The Seduction

Having fronted influential Melbourne metal outfit In Name & Blood for close to the last five years, Craig Wainwright has now moved on to a new challenge with The Seduction.

With a debut record and a national tour around the corner, Craig had the following to say…

By Cameron Chambers 

Hey man, how are you today? 

Good buddy, you? 

Yeah, travelling well, let’s

get right into though so we don’t run up the phone bill. 

Nah, it’s all good… I’m

calling from work. 

Well, fuck em then. 

Ha ha. 

For those that don’t

got together, any past members etc… 

The band started two years

ago now. I joined a year ago and before that they were together for

a year with their old singer Kevin… who they never played a show with.  

They went without a singer

for a while and I’d helped them out by booking shows and ended up

taking over the reins. We just got Joey Jones on bass that used to sing

for The Jonestown Syndicate too. So yeah, we’ve been playing for the

last year doing what we do. 

How would you describe The

Seduction’s music to someone that hadn’t heard the band before? 

I’d say, just noisy, rock

and roll influenced metal. 

The musical differences

was the right group of people for you to be playing with? 

It’s a little bit of both.

Some days I miss playing flat out metal with In Name & Blood but

at the same time, with The Seduction being influenced by bands like

Every Time I Die, Norma Jean, The Chariot and Botch and things like

that, that was the stuff I was listening to. I was looking for something

different coz I wanted to challenge myself. 

It was the right group of people

as well. I got along with Shane and Japan really well as well, so yeah,

it just went from there and we ended up being a band.  

The Seduction’s initial

their feet? 

More the later… it was influenced

from what they were going for at the time, and as I mentioned before,

I joined the band a year after they had started, so they’d been writing

the songs for some time.  

It was them finding their feet

but I was as well (vocally). It was something completely different for

me coz I went from one extreme with lots of highs to heaps of lows and

now I’ve found some middle ground. 

I definitely think the demo

wasn’t the best indication but it was a good indication of what was

to come.  

A lot of heavy bands struggle

you guys play? 

I’d like to think so. We

did the record as raw as we could for that exact reason. With past records

I’ve been on it hasn’t always captured the intensity that should

be there. We did this as raw as we could and most of it was done in

single takes all the way through, so it was as tight as we could get

it but it was also raw and messy… which is how we play live.  

I just lost track there, ha

ha, but to answer your question, I’d say yes, I think you get a fairly

good indication of what we sound like live by listening to the record.  

Your brand new record

“Betrayed” is set to come out on May 17^th

and recording process? 

Well, it was a year in the

making. We had a couple of songs from when we were first playing…

coz when I first joined the band they only had four songs, so there

are a couple of songs that were written early on in the piece. So yeah,

we’ve been writing for a year and lot goes on in a year, so it’s

really influenced by a lot of things that were going on.  

Everyone was angry for whatever

reason… you get angry and you write well. We had down time where we

didn’t anything for a few months and then we wrote the last three

songs for the record within the last couple of months, ha ha. 

So we just powered through

the writing using the feelings that we had and we used that anger and

resentment… so it’s a really angry record but I try to be positive

in everything I do anyway, ha ha. 

The songs themselves seem

point? 

Definitely, I mean, with any

young band as you yourself know, if you start writing songs you go “that

sounds sick, let’s put it with this bit and then this bit”… and

you just end up with a mish mash of riffs that sound like a song but

aren’t all that coherent… especially when you draw from so many

different influences and you listen to such a broad range of music…

it just gets to the point where you listen to something and go wow,

that’s a really well written song, we need to do stuff like that! 

A lot of it comes from Kurt

Cobain and pop music… although Nirvana were usually horrible live

the songs on the records are phenomenal… they are just such well crafted

pop songs.  

We wanted to write songs that

are coherent and not just spazzy for the sake of being math metal. We

draw from all those influences and try and write much more streamlined,

coherent songs.  

You’ve been singing in

“Betrayed” compared to your previous recordings? 

Best I’ve ever done. I’ve

no idea where a lot of this has come from. If you asked me a year ago…

I was considering giving it all up and then I started doing this and

listening to different music, and having people like Melder get behind

me about doing something different really helped.  

Also, dudes like Damo from

The Red Shore and Jon - who plays guitar in Picture The End – those

guys were really pushing me as well. Even if it’s just hanging shit

on me they were always pushing me to work on my vocal performance.  

