Interview by Kris Peters
The music business can be an unforgiving mistress. Bands can - and do - give it everything they have, writing, recording and releasing high-quality material and developing an ever-growing fanbase yet still see minimal reward for effort.
But when the planets align and the wheel starts turning in your favour it can be a beautiful industry and one which suddenly starts giving.
After plying their trade without much overall success for the last couple of years, Newcastle rock outfit Wayward Kings were almost by chance introduced to Tim McLean-Smith from new Australian label XMusic and the rest, as they say, is history in the making.
The band released their new three-track EP Another Life Another Time last Friday, which, coupled with the recent signing, suddenly has the planets aligning in favour of Wayward Kings.
HEAVY caught up with frontman Ryan Daley to find out the full story.
"There's always gonna be a time when people are gonna judge you, or they're gonna hate it," he said matter-of-factly when asked how he was feeling about letting the EP free into the world. "I was talking to a mate the other day, and he said he didn't like ALAT, and that's awesome feedback. We're not out there to please everybody. Matt and I are pretty much the brains trust of Wayward Kings. We've played together and wrote together, and we come up with ALAT being a bit of a rock tune that's gotta be consumed on different levels, you know what I mean? I think it's good to have people in your corner that go it's shit mate, or it's fucken awesome, because they're the people that you really listen to. The more and more stuff we put out, the more people have a chance to have a negative feeling about it."
In the full interview, Ryan talks more about the EP musically, runs us through each of the three tracks individually, how Another Life Another Time differs to their last EP The B Sides, releasing EPs over albums, signing to XMusic and more.