Today’s the day Lostprophets release release their fifth studio album ‘Weapons’. You can stream the full album, as well as read a track-by-track guide to ‘Weapons’ from Ian Watkins after the jump.
Bring ‘Em Down
Stu came up with the original idea a couple of years ago, and then our manager liked the little thing he did – it was only a minute long – and gave it to me and said “Make that a song.” So I went home to Wales and sat in the front room with my dog and wrote this track. Originally it was more tacky, glittery, Prodigy-like, dubstep-heavy. I wanted it to grab people’s attention with all this insanity sound. Pretty much all the glittery stuff got taken out, much to my dismay. The original one – we might put it out at some point – the end of it is a full dubstep breakdown, with the same chorus over the top. I thought it would be wicked, because no one would expect that. But that got taken out.
We wrote this a few years ago originally, but we never finished it. It was always something we kept coming back to, because we’d listen to the demos and it sounded wicked. So we decided to give it a go, finally managed to finish it and it worked out.
This was the first song we finished in these sessions. It’s only one-track vocals, no harmonies or anything. I think we only did the song like three times and that was it, which was pretty crazy and was new for me. We didn’t really expect that – just went in, sang the song three times and that was it. We didn’t really think much of it, then we listened to it and it had a cool vibe about it.
That’s something I wrote after the album was done pretty much. I went back to Wales and, the same with ‘Where We Belong’, I felt the album was missing something – like a counterpoint to the other songs on there. I wrote it in my bedroom, sent it off to everybody, didn’t look at my emails for a week – because I didn’t want to deal with rejection. I finally looked, and everyone was loving it. So we went and recorded that – I did my bits, the guys did theirs in LA – and we put it all together.
That’s kind of like ‘Where We Belong’ too. That was written around the same time, and it was just kind of like a more personal, introspective version of ‘Where We Belong’ – more of a sentimental self-reflection. It feels like the other side to ‘Where We Belong’.
A Little Reminder That I’ll Never Forget
That was something Stu wrote, which I put vocals to down the line, towards the end of recording. It was written in Stu’s vibe.
That was one of Luke’s ideas musically. We came up with a verse for it, but what we kept coming back to lyrically and vocally was this part which could have come across as rapping. So we were sure we could get a rapper to do it, and it got to the point where we couldn’t decide, so one day I went, “You know what, fuck it” and I took a megaphone and did it as a demonstrator chanting, and it sounded wicked. It didn’t sound forced. It could have gone either way I guess, but we did it and it just felt natural.
Something we wrote in Stu’s house – that came together pretty quickly, and it was very easy to write. It’s just a nice song. We didn’t think too much about it, just did it for pure enjoyment.
Somedays
That was something Jamie came up with – the music – and the melody for it, I woke up in the middle of the night, recorded it on my phone, and fell back asleep and forgot I did it for a few days. Then I came across it and was like “Fuckin Hell that’s really good!”. It was originally more stripped down acoustic, and then as we went along we built it up and decided to put more instrumentation on it. It’s a vibey, kind of chill song.
That’s something Jamie and I wrote, and originally I’d put all this orchestration on it – it was super James Bond. It was massive, but there was this conflict because I wanted to go fully over the top and epic. But the song was done in one night. We just came up with it and then it was done.
I just like the idea of the title track being a secret track. It’s wicked, and it was just recorded with a couple of mics in a room – a complete antithesis from the rest of the record. It’s kind of like that look at the end of ‘Thriller’ – you think it’s alright, then he turns around and he’s gone slightly crooked.