Wish For Wings

Queensland metalcore outfit Wish For Wings have been steadily building a name for themselves in Australia and beyond since bursting out of the Brisbane scene around 7 years ago. Fresh off the back of a tour with Stick To Your Guns/First Blood and with a brand new studio release 'Echoes' recently dropping, we caught up with the bands bassist Aido Spinks for a few words.

Hey Aido, with you and your brother Aaron both playing in the band, I think it's important to know whether you’re the good or evil twin?

[Laughs] I wish I could say I was the good one, but I think I’m definitely the evil one.

Beauty! Now that that’s settled, who’s your favourite super-villain?

Hmm…probably The Penguin (Batman).

Wish for Wings have just released their latest full-length Echoes, glad to see it on shelves?

Absolutely, we recorded it a little while ago - May or June I think, so by the time it’s ready to hit the shelves you almost forget you have a new album coming out. We’ve listened to all the songs so many times that now that the album’s actually out we feel like we’re ready to record again!

How do you think it separates itself from Afterlife?

With all our recordings, we’ve always tried to improve a little with each release and Echoes felt like a very natural progression from Afterlife. It’s still definitely a Wings CD, but we’ve had a bit of a lineup shuffle since the last album and the new members have bought new elements to the band. Our new singer [Locky Paul] has a good set of cleans on him, so there is more clean singing on the album. It also feels a little slower and has a different groove to it than Afterlife. It’s not a crazy departure from anything else we’ve done, but it’s a little more varied and focussed.

How did you find the tour with Stick To Your Guns?

Amazing, definitely one of the best tours we’ve done. Jumping on as the Aussie support act, we were thankful to be playing to their crowds and tried our best to convert their fans into our fans! We’ve been around forever, but people still came up to us after the shows and say things like ‘Hey, I’ve never seen you guys before but you killed it tonight. It feels good to reach a broader audience. Both bands were really great people as well, they weren’t up themselves and they were fun to tour with.

There was quite a few regional dates on the tour, I caught you in Bendigo the other night for the Bender Alternative Club Launch – Does the reaction in regional areas sometimes surprise you?

We love playing regional areas! We’re just about to do a rural tour through North Queensland. I think because the kids aren’t as spoilt for choice as they are in the cities, a lot come out for the shows and go absolutely crazy. I’ve found at regional shows there are less big egos and fights and that sort of thing, the kids are generally really honest and respectful and just stoked to have some bands playing in their town.

You also had quite a few club shows on the Stick to Your Guns dates, what are your thoughts on alternative night-clubs?

When Wings started playing, there was hardly anywhere to play. Heavy, underground music was certainly not accepted in any clubs. We used to play at Mary St on a Wednesday night in Brisbane, that was the only night that they would have us. As the hardcore scene continued to grow, that Wednesday night became very popular and they started giving us a Friday night once a month. It was everyone in the various hardcore scenes that made the alternative clubs viable, we built a really strong, tight community and there was no competition between bands or anything like that. I think the problem with all the clubs now though, is bands don’t have to work as hard as they used to. A band can simply book a tour and not worry about the promotion because the clubs will do it all for them. We enjoy playing the shows, but it’s easy to take for granted and makes bands incredibly lazy.

What’s next on the Wish for Wings horizon, a lot of touring I’d imagine!

Yeah a lot of touring. We are touring with a band from The States in January, I can’t tell you who it is but a lot of people are going to be psyched for them, I know I am! Apparently we’re going to Europe in March as well.

That’s exciting!

Yeah, but I’m not going to get excited until I’m on the plane. We’ve been booked to tour Europe before but it fell through, so I’ll wait til everything is certain before I get too excited.

Any plans to release a new video, the last two were entertaining!

Yeah we shot a new video for ‘Mirror Match ‘ a few weeks ago. I actually thought that we’d have some sort of preview back by now. We used a new director for the new video, we basically went down to a property on the South Side of Brisbane and lit a bunch of fires and played around them. I’m a little to see how it’s going to turn out, we put a little too much petrol on the ground and the fire blew across the whole step we were playing on. It’s supposed to look all hard and brutal, but we’re probably going to look like pussies scared for our lives and screaming like girls [laughs].

Who are a few up-and-coming hardcore bands you’d be keeping your eye on?

A band that we are touring with at the moment called The Ailment put on a great live show and are all-around good guys to be around. They’ve got new release coming out soon, it’s a probably a bit more inclined towards deathcore but is solid stuff. Resist the Thought have impressed me recently as well, Conor Ward who was filling in on drums for us now drums for them. He’s a solid guy and a fucking amazing drummer – one of our very good friends.

If you could relive any performance so far, which one would it be?

Parkway Drive at Riverstage recently was something pretty crazy. We toured with them way back I the day on the all ages assault tour (2005) and we were playing to a couple of hundred kids in small towns. I thought that was pretty mind-blowing then because we were playing I such small area. Riverstage this year was something else though, five years on and a lot of work on their behalf and they are playing to 6500 kids that are there to see them headline. That was an awesome show, but then some of the shows we love the most are the ones with 150 kids packed into a tiny shoebox-sized room.

Cheers for your time mate, has been a pleasure.