Paul: Hi, please introduce yourself and your role in the band…
Neil: Hi , I am Neil Starr, lead singer and guitarist in Attack! Attack!
Paul: How have things gone for you so far in 2009? 2008 was a good year, how has this year been shaping up for you?
Neil: 2009 is more of the same really! We have played shows on the mainland of Europe with Forever the sickest kids and done a joint headline UK tour with our buddies in Tonight is Goodbye. We played the US for the first time in our career too in March! We got to play in Austin Texas as part of the SXSW festival, that was a crazy few days! Loads of great bands, loads and loads of free alcohol, plenty of sun . Good times! We have also managed to find the time to build ourselves a rehersal room which is really gonna help us whilst writing for album 2. We also built a small ‘chill out’ room which is totally awesome! It has a vintage arcade machine in there plus Xbox 360, Sega megadrive , NES, SNES etc etc . Its a computer geeks dream.
Paul: The praise is continuing to roll in for the album – has it exceeded any expectations you may have had?
Neil: To be honest we really didn’t set ourselves any expectations, we just hoped and prayed that people would hear it and be in to it. It was flattering to receive such nice reviews from people like yourselves, and even more pleasing was the feedback from fans. We continue to be blown away with the number of people that are interested in what we do, come to the live shows and sing along to all the songs. It’s a dream come true for us and we just want to keep loving what we do and sharing this band with as many people as possible.
Paul: Do you have any achievements or career goals you’d like to achieve but haven’t yet?
Neil: A silly one yeah :p I am a massive fan of the game FIFA and its always been my goal to get a track on the game, fingers crossed this year could be the year! A big goal for 2009 is to write album 2 and push ourselves even harder to create a better record than the debut. Generally speaking, as band we just want to keep building our fan base and push things forward.
Paul: How on Earth did you manage to get the 90210 gig?! Have you seen the sequence where your music is played yet?
Neil: The director just phoned me up and offered us millions of dollars :p haha , we wish! No it was something our management sorted out, we knew nothing about it really until we had a mail from our manager saying we were gonna be on there. We were stoked! Yeah we have seen the sequence, its pretty weird for us to be honest watching it but it’s cool that people are taking interest in our music.
Paul: You’re playing Slam Dunk Festival in May…going from the smallest stage last year to one of the bigger stages this year, and the Punktastic stage at that! Excited to be playing? What can we expect from the live performance?
Neil: Super excited! Totally buzzing to be on the Punktastic stage with some awesome bands! Performance wise we will just try and do what we do best which is give 200% energy, get the crowd singing and jumping and try to make everyone in the crowd feel like they have had a good time because we will definitely have an awesome time!
Paul: Any other festival performances lined up for this summer?
Neil: Yeah stuff is coming through for us, confirmed on a few things like the 2000 trees festival and the relentless Naas festival Some other cool things lined up but we aren’t allowed to announce them yet. we will be sure to let you guys know when we can announce them!
Paul: What are your plans for the rest of the year?
Neil: We have a bunch of tour dates starting in May through til September, we are keeping really busy! Check them out at www.myspace.com/attackattackband because we are going to some pretty random towns and cities so chances are we will be coming near you! As I mentioned earlier we also plan on writing the 2nd album, whether or not we get to record it this year we will see. I guess it all depends on the touring schedule….
Paul: Are you writing any new material yet? Have any plans for further releases yet?
Neil: Haha, yeah, we have about 6 songs written for the next record so far. We plan on writing about 20 which we will then choose maybe 12/13 for the next album. No recording time booked in yet , expect another album though in 2010.
Paul: You’ve recently announced a couple of dates for Dopamine after a spell on the sidelines. Why did you guys decide to get it back together?
Neil: Basically because we have had a load of requests from fans asking us to play some shows. Its been along time since our last live show obviously because of my commitments to A!A! , but we have all really missed jamming together.
Paul: Why just two dates and why not a full tour?
Neil: Again this is due to my commitments to A!A! . If there was more available time we would have looked at more shows but literally there has been no break for me in the last 18months and the next 12months are going to be just as busy. I am not complaining , I love playing music, its just a shame there has to be a compromise. I am really excited though for the 2 shows so bring on September!
Paul: Can we expect new music or are these two dates the only two you intend to do for now?
Neil: These will be the only 2 dates we play for a while , but we have been writing and jamming new material so there will be a third album at some point which is exciting for us 🙂 We might even get to record a few songs this summer.