Twelve Angry Men.

Allow me to sound like a David Lean movie for a moment: sometimes even the briefest encounter can change your path in life. RedTwelve were born eight years ago out of a chance reunion between school chums Ciaran Boylan and Paul Mullen.
“I had just broken up a relationship when I met Paul in a bar,” Boylan tells me, “I hadn’t been in a band since I was 13! Paul came over and said; ‘Ah, you still singing man? My band is looking for a singer!’. I took a chance and did an audition. We wrote a song which at the time that we thought was the best thing since sliced bread, and it kind of progressed from there.”

It seems like things got off to a cracking start for the Meath rockers, so I have to wonder why 2009’s debut album, Mines, took a full three years to record.
“It was pretty epic!” he laughs. “We recorded it in a box-room in a three-bedroom house, so it was a very drawn out process. It was a learning curve too though. I mean, six months in we decided we didn’t like the guitar sound we had and went back in and rerecorded all the guitars! Before we started, we had skeletons of songs, the songs we would have had for years, but when you’re recording you kind of have to sit back and look at your songs and take it, not necessarily in a new direction, but certainly add to it.”
So how does the noise on Mines compare to the infamously frenzied RedTwelve live experience?
“Our whole thing is our live show so to try and embody that in a recording was very bloody tough. The album is probably a bit tamer than the live show itself – we tend to play a little bit faster and a bit harder live. But I’m glad we got there in the end with the album. We had to say enough is enough, I think we were entering Chinese Democracy territory!”
Technical difficulties aside, the power rock fivesome certainly know their stuff, having cut their teeth touring with noughties favourites Turn.
“It was brilliant,” Boylan beams, “we even played New Year’s Eve in Whelan’s with them. You can learn a lot from a band like that. I went up and sang a song with the guys, ‘No More’ from Forward, which is a great album. We’d be fairly quick with our soundchecks but Turn were the exact opposite – I remember going on stage singing this song with them and it all sounded exactly like it did on the CD, so I saw why they spent so long at it!”
Taking inspiration from stadium rockers Foo Fighters, Muse, Guns ‘N’ Roses and Biffy Clyro, Boylan is the first to admit he’s never been a low-key performer.
“The album goes through a whole kaleidoscope of emotions. When you see us on stage, you’re not going to be thinking ‘Wow, that song’s very deep!’ I’m a bit of a fucking spaceman on stage. We’re very performance orientated, and I look at the likes of Axl Rose and Mick Jagger – they all had the persona on stage, so I do jump around a lot. It gets very hot and sweaty up there – it’s like car crash TV, the audience can’t turn away in case I fall off the stage or something!”
With all that reckless rocking out, it must be hard to pick a performing highlight.
“There’ve been a lot of great moments, definitely,” Boylan muses. “The final of the O2 new band competition was a big deal for us. We got through a heat in Whelan’s to play in the Village to about 800 people. Dave Fanning introduced us and playing to that size of an audience was pretty cool.”
They may not have taken the O2 title, but RedTwelve have high hopes for the JD Set in March.
“I’m extremely excited about it,” he says, “getting to play Dolan’s Warehouse will be great and we’ll also get to see what the standard is and meet a lot of other great bands.”
He may have victory on the brain, but a conversation with Boylan has left me in no doubt about how honourable his intentions are.
“We seem to gel as a bunch of lads and you don’t really find groups of people that you really get on with every day so if you do, you should stick with it. It’s a marriage of sorts, being in a band, it’s like heroin or something. It’s always gonna be there in the back of your mind if you have a real thing for the music and it’ll certainly always be a long term thing for us.”