Last week The Defiled headlined London’s O2 Academy Islington as part of their tour with Avatar, but before the show Metal Hammer’s own Alexander Milas sat down with Stitch and The AvD for a quick chinwag.
Hey Stitch and The AvD, how’re you doing?
Stitch: “We’re very, very hungover.”
How did that happen?
Stitch: “It was our tour manager last night saying, ‘We’ll go for one drink.’ But I was looking at my phone this morning and my last texts were from 7am, so…”
It’s always difficult when you’re reconstructing a night based on social media, or missed calls, or police records…
The AvD: “That is a big problem – it reminds you of things you’ve done the night before and sometimes it’s not that great. I actually drank a bottle of Jägermeister on stage because the public got what the public wanted, and they were like, ‘Chug, chug,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, let’s do it, we’re in Stoke, why not,’ and I kind of quarantined myself and they went out without me because I just, I was way beyond driven.”
Stitch: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be that sensible to do that? That was insane to go, ‘Right, I’m putting myself to bed.’ I was like, ‘Wow.’”
Or your body’s basically just saying, ‘I can do no more,’ right, ‘Just stop this.’
The AvD:_ _“I don’t think that was it, cos I was up till four, five in the morning, but in my bunk. I just didn’t want to, you know, have the barriers broken down, hanging out with everyone and probably get into some trouble, which I tend to do.”
Oh really, do tell, you can’t just say that and park it there man. Actually, I shouldn’t be asking you – Stitch, what’s he got up to?
Stitch: “What have you got up to on this tour? You haven’t been that bad, have you?”
The AvD: “I fell in love in Italy ha ha ha.”
Go on, what happened? Was it a woman?
The AvD: “Yeah, it turned out to be a woman and after checking the social media the next day we found out it was a lady called Sarah, and that’s what I do every day, I just talk to her, and she’s kind of put a spanner in The AvD’s party time. Like, my party time is the stage, that’s when I’m having fun and then I go to my bunk and just talk to her a lot. I’ve changed.”
But love has changed. It’s not like you just meet someone and then you get to know them. You meet someone, you find out their name, you find them out on Facebook or wherever they might happen to be, and check out like 300 pictures from like the last five years. Am I right?
The AvD: “Yeah, yeah, just sit there lusting over them in your bunk.”
Well guys, I’ve gotta ask you so, huge news, you just went to a place I have been fascinated by for a lifetime. You were in Greenland, not anywhere in Greenland, you were on top of an iceberg. Now, what happened?
**Stitch: **“We got approached by Jäger and it sounded really silly when they asked us and we went like, ‘Oh it’s ages away, we’ll deal with it,’ and then when it came it was pretty terrifying wasn’t it.”
So, basically, ‘Dear The Defiled, would you like to play on an iceberg, thanks very much, Jägermeister.’
**Stitch: **“That was pretty much it. Was that it Adam?”
The AvD: “I think it was, they thought that we were the only people idiotic enough to go, ‘Yeah man, that sounds like a great idea.’ So yeah, we did exactly what they thought that we were gonna say, and we were like, ‘Yeah, right on, let’s do that.’ I didn’t think it was going to be as dangerous as it was…”
**Stitch: **“I was terrified before and you guys were like, ‘Oh, it’ll be easy,’ and then it changed when we got to Greenland. I was kind of confident with it, you were the one who was like, ‘Ooh, we’re gonna die.’”
How cold was it? I mean, you guys must have been in the Arctic Circle right?
**The AvD: **“We were on the doorstep of the North Pole, I guess you’d call it. We got to see where icebergs were born and do shit that no-one gets to do, and experience a culture that no one gets to experience, really. It was actually set on the beautiful backdrop and it’s great that we got to do that, but I think people need to educate themselves on what the West has done to those people and how it’s affected their lives.”
**Stitch: **“Quite sad in places wasn’t it? Like really sad, it’s devastating, you know their culture and stuff, it’s just a totally different world to what we’re used to. There’s a few kids we saw when we went into the town, there was a couple of kids where they were like, ‘Ooh, he’s got Nike trainers on,’ whereas the rest of the time they weren’t like that. There were like two kids that looked Westernised.”
**The AvD: **“I think the West has made Greenland follow their laws, but it just doesn’t work over there, and depression, alcoholism and suicide is at an all time high. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to talk about, I mean, we’re on the radio and if we’re going to do anything with our lives I think we should bring people’s attention to what we’re doing to the world.”
