Even in a world of increasingly identikit guitar bands, ¡Forward, Russia! stand out a mile. In only a short while they’ve managed to create their own unique look and sound, something that vocalist Tom explains came from a desire to tear up the rock ‘n’ role rulebook.
“Me and Rob used to be in a band together and Whiskas was in another one, but they were all a lot simpler, more garage rock-driven stuff. When you’re doing music like that you feel quite confined, it’s hard to do something different. When we started this we wanted to be a band who could do anything and yet it would still sound like us. That was a big problem when it came to writing songs, we’d write something really good but it wouldn’t sound uniquely like us. We’ve never said ‘no’ to anything before we’ve tried it musically, even if it’s the stupidest idea ever to everyone else.”
A big part of ¡Forward, Russia!’s mystique is the stuff that goes on around the music, the matching t-shirts and numbers instead of song titles.
“It all came together by accident,” admits Tom. “The title thing was more born out of laziness, not finishing lyrics. We called them that in practice and ended up calling them that full-stop. The t-shirts came from messing about before gigs, drawing exclamation marks next to our name on posters. Then we decided to wear the t-shirts for a one-off gig we did in Leeds because it was our first big headliner and everyone said we looked a lot better like that. It’s not part of some big plan, although I can see how people might think that. It’s all very organic.”
One thing that does tie them into rock history is the sheer energy and excitement that they bring to their records and live shows. “We’ve always wanted to put everything into any band we’ve been in. It’s a lot easier to get enthused about the songs when you’re genuinely excited about the music you play, it makes you want to move like we do.”
To my mind, there’s a lot of Leeds in the ¡Forward, Russia! way of doing things, something that Tom would agree with.
“Leeds bands have always had to do things differently,” he asserts. “Despite having the same amount of talent and being pretty much the same size as Manchester it’s never had that big breakthrough band like the Happy Mondays or The Stone Roses. A music industry infrastructure never developed there but you don’t need that so much now anyway. The good thing about Leeds is that you’re allowed to develop naturally, you don’t play one gig and a guy from a record label sees you and tells everybody that you’re shit, like what happens in London.”
This year’s debut album Give Me A Wall proved that the band had the walk to match the talk and provided an invigorating mix of styles, not least proving that you can make ferocious rock music that you can dance to.
“We all listened to a lot of different music when we were growing up but I think it comes from wanting to dance when you’re playing your own stuff. At the time we were starting there were a lot of people pushing that dance element forward and we were interested in that, but at the same time we wanted to keep the elements of all our favourite music – post-rock, hardcore, indie, electronica. I thought that if I liked all these bands, wouldn’t it be great if there was a band that sounded like all of them and that’s what we try to do.”