It’s Metal May, when we here at Sentinel Daily like to shed some (un)light on the filthiest treats available on the metal scene – and not many bands offer up filthy treats with quite so much reliable regularity as Ingested, who also happen to be heading Down Under very soon for a quick three date tour. With this in mind we dispatched our own filthmeister, Leeno Dee, to have a chat with the band’s guitarist Sean Hynes …
Hey Sean, so what’s been happening? “Hey! We just got back from the States about a month ago, and a one off show between that and now in Denmark, so a couple of things, but we kick off our next tour next week so…it’s back to work I guess”.
Having just been in the States, how did you find things over there? “Yeah, I mean, I’ve been playing there now for ten years so its, it seems like home almost at this point. We’ve got an American in the band (guitarist Andrew Virrueta) and we always have American crews so I’m very much into it. Its a good place to be, a good place to go. Good market to play for y’know, for a band so far away from a massive market being able to break through and look at it as a sustainable way to tour, y’know we always hit that place once or twice a year and its a good position to be in”.
Its great that you’re doing well over there considering the type of band you are. Not gonna end up in the hall of fame over there right… “(Laughs) Yeah no!”
So on the road again, where do you start this time? “Well, the tour starts in the Czech Republic so we’ve got to make our way there which is a mission, so we’re gonna do a one off gig in Belgium-we’ll drive from Manchester to Belgium and do that gig, meet the bus then take off. We leave on a Monday, play Belgium on Tuesday and then Wednesday, off we go”.
Mostly Europe? “It’s all Europe- no UK. Its a strange routing actually…there’s some really strange countries, there’s a bunch, there’s a bunch of those countries that we’ve actually never been to so when we got the opportunity and the offer to do this- y’know, we like trying new things and there’s definitely some countries to kick off the bucket list but yeah we’re hitting places we’ve never been”.
Give us a rundown if you would ? “Poland, Latvia, Estonia, France, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania… Greece! Never been there. Serbia, Bulgaria, never done that. And usual stuff like Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, so yeah, there’s quite a few there that we don’t normally do. That kind of area, not many people do that so I’m really excited”.
Most acts that play Italy stick to the North, I’m curious, where are you playing there? “Yeah- we’re doing Milan and Rome-and we’ve never done Rome before. You know, after twenty years its interesting to hit that for the first time. So I’m hoping to see some cool stuff there y’know?”
Yeah. Good on you! What about Japan? Have you had a shot at Japan yet? “Never done Japan, but we hopefully can share some details at some point soon, ‘coz things are in the works.
I mean, its a bucket list place to go for me, not even to play, just to visit in general so hopefully that comes off pretty soon”.
So, in 2006, yourself and Lyn (Jeffs, drummer) kicked it all off… “Yeah, at that point Lyn was the last member to join because we did exist as a previous band and then changed the name and changed the drummer. So when Lyn came on board we changed the name, changed all the material and that was kinda the start of Ingested at that point. And we had the same members until 2019 and then everything started to change, the bass player went, then the guitarist went and most recently now we’ve changed vocalists so we came back this year- completely different line up – new guitarist, new bassist, new vocalist, a new kind of start for us…but yeah, me and Lyn were the originals”.
The last album, The Tide Of Death And Fractured Dreams, came out in 2024, will you find time to work on a new album soon- are you writing? “Always! I’ve got the luxury of having such a back catalogue of stuff I’ve written over the years that we can pull from but yeah, I’m always writing because you never know what the next lot of songs is gonna be, what direction because its always gonna be six months to a year before that material sees the light of day. We’ve got our eyes on next year for the next album, though obviously we’ve gotta get it written and recorded this year. So, y’now, that’s a hurdle to get over. But we’re finding our feet as a completely new band-there’s members we’ve never worked with before, vocalist and all that kind of stuff so… we’re just getting used to the new wave thing, y’know? It’s quite exciting, the new material that we’re writing is kind of like going back to what we used to do back in the day, kind of heavy groove stuff which is quite exciting for us because, our vocalist kinda does vocals…the way he sounds, it kind of gels well that way. Its the early stages of the new band”.
I guess having the new line up nailed in place through some solid touring will have a positive effect on the next album too… “Yeah, at this point the line up has only done one tour so…we’ve still got a bit to do together”.
With a good support team, label et cetera? “Yeah. (Label) Metal Blade are great and we’re lucky, we’ve got a good team actually, label and management, booking agent, the whole thing works well, we’ve got good people involved”.
