Ahead of their Download appearance, Split Chain singer Bert Martinez-Cowles tells us about how good fortune and imposter syndrome shaped the band’s killer new song, who am i?
Over the past year, Split Chain have gone from being "five mates from Bristol who wanted to play a couple of shows" to one of British rock's most promising new bands. They've just done six weeks out in America with Thursday, Silverstein and Arm's Length, next weekend they're playing Download for the second year on the bounce, and then in July they're dropping their debut album, motionblur, released through legendary punk powerhouse Epitaph.
It's this good fortune, though, that finds them questioning themselves on brilliant new single who am i?.
"We are all our own worst critics, and the song is about working to overcome and block out the noise, negativity and feelings of inadequacy that stems from within our own minds," explains singer Bert Martinez-Cowles. "It's ultimately about pulling ourselves out of the negative cycles of rumination and allowing ourselves to believe that we do deserve good things and that we all deserve them just as much as anybody else.”
We caught up with Bert to get the lowdown, and find out just how crackers the past 12 months have been…
Tell us about who am i?, would you?
“It’s a song based around imposter syndrome. We’ve come from absolutely nothing, not even meaning to start a band, to where we are now in literally two years, which is just insane. I feel like it's something we need to put out there, because we battle with it all the time. It’s been so quick, what’s happened to us. Before we started this, we were just mates, we didn’t know anyone in the industry, it was the classic cliché of five friends wanting to play a show in our local city. I was in a band before, but we did nothing. Split Chain started with nothing behind us, and so right now we’re like, ‘Why us? Why is this happening?’”
It was quite a dash to get it done, right?
“Yeah. We wrote it while we were recording the album, and it was the last song to be fully finished. We finished recording it the day before we had to leave the studio. We rewrote it three times! It was the perfect moment of going, ‘The song’s not good enough. We have no time.’ And then something just clicked, and it came together."
It's got a slightly different vibe for Split Chain than what people might be used to, almost ’80s goth…
“Yeah. It's definitely a little bit different to the rest of the stuff on the album. It's got a lot of influence from post-punk, because Tom's [Davies, bass] quite big on that genre of music. So we brought some of that in, and it works really well.”
You've been to America a lot recently. How did it go?
“We were out there a while ago with Silverstein, Thursday and Arm’s Length. Again, it's so insane. ‘Why are we getting this? Do we deserve this?’ It's all just mental. Going to America because of your own music is something we’d never even thought of, so that's already insane. But then do it for six weeks and see the whole country with Silverstein and Thursday, who were two of the biggest bands that we all grew up on, and to meet Arm’s Length, all of that really made us go, ‘What’s going on?’ Everything that could have gone well did. I can’t tell you how good it was. And then to go back and do a headline tour made it even better. But yeah, that ties into the song – why us?”
motionblur is due out on July 11 via Epitaph Records. Split Chain play Download Festival this month – get your tickets now
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