If Cinderella favoured emo music and had a Welsh accent, her story would sound a lot like lostprophets’.
Hailing from Pontypridd, they recorded their first album, The Fake Sound Of Progress, in 2000 for just £6,000. Yet, with a wave of a wand, they’re back with a big-budget third outing Liberation Transmission. What, I ask frontman Ian Watkins, do his friends from the valleys make of it when he tells them he’s off to Hawaii to record with Metallica producer Bob Rock?
“They all come with me, because they’re in the band,” he quips.
That’s ignoring the fact that founding member Mike Chaplian quit, to be replaced by Fenix TX drummer Ilan Rubin.
“At the moment we’re trying him out in case he hates us,” explains bassist Stuart Richardson. “So we’re not married, we’re just dating. We might get married to him later and be his sugar daddy. I mean that as an analogy, of course.”
Of course. So how is he fitting in, bearing in mind he’s 17?
“It says a lot about our level of maturity that we get along great with him. I come from a small valley in Wales, and all you do there when you’re 17 is drink until you fall over, and that’s pretty much all I did when I was his age,” continues Richardson.
However, he’s got some growing up to do as he’s expecting his first baby with wife, the editor of People magazine in America.
“I’m so thrilled,” gushes the excited father-to-be. “We didn’t exactly try, but we didn’t exactly not try!”
But between a touring Welsh rock star and a superbusy LA editor, how do they even have time to conceive?
“You just know if you want to be with someone, and then you just make it work. We made a pact that we couldn’t go longer than three weeks without seeing each other. So she’ll fly out to see me, or I’ll fly out to see her. But that will be more difficult with a baby.”
However, it may be helped by the fact the album is set to launch them into semi-permanent American residents, its polished sound being perfect for their market. The flipside is that long-standing fans have turned against them, with one MySpacer declaring it “weak, wet and downright emo”. Yet anyone au fait with their history will know they’re no easy sell-outs.
“This was the album that we wanted – and needed – to write at this time,” Ian declares. “We’ve always written songs that are honest to ourselves, and not given a fuck about scenes, fads and genres.”
Stuart agrees: “We’re ten years older than when we started and you can only do one thing for so long. You know when you see some band reform to relive the past? We felt like that, like a bunch of 50 year olds trying to be cool.”