Rock Regeneration’s Dan O’Gara caught up with Troll Mother on their “South Coast Hunger tour” which had briefly blended with aAnd?’s “You only really care about the picture of the dog Tour” a few weeks back at The Anvil Rockbar, Bournemouth.
RR: Introduce yourselves
Alex Trouchkin (drums): I’m Roman and this is Alex; (points to Roman Boswell (guitar) we are…Troll Mother, yeah!
RR: A two-piece, there are a few two-piece bands around at the moment; Monolithian, Tusker, Jucifer, My Diablo… I’d like to see a concert with just two-piece bands on the bill.
Roman: We did one in Brighton and I think everyone thought it would be easier because there’s just two of you, but its a bit of a misconception because there’s just the same complications as having a five-piece band.
RR: So it’s not easier?
Alex: I don’t know… 50-50, there’s less people to call, but at the same time there’s more things to do… but the vans less crowded, so that’s all right!
Roman: From my perspective one thing I’d say is, melody-wise; it’s only me…if I screw up, it’s more noticeable.
Alex: You have to fit more on it, if that makes sense? We have to make it sound bigger like there’s more people on it somehow. Turn it up so loud no one can hear properly, haha!
Roman: That’s usually the way to go!
RR: What other two-piece bands have influenced you?
Roman: Thinking back; when we were faffing around at collage playing music, I felt that one of the things that inspired the whole two-piece thing was Dark Castle because they were doing slow, sludgy; doomy atmospheric stuff and it amazed me that they managed to get that sound, just the two of them.
Alex: Giant Drag! Annie Hardy…woo!
Roman: Where you at?
Both: Haha
Alex: Monolithian!
Roman: Yeah, they bring it!
Alex: Monolithian put us on a tour please?!
Roman: I like White Stripes.
Alex: Bless Meg White, I love you Meg.
Roman to Alex: Imagine if you were in The White Stripes.
Alex: I’d love it! Easy gig mate. Get paid a quarter of a million to kick the kick drum.
RR: How would you describe your style?
Alex: Fuck… chuck away the bong, chuck away the weed and pick up the crack pipe. Crack Rock.
ADHD moving from one room to another.
Roman: That is literally the hardest question? I really don’t know.
Alex: I think we listen to so many different styles of music… we’ll play a bit of Doom and after a while say “Fuck, this is boring”. We’ll move on to some Thrash and be like “this is cool, but I’m getting a bit tired” so we slide down to some Cock Rock; then go back up to some Black Metal or Death Metal or something. You know, just move through the genres; it keeps us occupied. It leads to more musical opportunities; once you break from the fact that you’re not doing one thing, you can do whatever you want!
Roman: For sure…we didn’t set out to be a “type of” band. All the different little pieces we touch on; the thing that glues it together is the whole storyboard side of things…the monologues, the noise effects is what we try and use to stick all of these random styles together.
RR: You’re bang slap in the middle of the South Coast Hunger tour, hows it going so far?
Alex: Yeah man, wicked stuff. Brighton was a good hoot, with Hellripper and Enslavement. Also, London was good, we did the Live Lounge with all the mistakes included and now Bournemouth, always love playing Bournemouth.
RR: The Forest Mother EP is awesome, any other EP’s coming out?
Alex: Aha, we have got a secret stash of stuff hidden somewhere, that will come out in full force as soon as we have finished this tour, we are going sit down and …think of something to write haha. No; we have got some stuff down already, “Skeleton’s” been made; now we just need to give it some organs or something.
RR: Do you record it yourselves?
Alex: Not this one, we are gonna spoon some money (on it); people have been buying shirts, so we are going to record an actual audible one.
RR: How’s your Bandcamp working out?
Alex: Steady; good app, I’ve got it on my phone; but it doesn’t show you free downloads, so that would be interesting to know. If Bandcamp is reading this “Sort it out!”.
RR: Out of interest who did the monologue for Battle for Troll Mountain on the Forest Mother EP?
Both: Josh Jones.
Alex: He had a go at me for never crediting him, so we will credit him. Look; we’re big fans of D&D, World of Warcraft all the old school RTS games. When I got older I found the magic of drugs; smoked a lot of it, but in the meantime we managed to write this whole big scenario and thought we should incorporate the games into the music. But the guy who speaks is Josh.
RR: What songs are you going to play tonight?
Alex: Just the album in it’s entirety, which is basically one long song that we’ve had to split up haha!
Roman: We’re going to finish this tour and concentrate on writing some new stuff.
RR: Where are you based?
Roman: I live in Worthing.
Alex: I’m gonna say O.G Bognor, Bognor Regis Butlins represent, haha!
RR: How do you write new stuff?
Alex: He’ll come up with a riff and by the end it’ll wind up as something completely different. The riff has gone, it’s something else entirely at the end of the day.
Roman: I would like to plan things and keep four steps ahead, but I find there’s no point in doing that as I think it’s going to sound one way but never does. It’s one of these things that you just have to ride it and see where it goes. The new stuff is totally different.
Alex: Yeah, it’s going forward; going somewhere… we’ll have to wait and see. The next hardest thing will be to put in the monologues and formulate it out, so that the monologue and lyrics complement each other. It can be easy sometimes but other times it’s hard. Sometimes you can’t write anything for months and then you’ll write a whole song in one day, that’s just the way it works. Don’t force it…just take a shit and try tomorrow.
RR: What kind of gigs are you finding yourselves on?
Alex: Literally just get chucked on everything, we don’t know how to explain our style.
Roman: On Sunday we were sandwiched between two Rock n’ Roll bands…proper old school Rock n’ Roll; stuck out like a sore thumb but it turned out to be a great night – everyone was happy.
RR: Love those type of gigs!
Roman: Yeah if we had it our way we’d have a Hip-Hop group, then a Metal group, then Punk, then some Jazz…throw it all in there, in one night! But I don’t think that’s ever going to happen haha.
Alex: If I ever get to direct a festival it’ll be the most bipolar one ever!
RR: Regarding the new album, how is it sounding?
Alex: I have high hopes for it, I think it’s gonna do really well. We have recorded a single but we want to record another one to go along with it. Like a double-sided one? Like two songs for one, because we love our fans. And we’ll do a decent video for it too, but that’s all plans for the future.
Troll Mother then leaves to soundcheck in the Anvil and later deliver a cracking show. We look forward to hearing the new music these guys are working on.
Links
https://www.facebook.com/TrollMother/
https://trollmother.bandcamp.com/
Interview and photos by Dan O’Gara
