Review Fix Exclusive: Safeguard’s Declan Gough Talks I’m A Stranger To Myself

Review Fix chats with Safeguard’s Declan Gough who discusses the band’s new album, I’m A Stranger To Myself, the follow up to their self-released EP When Did You Stop Caring.

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

Declan Gough: I put up an advert online around mid 2016 looking to start a pop punk band, as that’s always been my main genre of interest. I found Zak and Martyn through that, we met up, had a couple jam sessions, and we clicked. Then I got Connor from my previous band to fill in for us one show when our previous drummer left, but immediately he fitted right in so he became a permanent member, and then finally we added Denholm on guitar after another early member departure. It’s fair to say we didn’t have the smoothest of starts, but since then we’ve been a solid unit!

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Gough: Every so often, we’ll all get together at Martyn’s place and just sit in a room and write. Usually, someone will bring an idea in and we’ll work on it and see if we can make anything from it. We used to all just write separately and only work on ideas when we got together to practice, but since work began on this new record, we made more of an effort to get together and it definitely paid off.

Review Fix: What’s your standout song on the current EP? How was it written?

Gough: For me personally, my favourite track on the EP is ‘November’.  It’s arguably has the most intricate instrumentation of all the songs, and I think some of the best lyrics we’ve ever done. It was actually the last song we finished before we went to the studio, it literally went right down to the wire because we were working relentlessly trying to get it right but i think it came out brilliantly and one of my favourite songs we’ve done to date.

Review Fix: What did you learn from the last EP?

Gough: As much as I still love our first EP, we pretty much went in all guns blazing, and almost every song was kinda just 100mph right in your face. With this one, we learnt how to strip certain parts back to bring other parts more to the forefront and bring the whole song more to life.

Review Fix: What are your remaining goals for 2017?

Gough: There’s not very long left of the year, but for goals I’d love for Harbour to hit 50k streams before the year is up which we’re very close to doing, and then following the release of this EP – to reach more people and gain new fans of our band to take into the new year.

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

Gough: The songs on this EP mainly deal with depression, anxiety, and being socially awkward. Overall, the message we kind of want to get across to the people who deal with those issues is you’re not alone in feeling the way you feel, that it’s okay not to be okay, and we hope that people can take the positives from it and be some form of therapy for them.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Gough: We’ve got a few cool things in the pipeline for 2018 which we’re keeping firmly under our hats for the time being, but you can keep all up to date over on all of our social medias!

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Gough: If you’ve ever shown an interest in our band, thank you so much, it really does mean the world to us all. Thank you to anyone who’s pre-ordered the EP, and to anyone who hasn’t yet and wants to pick it up, you can find it over on our Victory merch page, and all your usual music outlets: iTunes/Spotify/Google Play, the lot. Once again, thanks for checking us out!

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 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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