Jamie Mathias - Interview

Welsh rockers Revoker are one of the newest additions to the Roadrunner family and have a packed year ahead of them with the release of their debut album, "Revenge for the Ruthless" and a busy tour schedule.

Vocalist Jamie Mathias was kind enough to take a few minutes to chat with us about the origins of Revoker and how the band are already taking the rock world by storm.

Hi Jamie, thanks for talking to us. You’ve been jamming with Chris Green [Revoker's lead guitarist] since you were both teenagers - how did this develop through the years to bring Revoker to where they are now?

Chris and I have been friends since our mothers were wiping our asses!! (2 years ago) We both started playing guitar at about 11 and listened to a lot of Metallica and Black Sabbath from our parents’ record collection. Chris’s dad taught us all the basics to get us going and really encouraged us to start jamming in a band as soon as we could play our first 3 chords!

We started off playing in a covers band around our local pubs playing Ozzy, T- Rex and Thin Lizzy - all the pub classics! From our first gig in a pub, we wanted to headline Download and be in a huge band! And we always wanted to challenge our ways to improve as a band, obviously wanted to write our own material, and get a record deal. We just played every show we could as Revoker!

We’ve played charity events for 60 year old people to clubs on a Monday nights in front of the sound guy and have been constantly writing new material and sending our demo everywhere!

How long have you been playing the guitar for, and who would you say your influences are?

I’ve been playing guitar since I was 11 years old. The first song I ever learnt was “All Right Now” by “Free” - I guess it was a really easy song to start off with. I couldn’t just go in at the start ripping up Master of Puppets (which I wanted to be able to do!!).

My musical influences are the bands I’ve grown up listening to like Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Metallica - pretty much all the 70’s and 80’s music.

Skindred’s Benji Webbe worked with you to produce your debut album, “Revenge for the Ruthless”. Tell us a bit about that?

Yes we got friendly with Benji when we were recording our E.P in Newport. One day he popped his head in through the door and says “that sounds slamming boyo’s”! So we instantly got on and started chatting about our music and songs and where we wanted to go with them!

From a producer’s point of view Benji gave us a lot of good advice, so when it was time to record our full-length debut we thought it would be great to get him on board. We all knew where we wanted the record to go so we just went in and rocked out!

"Stay Down” has been chosen as the 2011 theme song for the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts. Could you tell us how this came about?

I think BAMMA approached our record company after hearing the song. It’s the perfect song and fits in so well with the events! It’s basically about a normal Saturday night out where we live; people go out, have a good time, and some idiot starts to ruin it and wants to fight everyone! SO STAY DOWN!!

You’ve appeared at some prestigious festivals such as Download and Hammerfest. Is there anywhere you would like to play that you haven’t had the chance to yet?

Yes it was amazing to play Download! It was our dream so it was really surreal to be appearing as a band and not a spectator because I’ve been attending Download since it started in 2003! But there’s a lot more festivals we’d like to play - Sonisphere in the UK and around Europe, Rock am Ring… basically every single metal or rock festival!

Metal Hammer, Kerrang and Rock Sound have all tipped you as a hot band for this year. Where do you see 2011 taking you all?

I think 2011 is the year that everyone is going to be introduced to Revoker especially the UK. I think 2011 will take us to the next level or even a few more levels up! We don’t want to stop - we just want to play everywhere and make sure everyone knows who we are!

You’ve just completed a tour with Rob Zombie - are there any bands or artists who you would like to tour with in the future?

Absolutely! I’d basically would love to tour with the big 4… I think our name fits in quite good on the poster: METALLICA, SLAYER, MEGADETH, ANTHRAX, REVOKER. They can call it the big 5 then!! Haha.

Thanks for your time. I’ll leave the last word to you - do you have a message for your fans reading this?

Thank you so much for your support - it means a lot to us… seriously! Come and hang out at a show and have a beer! We have our debut out 2^nd May “Revenge for the Ruthless” and you can pick our single up now “Stay Down” on iTunes, Amazon etc. We will see you on the road sometime this year - keep rocking!!!!

For a full list of Revoker's tour dates visit their MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/revokeruk