Interview With A Member Of The Living End Band

The band´s lead singer, lead guitar player and main songwriter, Chris Cheney sat down to talk to us about their last record Shift and the band´s future. A dream come true you might say? Of course!

Congratulations on the new record, it´s completely killer! What can you tell me about it?

Hey! Thanks a lot! Well it is not what you would call a feel-good record, I mean it´s a good record, but it´s saying that something isn´t quite working, you know? It´s also a statement about how sometimes the only way to fix something that´s gone too far is to break it and then put it together once again. It was hard as hell, but it was the only way to make the change.

I sensed it had a more emotional touch, some personal depth, is that so?

Well, yes, glad you picked that out, it´s more like a deeply personal thing. The songs don’t have any sugar coating of any kind, and there are moments that I find them hard to listen, but to me, honesty is the most brutal of feelings, and when it happens, the songs are just better.

What´s it like to make a record in 2016 when everything is about spare songs and no concept?

Well, we don´t know how to do it much differently! I mean, it´s a record, we like to think of them as songs that create a document. The album has eleven of them, and they are the new enemies as well as the old friends, also about some of our mistakes, regrets, and greed, but also triumphs, I think it´s got it all.

Well, that´s a lot! You feel it´s your darkest album?

Well, I think there´s hope in it. The band reached this awesome new level now. I love it. But we´ve never made a dark record, and this one feels shiny and great, we have flushed out a whole lot of crap. We try never to lose the edge, never get too comfortable in our comfort zone.

What are you guys up to at the moment?

Well, we played four shows like back to back; they were at the Sydney Zoo and the Melbourne Zoo. It was a whole different experience, very unlike us. We played a set of an hour and a half but we played 30 minutes acoustically, stripping out the guts of every song, we even had this huge string section. It blew our mind; it was simply fantastic because, despite the acoustic thing, they were huge 5,000 people shows. We´re also going to play the Hyde Park with our pals Green Day; it´s going to be a great year!