The Raven Age are back at Donnington for Download once again! This time they're smashing the 2nd Stage on the Friday afternoon and we got a chance to catch up with them.
Hey guys, thanks for being up for some questions! First off, tell us a bit about The Raven Age.
We're a young metal band from London U.K, We've been gigging together since Feb 2014 and we've recently been signed to BMG and released our debut album Darkness Will Rise. Go and check it out!
You guys hit Download back in 2016, where you were on the Pepsi Max stage. This time around you're up at the Zippo, how did it feel getting that slot? What's changed since then?
It's a great feeling knowing that we're climbing the Download ladder. Moving up to later on the bill is great but jumping up a stage is something else and we're mega excited to smash the Zippo Encore stage. I've seen many a great band on that stage so it's an honour to be included. Since then, we've hit UK and Europe pretty hard touring wise and we've released our debut album, it seems to have helped which is great to see!
Obviously you've been busy since 2016, with support slots all over the place with some massive bands, which was your Favourite tour?
We've had some great tours, we recently supported Anthrax in Europe which was amazing, but I can't ignore the magnitude and how incredible it was to support Maiden on the Book Of Souls world tour. That tour challenged us as a band, made us better and showed us what you can achieve with hard work and great songs. It totally inspired all of us to keep driving forward and chase the dream.
Your bio mentions that in the past 4 years thanks to these tours you've hit 6 continents. Which is the missing one and are their plans to do it?
The missing continent is Antarctica and yes we do plan on doing it one day. Whether that's to a huge crowd of freezing cold TRA fans or just us and a couple of polar bears in the distance. Either way is cool.
Not only have you rocked the globe, you released Darkness Will Rise a month back. How was the recording of that?
The recording was a lot of fun, we worked with producer Matt Hyde who's been a part of some monumental metal albums. We recorded drums with him and luckily, Jai was on form - nailed the tracks in no time at all. The rest of the album was engineered by myself which gave us a nice relaxed vibe in the studio without red light fever taking over the album! Perhaps we even took too long in hindsight and we'll look to shave off a bit of time on album number 2, but we're super happy with how it's turned out!
You can feel the film score influences you have previously talked about in the record. If you could pick any film to score, what would it be?
I'd love to give Gladiator a go. I love the film and the sound track to that film makes it. So to do that justice or get anywhere near the quality, I'd need to come up with something pretty damn special.
Now onto some fun questions just to get to know you guys a little better! If you could pick one song to represent you as a band, what would it be?
Of our own, I'd probably give people Salem's Fate as it has a good dynamic to it and shows a decent variety of what we have to offer. If we're picking any song, unfortunately it's gotta be the sax song as it's what everyone in the band seems to sing all the time when on tour!
This'll hopefully be an interesting one for you guys as I imagine you've met alot of different bands now, but if you could play any song with any band, what and who would it be?
For me personally, and I'm sure for a lot of people, I'd love to play 'The End Of Heartache' with Killswitch Engage. That song was so influential on me and opened up a whole new door to my musical taste at the time. It's one that the whole crowd (including myself) sing every word to and it'd be cool to see from the other side for once as jam with those boys.
And finally, what are you bringing to Download this year that means people should come and see you?
A new backdrop, a new set list, a new tour bus, all brought to you by the same 5 idiots as last year and we're really excited to deliver some new material to you all. See you on 9th \m/
Thanks and all the best guys, we're once again looking forward to seeing you rock Donnington!