With One Last Breath

Rising metalcore stars With One Last Breath are a passionate five-piece with legions of fans. The band features siblings Joe and Sam Graves, along with vocalist Spencer Costello, drummer Chris Bowling and bassist Joe ‘Lanky’ Lancaster. They’ve been on tour with Asking Alexandria and Yashin, Of Mice & Men and Bury Tomorrow, and played the Download Festival, and the Kerrang Awards as well. When we caught up with them, they told us all about what it takes to get the memorable sound that they call an eargasm!

Hometown:
York
Debut:
2008
Homepage:
www.facebook.com
Twitter:
@WOLB

Metalcore Mayhem

WOLB have been working on their new album which is dedicated to their passionate fans who think nothing of hurling themselves around at a gig to the point of destruction!

WOLB were originally a four-piece when they started out, in 2008. Having been in a few other bands first, the Graves brothers decided to try working together, as Joe explains.

Me and Sam knew we wanted to be in a professional band, so we said, shall we do something together? And we got Chris, just found him in a local band, and then we had another bassist for a while, we were a four-piece. And that didn’t work, the bassist left and we found Lanky and Spencer.

After that, things happened quickly for the band and they’ve spent the past year and a half touring and making their first album, which is currently being mixed and mastered. The Graves brothers also run Innersound Studios on the outskirts of York and work with other bands as well as on their own tracks.

We’ve got an EP out, it’s been out for a while, it’s like a cross between that and the single and the video for After The Suffering. It’s full of solos, it’s got epic parts, there’s a lot of screaming, there’s a few breakdowns here and there, there’s a lot of riffing so it’s just like a big mixture of everything that we love and it’s going to blow people’s minds.

Their influences include Metallica and Bullet For My Valentine as well as Asking Alexandria. As bassist Joe ‘Lanky’ puts it:

It’s kind of like a Bullet For My Valentine dad and a metalcore Asking Alexandria mum and them two getting together and creating this one baby, which is kind of like a good mixture of the two

Though Sam insists that plenty of solos remain in the mix as well as the dark and dirty riffing.

They say people either take to the metalcore sound, or don’t really get it. With One Last Breath are finding their fans react to the intensity of the music with an intensity of their own: broken noses and broken ribs and broken anything can happen when the crowd are really getting into it. The band admit to being prone to the occasional accident themselves, especially Lanky.

I’ve swung my bass once, first gig with these guys, with WOLB, I went out into the crowd, swung my bass and it went fucking flying off into the crowd. Which was a nightmare. Second ever gig with WOLB, I was so hungover I had to go offstage to be sick.

But thanks to the wonder of his wireless guitar pack, he carried right on playing!

Touring means plenty of partying all round, and a starring role for a certain refreshing vodka-based drink.

On the Asking Alexandria tour there was a thing called getting iced, where you plant bottles of Smirnoff Ice for people and if they see it they have to get down on one knee and drink it. Anyway, it was like the last date on our first ever tour and they got us big style, Asking Alexandria. We were playing the last song and then they cut off all the sound, all the lights and there was their crew at the side of the stage, like ‘Get off! You’re running over.’ We were like, oh fuck, got to run off really quickly, we thought we’d really upset a lot of people. And then we turned round and they were all laughing at us. And there were bottles of Smirnoff Ice along the front so we had to get down on one knee and drink them.

Revenge was taken by hanging up a load of bottles in the dressing room with personalized rude messages for each band member, but WOLB are still good mates with Asking Alexandria and other local bands they’ve toured with. They also make a real point of meeting their fans.

They’ve put us in front of who we needed to be in front of. Yeah it’s cool, it’s nice meeting them all as well. We stick around and meet as many people as we can.