What can I
say, after risking life and limb to get to
York in torrential storms we're greeted at the
pub door by Sign's tour manager James from
Riot Promotions. We're quickly ushered
round the corner to the tour van which stands
in complete darkness, no lights, no signs of
life inside. James warns us that the
band have journeyed further than their earlier
naked post-gig folk dancing and are now
travelling totally naked for most of the tour.
A quick check reveals the band have remembered
we're coming and have put some clothes on to
save any blushes (ours not theirs). We
journey to the chill out area where the band
sit merrily around a small coffee table
festooned with bottles of alcohol in various
states of consumption (at least I think it was
all alcohol!) and candles, which tastefully
highlighted the porn posters festooned around
the walls.
Touring
The band are no strangers to these shores and
are half way through their current tour when
we catch them for an update on how it's been
so far. Zolberg
- Well so far we have been in for one hell
of a ride. You just couldn't imagine how
it's been, there's been so much crazy shit
going on, there has been a lot of nakedness
involved and a lot of drinking. Eagle
- Ah yes there's been a lot of good times
and a lot of good music. There's been a
lot of nice gigs. (The Mexborough
gig had over 250 screaming fans turn up and
let's just say they weren't afraid to go
mental ... I still have the bruises to prove
it!).
Zolberg - When on
day one of the tour it didn't begin very well.
When we landed in the UK because no one knew
our lighting engineer was coming along with
us, so there wasn't room in the car that was
picking us up and all the gear and stuff.
So we had to hire a new car which cost us a
lot of money. Then we drove back to Rob &
Donna's place in Yorkshire and they looked
after us. Eagle - We hadn't slept
for the whole night before so we were very
tired. It was good to go there and relax
and recharge our batteries. Then
the actual tour started, our first gig was in
Leeds.
Zolberg - Yes it was a good gig in
Leeds (Rios), we had some people came down to
see us all wearing their Sign shirts which was
great to see. Eagle - Yes it was
good to see a lot of both old and new faces in
the crowd. Zolberg - We'd
played the same venue before but in the larger
room with The Wildhearts on the last tour.
It was very cool playing the same venue only a
couple of months later but this time as the
headliner. Having our own tour bus as
well has been great.
Eagle - We've toured in smaller vans in
the past and it's not so good trying to sleep
at night all crumpled up in a pile.
Zolberg - Our promoter James's wife toured
on the bus with us to begin with and tidied up
after us, that was great. Eagle -
We've been broken without her, good job we
have not switched on the lights! Plus
there's no one here to shock any more.
You shocked Michelle?
Eagle - Yes you'd
be surprised just how much we can shock
people. James is really cool, he just
goes with it. Some of the Teenage Casket
Company guys are really scared of us, they
just go to bed really early.
Zolberg -
James has told Rob Wilde that we are going to
rape him. He actually believes that we
might be able to do that. Yes we have had our
penis's out in the air an awful lot of times.
Eagle - Yes we have been naked most of the
time. It's the same as when you get to a
hotel room the first thing you do is just take
all your clothes off and just jump on the bed.
It's been like that for almost a week now on
the bus. The fun never stops, we're
always inventing something to do with our
dicks. (I did actually hear
from another source that at one point Rob woke
up to find the whole band butt naked standing
over him pointing their penis's at him, which
probably did not do anything to calm the rape
rumours at all).
Eagle -
Well James kind of told
us off last night because we were shoving them
into the back window showing the lorry
drivers. James said if a policeman drove
by and saw us he would stop us and we would be
deported, which wouldn't be cool at this time.
(Can't you just imagine the field day
Kerrang would have had if the band had been
deported!)
Zolberg - As the days have passed we
have progressively become more hammered and
more naked.
Yes we know all about your naked folk
dancing
after the gigs!
Eagle - Yes that was at Mexborough. We
were just singing our national Icelandic folk
songs with socks on our cocks as you do in
Mexborough. Zolberg - Well
Michelle, she decided to join in, she took her
top off and did some dancing with us.
Eagle - Michelle is cool.
Eagle - The Mexborough gig was really
good though, a lot of people turned up and got
very sweaty with us. It was one of the
best gigs I have done in my whole career.
So we decided to celebrate and we had the
naked dancing. There was also some vomit
involved that night. Zolberg -
Disarm were vomiting too then they came on the bus and passed out.
How many times have you been over here in
Britain? Eagle -
This is our seventh time
in Britain, we've done a lot of one off gigs
before we started touring. We did the
Barfly in Camden, London ... Zolberg -
This is the fourth full tour we've done.
