple J on Short.Fast.Loud which was amazing. Josh gave us a massive like which blew us away. We couldn’t be more thankful really.

You’re making a name for yourselves here that’s for sure.

Like I said we jumped on a plane to play three shows in Japan so we will do it again to any country. If someone gives us a show we will be there regardless of where it is.

We have a minute left! Your Linkin Park cover of ‘A Place For My Head’ was so good.

When we were writing we had come to a point in the album where we had a bit of writers block. Sam suggested we do a cover for a bit of fun to just break up doing the album. He could tell it was getting a little bit frustrating because there were a few bits we got stuck with. We all went away, and everybody picked a song. I think I picked Pantera, somebody else picked something different and Joe the guitarist picked Linkin Park. It was a song that I don’t think anybody really covers.

Last question. If you could collaborate with one artist who would it be?

For me personally it would be Jerry Cantrell. In my world he is God. He wrote the best riffs and is literally the coolest guy.