We recently sat down with the In Hearts Wake frontman Jake Taylor to talk about haunted palm trees, Hell On Wheels and how awesome the Triwizard Tournament is.
What is your favourite smell?
“The smell of cooking food, probably olive oil, garlic and a bit of butter onion – that kind of that smell. It gets the senses going. Honestly, it’s such a good smell, it reminds you of an Italian family.”
Do you have any phobias?
“I’m not afraid of heights. Spiders and snakes I’m coming to terms with and can deal with ha ha. Being dirty is alright. I like everything being organised, that’s not a phobia though – it’s a little bit OCD. It’s good to be organised in this business I think.”
If you were king for the day, what rules would you impose?
“It would be nice if everyone could have clean water and food, and healthy food. I mean it’s easier said than done, but that would be a nice thing to impose. Everyone should be able to have access to clean water, that’s pretty much the necessity of life. I mean, society’s functioning pretty well, there seems to be a system going, so it’s hard man, that’s a really hard question.”
What is your secret talent or party trick?
“I don’t want to talk myself up but, I used to play soccer a fair bit when I was younger, so I’ve still got it, I’ve still got the football, as you British guys say, I’ve still got the football down. And I can easily skull quite a few beers, neck to neck, just get them down. That’s probably really the only party trick I really know ha ha ha.”
Have you ever had a supernatural encounter?
“We went to these most haunted woods in the most haunted graveyard in Australia, it’s in the middle of South Australia. We went there – me, the tour manager and the band – it was like a full moon and it was cold. There was a really eerie feeling because there were graves there that were over 200 years old – which is old for Australia, because it’s a much newer colonisation. And the reason why it was so haunted was down to this palm tree up on the hill. The palm tree l was apparently where a young girl was, I believe she was, murdered at thirteen, back when it was an orphanage. You’re not supposed to go up there, but we obviously did and we were walking through this sugar cane field up to this tree, and on the way you’d take one step forward and feel the temperature change completely. You take one step back and you could feel it just be three, four degrees different, so it was drastic. Everyone experienced it and that was really eerie. When we got to the tree there were a couple of scratch marks in the tree and it felt like there was a disturbance in the area, if that makes sense. You could feel that.”
What is your favourite TV show?
“At the moment, I’m really enjoying Hell On Wheels, I’m really enjoying. It’s AMC, so it’s the same company that do Breaking Bad and Walking Dead. I’ve got so many favourite shows, but right now I’m watching Hell On Wheels and I’m also watching Mad Men, I’m about to finish that, so both are really, really good. Everyone loves Game Of Thrones, but I’m loving Vikings as well, it’s incredible. They’re all good, but I’ll just go for Hell On Wheels right now.”
If you could live as anyone else for the day, who would it be?
“Probably a footballer for the experience – having that amount of talent and being in a massive stadium, with hundreds of thousands of people watching you, all over the world. I’m not sure which footballer, because, I don’t know, there’s a lot of egos involved there but… well let’s go Ronaldo, just for a day. Not because I admire the guy, well I admire his skill, not his personality, but I would like to play in a massive match, that would be awesome.”
What is your favourite book?
“I’m going to go with Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. I just really liked how Quidditch stepped out of it, and it was all about the Triwizard Tournament. It was just so refreshing and unexpected when I was reading it. It was a big, nice, thick, juicy book, and where the other ones were kind of smaller, so it was awesome.
The Goblet Of Fire movie was good, it was when Harry Potter started getting good – well actually, Azkaban was pretty good, but it needed to be. I wish they’d made The Goblet Of Fire into two parts, as opposed to the last movie, because The Goblet Of Fire is such a big book and it had the Triwizard Tournament – I wanted more of it!”
What has been your most embarrassing moment?
“I can just think of an embarrassing moment, but recently in Australia we played a really big show with The Ghost Inside and I Killed The Prom Queen, it’s probably about twelve or thirteen hundred people in Adelaide. We were just grooving out on stage, I was probably rocking out way too hard, doing a few spins and just losing myself in the music, and I hit Caleb’s drum rise and just flipped over onto my back. I got up real quick to make it look like I meant it to happen, but it was pretty embarrassing and all my friends on the tour party were watching just laughing their heads off, it was good.”
What band epitomises metal?
“I feel like when I was, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and I first heard about Metal Hammer, I always connected with As I Lay Dying for some reason. I must have read a few interviews with As I Lay Dying, Tim Lambesis etc, and they were a really inspirational band for me in my teenage years. I know they’re metalcore and they’re not metal, but in terms of what I grew up with, As I Lay Dying, played a big part for me. So, I’d pick them as my metal band, and I know there’s more metal bands out there like Iron Maiden and Slayer and Metallica, but As I Lay Dying would be what inspired me to get into this scene.”
Draw me an elephant.
