Breed 77

'We have a network of contacts and we speak a language no one understands!'
Breed 77’s frontman Paul Isola explains why his clique were nicknamed 'The Gibraltarian Mafia’ arriving in London from their Mediterranean home some years ago. And the same reasoning could be applied to the band’s rock existence.
After ten years in the business they 'know basically everybody there is to know' and their own brand of metal is yet to translate to the masses. But with an army of dedicated fans fighting their corner the quintet have just released album number three and played a solid two-week tour around the UK.
Music News met three fifths of the band on the road ' guitarist Danny and drummer Adam were medically-engaged at the time ' to discover how they’re refreshingly content with their niche status.

MN: Kerrang! suggested the British rock gravy train keeps missing you having picked up bands like Lost Prophets and Hundred Reasons. How do you qualify or quantify your success?

Paul: Fashions come and go. We’ve been around about three times as long as any of these bands and we still will be once they’ve gone. I’m happy with that. We’re here to last, we’re not about fashion. We’ve been doing ok. As long as we get to communicate to our punters. I wish every band who gets successful all the best in the world. Of course you would like success like (Lost) Prophets, with millions of records sold, but every creature’s a different beast. You’ve got to concentrate on what you do and Breed 77 concentrate on our music and try and grow as musicians. That’s what keeps us happy.

MN: Your roots are in Gibraltar but haven’t you been based in London for a while now?

Paul: We’ve been here now almost ten years. Pedro is from Barcelona, Adam is from Cornwall so it’s a bit of a mix. Once upon a time we were a complete Gibraltarian outfit. I think what unifies us now is very, very much the Mediterranean. It’s much more of a scope than just one city. I think that’s what defines us and probably what makes us stand out a bit from the crowd.

MN: How has London shaped your sound further than your most integral roots?

Paul: We come from a very, very, very strong culture; a culture that would make England seem like a non-culture kind of place. We are much more about the tradition, about the folk, about the artistry. And here in London it’s very much counter-culture. It’s about the cutting edge, it’s about being new, it’s about something without any history. One thing London does do is keep you on your toes. It does give you a sense of urgency and a sense of purpose and the work ethic here is very different to back home. Back home people sleep four hours in the day halfway through the working day ' they value life rather than business. Here business is king.

MN: Do you play much in Gibraltar?

Stuart: We just did this summer. We had the pleasure of being invited by the Government as one of their biggest exports. It was quite good to be honoured by our Government.

MN: The new album 'In My Blood (En Mi Sangre)’ is key at the moment but you did a mini-tour earlier in the year to test the water.

Paul: We had the idea to play to 3000 people ' as a whole ' the entirety of the album. It was the first time they heard any of it ' live! We’ve sold a fair few records but nobody would know it because we’ve never been in the mainstream, we don’t belong to a particularly big company, we’re not part of ' like you say ' any gravy train, we’re not part of any movement that goes out there. We are here solely because of the fans. There’s a lot of people out there that keep us in clothing as it were. And we thought it would be really great that ' once we finished recording the album, which almost killed us ' the first people to be able to appreciate it and pass judgement on it had to be the fans. We didn’t write it for the press, we write for the fans.

MN: So was the reaction you got fairly accurate now the album is actually out and you have the value of hindsight?

Paul: If they hadn’t liked it we weren’t going to go back and change it! Yeah it was a great reaction especially with playing small places.

MN: You have opinions on the current emo trend. When you played Download - for the third time ' this year, how did you find it? Do you see more sub-genres forming each year?

Paul: I found at Download it’s probably the only place where there is a sprinkling of the token emo comb-over type things going on. The movement’s very big and that’s what the kids are into. Download has a heritage. It’s got a past amongst the artists. We all refer to it as 'Donnington’. You’ve got a lot of new contingents who are the Download fans but the vast majority of people who go to 'Donnington’ were there at Monsters of Rock in ’89.

MN: You recorded your new album in a Welsh valley in the middle of nowhere. Was that a change of scene from your usual recording environment?

Paul: We’ve never done a live-in studio. Basically it’s the studios that Sabbath and Led Zeppelin used to escape to in the middle of the Welsh valleys and there’s a history and there’s a magic to it. And we were going to record the album with an old fashioned approach ' recording it onto a two inch analogue tape which they don’t do anymore. And it’s much more about playing live together and it’s got a vibe. It was great to get away from it all. We were about 40 minutes walk from the closest urban centre which was a small town and there was no mobile phone signal.

Pedro: I think it’s a much more individual album for it.

MN: You’ve had a line-up change this year ' Adam Lewis joined on drums. Do you think it’s hard for someone to come into a band who have such a history together?

Paul: Yeah I think it would be tough. We had a very, very, very long trial period. Adam didn’t join the band officially, as far as we’re concerned, till the beginning of this month ' contractual reasons. It requires a lot of patience and tolerance on Adam’s behalf, besides all the official stuff, like we do speak Spanish a lot. He’s been taking it upon himself to learn. He’s more Spanish than we are!

MN: In 2004 you stated your greatest achievement was supporting Black Sabbath at the Astoria. Have you managed to top that yet?

Paul: I think recognition is nice sometimes; when we’ve gone into the mainstream charts that’s cool because that’s a smack in the face of the industry. We’re not fashionable, we’re not trendy, we’re not pretty boys, we don’t dress with the skater clothes, we’ve got nothing else that’s marketable. So right now we’re the black sheep ' and we’re the black sheep with a pulse that’s smacking the industry in the face all the time because we’re still here. Playing with Sabbath was a dream, playing Download was a dream, playing every night’s a dream!


'In My Blood (En Mi Sangre)’ is out now

www.breed77.net