‘We don’t want to be one of those bands that disappear forever’ | The Areola Treat

Influences and the new direction

Lisa Micallef-Grimaud: All our various influences happened to fuse together somewhat. There's a great love for drone and punk among us all, and a great love for Nico of The Velvets that I share with Chris and Adrian, and Steve's into drone and sludge, and Chris and myself both love desert rock and I love psychedelia. I think those factors, combined with the fact that we'd all had the same vision for the upcoming material and we'd agreed on the concept for this next album, worked in our favour.

Steve Shaw: We consciously decided to go for a more layered, deeper and darker sounding album, and that may make it less accessible than the first self-titled EP and to a lesser extent [Areola Treat's debut album] Pleasure Machines. We are influenced by whatever we are listening to at the time, and whilst writing the new songs, we were separately listening to post rock, black metal, electronic and other things in between. Lisa's many voices and sounds draw on influences from every art medium she happens to be exposed to, so one minute she's horror and the next she's complimenting a drone instrumental with seagulls.

Building on the old sound

Lisa: I think it's more of a metamorphosis or an extension of it perhaps. We didn't wake up one morning thinking "oh yeah we'll change that about the next album and it'll fit in nicely".

Real change is evolutionary, and I think that's good because it allows you to be free with the material you're producing. You have to move away from it and come back to it and progress again, or it gets old.

The Radio On EP was all about the upbeat tracks because we'd purposely arranged them that way. It was a compilation of tracks we loved that were yet unpublished that happened to be of a more upbeat nature. Pleasure Machines was the fruit of pure bass thumping and speed. But as far as The Areola Treat's studio work goes, nothing was really contrived so far.

Cover art for The Areola Treat's Walk Into Nothing.

'Spreading the seed'

Lisa: Local audiences will be important to target, to keep the spirit up as there are sadly hardly any garage rock bands here, so our project to further market ourselves offshore will always be the key motivation for a band like ours.

True fans of the more alternative genre on the rock are often disillusioned with the lack of enthusiasm for garage rock music or independent music as there tends to be a great sense of procrastination within the indie community here and many projects seem to be here today and gone tomorrow, until something better comes along, or what's more frustrating is people just stop wanting to create better stuff and furthering their potential.

We don't want to be one of those bands that disappear forever, which is why we keep spreading our seed on the internet.

Steve: We keep our standards high regardless where we are playing or who we are playing to. Probably our biggest challenge is when we have to stop rehearsing to discuss promotion and finances that make us wish we had a manager to take care of these sort of things. We have played overseas a few times and while it is a lot of fun, it takes a lot of planning and can get quite expensive. At the moment we play because we love doing what we do, and if the chance comes along to play abroad once more, then why not?

The Walk Into Nothing videos

Lisa: The Walk Into Nothing video interviews all lead to the idea that there's nothing much to do here except play in your musty garage. So it's an anti-climatic attempt that ties in with the ideology of the album that there is bleakness in beauty. It's by no means a promotional video of the islands of course, we've seen too many of those. I now challenge someone to open new punk and rock clubs and shops here, and make a promotional video on alternative Malta. That's what I would really love to see!

 And on that note...

Lisa: There was a time the few punks and post punks hung out separately, then together at this place, Fredu's, in Paceville, years ago. We were into Goth music then too. There was a club for that, and then it closed its doors, and then many of those punks left the scene for a more even-tempered lifestyle, got their fancy jobs and forgot what they used to love. There's just no subcultures left in the country.

In Berlin once, after having been clubbing till the wee hours in a post punk club that had used to be an abandoned gothic church, it was great to see traditional German goths in their lurex and lace and vinyl pants, exiting the building to get a taxi and go to get breakfast with the rest of us at the crack of dawn. You'll never see that sort of thing here unless it's Halloween sadly. People are still immersed in their subcultures away from here on a daily basis, making it a lifestyle, and that's what I want to see.

Playing is the greatest satisfaction you'll get out of it. Being in the garage and working on new material is therapeutic. Having to find a venue to play is just a nightmare and it kind of ruins the whole experience, although we love doing live shows - it's a total kick. Starting out bands, remember you're in control of everything you do. Never let the radio charts or your music corporations dictate what music is, and you'll find serious music lovers who'll respect you for it.

Walk Into Nothing will be launched at Chateau Buskett, limits of Rabat on February 8. The Areola Treat will be supported by Errormantics and The Violent Violets.