Which brings us to your upcoming Australian tour. You’ve been here before but this is your first time headlining. In 2023 you came out with Archspire. What do most recall from that tour?
“Yeah. I’d been told in the past how difficult Australia is to tour and its no joke (laughs) y’know? The travel to get there, not really being able to adjust and then you get there and its show, hotel, sleep for a few hours and then flying to each city. Its gruelling, its tough man so yeah. The thing I remember most about that is how tired I was and how tired I was when I got home! But the shows were great, I saw some friends over there, bands we toured with and some bands I’d never met before. The experience of going to Australia in general is interesting because its like British people and American culture just ran into each other (claps hands together) and it just exploded! All the people have kind of got the same humour and to me its kind of a strange but cool place man”.
The distance between shows here is pretty full on. “Yeah, we drove to one show, maybe…Sydney to Canberra?”
Three -four hours drive? “Yeah, that’d be it then”.
Yeah, any other city you’d be looking at like, nine hours… “Yeah!”
With seven albums under your belts now how will you arrive at a setlist? “We released a new single this year (Altar of Flesh) with the new line up-and because of the way that sounded and how our first album sounded it felt kind of appropriate to pull out some of the old songs. We tend to pick songs like that live anyway. More experimental songs. Choosing a setlist is interesting. We also play in two different tunings so that can kind of dictate what we’re gonna play. We have six, eight string guitars, and yeah we play drop F, drop A. The last three albums have had drop F so it just depends what we wanna do. The last American tour we did to save on carting extra guitars and extra headaches we just stuck to the six strings, we thought lets just keep it drop A. So that’s kinda what we did this year. Although if its a song I wrote on the eight string I can’t really translate that onto a six string so…”
That would certainly save carrying a lot of guitars on the road! “Yeah, you could be talking nine instruments at that point! It’s OK for our bass player- he plays a five string and just detunes his bottom string. He’s learnt to do it. Playing it opposite to me. It’s really clever”.
Any moments where you’ve had to pinch yourself? “Yeah, that’s happened a few times. Like, when I was younger my top four death metal bands were Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Suffocation and Nile and I’ve done several tours with all of those and some of them I even consider friends. Obviously you get roped up in how the industry is and the business side and talk and say hi and then you go- ‘hang on- holy shit! I’m friends with Dying Fetus, I’m friends with Suffocation’ and I’m like what the fuck is goin’ on! We’ve toured with Cannibal Corpse three times, I know them pretty well. Yeah. Sometimes you’ve gotta step back and take in and appreciate what you’ve achieved ‘coz I mean if you’d told me this when I was listening to these bands when I was eighteen or twenty I don’t think I’d have believed you! So I’m very grateful”.
Still feel there’s more to achieve though? “Yeah, we’ve done festivals with a bunch of bands, Napalm Death, Obituary, but there’s still things I’d like to do- so far what I have done in the space and time I’ve been allowed, I think its been fairly impressive. The style of music we play will dictate the ceiling that it hits. So any opportunity that’s cool that you wouldn’t normally do. I think I’m more aware of it now, when I see an opportunity and think, this may not happen again. Y’know we toured with Lorna Shore a few years ago and it took us to an arena- a single, small arena, but that was kinda cool, may never happen again. It’d be great to say we could do an actual arena tour but I know realistically that’s probably not gonna happen unless you get lucky and stuff but its not impossible. We’ve still not done Japan, and that’s another thing I need to tick off the list. The whole lot of Asia in general we’ve never done.There’s a lot of places I still wanna go and play so there things I still wanna achieve. To look forward to. Keep going and see how far it goes.
How do you find the touring dynamic? Being in a bus with a bunch of people and all that goes with that? “In Europe its busses yeah, in the US we do RVs and stuff, pretty close quarters but… you’ve just gotta learn to read the other people. Everyone needs space at some point so you’ve just gotta kinda feel out the mood if you need to back off and give people space. And it can be quite difficult to manage that. The people in our current crew are all decent people, we all have our moments, everyone does, but (shrugs) you just know how to handle it but it definitely takes a certain personality and mindset to do the thing we chose to do ‘coz it is quite unconventional for a job, its strange- you stick yourself in a van with people for months on end all the time but its what we chose to do, play music and this is what happens when you play in a death metal band y’know? (Smiling) You’re not gonna get fuckin’ private jets to each gig and you’re not gonna be on your own bus everyday so… you’ve gotta eat the shit and enjoy the taste sometimes y’know what I mean?( Both laughing). For every amazing experience there’ll be four or five ones that suck. That’s the nature of the game”.
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