Getting to Know… Fatality | Interview 🎤

Josh Abbott, vocalist for UK metal collective, Fatality, provides insight & answers our burning questions on the 112^th interview on The Musical Hype.

Per Josh Abbott, regarding his band, Fatality, “Our energy makes us unique. When we play live, we move, jump, headbang and shout until we drop, and we’d like to think that this energy comes across in our music as well.” Seems like a surefire recipe for rockin’ TF out to me! Josh Abbott serves the vocalist for the four-piece metal collective from the UK.  Additionally, he answers our burning questions for this our 112^th interview – my, my, my, how the time flies.  Besides Abbott, Fatality is comprised of Gareth Brimley (guitar), Jordan Maze (percussion), and Matt Shynn (bass).  Without further ado, let’s dive right into Getting to Know…Fatality: Interview #112!

Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with Fatality, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?  

I’d say our energy makes us unique. When we play live, we move, jump, headbang and shout until we drop, and we’d like to think that this energy comes across in our music as well. We’re always trying to push our own boundaries of how energetic and enjoyable we can be.

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your Fatality form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

Fatality was formed in 2016 by Josh Abbott (vocals), Gareth Brimley (guitar) and ex-drummer Chris Batson with our first EP being released in the same year. We performed at Asylum, a legendary Chelmsford venue for the release and raised £200 [$267.28] for the SNAP charity from merch and CD sales. In 2017 we recruited bassist Matt Shynn and subsequently recorded our second EP which we released in 2019. We did a small tour of the Prey EP in aid of MIND and raised over £500 [$667.05] this time. In November 2019 we parted ways with drummer Chris and joined forces with Jordan Maze who now completes our current lineup. Since his recruitment in late 2019 we’ve written and performed a new set of tracks with Jordan as well as some Fatality originals. We played our first show with Jordan on a live stream in Summer 2020. When we started playing our goal was to make music with our best friends and to play that music to anyone and everyone who would listen.

Awesome! Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?  

To be honest those goals haven’t really changed, apart from wanting to do it on a bigger scale with better quality music. Since we formed in 2016, we’ve had a few lineup changes and we’ve really refined our sound now and we still want to bring that to as many people as possible and enjoy it with them.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?  

We draw our influences from loads of different avenues. Musically some of those would be bands like Lamb of God, Limp Bizkit, Machine Head, Fear Factory, Papa Roach, Slipknot etc. These are all bands that we’ve listened to and fell in love with over the years and they’re also bands that have touched us in one way or another with the messages they convey in their music. If we can put our messages across and help a small percentage of the numbers they have then we would be over the moon!

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.  

For one gig Gareth (guitarist) decided to wear some old cargo shorts. He was getting into a power stance when his shorts decided to completely give up and tear from top to bottom, exposing his ‘little Gareth’ to everyone in the front row. I’m surprised we didn’t get arrested for indecent exposure after the show as I’m 99% sure everybody saw it! This is the reason Gareth never wears old, cheap shorts on stage now.

Wow – I bet that was something! Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

For me it would be one of our new songs which is being released later this year called “Eight”. It’s about the struggles of mental health and how low I’ve felt sometimes. I’m not great at talking about feelings so this song is my way of doing that. I’ve been able to metaphorically describe how depression and anxiety affect me personally and how I feel sometimes there’s nothing I can do about it. It has been really helpful for me to convey this in music and it means a lot to me.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

Jordan (drums) has a ridiculous appetite. We recently went to an all you can eat pizza restaurant and Jordan managed to eat 20 slices (the equivalent of about 4 large pizzas) in around about 45 minutes. We have never seen anything like it apart from those competitive eating competitions. Maybe we should enter him in one. We could win some money… or pizza.

Closing things out, what is Fatality currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

We, as always, have new music in the works. We have a few tracks that are ready to be released and a load of new material that we’re constantly working on and refining. “The Lesson”, “Indemnify” and “Eight” will be released over the next few months with the idea that we will accumulate these and more tracks into a 3rd EP/album at the end of the year ready for when live music is back. 

We have our new single “Juggernaut” available to stream from all online stores now and you can watch the music video on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. 

As far as future plans go, we’re going to keep doing what we enjoy doing. Writing tunes that we all enjoy to play, performing passionately for our audiences and having a damn good go at smashing through all and any glass ceilings that come before us.

You can catch us on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer as well as YouTube and as far as I’m aware, pretty much any streaming company out there! Just search Fatality Band UK and you’ll find us.

Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

Photo Credits: Fatality, Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype; Icons made by https://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik (Freepik); icons8