We had the pleasure of speaking to Nick J Townsend of Weak13. Join us as we chat about their upcoming album, the scene over the last few years and his plans for the future!

How would you describe your sound?

To be honest, I think I’d rather have somebody describe it. I know what I sound like. We do all sorts of music, but it’s got a metal edge to it. We could be doing something like heavy rock, but it have a distinct metal riff. Even something like hip hop or even light rock and there would be a dominant metal riff, which defines a moment in the song we want to dwell on, because you know, I love metal. But, what I don’t do is I don’t have every song sounding the same.

A lot of bands, when they hear what what we do… we work with different bands. A lot of bands do have that one song, which they re-record about fifty times and give it a different name. I’m not into that. I like to make sure every song sounds like Weak13, and we can cross genres without alienating people. They still get the same kind of meta-humour, satire and sometimes there is still a bit of aggressive riffs in there. But, sometimes there is something deep in one of them, it depends what kind of mood you’re in really. If you want to say something political, it turns a lot of people off, we’ll just rub people the wrong way, you know, just for one song. 

You guys just got signed, you announced it a couple of months ago now?

We’ve had offers for ages, but we released a single last Christmas, and before you release a single you send it off to the radio people and stuff. We had this label contact us about ten days before the single comes out, saying “we want to do a deal with you for this single”. We were like, it’s coming out in ten days, you can’t. I thought, let’s slow down, obviously you like the track you heard. Well we’re releasing this, and let’s write a track for you, and we’ll take it from there. That is literally how it happened.

I was thinking, well what kind of song do I write for a label that’s got about four hundred metal bands. I know, write a sound called ‘I’m more metal than you’, just so they know that we are serious, but not too serious at the same time. Obviously, I am more metal than you, but if we have a song call that, it’s a nice way of taking the piss. 

It is going to be a part of a wider album, right?

Nah, we’ve got a double album coming out, which we’ve sat on for about four/five years. We’re releasing these singles to bridge the gap. For example, next month when this goes out, mid July there will be another single. And a few months after that another single. None of these singles are gonna be on the album, because I don’t wanna have all the best parts of the album leaked before the album has come out. [We wanted] specifically recorded songs we knew we couldn’t do on the album. These are newer than what the album will be, because the album was written years ago.

We finished recording as lockdown started, then it’s been mastered during that time. We’ve sat on it and now we’ve got a good product. I’ll say it to you straight, this is one of the best rock albums of the twenty first century. Now most people will say that, yet can’t back it up. We can. We know we’ve got a good album and that why we’ve not released it yet. We’re kind of playing with our food at the moment. 

Is there a certain story or theme, any connections between the songs on the album?

Yeah, well it’s a double album. When you listen to this album, when the album is out, I think its a way of getting though things like loss. There is also standing up for yourself and all of the things that people don’t like to talk about. There are songs we’ve got on the album with the subject matter where people say ‘oh you can’t say things like that in case it makes little Johnny feel a bit sad’. Sometimes little Johnny needs to feel a bit sad, and put on some music where he can have a good cry just to get it out of little johnny’s system.

We’ve got a few songs for little Johnny. I’ve just made that guy up, I don’t know who the hell little Johnny is. We have a lot humour in our stuff. These sort of songs are very deep, taking it really seriously. Then there is the other side of the coin where you have little Johnny who wants to swear a bit and jump around. We’ve got a song on the album which I did for my father who’s pasted away, and my way of dealing with death was to write, I hope the most dark and beautiful song you can with that kind of thing gong through your mind. I’m hoping that if anyone has had to deal with loss, they can get through it.

I think the whole album as a theme to answer your question is about getting though life. There are lots of subjects on its own, but the majority of it is getting through it. It’s almost like life is designed to fuck you, and there’s got to be a way to get through it. I think this album was a learning process for us, both me and Wesley smith had loss. I lost a father, he lost a mother, we’ve been through so much, I think people who listen to the album have been through things as well. It’s about loss, moving forwards and standing up for yourself, which I think a lot of people will be able to relate to. 

