Lord Vapour are a stoner rock three-piece from Jersey's neighboring island of Guernsey. Last Friday night they took a trip across the pond to play Jersey's Moment of Madness Festival and bassist and vocalist Joe Le Long was looking forward to the newfound comradery between the two islands;
"We are looking forward to listening to our favourite Jersey bands! We're big fans of Joe Young and the Bandits and Electric Brick. We've never seen Electric Brick live so that'll be a highlight for sure."
On such a small island and a small community, it can be very difficult to find like minded people who are into the same things as you are. How did the three of you meet?
"We all met each other through going to local gigs, and playing shows together in our previous bands. As you said it's such a small community so it was almost inevitable that we'd end up jamming together."
The merchandising design for your t-shirts are very cool; where did the inspiration come from for the image and the name of the band?
"Thanks a lot! We are pretty happy about how the shirts turned out! With all our artwork we contact an artist and let them have free reign over the design. Usually we will send an artist our music and they will use the tracks for inspiration whilst they draw."
During the writing process, is it usually a collective task or do you come up with ideas individually?
"It's a bit of both really. But most of the time it's a collective task, one of us will have a really sweet riff and will bring it to the table then we will jam around that riff for a while and from there it usually just falls into place."
Since releasing your debut album, Mill Street Blues, you’ve played some pretty cool festivals and gigs throughout the UK as well as locally. How do the venues and audiences differ from the UK to Guernsey?
"That's a hard question to answer really, because we play quite a niche genre of music there isn't much of an audience for our style at home. So once we played a few shows around the UK we realized how small of an audience we really had. The scene in the UK and the rest of Europe is really thriving at the moment, we were glad to be well received at all the shows that we played."
How did it feel to completely sell out of stock for your first album?
"It's a totally great feeling. We're really glad people are digging our songs enough to actually want to buy them! It's a strange feeling being a band from a tiny island and receiving orders from Japan, Australia etc. We were asking ourselves 'how do these people find our songs?!'"
It’s needless to say that the guitar sound you use on your tracks is nothing less than filthy, dirty fuzz. Which musicians would you say influenced you growing up to pursue a career in rock music?
"I think you summed it up correctly with filthy dirty Fuzz! Well I can't speak for the rest of the guys, but I grew up on a musical diet of Frank Zappa, Black Sabbath, Budgie, Nick Cave etc, I could go on forever. But I thank my dad for that, growing up around him playing all these sweet records."
I’ve seen on your Facebook page that you like to use Orange amps; why do you prefer Orange over any other amplifier make?
"Orange just seem to nail the sound we want to achieve. As you said before "Dirty, Filthy Fuzz!" Can't beat it."
You’ve played and shared the stage with many musicians; who are your favourite local musicians besides yourselves?
"There's so many good local musicians, too many to list! But a short list would be Brunt, The Recks, Bobby Battle, Honest Crooks, Heave, Byzanthian Neckbeard. I've definitely missed out loads of people, if I could I'd list them all."
You’re currently in the midst of recording a second album I believe, with The Doors of Kukundo being the first released single back in January. Have you settled on a release date yet, or have an estimate of when it will be released?
"We can't say when the album will be released because we haven't finished recording yet! It's finding the time to arrange everything, as we plan on gigging through Europe in the Autumn, but we hope to get it out there sometime this year."
Follow FREAK on socials;
Facebook 💀@FreakMag666
Instagram 💀@FreakJaz666 / @PurpleZebraPant
Twitter 💀@FreakMag666 / @PurpleZebraPant
YouTube 💀@Freak Magazine
TikTok 💀@Metallijaz
Follow LORD VAPOUR on socials;
Facebook 💀 @LordVapourBand
Twitter 💀 @LordVapourBand
Instagram 💀 @LordVapourBand
Spotify 💀