Hybrid Myth

Becky Browning

In a tiny little venue off the beaten road in Chichester, we made sure we caught up with this gorgeous punk/metal fivesome after their immense performance at The Chi Inn! This night was absolutely freezing and I made the ridiculous mistake of not bringing my jacket, but I braved it, Snakebite and cigarette in hand, in the beer garden with the lads from Hybrid Myth….

SO guys, not going to beat around the bush. EP’s, talk to me?!

Martin: We recorded it in July last year! Basically, there’s this place that we practice in and every now and again the guys behind the till would be like ‘you’re really good!’, but one time this guy was like ‘I wanna record you’. We said of course, but how much is this gonna cost?? He told us £40, he was a uni student!! We kept our first EP self titled ‘Hybrid Myth’.

How long have Hybrid Myth been around?

As we are now, all of us have been together about 4 or 5 years. We went from playing stuff like Arctic Monkeys and Snow Patrol until Charlie was like ‘lets play something good!’
Charlie: Hahahahahaha, no I came back into the band and I was like ‘right where’s this going?’
Martin: No-one cares about you Charlie!! Hahahaha.
We used to go into pubs and just play a set list of like 23 songs that people wanted to hear, even though we’re all into the heavier music. We went to see ‘The Ghost of a Thousand’ live and from then we decided we would change and we knew we wanted to do this.

So do we see a tour??

Andy: (Sheepishly) We’ve never toured!!
Martin: I guess we just have lack of contacts and stuff. We had a New Year’s gig in Brighton not too long ago and that opened the doors for us. We’re currently doing what we can over in Brighton to get more shows etc. but we’re trying to aim at Portsmouth aswell to help spread our name. Unfortunately we don’t have a very big foundation, it’s all about getting the contacts in this business.
Drew: Our main focus at the minute is getting more and more gigs, getting more people interested in our stuff. After playing New Years eve in Brighton, no one knew us but the crowd were amazing.
Martin: Yeah we got a gig through doing that gig. Brighton has a really good music scene and we broke through it. We aim to break through the country too!
When we do decide to go on tour, we will definitely be hitting up Edinburgh, Liverpool and most main cities. London goes without saying! We wanna hit Camden, that would be amazing. Also Reading, home of Lost Boys and Adelaide.

Right, we need the goss. Who’s the trouble-maker ?!

(A whole bunch of hahahahahahahahaha’s)
DREW DREW DREW DREW. If you wanna get to band practice on time, dont go in Drew’s car. And if you want lyrics for your song, ask Drew. But if you wanna run around town with someone who’s got their trousers round their ankles, then speak to Andy. It’s not all Drew, definitely Andy aswell, the pair of them are trouble! We do actually get work done though!! We do a lot of lyric writing. Recently its mainly been Andy, but we all usually write lyrics. Dale just plays drums and falls off the stage.

Lads, Shout me 3 bands you’d say have inspired you amongst Hybrid Myth.

Everytime I Die definitely! Architects and probably Protest the Hero.

Whilst watching the performance tonight, I will say I did get a massive Architects feel to the show. I’m a big fan myself and i felt this even more so strongly from the vocals. I loved it guys!

We were briefly interrupted by A Room Swept White’s bassist Alex, who was utterly mortal with a pint in his hand. Also talking about his Topman jumper.

Where did you guys meet, whats the story??

Charlie: We all pretty much met at school really.
Martin: We were all in an Orchestra, make sure you write this down! Anyway, we were playing percussion and someone left a comment on my MySpace (Everyone laughs because he said MySpace Hahaha) asking if we wanted to join a band. We met up and they asked if i could play double bass, i was like ‘YEHH I can can play double bass’. So we started off playing some Arctic Monkeys, then some Killswitch Engage, getting deeper and deeper in our music.
Drew: The first time we had band practice i tried to scream and lost my voice for like a week.

Throughout the interview Charlie kept quiet and stressed about being the driver. Bahaha!

What’s the best show to date you guys have played?

Its gotta be New Year’s at The Hydrant in Brighton!! The crowd were amazing. We were all pretty drunk, not too drunk, but wasted enough. We played really well and everyone loved us. We wish we could have that atmosphere every time we played. We bought along a whole bunch of free EP’s to give away and they went like a shot! The next day our Facebook band page likes went up by 50 from that one show! We go along to these places and usually have no idea what kind of crowd are being pulled in, we were unsure in Brighton as we played alongside a Ska band. We kinda got on stage after them all like ‘Happy New Year RAWRR’ Hahahaha. We dont ever play gigs where all the bands are the same genre.

We played a pretty awful show at a school one time, it was a battle of the bands thing and there were kids with guitars and power tools haha!! We lost and came last, not even second. All these kid’s families were there and we were on stage screaming and stuff, they didn’t look too impressed. Our first ever gig was here at The Chi Inn and we play here all the time, we get invited back here a lot. Its our home! The old promoter here has left to travel, he had a sick kit, the sound was always amazing, just perfect. It used to get so rammed, you couldn’t move, that guy did a good job. Overall, a good venue! The low ceilings create a really good atmosphere, we love it when the crowd are closer to us. People have crowd surfed here at our shows and been pushed against the ceiling which is pretty cool. It always depends on how many people turn up ya’no?

The band showed us all their tattoos, indecent exposure!! And also threw a bunch of free EP’s our way.

We really enjoyed talking to these guys, they’re full of banter and love!! Make sure you check them out at the links below:
http://www.myspace.com/hybridmyth
https://www.facebook.com/hybridmyth

Keep up to date with Becky Browning’s interaction with Hybrid Myth in 2012 by visiting www.facebook.com/Beckstarrr.