They Will Kill Us All: Sharper Knives

By Melanie Zhu-Han  •  in Interview
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From paying tribute to the legendary P Ramlee to a performance at rainy Rockaway and serenading the crowd at The Actors Studio, They Will Kill Us All (TWKUA) had certainly made 2011 into their own. Amidst their busy schedule, JUICE seizes a quickie with the boys for our readers’ satisfaction.

Hello, it has been some time that you guys have taken to the stage and suddenly this succession of gigs – Actors Studio, Rockaway, etc. Do you ever find it hard to reconnect with the audience after spending so much time polishing the new album?
For us, we enjoy presenting our songs to the audience. Every time we get onstage after some sort of hiatus, we get excited and pumped up. This shows in our performance, and from there we get the same love back from the audience. So to us as long as we keep giving the best we will always find it easy to connect with the crowd.

Do you guys have any ‘before-we-set-fire-to-the-stage’ rituals? Have any of them worked to help the chemistry?
We don’t have any so called rituals but we do warm up now backstage, like really light body stretching and some vocal exercises. Pretty tame, huh? But that is working for us now so if it ain’t broke don’t fix it!

Has your songwriting process changed over the years? Do you finally what works and what doesn’t?
Songwriting is a never ending journey for the band. There are many things that we have yet to use and realise for our songs. A major difference between the first album and the upcoming one is that we try and really focus on producing simple catchy stuff in our peculiar way. We know what works for us now but it doesn’t mean that we completely discard the rest. Rather we aim to use things that don’t work now in the future. Never say never!

All your songs are in English, with the exception of the P Ramlee tribute. Would you consider doing an all Malay album?
‘Sepanjang Riwayatku’ is a really great song for us in a sense because it gave us the confidence to sing in Malay. We are currently writing couple of Malay songs but we have yet to get that great delivery we aim for in every song we write. It might be a couple more years before we feel we can do a full album. But again, never say never!

How is the local indie scene? Are bands supportive of each other or do they have more of a rivalry, seeing how it’s still quite a small community?
To us, we respect all the indie/underground/underexposed bands and definitely try to support them as much as possible. We always get great help in return from the same gang. This virtuous circle is always there since the beginning of the Malaysian music scene and this is part of what makes it alive until today. If this value is sustained and encouraged to the next generation of kids then there would always be a passionate indie community. And that matters more than the size.

All about the comradeship, indeed!

Keep up with their gigs and events via their Facebook page here.