GRUMMY KNOWS BEST

Deputy Music Editor Sarra Grummett offers up some more unknown (not for long) talent. This week, Pop-Punk foursome Man Of The Hour.

Man Of The Hour are indubitably a pop-punk band. With influences that resemble the well-known sounds of Motion City Soundtrack and Blink-182, it’s needless to say that this band effortlessly and quite ingeniously envelopes an energetic mix of hooking melodies and strong and exhilarating guitar rhythms. What is quite clearly known as “experimenting” and incorporating only the finest elements of hardcore, metal and punk-rock has clearly worked in Man Of The Hour’s favour who identify themselves as ‘progressive pop-punk’—a convincing and modern take on the genre that originally set out to innovate the attitude of punk-rock. Catching up with front man Rich, I dive deeper into the band that is Man Of The Hour...

How did ‘Man Of The Hour’ first get together?

Man Of The Hour first got together in 2008, formed by myself and Matt (ex-keys player), as an out of school activity. Over the two years we’ve had more than enough member changes, only Alex (bass) and myself are left of the original line-up. We found Josh (drums) and Owen (guitar/vocals) through a friend about a year ago.

Who are your greatest influences?

As a group of people we are quite diverse in music taste. I like more pop-punk stuff like Blink-182 and New Found Glory, Josh is a fan of more harder edged bands like Four Year Strong and Alexisonfire, Alex listens to most things but loves a bit of Bon Jovi and Owen loves bands that most people would have never heard of before.

What do you write about?

I write all of the lyrics. I tend to make up stories and tell them in song form as best I can, for instance ‘Doctor! Doctor!’ has two underlying meanings; the first is about a mental patient wanting all the voices in his head to stop, and the second is about thinking things which you really don’t want to/shouldn’t be thinking about. I don’t whine about ex-girlfriends or heartbreak. Some songs are based on experiences in my life, from seeing friends suffer from stage fright to being bullied at school as some examples.

What does Man Of The Hour bring to gigs? What makes the band stand out?

We bring an ‘in your face’ live show with catchy pop-punk melodies and heavy hardcore beatdowns. We’re different to all the other pop-punk bands in S. Wales as we class ourselves as ‘Progressive Pop-Punk’, a genre which we think best describes our music, taking influence from the best parts of metal, hardcore and of course, pop-punk.

Who writes most of the music, or is it a collaborative process? Is there more thought going into the sound or the lyrics of your songs?

Originally I wrote most of the music as well as lyrics, nearly all of our earlier stuff was written by myself. Over the last 4 months however, we’ve all pitched in as regards to writing the music. Owen and myself write the guitars, Alex writes his own basslines and Josh puts his beats to the songs. I like to think there’s an equal amount of thought going into both the music and lyrics. I write my lyrics with as much emotion as the boys enjoy writing the music, there’ll be times where we think certain bits of music sound banging and then other times a quirky line in the song can make us smile.

Man Of The Hour play a lot of local shows and you guys are continuously recording. What advice can you give to other bands just starting out that want to get heard?

We play as many shows as we physically can, it’s hard to gig as much as you want to when two of us are working and the other two are in university, but we cope with it pretty well. I am starting my own recording studio in the new year, so come next year we will most probably be recording more, we recorded our old tracks as well as our EP ‘I Can’t Believe Man Of The Hour Is A Pop-Punk Band’ at Screamadelica Studios in Cardiff Bay. We would’ve loved to record more, but money is tight nowadays. The best advice we could give to any band starting out is to gig regularly and build some solid contacts, don’t tick any bands/promoters/venues off, you never know what those contacts could do in future. 

What can we expect in the future for Man Of The Hour?

We’re releasing our EP  ‘I Can’t Believe Man Of The Hour Is A Pop-Punk Band’ next year, it’ll be available on iTunes and at our shows. We’ll also be gigging as much as we can, wherever we can.

Want to listen?

facebook.com/manofthehourband

myspace.com/manofthehourband