Slaves talk their new album: “It’s not quite conceptual, but we had a vision”

Over the last eighteen months, Slaves have been busy bees. Since releasing the huge ‘Are You Satisifed?’ and the relentless touring that followed, they’ve just about done it all: from Mercury Prize nods to dislocated shoulders, you’d have thought they’d barely had time for a lie down, let alone enough space in their schedules to work on a new album. Yet, here they are, with its follow-up complete.

“As soon as we released the last album, we did a session and started to try and write new songs,” the band’s guitarist Laurie Vincent told us, when the band played at Bilbao BBK Live last month. “Then, as soon as we had time off, we spent two weeks writing. I broke my wrist but I didn’t realise, so we were writing while I had a broken wrist, Isaac then had an operation on his shoulder, but we still spent quite a lot of time focussing on the new record.” Phew!

“We’ve done all the music,” his bandmate Isaac Holman confirms, “it’s just the finishing touches now; it’s about concentrating on artwork and tracklisting, things like that.”

Didn’t they fancy a bit of a break before heading straight back into another record? “In the modern world, where people like The Weeknd do three albums a year, it feels like there’s no excuse to drop off,” Laurie continues. “We just felt like we had the material and we were writing really quickly, so were like, let’s just do it. People asked if we wanted to take a break, but we said no.”

As for the record itself, while the band won’t divulge too many specific details, they do reveal that “it feels very different”. “We did hand it over to our label and they were like, ‘This is really heavy’,” laughs Laurie, while Isaac picks up the train of thought. “That’s the thing, there are songs that are heavy, but there’s also songs that are lighter.”

“We were sat on a plane a year ago,” Laurie offers up, giving a bit of the record’s backstory, “and we decided the title - we’re not gonna say what it is yet - and that it should follow on from ‘Are You Satisfied?’ in this way and we spoke theoretically about the album loads, and then it just all happened. We don’t think it’s that heavy, but everyone who hears it has said it’s punk. To me, it’s like if you blended the first EP, the last album and added a bit of new stuff. It’s got a bit for everyone.”

“It’s not quite conceptual, but we knew we had a vision,” adds in Isaac. “Yeah,” conclues Laurie. “It’s like the difference between accidentally having a baby and planning a baby. You know how some bands go away and say they’re gonna get in the studio and see what happens? We were like, ‘We’re gonna make an album, and it’s gonna be like this.’ It wasn’t a concept album as much as a planned pregnancy.”

Slaves’ new album is expected to be released later this year.

The band’s Laurie Vincent also has his first official art exhibition taking place at Edinburgh’s Flaubert Gallery. It runs from 4th to 17th August - for more information, head here.