Fightstar 'One Day Son This Will All Be Yours' album

“The moment I knew this band was going to work was when we were recording the EP,” says Fightstar bassist Dan Haigh. “Charlie said, ‘Shit, I’m really late for something I’ve got to do but I want to record this guitar line first.’ It turned out the thing he was late for was playing Wembley with his old band. It meant so much that he’d rather have been recording with us.”

It all started fortuitously at Charlie’s girlfriend’s house. “My sister was living with her,” says guitarist Al Westaway. “He came round one day when we were having a party and saw that I had a couple of guitars lying around. We all got pissed and the girls said, ‘Go on, have a jam’. I was thinking, ‘No!’ Charlie was Number One at the time and I thought I’d just embarrass myself.” “Omar [Abidi – drums] had popped round too,” says Simpson. “Al and I were playing ‘Killing In The Name’ by Rage Against The Machine and Omar was drumming in his lap. I can spot a good drummer in seconds and he was nailing every single fill. I was thinking, ‘This is very interesting…’”

Soon Al and Charlie were living together, rushing out to watch bands then coming home again and writing songs all night. “We wrote our first song – ‘Too Close To The Sun’ – after seeing my brother’s band Brigade,” says Simpson. “For a laugh, we thought we’d go to a rehearsal studio but suddenly we realised we didn’t have a bass player.” In stepped Dan Haigh. A school-friend of Westaway’s, the pair had met by chance again a few months earlier. “I’d almost packed up with bands,” says Haigh. “But Al asked if I wanted to work with him, then he asked me about this. The first time I met Charlie was when we went into the rehearsal studio. I thought he was just some guy in a pop band but then he put an Elliot Smith album on and I knew he couldn’t be all bad.”

It was a rehearsal that worked instantly, an immediate meeting of minds. “It was one of those cheesy moments that bands always say they have but it’s true,” says Westaway. “I was just thinking, ‘This is fucking awesome,” says Simpson. “I was playing music I actually liked and I hadn’t done that since I was 15.”

They wrote and rehearsed as often as they could, taking the band as seriously as possible but never quite knowing whether they had a future as Simpson’s day-job was getting busier. Eventually they called a meeting and asked Simpson where his heart lay. The answer was obvious and after a warm-up show in Westaway’s hometown of Northampton, Fightstar eventually put a night together at The Underworld and there was no turning back. “It was such a cool show,” says Simpson. “Lots of people came down but they were all very apprehensive. It was a great show and there were so many people there who couldn’t believe we were actually any good. From there on we’ve worked fucking hard and it’s just got better and better.”

That’s only half the story. For most bands it’s hard enough to break into the scene as a new band but, as Simpson explains, “Fightstar have almost had it doubly as hard. Most bands just have to impress people, we had to convert them first and then impress them. It would have been so easy for people not to take us seriously and, the fact that they have, is a testament to how much we’ve put into it. It’s been our absolute life and we love doing it. I never expected people to be as good to us as they have been – both fans and the press. They gave us a real chance and there’s been a real shift in our audience. People come to our shows now because they like us. Before you could see some people were wondering whether it was cool to like us or not. That doesn’t happen anymore which is pretty amazing.”

It’s led to a confidence in the band, one born from a belief in their own music. It means that the bold steps they took with their first EP, ‘They Liked You Better When You Were Dead’, have been lengthened with their debut album ‘Grand Unification’. “The idea behind the album is getting rid of everything that’s fucked up in the world,” says Simpson. “There is a concept to the album but I don’t think people should go into it thinking, ‘I’ve got to find the story here’. The albums starts just as the world is beginning to self destruct because of its problems. It then moves into a period of transition, where the old world crumbles apart before it resurfaces when the new generation wakes up in a land free of bullshit and pettiness. It’s a place where people concentrate on love, harmony and what’s good about life. It’s all about death and rebirth and, lyrically, every song tries to refer back to that.”

“The songs are supposed to be key moments in people’s existence during that last day of the world,” adds Haigh. “A lot of the music on this record is born of a desire to capture something epic. We want it to sound big, grand and momentous – planet sized! We’ve been reading a lot of astrophysics related books and we’ve all been thinking about the awesome scale of the universe. It’s something that’s had a big impact on the record.”

“The funny thing is that we never set out to make a record with a concept,” says Simpson. “When I hear something is a concept album, I always think, ‘I hope this isn’t a load of pretentious bullshit’. But, gradually as we wrote more lyrics, everything seemed to link together.” Simpson is aware that people will try to read more into the themes of death and rebirth than is really there, that people will link them with the transition from Busted to Fightstar. “It wasn’t an intentional thing,” he says, “But on a subconscious level it probably had something to do with it.” “But it wasn’t just Charlie,” says Westaway. “The same thing was happening to the rest of us, just less publicly.”

‘Grand Unification’ was also a chance to explore darker sounds, to search out beauty from the bleakest recesses. “We really tried to veer away from the whole emo thing,” says Simpson. “It’s too easy to write in that vein and now there are too many bands doing it badly.” “As a result,” continues Westaway, “Our songs became darker. We’re always trying to find the beauty of darkness. There’s something fascinating about shaping shadows.”

The inspiration of Manga in general and, in particular, the series ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’ has meant the band has had a chance to explore their visual side too. “We’ve always been a visual band and I think people are going to realise that when they see the artwork,” says Haigh. “Dan Conway is the guy doing the artwork and he’s monumentally talented. I’d been trawling the internet looking for an artist and came across him. His pictures already described our songs perfectly; it was as though he’d already been drawing them for us.”

The album was produced by Colin Richardson (Funeral For A Friend, Machine Head, Slipknot). Charlie said “It was an absolute dream come true working with Colin. In my opinion he is the best rock producer on the planet. We couldn't have asked him to do a better job on the record.” Colin said of working with Fightstar, “It's records like these that will go a long way to putting the British scene back on the map. I'm immensely proud of it - there's not a single weak song on it, and you can't say that about too many records these days. It's an album that will stand the test of time.”

It’s an album that’s bold in design and spectacular in execution, a brave step forward but not a risky one because, with songs this good, there’s no danger involved. This should come as no surprise to those who’ve seen Fightstar play live. When the band speak about what they hope for the album they’re humble, saying, “We just hope it gives us a chance to make another album.” And, though they’re ambitious, they’re already stunned by what they’ve achieved. “People ask me whether we want to be a massive worldwide selling rock band,” says Simpson. “It’s never been about that. We’re playing The Astoria in London in March and that’s always been the benchmark for success for me. Anything else we achieve can only be a bonus from there.”

who is who
Alex Westaway (Lungs/Axe)

Charlie Simpson (Lungs/Axe)

Dan Haigh (Bottom Feeder)

Omar Abidi (Hammers)

press quotes
"They've out done themselves; One Day Son, All This Will Be Yours is a work of grace and beauty any band would be proud of."

"This is an album with a gigantic heart, a work that places them among the best Britain has to offer. It could well make them unstoppable." KKKK- Kerrang

"The intricate instrumental passages, multi-tracked vocal harmonies and pounding riffs hint at Muse-scale ambition and intellect” 4/5- Q Magazine

"Fightstar are 100% credible and a band the UK can be 100% proud of." 4/5 The Sun

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Fightstar - One Day Son This Will All Be Yours