While at Slam Dunk North, Is This Music? sat down for a chat with The Blackout vocalist & host of Sappenin’ Podcast, Sean Smith; as we spoke about the return of the band, plans for the future and our shared love of wrestling.
is this music?: First of all, welcome back to The Blackout, and thanks for taking time out of your day to sit down and chat with us.
Sean Smith: Not a problem, I didn’t think anyone cared anymore.
itm?: Do you know what, It’s the hair, if you had that blonde hair still….
SS: It’s going blonde!
itm?: Is it!!??
SS: So, for Download, I want to do something special. We’re doing a hometown show on Monday, and then Friday, we play Download. So for the hometown show, I’m going to have this hair, and then two days later, I’m dying it blonde just in time for when we play Download.
itm?: So, let’s take it back a little bit, when did you all decide to get back together?
SS: Probably about August last year. So basically, we’ve had a group WhatsApp going since day one of The Blackout, we’ve never stopped that. So since the band split up, I’ve started the podcast, and every episode I basically cry about not being in The Blackout anymore. So the boys said, “If he keeps whinging like this, we’re going to have to do something”, then Matthew (Davies, guitar) said, “Boys, what do you think of doing some shows, listen, none of us are getting any fucking younger, our crowd aren’t getting younger, and are also disappearing, so if we’re going to do something, let’s do it ASAP”. So yeah, around August last year we got talking to festivals and then we got the offer for Download, and we were fucking over the moon.
itm?: What does it mean to the band to be back at Download?
SS: We love Download, (Download Festival head booker) Andy Copping has been so good to The Blackout over the years, we did Download probably like…. actually one year we played there four times, we did a couple of acoustic shows, the mainstage show, and something else. Another year we broke the Guinness World Record for the most amount of people doing air guitars in one place, it was broken six months later though, but yeah, he’s always been great to us Andy Copping. We can’t wait to play, we’re fucking super pumped.
itm?: What’s it been like seeing the fans’ reaction to your return?
SS: The amount of people I’ve met this weekend who’ve congratulated me, THANKED me for The Blackout, I mean I’ve been fucking begging for it for eight years, people have told me they’ve bought tickets to go to Download just to see us, and I’m like “You fucking idiots”.
itm?: So just the one warm-up show, then Download?
SS: Yeah, one warm-up show, Merthyr Tydfil, at the Redhouse on the 5th of June, where we’re probably doing an hour and ten minutes, and then Friday at Download we’re doing about 45 minutes.
itm?: That’ll be no problem, 45 minutes after the longer warm-up show, right?
SS: I hope so, as soon as we finish, I want to run to the main stage to catch Pendulum because we overlap.
itm?: What have the band got planned for after Download?
SS: We’re hoping to tour, maybe later in the year, late November/December, but the problem is, we’ve kind of left it a bit late to book the venues we’re looking at, and with us not all living in Wales anymore, it’s hard to line everyone’s schedules up.
itm?: Any thoughts on releasing some new music?
SS: We’re not doing new music, it’s just going to be a nostalgia thing, literally, like “Does anyone remember these fucking songs”. So yeah, never say never, but at the moment, the boys are adamant that we’re not going to write new music. I’m hoping, after we play Download, they go “Oh go on then, let’s do an EP or bring some singles out”, just to keep the touring going. If we can’t get the dates booked in that we want, it’ll probably be one big show, either in London or Cardiff, and then maybe February or March next year we’ll do a tour.
itm?: Fingers crossed! Thanks again for your time today, Sean., but before I let you go, I’ve got to talk about this, you’re a massive wrestling fan, correct?
SS: Thank you! Oh I love wrestling, yeah!
itm?: So when did you really get into wrestling, and do you have a preference between the big two, WWE & AEW?
SS: Yeah, I love AEW. When the band split up back in 2015, me and my friends would get together and just every weekend, we’d sit and watch PWG (Pro Wrestling Guerrilla), and it turns out we fell in love again with wrestling at the perfect time, during the boom of independent wrestling, all the people we loved in PWG, give or take, are now in AEW.
We had (wrestler) Kip Sabian on the podcast last week, he was amazing, he pretended he didn’t know I was in The Blackout at the end of the interview. He said “Me and Andy from Every Time I Die (aka wrestler, The Butcher, in AEW) were talking about a band called The Blackout the other day” and I was like “You know how I know that’s bullshit? If Andy out of Every Time I Die had ever heard our music, the only time he would ever talk about it is if he was saying how fucking awful it was”.
After we did the interview, about a week later, Kip Sabian messaged me and said he’d been listening to ‘We Are The Dynamite’ and ‘The Best In Town’ on repeat, and I was like, “This is nuts”, I love wrestling to the point that, to me, they’re like rockstars, where as actual rockstars, they’re just normal people.
itm?: Sean, it’s been an absolute pleasure!
SS: Thank you!
More at www.facebook.com/theblackoutband / www.instagram.com/theblackoutmusic.