As I said, it’s my best work

and my best performance. It’s probably how the new In Name & blood

stuff would’ve turned out I guess.  

The packaging looks pretty

slick man, who handled the design and layout? 

Shane, the guitarist for The

Seduction does it under the name of Frail Merch. He’s a graphic designer

by trade and the picture is a photo from the forties by Toni Frissel

and yeah, we just wanted to go with something slick and straightforward. 

I contacted dudes like John

Dyer Baizley and Chris Crude but last year bands like Pig Destroyer

and Darkest Hour all had records come out at the same time with similar

artwork, so rather than go down the “gnarly and colourful metal artwork”

road, which I love, ha ha, we decided to go with something more straight

forward.  

Shane found the photo when

he was going through a video one day looking for stuff, he found it,

fell in love with it, pitched it and we went from there.  

Do you have a favourite

song from the album? 

“ The Kids That No One Wanted”. 

Care to elaborate on why? 

Um, it’s full on from go

to woe… it’s pretty quick all the way through and it’s got a gnarly,

heavy breakdown at the end. More so on the lyrics… Josh Kirk passed

away late last year as he suffered from depression. The song was written

two days after we found about his passing. 

It’s kind of the same thing

we did with In Name & Blood and “This Is Not An Exit”. It’s

just trying to... it’s a song about being positive as much as you

can and telling people you love them and that you care. It sends out

a really positive message for people to band together and not talk shit

on each other all the time.  

The Seduction have landed

the tour? 

Just playing to new people

and actually seeing The Devil Wears Prada. I’ve been checking out

their record heaps lately and it’s brutal as well… some of it is

so heavy! 

I’m just hanging out and

keen to get back on the road. I haven’t been on the road for a year

and a half so I’m keen to have some fun. I’ve grown up a lot so

I know what to look out for so yeah, I’m excited to play to new people

and meet some new crew and drink heaps of coffee.  

How do you think you’ll

fare with “The Devil Wears Prada’s” crowd? 

I was actually thinking about

this the other day and I think it’ll be ok. I was a little bit worried

at first because we’ve also got House VS Hurricane on a few of the

shows, and they play a similar style to The Devil Wears Prada… you

know, the electro elements through heavy music. We don’t have any

of that, it’s just more straightforward rock n roll type stuff thrown

in with metalcore. 

I was listening to their record

and ours though and I think it will be quite good.  

Have you had much of a chance

to road test any of your new songs? 

Not live, no. There are six

or seven songs on the record we haven’t played live and part of that

is… I’ve always been in bands that have always played everything

as soon as we’ve written it, so I wanted to actually do it this time

how a lot of bands do it… I wanted to have some new stuff and be able

to give kids something they haven’t heard before.  

We’ve been playing it heaps

together but we haven’t tested it on the road, so The Devil Wears

Prada will be the first time we’ve played it people.  

What do you guys have planned

once this tour wraps up? 

More touring, ha ha. 

We’ve got some shows with

Hopeless coming up which will be a release tour of sorts and yeah, Hopeless

are pretty much the best band in Australia in my opinion. We’ve also

got some Perth shows coming up and that’ll be sick… it’s in August,

and we’ll be writing for a split seven inch that we’re doing as

well. 

Cool, who’s the split

with? 

Hopefully Hopeless but we need

to see what Carpathian are doing before we lock that in. 

Quick final 5 questions

for you mate… 

Your favourite album at

the moment? 

Hopeless demo. 

The Veronicas or the Olsen

twins? 

The Veronicas. Olsen twins

are too messed up. 

Most embarrassing experience

on stage? 

The very first time I ever

performed was at Stylus nightclub in Ferntree Gully. A cover band was

playing and I’d just joined a band and we begged them to let us play

a song during their set. They let us get up and I went to step on the

stage and missed the step and fell flat on my face in front of about

a thousand people.  

Incredible. 

I know. 

Good way to start your career. 

Ha ha, yeah. 

Pre-bad or post-bad Michael

Jackson? 

Pre bad. 

Most ridiculous thing you’ve

done for a buck? 

I don’t know, Ive done too

much stuff for free, ha ha. 

That’s all we’ve got

time for mate, any last words?

Support local hardcore, buy

records, buy zines and go to shows.

For more info on The Seduction, head to the bands Myspace page.