It’s that time of year where we set out to interview as many of the Sophie, New Blood, and Jager bands as we can in the lead-up to one of the most anticipated festivals of the year, Bloodstock. Answering our questions here is Drew from Catalysis who play the New Blood stage on the Friday.
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Dundee, Scotland
How long have you been playing together as a band?
Just over 5 years in total. Most of the lineup has been the same since 2017, with our bass player Pabs ing us in September 2021.
Where does the name of the band come from?
The lie would be that Catalysis is the the process of speeding up a chemical process by adding an accelerant and that is what our music does. The truth would be that my dad said years ago he’d always wanted to use that name for a metal band, so I nicked it!
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
Obviously in this day and age it’s really hard to be unique as a metal band, as there’s so many great bands out there doing it. What we try to do is bring our various influences together in a way that means we don’t ever sound like one particular band. We don’t want to be a supermarket own brand version of Machine Head, Chimaira etc. We want to be a party platter made up of the best bits all of our influences, if we can. In of description – 3 words: groove, melody, riffs
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
I’m not going to claim we reinvent the wheel and do anything particularly different to a lot of metal bands but we do bring 100% to every show, whether it’s Bloodstock or playing in a pub to 30 people eating steak pies and fish suppers. We are energetic on stage, our ion shines through and the band has a genuine chemistry in our live performance too. Like a lot of people, the band isn’t our full time job, so the stage is where we come to sweat out all our frustrations with day to day life and live in the moment, making music alongside each other – we’re a group of 5 best friends, getting to do what we love. That’s genuinely reflected in our performance. In of why they’d watch us instead of another band – our raw, handsome good looks will hopefully be enough to seal the deal. I’d find it hard to convince someone to watch us over Behemoth or Testament! I guess this: just that all your favourite bands started off playing the small shows, so why come check us out over someone else? Because you just might prefer what we’re doing!
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
I’ve been in 2012 and 2018, Calum was with me in 2018.
It’s a great festival with a diverse lineup – enough bands over the weekend to keep any metalhead interested, regardless of what sub-genres they favour. Overall, the community is good, the prices are reasonable and it’s just a solid good time. Hopefully the weather is good though – 2018 was a bit rainy.
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Which M2tM region did you win, or did you come through other channels?
We won the Scotland region. FREEDOM!
Can you put into 10 words or fewer how it felt when you realised you were heading to Bloodstock?
Like years of hard work being recognised and paying off!
What sort of setlist can we expect?
Because we’re (hopefully) going to play to a lot of people who haven’t seen us before, we’re going to be doing a single heavy set – the thinking being that if you want to check us out ahead of the festival, they’re the songs you’ll most likely hear and come across – by checking out music videos on YouTube etc. The remaining time in the set will be filled with our most pit worthy material!
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
We know we play the Friday, so the big ones would be Avatar for Sean and myself, and Bloodywood for our singer Col. I’d also like to see Heart of a Coward but to be totally honest the main bands we’re hoping not to clash with are our Scottish brothers in Certain Death and Party Cannon – just because ing each other builds strong bonds, strong bonds builds a strong scene and that’s what we’re all about. Bands building each other up!
What are you working on at the moment?
Our latest EP, Innova, [Review here – Mosh] came out on 2nd July and we’ve had a few shows around it so now that those are out of the way, we’re focussing on tightening up the set for Bloodstock. We have already got a few demos flying about for new material (we’ve released 4 EPs and a full length since Dec 2017, so nothing new there – we never stop writing) but until we get Bloodstock out of the way, we’re not really doing much with those yet.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
The wildest thing I’ve ever seen at a live show was in 2012 at Bloodstock, there was a couple fucking in the crowd during The Black Dahlia Murder’s set.
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fired up before going on stage?
Water, because we’re old and sensible. That being said, once we’re off stage it’s game on! You’ll catch Calum and myself sinking ciders and the other guys with a beer in each hand!
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Catalysis: facebook | instagram | spotify | youtube
