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Youth and individuality. Rock and intellect. Depressing
origins and desire. Surely they don't all have to be
characteristics mutually exclusive of each other? Do
they? They are? Well in that case you're first in the
firing line of rock's latest young avengers Kenisis.
Best get the hell out the way we reckon.
Hurtling straight out of Bolton in northern England
as fast as they could early last year, school friends
Tom, Mike, Neil and Connor - none over 16 at this point
- started knocking around as a band to alleviate the
boredom and depressing realities of the life that was
developing all too quickly around them. Within 5 months
they had a demo tape together which they sent out to
as many people as they could think of, 200 as it happens,
each accompanied by a personal handwritten letter. This
demo, never intended for release, turned into their
first mini-album, 'Worship Yourself', which in turn
sold out quicker than Dave Grohl could collect his next
royalty cheque. This was only sign of how things would
start turning over.
With a hint of the Llama Farmers or Idlewild about them,
only with a fat whack of intelligence to boot, the raw
power of Nirvana and The Pixies, the melodic brilliance
of the Flaming Lips and Smashing Pumpkins and that youthful
muscle we presumed had evaporated with Ash's teenage
years they've spent the last 6 months tearing apart
any stage that'll have them. We spoke with guitarist
Connor on his mobile, stopped by a garage just outside
London for a toilet break and confectionary refill en-route
back up North after one such whirlwind of gigs…
Crud: What exactly is the point to Kenisis then?
"We're kind of singing about everything from right-wing
Europe to the problem with authority and government
and race in our home-town. We're taking a wider look
at the world rather than just talking about our own
personal experiences and our love lives. We're just
taking an objective look at the world."
Crud: So being a band from a provincial Northern
town, we guess you'll be pretty tied to your roots then?
"No. Not at all. Well, it's kind of like a ticket out,
y'know. Rather than having a 9-5 job and getting drunk
every Friday night. Instead of getting drunk we were
at band practice, or reading a book, or something. Just
trying to get away from that."
Crud: Instead of every just getting drunk every Friday
night though, isn't it going to end up every night pretty
soon?
"Well we haven't really got much interest in that to
tell you the truth. Some bands, or a lot of bands, get
into the industry because they want to take drugs, fuck
models every night or whatever. But we just want to
make the perfect record and bring some intelligence
to music."
Crud: You are though, it has to be said, pretty damn
young. We're staring to get used to the more styled
breed of media darling, at least over the voting age.
"We've got no real interest in being cool or being the
NME's favourite band, because all the best bands put
themselves on the line to look ridiculous. We don't
think we fit in with any trend or culture at the moment
and this is probably a good thing. There are quite a
few bands, good bands, our age or older coming through.
But none of us are part of any scene, we don't sound
similar. Bands like the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster,
even bands like the Cooper Temple Clause we feel an
affinity with. At least they're trying something. I'm
not sating they pull it off, yet, but at least they're
trying y'know."
Crud: The thing is, you look young but you don't
seem it.
"We're more concerned with being a good young band than
we are with being a, erm, young good band. Y'know? I
think it just happen that we're young. It might work
in our favour to start off with, but we're going to
grow up. As long as we're good and we're challenging
people and we challenge ourselves. The only benefit
youth has is naivety. We get patronised a lot but hopefully
we'll prove them wrong."
Crud: Well away from your average 16 year olds nu-metal
listening patterns, we hear more early-90s post-grunge
perspective from you.
"I think if anything we're a reaction against Linkin
Park and all that. That stuff just sounds so contrived.
I can't relate to how bad a white middle class American
life is. I can't feel his pain! I come from a town where
most people work in a Warbutons factory. I think a lot
of those band s from the late 80s and early 90s, Nirvana,
Pixies, Flaming Lips and these days still with Fugazi,
At The Drive In, Trail Of Dead, you can just hear a
lot of truth in their music, y'know, and we just want
to portray the truth no matter how ugly or how beautiful
it is. Music just seems so self obsessed at the moment.
You've got the louder bands talking about how terrible
their white middle class lives are, you get acoustic
bands talking about how great it is to be in love. A
lot of bands just don't warrant an opinion and there's
no point in having any strong opinions on them because
you're wasting your energy."
Crud: When we first saw you one thing that caught
our eye was the slogans on your t-shirts, 'sanity is
not statistical' and 'shopping is not crating'. What's
going on there?
'Shopping is not creating' is a Douglas Copland one.
We all live in an MTV world where everything is degenerated
down to bite-sized chunks, slogans that are in your
face otherwise you won't listen. And that perfectliy
sums up or attitude towards 21st century consumer culture.
Sanity is not statistical is George Orwell from '1984',
It's more talking about being an individual and not
just in the nu-metal sense of the word. Just because
you're going against the grain and taking people on
your own terms doesn't mean that you're insane. Sanity
is not about what the majority of people think of it.
It's about believe in the truth and following it trough.
We have no aims to sell 10,00 records. We have aims
to sell 2 million and compete with Britney Spears! We
got played on daytime Radio 1 and Gorillaz got played
after us. So there's us talking about American foreign
policy and then there's we're followed by some cockney
who thinks he's black. We're taking pop on our own terms
and that's the biggest victory we could have."
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2002©
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