Interviews

Caesars Rome

Marcus Warner 02/02/2009

Caesars Rome are a Welsh band who write songs that warm the heart; genuine, huge sounding emotional rock without any nods to false sentimentality. They appear to have a bit of the Midas touch thus far, with a label and support slots with Funeral For Friend already in the bag, but it appears from speaking to them for God Is In The TV, that this is only the beginning.

So, for those new to the band, give us a bit of an insight into the history of the band?

The band was originally formed in January 2007, with a few line up changes later the four of us; Jonathan Hopkins (guitar/vocals), Kyle Smith (guitar), Richard Berry (drums) and Ashley Cocco (bass) have been active since the beginning of this year (2008). We originally set out to be a covers band to be honest when we reformed we started hammering out some of The Police as we are all pretty big fans.

So I innocently uploaded one of our tracks to the XFM Unsigned page, and before we knew it we were featured and went on to win artist of the week, which really got the momentum back, from there on we hit the studio to demo some tracks we had written and we then found ourselves doing a live Session for BBC Radio One, where we saw plays regionally and nationally.

So after the immediate press we found ourselves playing some incredible bills, with bands such as Funeral For A Friend, Innerpartysystem, InMe and Twin Atlantic, which has been great for us as its opened the doors for us in the industry and to people who hadn't heard of us!


You've just come out of the studio, recording your debut album with Romesh @ Longwave, how did that go?

Recording so far has been a blast, we are currently on our Christmas break and are going back into the studio in January to finish up some more guitars and vocals. It's sounding absolutely huge and it's been everything we expected and more.

For those who don't know a lot about Romesh he is well worth checking out, we all know the big records he's produced this year (Kids In Glass Houses - Smart Casual, Funeral For A Friend - Memory & Humanity) and for us to work with him and have him shed a huge light in the tracks has been amazing. Him and his engineer Rob Thomas have been incredible to work with and very easy going!

And the album itself, any ideas for titles?

The album has indeed got it's title at the moment we are keeping it under wraps until we have all the visuals and artwork completed! Very happy how everything has panned out, both lyrically and aurally.

The album is coming out on Superball Music, when is the album due to drop?

The album is indeed coming out Via our European label Superball Music, we aren't 100% sure so don't quote us on this, but we are aiming for it to be released April / May 2009!

And how did the Superball Music deal come about?

Well it was all right place right time i guess, we were sent a message around 2 years a go on my space of all things, a few emails later and MP3's sent back and forth we started talking a lot more. We played a show in London in 2007 and the label boss flew over to see us play, and he really liked what he saw. It's been a long process and we've done a lot of work in between and its panned out really well for us, and we can't wait for people to hear the record!

I hear a number of influences in your sound, who are your main influences?

This has always been a tough one to call as we all listen to a lot of different things, I'd say myself and the drummer Rich have the most similar taste in music, where as the other two are completely individual. A big influence in our music are Thrice, we take a lot of inspiration from Jimmy Eat World also, other than that we'd love people to come see us and put their own opinion on our sound!

With 2008 at a close, what does 2009 have in store for Caesars Rome?


Well 2008 was a great year for us as a band in the writing and recording aspect, 2009 is going to bring a lot of live performances and extensive touring, it's in both ours and the labels best interests for us to get on the road as soon as the record is complete. So we will definitely be playing everywhere and anywhere in 2009!

Also the release of our début record too which is going to be exciting for us!

Is there a reason that you haven't put an apostrophe in Caesars? My concern is that previous Caesars maybe quite annoyed you have taken their possession of Rome away from them...

I must admit we do like the tongue in cheek questions. I guess we tried the whole apostrophe thing, the strongest reason why we decided to leave it out was because Myspace really didn't like it! Every time we put it in on our edit band name section it would throw an array of code in with it, which drove us around the bend.

In relation to previous Caesars I'm sure they wouldn't be too upset! Plus it looks so much better as Caesars Rome! ;)
Our gig dates at the moment are very sparce as we are still recording the album!