We've toured with The Answer, Wednesday 13,
The Wildhearts and now this is our fourth
tour. Eagle - Last Summer we also
did the Middlesbrough free festival which was
great. Zolberg - Each time we
come back the crowd gets bigger and bigger and
we see some familiar faces which is great.
Actually it was at The Wildhearts gig
in Newcastle that we first saw you guys live.
Zolberg - That's
a nice big venue, nice people. Eagle
- Ah The Wildhearts tour, we weren't
allowed to get naked on their tour bus.
They didn't want any jizz on the curtains.
Now it's fine because we have our own bus.
Zolberg - Well we have this thing going
on though where no one is allowed to jerk off
on this tour at all.
On the bus or in general?
Zolberg - In
general. And if someone does then the
rest of us are all going to jerk off and cum
on him. So ... no one's jerking off! Eagle
- The balls are getting really big though.
Zolberg - Each day we are getting more
and more horny and all this porn is not
helping at all. Eagle - We love
English vile porn, it's just horrid some of
it. We started by buying fancy nice girl
porn then James starting buying some filthy
porn with 70's old ladies in and stuff, it was
horrible and yet so intriguing! You did
not want to look but somehow you just couldn't
stop looking at it. Zolberg -
You'd say ... what is that? How come ... I've
never seen one of those do that before!
The band have been together for 7
years and have already toured considerably,
quite an achievement from ones so young.
Eagle - Up until the last couple of years we'd
only done some tours in Iceland. Zolberg - Yeh
over the last couple of years we've been
touring further. We've come prepared for
maybe 20 years playing music. Eagle -
We've played Britain, America, Canada, all around
the Continent, in Europe we've done Belgium
and Holland.
That's quite a lot of
touring for such a young band like yourselves
to have done so soon.
Zolberg - Well
when you're played in Asia or Russia, then you know
you've fucking made it. We want to tour
the whole world. We want to tour places that
no one has even heard of. Eagle - We'll
tour Babylon. Zolberg - Ok, but then we
need to play Atlantis. Eagle - Yes and
then the Bermuda Triangle. Zolberg -
Actually we should go down to the actual
centre of the earth and play there.
Eagle - Yeh I hear it's great there!
Well I think you'd love it there because
I've heard it's really hot and you can take
your clothes off all the time!
You guys will be headlining the infamous
Trashstock Festival in Nottingham this
Saturday. How are you feeling about
that?
Eagle - We are all very excited about
this although we have no idea what to expect
though.
Have you not played
Junction 7 before?
Zolberg - No, we've never been there,
we've only played Rock City.
It's a really cool place to
see bands and it will packed and probably very
hot and very sweaty! I think you will
all enjoy it very much.
Zolberg - There's a lot of cool bands
playing that I'm looking forward to seeing.
Eagle - Yes it is a shame we can't be
there on the Friday as well to see those bands
as well. It's a good bill both days.
Zolberg - The next day after the
festival we will be playing in Doncaster at
the Gay Pride Festival. That will be fun
as well. Eagle - Maybe we should
put on some costumes and stuff and show some
support. If
it's not too personal a question to ask, which
way do you guys swing?
Eagle - Which team do we play for you
mean? Yes.
Eagle - We are not up-hill gardeners,
we are just very open minded. We all have
girlfriends back home and they said no
cheating!
Zolberg - Well I had my first shower
last night. That was the first shower
I'd had since we left Iceland. It's only
been a week though.
I am SO glad I came to join you
today! (laughs) Eagle
- We thought we'd have to call the fire
department. We took the shampoo and we
made him clean again. One time we were
on tour and after two weeks we were all
nagging him to change socks, so he came out
with clean socks on but he still smelled awful
and when we checked he hadn't taken off the
dirty socks, he'd just put the clean ones over
them! He is so bad. This tour we are not
wearing clothes most of the days so it saves
on the washing and the dirty clothes so that
is good. We are maybe only wearing
clothes for two hours a day and then the rest
of the time we are naked.
Zolberg- That sounds very unnatural but it's
not. Eagle - No you see we're
brothers, we grew up naked with each other.
Zolberg - That sounds even worse now.
Our parents are hippies.It's just a
lot of people are afraid of being naked
because they think it's wrong, but I don't
think so. I think it's perfectly
natural, it's healthy. Eagle - It
is natural to take the little fellow out for
some fresh air and a walk. So this tour
you have had a lot of nakedness, a lot of
alcohol, a lot of good music ... and a lot of
porn. And you young man wear your socks
for far too long then put them places you
shouldn't!
