We had the pleasure of chatting to the amazing Kris Barras about his brand new album the other day, as well as his upcoming tour and his general sound! Check it out below!
Sadly the video didn’t save, so it’s just a written one for now. Maybe the audio will be dropped at some point!
The album is out soon! Is there an overall story, or is each track kind of its own thing?
There’s no like concept for the album. There are, yeah, eleven individual tracks. I always like to have like a cohesive sound throughout the album, and I do think I think we’ve got that with this. I think there’s a lot of different flavours on there, but I think there is overall like a cohesive sound, but, yeah, it’s not like a like a concept album or anything like that!
I did notice that we’ve had five singles so far, and they’ve all been towards the start of the album. What went into that decision, if there was one?
It’s really interesting that, because someone else asked me that one! The track listing was decided before the singles. I didn’t get involved in choosing what the singles are. I don’t normally do that. I put forward the ones that I think would be good. I think with the album there’s some obvious choices. You know, like ‘Monster We Made’ is the title track, it makes sense for that to be a single. ‘Riot of One’ makes sense to be a single, but a track like ‘Beautiful Lie’, I never imagined that being a single.
But I don’t choose, I find it hard to judge my own own music. In my opinion, a song that I’ve spent in some cases quite a long time writing and then recording it, and that being like a year ago, I find it a hard process, and you know, I’ve got fortunate enough to have people involved that are much more knowledgeable and experienced than me. I’ve got fantastic management, great record label with Earache, and a really, really good radio plugger like Austin Collins, who works with some of the the biggest names in rock and metal. And you know, I like to get their opinions, you know? They they know what will work, and ‘Beautiful Lie’, for instance, is the the head of Earache Records, Digby, it’s his favourite song on the album, and he absolutely loved it, and and that’s one of the reasons that got pushed through, and that’s great!
It was actually just coincidence. I wrote the the track listing and submitted that before any other singles were were chosen.
What can we expect from the other half of the album?
I’m really looking forward to people hearing it. I think there’s there’s a lot of different flavours on this album, there’s a lot of different elements, and there’s some stuff on there that people might not expect, or they wouldn’t necessarily have heard me do before. Some of the guitar work and the solos and stuff, I’ve really gone back to what I used to do in my teenager years, some of the more shreddy stuff, like stuff like guys like Steve Vai and Satriani and stuff, and bringing out some of those influences.
Typically, I’ve always had a token softer ballad song on each album. This one’s got three that could maybe sit into that category. Each one’s a little bit different. One of them in particular is just pretty epic. It’s got orchestral stuff and a big guitar solo over a big orchestral arrangement that that just sort of produced it. There’s some cool stuff in there, and yeah, I’m looking forward to hearing. I feel like the singles, whilst they probably are the strongest standalone tracks for what you need from a single, I don’t feel like they necessarily sum up the album, you know what I mean? Like, we’re at an EP, and don’t feel like they sum up like the Monsters We Made album. I feel like you need to hear all eleven to get a feel feel for the album.
Your debut KBB album came out just over a decade ago now. Is there any kind of comparisons you can draw from that release to this one?
I mean, if someone had never heard me before and listened to the first album, and then listened to this new one, they they wouldn’t even think it’s the same. It’s like the two have absolutely no connection whatsoever! I started off more in the bluesy rock world. I gradually got like a little bit heavier. The 2019 album, Light It Up, was still in the blues rock world, but had a lot more like classic rock elements. Then COVID hit, and, we didn’t know if the world was ended. A lot of stuff I was writing was just a bit heavier.
The thing is, I love playing blues music, but it’s not that’s not my entire identity. And I think people have struggled with this over the years with trying to understand me as an artist. It’s like there’s a lot of people in the blues world, they play blues music, and that’s all they can do. Maybe they’re much, much better than me at it. But that’s all they can do. That’s not me. I’ve played in metal bands all my teens. I was playing in jazz bands in in my early 20s. I’ve played a lot of different styles of music, and I spent a lot of time studying different styles of music when I was younger, and I think like these influences wanted to come out. With my 2022 album Death Valley Paradise, I was much more in like the modern hard rock world. Halo Effect, we went another step further again, probably taking more like modern metalcore influences, particularly in the production. This one, the way I see it is kind of sitting in between those two albums, like pulling it back a bit from Halo Effect. It’s not quite as heavy, and I just see it as kind of straight modern hard rock.
