The upcoming album from Brit rockers You Me At Six marks their seventh, which is a huge milestone in any band’s career. It’s so huge that there are a lot of artists that won’t ever make it that far, though You Me At Six are still standing after over fifteen years as a band. Having said that, they’re no strangers to the classics, and continue to be influenced by the legends that preceded them and their contemporaries. In his own words, guitarist Max Helyer took us through the tracks that influenced Suckapunch, which is out this January.
The Prodigy – ‘Smack My Bitch Up’
Since the passing of Keith Flint, I went on a massive listening spree of The Prodigy. This song is one I would normally put on before a gig to get us all hyped up backstage. I think the production and sound of this record still sounds as incredible today as it did when it first came out, and we also took a lot of inspiration from The Prodigy for the new record in how they’ve blended electronic music with a band. I think the obvious song from our new record that has been inspired by this is our song called ‘MAKEMEFEELALIVE’.
Pendulum – ‘Hold Your Colour’
Another artist and song that we’ve listened to as a band for a long time, another great pre-show song that gets us hyped up and in the mood for a gig. It’s great to go back and listen to artists that you grew up around and actually how much influence you can take from them now and put into your music. The blend again of electronic music with a live band is something that we look into as a band, especially with how we write music now, and Pendulum was one of the artists that had influence on some of the new songs, so it felt right to put this track in.
Marilyn Manson – ‘The Fight Song’
This is a song that has been on my stereo for a long time now. I love the aggression of this song and how industrial sounding the production is.
Kendrick Lamar – ‘DNA’
We’ve always been big fans of Kendrick in this band. When we were recording Cavalier Youth in LA we had good kid, m.A.A.d city constantly on the stereo system when recording. I picked this song because again it’s another great song that gets the dressing room hype on the go before a gig. It’s also structurally a unique song in how it’s formed and how it grows throughout the song.
FOALS – ‘What Went Down’
This record always hit me really hard. As an opening track, I love the suspense and anticipation it brings throughout the song, it feels like it could be used in a movie, which I really like. FOALS are an amazing band that we have played a few stages with over our career and we always enjoy what they do with their live show – this is always a stand out song.
Arctic Monkeys – ‘505’
I picked this song because it actually inspired one of our new songs from the record called ‘Kill The Mood’. The start of the song feels very droney and almost sends you into a bit of a trance. That, I thought, was really unique. It’s also one of their best songs in my opinion. I think it doesn’t get enough attention brought to it as they have so many great songs.
Biffy Clyro – ‘Bubbles’
We have been lucky enough to share the stage with Biffy many times over our career now and they are some of the best dudes we have met. This song feels like a great journey, especially when it gets to the bridge section, which was something we have always loved in our band.
J. Cole – ‘Power Trip’
This has been a You Me At Six jam for a long time now. Again, the same as Kendrick, this J. Cole song was on our stereos when we’ve made records before and is one we always go back to. The simplicity of how this song grows and develops is really interesting. Sometimes the best thing is just the groove of the song, and they do this in a great way by pulling instruments in and out of the track to give it a dynamic shift.
Tyler, The Creator – ‘IGOR’S THEME’
When I put on IGOR the album for the first time, this song just completely blew me away. I couldn’t get enough of the energy and feel that this first song brought to me straight away and it instantly inspired me to go and write a song, which then became a song on our new record called ‘Voicenotes’. The groove of the bass and drums is something I’ve become really fascinated by because of listening to lots more different genres of music, and because of this it’s allowed us to grow and develop more as a band and really push our writing abilities to different areas maybe we wouldn’t have tried before hand.
The Killers – ‘Mr. Brightside’
To finish with a song that I think pretty much everyone in the world knows. It’s an anthem for many including us. Every band would love to write a ‘Mr. Brightside’ but there won’t ever be another one in my opinion. I think some of the guitar playing in this song is really unique and different even to this day. We took the picking style pattern and tried to create our own version with this on our song ‘Beautiful Way’.
