Slaves to Gravity are one of the latest bands in many to lay the claim to bring back the rock that we should all be listening to, rather than the atypical indie trash that takes up the charts.

Think back to when music was all about heavy riffs, dirty basslines and loud epic vocals as pioneered by Soundgarden and Alice in Chains in the early nineties. StG plan to take their fans and anyone they can convert along the way back in time and to a much simpler, yet more hardcore time when MTV wasn’t full of the obvious sell-outs you hear today.

Getting the chance to talk to the guys before their gig at the Charlotte supporting Will Haven & the Miramar Disasters, joining local Leicester band Invey as their support, lead vocalist Tommy Gleeson sheds some light on why they want to bring back grunge for the better: “We formed from the ashes of a couple of bands when we first got together, and we all felt pretty burnt out and pissed off about everything we had gone through with a label”.

Instead of relying on bigger labels, the band have set up an independent company to bring their music, almost considered retro now, to their fans: “We’re just trying to bring back a type of rock music that was really popular in the mid-nineties, with a modern spin that incorporates different influences that wouldn’t expect to find in that genre. It’s just like flying the flag for rock music that we think should be still out there to get at people”.

“The obvious influences aside,” explained Jason Thomopoulos, originally a member of The Ga Ga’s alongside Tommy and Toshi, “a lot of the old early nineties stuff, Alice In Chains really inspired me as a kid, I really wanted to be in that band man. Between the four of us it’s so different, so many influences, Alice in Chains is one of the few bands we all agree on, Pantera, Vision of Disorder, STP, the list could go on and on”.

Of the few bands mentioned, they show heavily in their single release of Meantime and streak like a college freshman through the rest of their short but sweet set. Tommy continues: “It’s more about the songs that tie us together, any band whether they were really heavy or quite chilled we appreciate great songs, so any band that championed that cause, you’ll probably find that in our collection somewhere”.

The more reserved members of the band, Toshi Ogawa (bass) and Mark Verney (lead guitar), lean back and allow the other half of the band to explain their producing techniques with mixer Chris Sheldon: “Well we just put a gun to his head and told him what to do [laughs]. Nah; we went away to Lincolnshire for six weeks over the summer to make the album, doing all of it on our todd but then Chris came in and worked his magic.

“It’s really hard to make a mix sound really ballsy, and loud and in your face; yet make it sound clear so you can pick out every last note of every instrument and still have it hang together”.

Supporting Will Haven is an obvious godsend when any band is trying to reach new audiences, when even gaining a couple of new fans seen as progress: “It’s inspiring sharing the stage with a fucking great band. We’re inspired anyway to go out and play for ourselves and spread the word, we don’t need anyone to do that for us.

"It’s always great when you’re playing some shithole somewhere, supporting a bigger band that gets you a bigger crowd and new people to get your music”.

The more they explained about the album, the more you can see they care about the music they put out to their audience. Admittedly the lyrics don’t add much to their sound but it is all about their music, seen with previous single release Big Red and other tracks such as Heaven is a Lie when played live and Burning Robe, a more traditional metal track with a blended punk ethic that ended the show on a fast, to-the-point, rock track on speed almost as if it was announcing their arrival on the scene.

Their debut album, which is released on March 4th next year, will embody the idea of grunge that we’ve already seen on their current single release Meantime, As Tommy says: “It’s not massively eclectic, not completely mad shit, but the single sits in the middle of what we do as a band. We have heavy extremes and more smacked out psychedelic shit going on in parts of songs that allows us to experiment with our sound”.

In the end, StG come across as a warm, methodical band both musically and in personality, that want to bring something back to a decade that is far too concerned with monetary reward than just to be content to play for the sake of playing. The only problem that lies on the horizon is that they just won’t herd through the indie noise that is leading the homogenised death of traditional rock in any sense.