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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