Zolberg - This tour has been so much
fun though, we have had so many laughs on it.
Eagle - We broke a table.
You broke a table?
Eagle
- Yeh Homer was peeing in a bottle while
we were driving, he was crouched down on his
knees peeing into the bottle and then a car
pulled out in front of the bus, so we had to
brake suddenly, and Homer just flew over on to
the table like Superman with this bottle and
they went down the aisle. He just laid
there flat on his tummy and the bottle he'd
been peeing in was on the floor and was going
all over the place. Zolberg - Oh
we laughed for so long after that happened.
Eagle - Yes and he was all bruised all
over his front after that. The table was
just lying flat with the legs laid out the
sides flattened. It was so funny.
Zolberg - It was the funniest thing I have
ever seen in my entire life.
Swiftly moving on ... have
you considered when you will be coming back
after this tour?
Eagle - Well when we get back we
will be finishing off our new album and then
release it in Iceland and online.
Zolberg - Hopefully we'll get to gig on
some tours after that. Eagle - It
all depends on how much you British people ask
for us. If you want us we're here.
Heimer - Naked! Eagle -
Everybody wants to be naked and famous man!
Everybody wants to be just like me, I'm naked
and famous! Zolberg - We're
having such a great time we really don't want
to have to go back home.
What can you tell us about this new album?
Eagle - Well it's already written and
recorded. Zolberg - It's almost
finished, we've been working on it for two
years and we're producing it ourselves and
mixing and recording it all. It has cost
us a lot of money because when you are doing
something yourself it's very hard to be
objective. We've been working on it for
two years and every day when we wake up we go
to the studio and do things with it.
It's going to be really great when it's
finished. We have eighteen tracks
recorded already, that's eighteen tracks out
of maybe sixty that we had written.
Eagle - It's going to be hard to cut it
down to fourteen songs for the album.
Zolberg - There is a theme, a story
attached to the album, the songs are all very
emotional, very beautiful, angry, it's going
to be a little bit less 80's hair metal than
the last one, that's not the kind of thing
we're going for. I think maybe it sounds
more mature because we have matured. I
think you'll like it. Do you know
what you're going to call the new album yet?
Zolberg - Yes, 'The Hope Of Sign'.
Heimir - Or maybe 'The Naked Truth'!
Tattoos
Throughout the interview I
can't help but admire the tattoo's the guys
have and ask them if there's any stories
behind them. Eagle starts
us off by telling us about his
tattoo's.
Eagle - I have some shit tattoos,
well actually I have just one left as I
managed to fix the others. My friend and
I decided to buy a tattoo machine when we were
16 and that was not such a good idea. I
would recommend to all the kids never buy a
tattoo machine, unless of course you have a
bald dog that you can do whatever you want
with, or perhaps an old grandma.
(To this the band burst into
hysterics and ask just what it is that Eagle
has been drinking this evening).
Zolberg - You
ended up with something like 3 new tattoos in
one month! Eagle - Yeh it was something
like that. My mum wasn't very pleased.
She liked the first one, the second one she
said was
OK, but by the third one, she said ... "What are
you going to do with yourself? Do you have
some mother issues?" ... but I kept on
although after that I went to a professional.
Well at least I thought he was a
professional when he showed up. He told
me to come see him on the Monday morning so
when I got up and walked there there was no
sign of him anywhere. That went on for a
couple of months until he did the outlines.
Then I had to get another guy to finish it
because he never showed up. But it
looked good and it was a big one too, a Celtic
dragon.
Zolberg - We all have Viking type
tattoos. I have magic runes on my arm,
it's a love charm, that's my favourite one.
Heimir has a celtic design on his arm.
His guy drew it on freehand. Heimir
-
Yeh it was done freehand, which was cool.
That was really brave of you letting him do
that!
Zolberg - A.D. has a raven.
A.D. - Yes so do you! Zolberg -
He
also has me on his neck when I'm dead, the skull
with the face paint. I also have that
tattoo as well
on my wrist and Eagle's going to get one done too.
Eagle - Yeh but I haven't had time yet.
Maybe we should have had it done today as
there was a nice one up the road. If we
have any more tattoo's then we're going to be
like 'Tatt-udes'! Zolberg - Yes we're
going to be like old men with long hair and
all covered in tattoos. Eagle - With
black suits and white hair? Or maybe just
naked old men? Do they have alternate
retirement homes?
With this imagine
engrained firmly in our skulls the bands tour
promoter James pop's his head round the bus to
tell us it's time to get back to the venue and
with that we head off for more beer and look
forward to the gig ahead of us.
