Allusondrugs are now Allusinlove and heading for Brighton
After a year or so with the new name, the band play Komedia in Brighton on February 13.
Lining up as Jason Moules (vocals/guitar), Andrej Pavlovic (guitar), Jemal Beau Malki (bass) and Connor Fisher-Atack (drums), the band has existed in various guises for around six years, originally from Castleford, an old mining town in West Yorkshire.
Andrej reflects that the name change was probably right.
“We were Allusondrugs for about five years.
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Hide Ad“What happened was that we were independent and doing all our own bookings, but every now and again the name would cause us problems. We were denied radio or visas for America, and then we got signed to a major label a while back, and then a few weeks into the deal they were getting problems as well, and it was obvious that we needed to change the name.
“I think in all honesty the world just wasn’t ready for the name.
“You would get parents saying that their children had bought tickets but they were not going to let them go to the gigs.”
Andrej insists it was all based on a misunderstanding of the name. They weren’t promoting drugs; they were saying that the whole of society is on drugs – and blinded by drugs.
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Hide Ad“The greedy sociopaths, the top one per cent, are taking away all our liberties.
“There is TV being produced that keeps us in our homes, and there is food being produced that makes us ill. Everyone is pushing their own agenda for their own misuse, and there are just not many people that are awake, that are aware of what is happening.
“That’s what we are saying, that there a lot of people that are blinded. Our population is blinded by drugs and that’s what we were reflecting.”
But the new name was something they had been using as a hashtag for a while, and so the name change happened naturally enough.
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Hide Ad“The music is a blend of rock and pop and alt, and it is influenced by a lot of guitar music as well. It has got The Beatles down the core, and also Nirvana were a huge part of our formation as a band.
“And then after that we discovered My Bloody Valentine. They created sonic layers that we had never heard.
“We have incorporated that into something that is quite psychedelic and also quite trippy but also quite accessible.”
Andrej is originally from Croatia: “I am a refugee, but living in Leeds. I have been here a long time, maybe 25 years. It was because of the civil war back in Bosnia when it was divided into separate states and it got really unsafe. Mum and dad thought there was no future for the kids there.
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Hide Ad“People went to different places, and we came to London and started working our way north.”
But the family used to go back to Croatia for long summer holidays, which was both good and bad.
“We would go back for five-week holidays in the summer which used up almost all of the school holidays. It was great, but it was also a bit annoying.
“We also had the situation where a lot of people would speak to me or my brother and say ‘I used to hold you as a baby!’ and we didn’t have a clue who they were!”
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