And talk to me about ‘Rock, Paper, Metal’?

This is like where I’m saying I’m playing with my food. you have the part in the song where the is serious metal and serious riffs, but at the same time, I’m saying the best time to take the micky out of rock, paper, scissors. Obviously it’s got to be rock, paper, metal. A lot of people have found it quite funny.

I saw that your cover of “Mary” has been getting Australian air play?

It’s doing alright, I mean I was a bit surprised, it’s not something that we’ve actually promoted. It just suddenly picked up in Australia, lots of people were talking about it. It’s not actually one of our songs, it’s actually a cover. I think it means it is going to be very hard, I mean we like a challenge. But when we actually release our double album with our songs, we make sure we do better.

We’re very fortunate we picked a few covers; we also did a Depeche Mode song. The Depeche Mode fans are the hardest people to please, trust me. My partner is one, I did the song for her ears to say will Depeche Mode fans like or hate this? She said to me no as its a difficult fan base. When we released it, it did that well that within two days one of the official Depeche Mode fan sites put it up as one of the worst covers of Depeche Mode ever. I was impressed. We suddenly had thousands of hate messages because we had loud guitars, and they didn’t like it. But, it’s done very well in Germany of all places. You’re gonna get people like marmite. 

Is the plan for the album release next year?

Well we want to do it this year. We had to delay a lot of things because of lockdown. Weak13 kept active during lockdown and we’ve actually done a lot more than what we were supposed to do. We kept the album back knowing that this would sound good, and it would do okay. I’m hoping to release that in November, but it’s going to depend on other things because I’ve got two more singles to release before then.

Every three months, we’ve tried to release something interesting since 2020, with all the shit that kicked off. I remember seeing all the Facebook statuses that bands put up saying ‘it’s been great doing all this, shall we call it a day’. The cowards all left whilst the real musicians just kept on trudging though the shit, tying to maintain a career. I think we did fairly good through that lockdown situation. We got a lot of stuff done. I think a lot of the musicians that have gone thought that, and are still doing music, should be proud because there’s lots appearing now in the press saying “of hi everyone, you haven’t seen us since February 2020, just thought we’d say hello”. Like no, you fucked your fans off for three years, Fuck off. 

I’ve spoken to a few bands recently actually. I definitely remember Outlaw Orchestra from the other weekend who look back at lockdown quite fondly because of how productive they had got during it. They just worked harder than ever. 

It was a good opportunity, if you saw it as an opportunity. And we did, we saw it as a way of going, well okay lets not complain about what we can’t do, let’s look at what we can do. And we did a lot of that.

There is something very big which we spent a lot of time on at the start of lockdown, something we created, which still isn’t finished and will be hopefully ready when the new album comes out. It’s a music video we’ve spent three years on. we release music videos every three months. There is this one particular video we’ve been doing, which is very hard to do, and it’s taken since the beginning of lockdown until, still now. And once that’s done, people will go, how the hell did you have time to do that. We’ll go well…there was a thing called lockdown and it’s very hard and we used the time wisely. I think it’s a case of looking at the opportunity within a difficult situation. 

After the album, do you have any long term plans? Any goals?

Goals…I’m already working on the third album. No one’s going to hear that from me until… probably four years time. Things take time is the reality. You can’t just disappear for four years. And one of the reasons we keep releasing these singes is so that the people who listen to our music don’t thing we’ve just walked away. We’ve always made sure you’ll never get three months without something new from us. Sometimes having a couple of years works for some bands; it doesn’t work for us. We’ve go people who if you haven’t done anything in four weeks they’ll think you’re dead. People will just assume you’re dead if you’re not on social media.

At the same time, we take care of what we’re doing. We want to make sure when we release something it’s on our terms and its something that we approve of. What we don’t do is post a load of random crap every day trying to just jump on some kind of social trend. We like to make our own trends. As much as I enjoy TikTok and Instagram, I don’t really waste much time trying to follow their trends. I’d rather stick to our agenda of what ever the hell Weak13 wants to do!