Review Fix Exclusive: Down in One’s Gon Pan Talks Future and More

Review Fix chats with Down in One’s Gon Pan, who discusses how the band got together, their creative process and goals for the future.

For more on the band, click here.

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

Gon Pan: I met Jonny through work a few years back and we quickly realized that we share a mutual love of metal and drinking, forming a band was clearly the next thing to do! He invited me to join his then band at the time, but unfortunately that fell apart. So we went back to the drawing board and decided on what we wanted to do next. Once Jonny had a few new riffs down he invited Rich, who he met through work, to join the band as bassist. Noting that we sorely lacked a drummer I then got in touch with Jimmy, who I’d played in a band with back when we were 16-year-olds. He came down to jam with us and we wrote two of our tracks that night! He was in instantly.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Gon Pan: It might sound a little cheesy, but we work really well off of each other when we’re writing so we usually write new songs at practise. Someone will usually come in with an idea or a riff and then one of us will go “Wait a minute, I’ll try this…” and it just starts bouncing about! Once we’ve got a basic song structure down I start writing lyrics and we try it again with the lyrics. Then we’ll see if anything’s missing from the structure.

To be honest we don’t ever stop improving our songs. We’re always improving and trying new things, some of our songs are completely different to how they were recorded on our first EP.

Review Fix: What’s your standout song? How was it written?

Gon Pan: I’d say it would have to be Mad Gun at the moment (which, funnily enough, we just released as a single and music video. Check it out on our website www.downinone.co.uk or you can find it on Spotify!). Mad Gun is a song that I think really represents what we’re about, riff-focused metal that gets you banging your head! If I remember right Jonny came into practise one day with the opening riff and it sorta just went from there, we started jamming it and adding more things and then we had a song.

We still kept changing the song though, we weren’t really happy with it until at least three or four practises after we started it. When the structure clicked we knew we had a banger of a track!

Review Fix: What are your goals for 2016?

Gon Pan: Spread the word of Down In One. We want to get out there, play more gigs and spread our music to anyone willing to listen to it. I would absolutely love to do a mini-tour and play another festival this year.

Review Fix: How do you want your music to affect people?

Gon Pan: Y’know what really makes me happy when people listen to us? When you see people headbanging along, smiling, drinking and really just having a good time! We live to party and we love to spread that joy around us when we play!

Review Fix: What’s next?

Gon Pan: We’ve got a fair few gigs coming up, we’re playing Metal 2 The Masses for a chance to play Bloodstock this year so there’s been a lot of intense practising to make sure we’re at the top of our game! We just released a music video and single, so we’re trying to promote that too at the moment. And of course there’s always more drinking to be done!

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14225 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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