If you’ve read Platform a lot you’ll know Marek Steven is our buddy, he occasionally writes about things like witchcraft and always hooks me up with film stuff because of his day job as a film PR, he makes music videos too and blah blah I don’t know how many times I’ve written about all the things he does.
His true passion, as I’m sure you’re aware by now, is metal, and in particular his band Invasion, who are currently kind of a big deal, if you hadn’t heard. He plays guitar (sometimes with no shoes on) while Zel plays the drums and Chan sings. Midway through their UK tour recently I made him buy a disposable camera and take photos of things for us, being the good sport he is, he obliged and even went as far as to write some captions for us. Thanks Marek!
“Invasion recently did our first UK/Ireland tour and it was clichéd and a lot of fun. We played Bath (friendly and generally a blast) Guildford (pretty good but everyone said “why are you playing Guildford”… Erm, you live here!) Manchester went well and I think we confused and possibly inspired a few hardcore kids with doom riffs. We were way too drunk in Edinburgh but still had a good review in The List. Edinburgh is as beautiful as they say and more wizardy than I realised. After those shows we played Glasgow and Dublin and I took a few photos when I remembered…”
Glasgow
After playing Edinburgh we stayed with a super nice bunch of stoner metal geeks in Glasgow for a couple of days. They lived on one of the most beautiful streets I’ve ever seen. They’re opposite the park in West Glasgow with the beautiful uni buildings peering out over the trees in the distance. Their basement flat was huge but also completely and utterly trashed like I haven’t seen in years. The text said “it’s the flat next to all the broken furniture and rubbish”. Which was useful and a little worrying.
The house was two basement flats that the band we played with (Low Sonic Drift) rented for next to nothing. They had loads of really nice geeky stoner mates who we hung out with and listened to heavy metal very loud. The bassist in the band, Paul, was in the corner literally the whole time we were there playing a computer game called Scribblenauts on his laptop. Apparently when he starts a game he doesn’t stop until he’s finished in one go. This can take three days or more and he genuinely barely moves.
Someone was skinning up the whole time we there, which was great. I didn’t manage to get a shot of the flat before they tidied up, but it’s safe to say that you couldn’t see the floor for bongs, general detrius and pizza boxes. Despite this it was a great atmosphere and actually the most relaxed I’d been for ages. My band mates were definitely relieved that we had a hotel for the second night.
This is one of many bongs in the flat, plus a pretty decent old LSD poster. They guys that lived there and their mates were keen on taking acid and going out on mad nights in random clubs and similar. Recently they all dropped and took their sofa and a stereo into the park and had a great day messing around. Acid’s good if you’re stable as it’s a bit more challenging than other drugs. The results can be a lot more special if you do it right, but you need cool mates.
Downtime involved Guitar Hero 1. Note skinning up in the background and several bin bags that have just been filled with three nights partying. The night prior to us being there one of their mates got so drunk he apparently urinated in the corner on the room and then feel asleep directly afterwards in the same area. He left early before everyone else woke up.
Desperately trying to open a bottle of wine to get wasted at 6pm.
We were all stoned and therefore not really particularly focused on the the concept of sound-checking at 5pm. We got a call at 6.30 which confirmed we were super late. Jav reacted by sitting down and skinning a massive joint “for the road”. The joint was long gone before we loaded the gear into a taxi. It all worked out fine, stoner time works.
They have so much room in the flat that they have a full on practice room set up all the time. And no real neighbours to speak of either. Invasion never rehearse normally so we took an hour out to write a new song which we recorded this week.
Some solid doom and metal posters from recent Glasgow shows adorn the walls in there. We were pretty jealous of this rehearsal room, it’s a nightmare getting somewhere cheap to practice in London. Everything is super cheap in Scotland. Drinks are pretty much £2, and many places had them cheaper than that. It’s crazy. We saw a few beered up fights in Edinburgh and heard some stories about Glasgow. The vast majority of the city is still a no-go area apparently.
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