It’s promising to be an exciting time for British metal band Urne. With the band’s sophomore album A Feast On Sorrow out in the world and garnering great reviews, the band have recently been added to this year’s Download Festival where they’ll be rocking the Dogtooth Stage on Friday. The Midlands Rocks sat down with vocalist/bassist Joe Nally before Urne’s recent Birmingham gig (reviewed here).

We’re speaking in Birmingham, the home of Black Sabbath. They say they were influenced by their post-industrial surroundings. Growing up, how did your environment shape you?

It’s strange, but more so now with Urne than anything I’ve previously done. There’s a rawness and aggression to London. I always thought I had an idyllic upbringing, until I talked to other people and it dawned on me it wasn’t so. There’s a grittiness to London; I’m from Stretham, and Angus [Neyra, guitars] is from Shepherd’s Bush, so that definitely impacted on us. I think it influenced us without us realising, and unlike anything we’ve ever done before Urne needs that bit of grit and spite. We kind of absorbed it and it’s come out through the music.

In terms of your musical lineage, would you say Urne is an extension of Hang The Bastard? Again, they were another gritty band.

I think Hang The Bastard were a gritty band, but not so much in the other member’s backgrounds, they had a much different upbringing to me. I never formed that band, and those guys had a luckier upbringing that me. They played that sludgy, doomy music and the thing was to make it as heavy as possible. With Urne, we play heavy metal but we’ve added an anger, before Hang The Bastard me and Angus had a band called Chapters, we toured with Sylosis (actually, the last time I was here was on that tour), and that band was characterised by originality; we didn’t want any parts to sound the same. I think we’ve taken most of our sound from Chapters.

I hear a lot of different styles in Urne; stoner, doom and even blast beats. Has your chequered career helped you form an original sound?

Angus and I write most of the music and we have different writing styles; Angus is more well-crafted, thought-out musician approach, whereas I have a more off-the-cuff style that doesn’t really make sense, but when you put it into a song it somehow falls in place. We listened to so much different music growing up, and culturally Angus is from a different background, so were open to everything entering the songwriting process. We’re a heavy metal band, but when I write vocals I don’t try to cram everything in; I want space in the music. On our first album you could definitely tell who our influences were, but on the last album we tended to do what we wanted to do. I was fortunate growing up, being exposed to different types of music; the more you listen to, the more knowledge you gain.

Urne’s two albums have been released both sides of the pandemic. Did the lockdowns influence the new album at all?

With Serpent & Spirit we still put it out in the Covid-era, we recorded it during a really heavy lockdown in Wales. With the new album I think it was more a fresh slate, and the only thing that’s different is that we set ourselves a timeline and everything had to be completed in a certain time, mainly due to diary constraints.

You have a new drummer in James Cook. What does he bring to the table?

I don’t think we’ve seen the best of James yet. He joined at a crucial time; he had to learn a whole set to go and play some shows; he’s a drum teacher, a husband, a father, and then he had to join Urne and learn all this new music. Our previous drummer helped us create that large aura, he was great at mapping songs, whereas we can throw ideas at James and he’s powerful; every hit is precise and he’s made us sound so tight. But I’m excited that now he’ll have more time when it comes to creating songs with me and Angus. I’m intrigued to see what he’ll do next, and you can definitely see his confidence growing, and when you have confidence behind you, things start to happen!

This tour is the first time you’ve road tested some of those songs. What has the reception been like?

Really, really good. The two old songs that we are playing always go down great, but the title-track of the new record [A Feast On Sorrow] has been going down great, we try to make it a bit theatrical. I’m excited to see how they’ll be going down in another years time when we’ve got more shows under our belt. But on our first ever UK headline tour, I’m happy how it has gone down so far.

You have two strong support bands. Do you find that keeps you on your toes and at the top of your game?

Totally. Tribe Of Ghosts are, for such a young band, a professional unit and kill it every night. Mountain Caller are just such amazing musicians, and each has a unique tone. Both bands definitely keep us on it, but we just go out there and do what we do. There are a lot of “hype” bands around, and that means nothing to me, I want good bands and Mountain Caller to me are just an amazing band. I definitely wanted Mountain Caller on the tour, and with Tribe Of Ghosts I though ‘where were we when we got picked by Orange Goblin?’. I spoke to Simon from Bloodstock and said that I wanted a band who was our size at Bloodstock two years ago, who could he recommend and he said Tribe Of Ghosts. The thing I’d like to say is that Mountain Caller have two female members and Tribe Of Ghosts one, and I think it’s important to push that more and more. Some bands get the push without the quality, but with these two bands the quality really shine through. Beccy [Blaker] from Tribe Of Ghosts has a ridiculously good voice, and the songwriting quality of Mountain Caller…they’re really on it. There’s a lot of people who say they want a diverse scene, but we try to put it into action.

Some of my favourite bands are trios; Motörhead, Budgie, Rush. Was it always your intention to form a three-piece band?

I was always set on it, but the other two weren’t quite sure, when you’re in a band with four or five people there’s too much stress, this incarnation has been stress free.

Urne has become known for their big sound. How do you create it with just three people?

It’s a drummer who hits hard, a guitarist whose got a big sound, and I’ve got a big voice. The main thing for us is our sound guy who we’ve been working with for 18 months. He’s a sound guy at The Craufurd Arms in Milton Keynes, and he’s full of energy and the sound he gets is just amazing and we were the first band to take him out on the road. And in terrible venues, he still gets a great sound and he is like the fourth member of Urne.

The future is looking bright for Urne, you have some major festival slots pencilled in. How do you view the future with the band? Is it with excitement or trepidation?

We have a few more to announce, but with a band our size, we won’t know until closer to the date. I want to do stuff that’s different, I don’t just want to go out with metal bands. I said to my agent; get me things with Wolfgang Van Halen, get me things with the heavy rock crowd.

You seem pretty zen and chilled offstage. How do you psych yourself up to go and play heavy, aggressive music?

We played Manchester last night in a venue that wasn’t really a music venue, and my mechanism to cope with that is to have a laugh and a bit of banter. Now when I go on stage, I don’t really overthink it, my first ever festival was playing Download and that kind of chucked me in at the deep end.

Finally, if I had a magic wand and could make any dream come true for Urne, what’d it be?

To have James Hetfield sit down and listen to every song we’ve ever recorded.

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