Interview: Milk Teeth

Milk Teeth have been on the up and up since the release of debut album ‘Vile Child’ in early 2016. Fresh off a tour with Creeper with a new song, EP and tour just announced, we catch up with guitarist Chris Webb to get the gossip on all things ‘Be Nice’.

Q: Hi Chris! The last time fans will have seen you was your support slot for Creeper in the last few months, how was that?

A: Hey! It was a lot of fun. Creeper and us have been wanting to tour together for years so finally getting a chance to do it was great. Especially on Creeper’s album release tour, it made it way more special for us.

Q: And now you’re back with new music and a signing with Roadrunner Records, congratulations…

A: Thank you! We’ve all grown up on Roadrunner bands and love all the new ones they’ve signed to so believe me when I say it’s a dream come true!

Q: What made ‘Owning Your Okayness’ the right song to mark the start of this new era of Milk Teeth?

A: I guess it kinda sums up what we do as a band so well. We’ve always said we wanted to make the noisiest pop songs and I think we’ve done it. Still a punk rock song but it gets caught in your head. Well, I hope it does anyway.

Q: What’s the reaction to the track been like so far?

A: People seem to love it! We’ve got so many tweets and stuff saying how they’ve had it on repeat forever and exactly what we wanted, I guess!

Q: You’ve just announced a headline tour for this summer. It sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun…

A: We are SO stoked for it. We’ve not done a headliner in a while and we’ve got some new songs to play, so yeah, the excitement is real. We did like 150 shows last year so it’ll be nice to play a new set.

Q: What made you choose Employed To Serve and Wallflower as supports? Employed To Serve are a bit of a curveball…

A: I love mixed bills so much! Why would you wanna go to a show and see 3 bands that sound all the same, ya know? We play both slow songs and heavy songs so we thought why not bring two bands who do that well!

Q: A lot of people are curious about the Hit The Deck date on your tour poster. Are you at liberty to say anything about that or will we have to wait?

A: Not too sure on that to be honest! We announced it because it was a show in South West and we are a South West band! Can’t wait to see the rest of the line-up.

Q: Your new EP ‘Be Nice’ is out at the end of July. How have Milk Teeth evolved between this release and the release of ‘Vile Child’?

A: I guess we’ve trimmed the fat a bit. To me this EP sounds the most “milky” out of anything we’ve done. This is the most us. Emotional punk rock with pop hooks. We’ve never shied away from the word “pop” either and now we can embrace it.

Q: Be Nice is the first of a two-part series of EPs, the second part being released later this year. How are the two parts interlinked?

A: I mean, there’s no like running theme or story with the two EP’s. We just wanted to get new music out as soon as we could and two EP’s seemed a cool way of spreading it across the year. Together they are a good example of all the dynamics of the band, some softer songs and some snotty punk rippers!

Q: You seem to permanently be on the road or in the studio. How do you think your work ethic has paid off in making a name for yourselves?

A: Ha, well I certainly hope so! Last year we did 3 months of touring back to back on a wide range of tour’s. We always joke and say we don’t really know who are fans are because we play to so many different crowds, and I think that’s the way it should be! We now think about our live show in a completely different way and we plan things a lot more which works really well for us.

Q: Do you have any specific goals to want to achieve with the release of this EP? Or even beyond that?

A: We’ve always said we want to be the biggest and best we can be. So not like a target, but more of a “how far can we take this?” If you had told me this time last year that we’d have a single out on a major record label I wouldn’t have believed you. So who knows what’ll happen next!