North Empire

It’s time for another interview! This time it’s Wank For Peace from France. These guys do quite some touring so if you don’t know them yet, you should definitely check them out. Go on and read about their name choice, Horsebites, etc.

Could you please introduce yourselves?
So we are Wank For Peace, from Angers, France. We’ve been a band since 2008. Laurent plays guitare, David Bass, Flo sings, and Antoine plays Drum. Antoine is the new one! The show with you guys will actually be his second show. We all have shitty studies and shitty jobs.

Your bandname is rather ridiculous, what’s the story behind it?
If wanking wasn’t allowed for worldpeace, what other activity/ways would you choose to gain this goal? That’s nice to answer such a question! Nobody ever asks us that in France, because people don’t get how shitty this name is!
So there is no real story… We started playing together in April, in June a friend asked us to play a show, we had no name, one of us said “Wank For Peace”, we play the show under that name, and now we’re stuck with it. We know it’s ridiculous but we don’t really care. I mean that’s just a name! If people aren’t smart enough to go beyond the name… whatever… We don’t want to get famous, we don’t want to a “hardcore credibility” name. So we’ll keep this one until the end!
And world peace isn’t something we believe in. It takes a lot of faith in mankind to believe something like this.

How has music influenced your lives? And what artists have influenced you the most?
We’ve been into music since we’re teenagers, it has always been quite important, but those last 3 years, since the beggining of Wank For Peace, pretty much changed our lives. All those places we’ve been, all those people we’ve met influenced our lives in many ways. Politicaly, Ethicaly for example. They way we live our lives back home, the choices we make, all that has been completly changed by the band! And now our girlfriends hates us.
And if we should pick artists I guess we would chose Kid Dynamite (obviously), Blink-182, NoFX, Guerilla Poubelle.

‘What Will Remain’ (link) is your first LP, can you tell us something about it? Does it have a general theme?
It is! This is a very urgent LP, we wrote the songs pretty fast, recorded the LP right after. If feel like it’s really spontaneous. I don’t know if there is really one general theme, but there is definitely some general directions. Time is one of those, the way we use it mainly. Choices is another one. How much we hate any kind of pride. I guess that this Lp is mainly influenced by our discovering of that music scene, of touring, etc. We’re still newcomers so may be it’s also a bit naive…

The artwork for your LP has been done by ‘Horsebites’ (link), one of the most popular for punk bands at the moment. What made you choose to ask him?
That was kind of a child dream. We have been listening to so many band who had a cover by him that we said “who knows may be it will be our only LP, let’s ask him”. He said yes! He is actually a very nice dude! We met him when we played with No Friends on their European tour. He drew the cover right after their tour! Richard is really amazing, he worked with so many awesome huge bands, but he cares about what he does, the fact that we met him on tour probably helped but he did it quickly and he listened every single details we had to say about the cover! I would want to say “give him some work to do” but he really is busy enough with kiss and beyonce designs.

You’re from France, unfortunately we don’t know that many good French bands in Holland. What bands from France are really worth checking out?
There are a lot of amazing bands in France, but quite often they hide in their green countryside and don’t tour that much. You should check No Guts no Glory, Birds in Row, The Traders, Zombies Are Pissed, Justin(e), The Helltons, Nina’school, Nine eleven, Can’t Bear this Party, Maladroit, Daria, One Thousand Directions, The attendants, As We Draw, Charly Fiasco, Guerilla Poubelle, Mon Autre Groupe, Pink Flamingos…. Okay this list might no be objective because lots of them friends… but still.

You toured like 10 countries, what’s the best one to play? Which one has the best drinks/food? And which one has the nicest girls (or boys, whatever you fancy)? What place do you really recommend to other touring bands?
We all had a major crush on Slovenia. The landscape and the people are so nice! We also had the best afterparty food there! The guys from In-Sane took us a place that made Cheese Bureks, amazing unclear memories about that! We also loved Hungary! I guess the more east you go, the better this is, people in France for example don’t really give a shit about punk shows anymore. And we don’t do girls, or boys. On tour we only do each other.

You have been to Holland before. What do you hate about it?
When we went to holland with the band, we arrived at 11pm, we played at midnight and we left town at noon the day after , so all we did is party at steenjwijck. So we’ve got nothing to hate about Holland except Laurent who eems to have been thromatized by all thos bikes “horning” all around when he came to Amsterdam when was 17. But what we can hate is the way french people see holland. Drugs and hookers. Shame on them!

Anything else you would like to add?
Thanks for asking, and thanks for reading, all this cool adventure really means the world to us!

Wank For Peace will be on tour in March. Come and check them out on Saturday March 17th at Cafe Asgard, Beverwijk, NL with A Thousand Directions (FR) and De Aanslag.