Employed To Serve return in 2025 with album five. It’s heavy, it’s In Flames-y, and there’s secret guests. Justine Jones and Sammy Urwin give the lowdown...
Justine: “It’s my favourite time I’ve recorded. I feel like we’ve really got our routine nailed.”
Sammy: “We had everything pretty much fully demoed, which helped. Then when you get to the studio, you know what you’re doing so much that if anything experimental comes up, you’ve got a solid base for it. Also, we were nice on Justine, whereas in the past, we weren’t.”
Justine: “I’d wait ’til the end, then have three days to do an album’s worth of vocals, which isn’t that great. This time, I did one song at a time, not screaming for three days straight.”
Sammy: “This one has more of me doing vocals. I used to have to bosh it all out at the end as well. I remember we did that on [2019’s] Eternal Forward Motion just before we went on tour, and I crucified my voice. It was fried to bits.”
Sammy: “The biggest takeaway we had after [2021’s] Conquering was that we there was a lack of contrast. I love it, but since that was our first album with the new line-up and leaning into our metal influences more as the band, it was kind of a full-on assault. This new album is still intense, but I feel like we’ve added in more subtle nuances that were more apparent on [2017’s] The Warmth Of A Dying Sun and Eternal Forward Motion. There’s guests on it we can’t say yet, but they’ve added to that, too.”
Justine: “Not that I wasn’t happy with the record or anything, but we were starting to get used to working together. We’ve been playing together for a couple of years now, so it was a really nice thing going into this record. I’d say we’re more metal now, in a more traditional sense.”
Sammy: “But we didn’t want to just steamroll the whole way through. We’re quite an eclectic mix of individuals in terms of our influences, so it seems weird not to have passages that bring it down for a second, or have a slightly different vibe to it.”
Justine: “We’ve got the Scandi-metal sound on there. There’s a big In Flames influence.”
Sammy: “I wanted to explore melody even more than we have in the past. We’d been listening to a lot of bands like Soilwork and In Flames.”
Justine: “Love Metal by HIM as well. And Sammy’s forever listening to Dio.”
Sammy: “Yeah. I didn’t nail the Rainbow In The Dark keyboard, though. Next time. I’ll have to call up and ask, ‘What keyboard setting did you use on the Casio?’ But yeah, it was definitely a decision to add that element to the sound. I can’t really remember what the real catalyst was, other than jamming a lot of Soilwork.”
Sammy: “On the big tour we did with Gojira [last year], we found ourselves leaning into our more metal stuff and less into the chaotic, earlier songs. Some things just don’t translate in arenas, and I think some of that has fed into the new material, for sure.”
Justine: “We’re almost manifesting those big stages now. It’s hard sometimes, because we started this in our early 20s and we didn’t really know what we were doing. We’ve ticked off all of our bucket-list things, or at least a good portion of them. We were lucky enough to do most of our dream stuff quite early on in our career. So now sometimes we’re a bit like, ‘Well, why not act like the sky’s the limit and try to do these bigger songs for these bigger stages?’ Let’s do it and see where it takes us, and have fun whilst we’re doing it.”
Justine: “We really liked how big the artwork was for The Warmth Of A Dying Sun. We wanted to continue that on this album – like Iron Maiden and Eddie. That was the album where people first took notice of us, so it made sense to tip the hat.”
Sammy: “The message we’re putting forward now is, ‘Heavy metal unity.’ To go with that we wanted a shield as a band. Judas Priest have their trident – what’s our identifying factor? Our drummer Casey [McHale] said, ‘We really should bring back the sun as our thing that represents us as a band.’ So we have. It ties into the title, and it feels good, making that reference and having that link.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2024 issue of the magazine.
Employed To Serve’s new album is due out in early 2025 via Spinefarm. The band play 2000trees in July.
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