Hitting the Road with Rising UK Metallers VANITY and DEFERENCE

On April 26th, rising UK metallers Deference and Vanity (formerly Vanity Draws Blood team up to release their split EP Condemned To Repeat but, before that, the pair will be hitting road together at the end of March for a run of shows. Ahead of the dates, we sat down and chatted to both bands about what they’re expecting from the tour.

1. Tell us about what you’re looking forward to about the upcoming tour?
Vanity: Playing the new songs from Condemned To Repeat live will be awesome, getting to explore new places and dicking about together is half the fun of tour.

Deference: We’re definitely not a band who turns up and sits around the venue on our phones for 4 hours, we normally arrive 5 minutes before soundcheck because we were looking at a waterfall or having a kickabout.

2. Anything you want to warn the other band about?
Deference: We’ve gotten to the point as a band where we can communicate through memes and stupid noises. Also, Matt gets really hangry.

Here’s Deference with the video for one of their offerings, “Burial”:

Vanity: We are pretty much the same except we all get hangry, we always make sure we have a stock of snacks to keep everyone calm.

3. What’s your favourite song to play live?
Deference: “Devil’s Duplicate” is our favourite song along with “Scavengers Stay Away”.

Vanity: “Anxiety” has always been our favourite. We love the heavy, dark atmosphere it creates live.

4. Where is your favourite town or city to play?
Deference: Southampton shows are definitely our favourite to play just because it’s a hometown show. Outside of Southampton, Hereford has been consistently kind to us and they all love to drink and go nuts at shows!

Vanity: Kingston will always be our favourite place to play. It was the town we had our first show in and although as a band we come from different areas, we all consider it to be our hometown.

Vanity, explore the distressing side of the farming industry in their video for “Humane”:

5. What essential items can’t you live without on the road?
Vanity: A sleeping bag and pillow because forgetting them and sleeping on a hardwood floor suuuuuuucks! Also a phone charger is a good idea because you don’t want to be without the bangers playlist.

6. What’s the funniest thing that has happened to you on the road?
Deference: We have so many stupid in jokes that we just randomly made up, normally when everyone is trying to go to sleep, it’s hard to think of a specific thing!

Vanity: Our old drummer fell asleep in the van so we coloured in half his face with permanent marker, we all kept quiet about it until we arrived at our hotel. We let him go to the reception desk to get our room keys. It wasn’t until he got to his room after walking through the hotel, speaking to several people on the way that he found out what had happened.

7. Ever had anything really bad happen to you while you’ve been on stage?
Deference: Rob [Vocalist] once climbed a speaker stack during a song and the sound guy came onstage and kicked him offstage. He then started on the rest of the band, then cut all the microphones and turned the PA off so we couldn’t continue the show.

Vanity: We used to have all our guitar gear in a massive 20U rack case, nicknamed “Tone Henge”. At the time we thought it was really efficient as all our guitarists equipment was so easy to set up as we only had plug in 1 plug. We had 1 gig where the plug got pulled out and turned all the guitars off, another gig where we had to carry it up 5 flights of stairs (it weighed around 50kg) and another show where we had to dismantle it completely and rewire all the gear back together because there wasn’t enough space for it on stage. Needless to say, we no longer use it.

8. If you could go on tour with any band past or present who would you choose and why?
Deference: [Matt – Guitarist] I think Periphery, not only because of the musicianship but because I’m a huge guitar nerd and would just enjoy geeking out with them! [Rob – Vocalist] I would like to tour with Currents or Polaris because they’re both such incredible bands. After chatting to the guys in Currents we realised we had a lot of stuff in common so it would be great to spend some time with them and get to know them better than we already do. Hearing them smash it every time they played I think I would just be in awe the whole time. [Jonny- Guitarist] Metallica because, if you’re gonna support a metal band it may as well be the one where the most people will be watching, haha!

Vanity: [Elliot – Guitarist] Silent Planet, because they simply don’t have a bad song. They know how to use moments of silence effectively, how to use modern FX to create music that moves you. As a guitarist I’m not usually focused on vocals, but I find Garrett Russell’s lyrics so deep, unique, complex and outright creative. I also hear he is a swell guy. [Charles – Bassist] For me it would have to be Thornhill, I absolutely love the music they’re putting out.

Catch the two UK metal bands going head-to-head on the following dates:

03/25 – Manchester – Rebellion
03/26 – London – The Unicorn Camden Live
03/27 – Brighton – Quadrant
03/29 – Southampton – Suburbia