What’s the the writing process like for you? Do you do a lot of it yourself and kind of bring it to the band, or are the band a bit more involved as well?
It’s changed a bit over the past few albums. So, Josiah, who’s the producer, and he plays rhythm guitar and keys in the band, I’ve got him a lot more involved with the songwriting on Halo Effect, and on this album, And we work really, really well together. He’s my best mate, he’s a great guy and amazing producer, and his songwriting is really, really coming into its own over the past few years.
The process is is very, very different from song to song. Some of the songs started life as just me on my guitar singing some lyrics and then turned into a chorus, and then we develop it from there. Other songs, like ‘Riot of One’ for instance, he wrote the main riffs on that, sent it over to me and was like, “I’ve got this idea for like, kind of a big sing-a-long type song”. I’ve got a few of those. It’s obviously just instrumental that he gave me. And I sat with that and then ended up writing the lyrics and the melody. He gave me a stear in the right direction, gave me a little kick up the bum and said, ‘Right, go and write a big chatty sing-a-long banger.’ And so lots of different processes, I think that that’s a cool way to approach it, to keep it fresh and to keep new ideas coming.
I imagine it’s a different approach as well for this compared to something like, Hollow Souls or Supersonic Blues Machine?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, Hollow Souls, he’s involved with even more so because that’s actually like a joint venture. Like, Kris Barras band, technically, I’m a solo artist, but Hollow Souls, we started that together. Obviously we’ve got Phoebe with Hollow Souls, and it’s a different element. So we consider, obviously female lead vocalist, but also guests being involved. So that changes the writing process a bit with that, because we’re sometimes writing a song with with a special guest in mind, or we’re writing a song with a female vocalist in mind, which changes things. She likes to sing in different keys to what I would actually write songs in, so then we’re trying to write songs that would work for her, and so that’s kind of like a different approach, which is which is cool where it’s all in joint!
You’ve got quite a extensive tour plan for pretty much the rest of the year, right?
Yeah, so around the album release we’re doing an acoustic in-store tour, which is going to be cool. Josiah’s coming with me, he’ll be playing the piano. We’re doing like two of these a day, visiting like local independent record stores, and we basically do like a half-hour, 40-minute set, and then meet people and sign anything they want signed, and that kind of thing. They’re good fun. We did it on the last album, it’s the first time I’ve done it on the Halo Effect tour, and yeah, I really like doing like the stripped-back version of the songs. Vocally, I prefer singing the songs that way, I feel like I maybe do a better job vocally like singing over a piano rather than over a heavy band.
It’s going to be hard, you know, two a day with the some pretty crazy journeys. It’s it’s a pretty pretty intense thing, but hopefully it’ll be good fun.
Would you ever consider releasing a studio version of any of the strip-back tracks?
Well, we’ve recorded four of them. I don’t really know what the record label plan is. I think they’ve added like a bit of a bundle where you get a couple of them. I don’t know what the full plan is, whether there’s going to be a deluxe version or not. I don’t really get involved in it. But I’ve recorded four of them, piano versions, and I’m sure they’ll see the light of day at some point.
I assume it’s a full electric tour in October?
That’s right, yeah. Full band, nothing too crazy with that tour, it’s just around the UK. I can’t even remember how many dates, 10 dates or something. It’s our first headline tour in the UK for two years when that comes around. It’ll be good to get out there and have a blast!
Have you got much in the works for next year?
I’ve not even thought about it. I mean, again, I don’t really get involved in that stuff. There might be stuff going on that I haven’t yet told about. I mean, for me, it’s been a bit weird releasing an album in the summer. I’ve not done that before. Like, doing festivals and doing an album at the same time, it’s a different experience. So I’ve just been focusing on that, and then this tour in October, and not really thought about what happens after that. I guess it depends on how well the album’s received, and how well the tour does, and what opportunities come after that, you know? So, who knows!
Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of? Anyone you want to support, or any friends you want to bring along?
I mean, I’d love to open for Alter Bridge. I think that would be sick! Something like that would be really, really cool. I think we’d be like a good fit, I think we’d probably go down quite well with their fans. Yeah, that would that would be a pretty cool tour to do!
