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Interview with
PAUL GREEN
(Vocalist of
DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL)

Interviewer – Connor Gutteridge

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When and How did you get your start in music and how did this lead to the beginning of ‘Devil Sold His Soul’?
For me I got kicked off music when I was about 16, I always wanted to be in a band like Oasis. I loved my indie back then prior to getting into heavy music. Through that I then jumped from band to band and progressed. I got into a band called ‘The Arusha Accord’, a band from Reading, they were my first real band of sorts, and we toured a lot. They are still going today actually. Through that I got I got to know the ‘Devil Sold his Soul’ guys. So, they started out roughly around the same time, maybe a year before The Arusha Accord. When Ed, who is back in the band now, left in 2013 I stepped in to replace him.

What bands really influenced you growing up and starting in metal?
Absolutely, Oasis were my entry band into rock music, see my parents were never into any sort of metal when I was growing up. So, my first real bands in were more on the post-hardcore side, bands like Thrice and Anberlin. I never really got the proper education of the proper traditional metal bands like Metallica and Pantera. So, I came in more from an escape punk route and by listening to loads of bands like Lagwagon. Someone then introduced me to the hardcore side, the more like heavier and screamier style music and I was totally hooked from that point. From that point onwards it was more about tech metal for me because someone showed me The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Miss Machine album which absolutely blew me away. From that point onwards it was just a journey into all the other stuff.

How has the past 12 months been in the life of the band?
It’s actually been really busy, so that has probably saved us a lot of the mental health issues that comes with not knowing what to do with ourselves during lock-down. Yeah, we have been super busy, we’ve been recording music videos. This time last year we were in the studio starting off vocals, we waited until the first lockdown has dissipated and then May-June we got in and finished the vocals properly. Got in to mixing in June-July and mastering it then as well. From then its just been an absolute none stop train all the way to where we are today, talking to labels, getting signed up to nuclear blast. Then just an insane amount of work to do to get to the point where next week we release.

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How do you feel about the emergence of the online show and would you guys ever consider doing one yourself?
We thought about it quite a bit and had loads of discussions in the band. It doesn’t really do it for us, reason being is that we really vibe off the crowd and the atmosphere of people singing back and there a massive sea of sweaty bodies and people having a good time out the front. For us we looked at Architects did a really good one and tesseract did a really good one. We just felt that if you were going to do one you had to really put it on par or better than what is out there to make it worthwhile, and you just cant I mean the budget and the vibes. We just wouldn’t want to do it because it just wouldn’t feel good for us. Maybe the fans would get something out of it and maybe its selfish of us to not want to do it but predominantly it’s a case of we would feel quite stagnant being up there.

The new record ‘loss’ coming out in a weeks’ time, talk to me about the new record and what this one means to you?
‘Loss’ is quite a dark record there is really no two ways to say about it. We went through some pretty tough times leading into it and during the writing period of it. Our drummer lost his mum, we were kind of feeling around for new music and then that happened, and it really set the scene for what we were going to write about. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one who passed during that period, so it was a case of we’ve got our theme and wanted to make a fullness record and not just put out ten tracks about whatever. We kind of dived into our own personal lives and how each individual member of the band dealt with their grief and the transition through that period. We dealt with some other areas in loss as well because loss doesn’t just mean people dying as such and the grief process but also instability from mental health. Even before we signed on to Nuclear Blast, we kind of felt like we were losing our way in the music industry. Our first track ‘Ardour’ is kind of aimed at that a little bit more. The whole this just kind of curates around the whole three or four years that we spent writing this record.
Music is the only way we can express as a band. We are quite shy guys; we are quite introvert. We need music to help deal with our lives as we are not particularly good at talking about stuff out-front. Ed and I especially, we would rather put it into the lyrics and get it out there because its just easier for us to do that.

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Talk to me about the recording process for this record and how Covid and Lockdowns have affected this.
It was a bit messy, luckily pretty much all of the music was done instrumentally in 2019, so that was done and out of the way. Ed and I spent the back-end of 2019 writing and finishing it all off, a couple of lyrics and hung into the beginning of 2020. But then when it came down to actually recording, we were set to do all the vocals in the end of January, February and March and get that all ready. Then the first big wave of covid came into the UK and saw an absolute pause on all that process. Plus, Ed had got covid, so he was out of the game for a while cause he wasn’t feeling right in his voice, especially as a vocalist it’s not ideal to have a respiratory disease. We got back on it, we sort of gauged it for when people could go back into a shop and buy a hoodie, or something cause at that point you can justify being back in a recording studio. We just made sure we were in different rooms doing it. It made the process probably a little bit less fun because we weren’t able to share it as a band, but we got it done and that is the important bit.

If you had any advice for young listeners looking to start a band, what would that advice be?
I would say just enjoy yourself, I mean that’s the important bit. Starting a band with likeminded people of course, you want enthusiasm of course and you want to enjoy yourself and you want to get somewhere with it, make sure that everyone is on the same page. Try your trade well, Learn and work hard as its not going to just come to you for nothing if you want to get to where you want to get to, you’ve got to work really hard. Mainly just don’t stop enjoying it, make sure you never cut that out of the process, cause you can easily and start focusing on the wrong things sometimes. I would say we are enjoying it more now than we have in a long time, but you can definitely fall off that wagon.

Any final comments before we wrap this up?
Cheers for having me on here dude. We are really hoping to get out to Australia and play some shows out there in the future when we can. We can hopefully get some of the agents out there and they wanna take us on to play like UNIFY Gathering and all those fun things, we are up for it.
It was an honour to sit down and have an awesome chat with an awesome guy in Paul Green from the band Devil Sold his Soul. Be sure to check out there new record ‘Loss’ released 9th April 2021.

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iTunes pre-sale: HERE

The tracklist of
‘LOSS’ reads as follows:

1. Ardour
2. Witness Marks
3. Burdened
4. Tateishi
5. The Narcissist
6. Beyond Reach
7. Signal Fire
8. Acrinomy
9. But Not Forgotten
10. Loss

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Check out DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL below
Website – Facebook – Instagram
Nuclear Blast

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Singer Paul Green states (about ‘The Narcissist’):

‘The Narcissist’ is our heaviest track on the new record. It was written about the negative and disruptive people we have in our lives from time to time. It’s a middle finger to their unapologetic attitude and their inability to grasp reason or logic. It seems the world has spawned a lot of these types of people lately and this one’s for them.

We started capturing elements for this track 3 years ago during our shows in Japan. Jonny our guitarist/producer, recorded the dissonant warning bells from the train station in Tateishi where we were staying. It’s a really cool memory from our time out there and to have it on the track just adds something special for us, it takes us back to that time and place every listen.

We worked with the super talented Olli Appleyard on the music video for this track. Oli has an incredible imagination and some techniques and style that are completely unique to him, which we love. The main focus was to make the video aggressive, schizophrenic and imposing. ‘Loss’ is a diverse record with many facets, each of the singles we’ve chosen showcases another side of the album’s sound. We hope those who are craving something on the heavier side find satisfaction in this track, there’s something for everyone on this record and we’re excited for you all to hear it on April 9th.”

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DEVIL SOLD HIS SOUL is:

Rick Chapple – Guitar, Piano
Jonny Renshaw – Guitar
Alex Wood – Drums
Jozef Norocky – Bass
Paul Green – Vocals
Ed Gibbs – Vocals

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AMNPLIFY – DB