Ruled By Raptors Talk Mini-Album, Musical Memories And More

Brit hard-hitters Ruled By Raptors will release their explosive mini-album, A Shadow That Never Moves, on Friday 2nd October 2026. 

 

Who is in Ruled By Raptors, how did you meet and what do you play? 

Will: We are Chris, Matt, Nick and Will! We all live quite close to each other and have gigged locally for years, so we all knew each other to some degree before the band.

Nick: Weirdly myself and Matt attended the same school, we even played a gig for Chris on the same lineup, but we never actually met until Matt joined the band.

Chris: I worked as a promoter for a bit, and I’ve ran a rehearsal studio for 13 years so I knew Nick and Matt through my business and Will is my Father/Mother-in-law’s son… My wife says it’s uncanny how much he looks like her brother.

What is your earliest musical memory?

Will: Probably watching Rush Live videos with my dad in the living room when I was really young.

Chris: It’s between singing along in the car to Janie’s Got A Gun by Aerosmith or wearing out my dad’s vinyl of War of the Worlds. For both I’d have been 3 or 4 years old.

Matt: Coming home from Woolworths with a Steps CD. No shame.

Nick: Well I’m a huge metal head so naturally my first memory is, while at a biker festival, seeing a Bon Jovi tribute act (Bon Geordie).

Chris: We found out a few weeks ago that our mate Aidan was in that band when you saw them! That was wild.

When did you begin songwriting? 

Chris: For RBR? It’s a bit complicated.

Will: We started writing songs under a different project we were all in, we’d all joined Chris in that band and after about a year when we started writing, we realised the sound had changed significantly enough to justify drawing a line under it and starting from scratch.

You have your mini-album ‘A Shadow That Never Moves’ which will be released on 2nd October 2026. How did you want to approach the making of the album?

Will: We approach all of our song writing as a band, meaning we all have input and almost no song ever comes to life as one individual person’s efforts.

Chris: With this one, some of the tunes were originally written for Silent Sound, we have a Dropbox where we keep any tunes we’ve written and revisit them regularly. We had originally intended for this to be a quickfire release following Silent Sound, but unfortunately my mam took ill and we had to wind things back for a while.

Matt: The songwriting for this record sort of became a ‘kitchen sink’ mentality. We wanted to push every idea to the nth degree, not allow any arbitrary constraints on genre or stylistic specifics. It was quite freeing to just allow any and all ideas to attempt to bloom.

Where did you record the album and who produced it?

Will: We recorded the album with Sam Cook at his studio in Lincoln who was excellent in getting what we want dialled in recording wise. He started the mixing process for us and due to Chris’ mam’s health, we had to go down the route of self-producing, so Matt actually did the mixing and production, we then had it mastered by Bob Cooper and it came back sounding absolutely mega!

Do you have any interesting, funny or memorable stories from the recording sessions?

Will: It was mid-winter and there was a blizzard as we drove down so that was memorable, Sam’s dog Flint was a great time too, he features on one of the tracks!

Chris: My windscreen wiper broke on the van whilst we were putting the windshield cover on, that sucked. So the first morning was traipsing around Lincoln on a Sunday morning in the snow trying to find a Halfords that was open. One of the wheel bearings also went on the way back.

Matt: We spent a week living together in a house just outside of Lincoln, with a very broken oven, a giant TV (mostly playing Welcome to Wrexham on repeat), and a fridge full of lager & own brand sandwich meats. Really brought me back to my uni days, for better or for worse.

Did you use any particular instruments, microphones, recording equipment to help you get a particular sound/tone for the record?

Matt: Compared to Silent Sound, we used a lot more of our own rigs on this record, leaning more into our Fender-y, sharp attack-y guitar thing. We tracked each guitar take through two amps simultaneously (Mesa Dual Rec/Sound City something on one side, then my Fender Super Sonic & an Audio Kitchen Trees on the other). It was a conscious decision to use quite shallow drums in the recording too, Sam really vibed with the idea of really transient-heavy drum sounds, and it really helped shape the mix.

Which of your new album tracks hear you at your a) happiest, b) angriest and c) most reflective?

Nick: While Algebra’s subject matter isn’t a happy one. When we’ve played it live we’ve seen so many people dancing, smiling and joining in with our call and response. I think that song can put a smile on your face.

Chris: It’s probably a toss up between Static Collapse and Mancunian Japanese as to which one is the most reflective. Static Collapse, I wasn’t really in a good place, I was drinking too frequently and using it to get to sleep and I was just lost. I’ve since been diagnosed with ADHD and I’m on tablets for it now. Mancunian Japanese is about not feeling good enough as a musician and not really seeing the positive things others believe in you. It’s about self-doubt.

Matt: I’m not really sure this is a happy record at any given point haha! Our angriest is most likely Rescissory, one of our more poignant & direct political songs discussing trickle-down economics & the humanitarian toll of the migration crisis.

Was it a difficult album to write?

Will: Yes and no, we had a lot of material to work with but that also made it difficult to narrow down.

Matt: It was difficult to finalise; I will say that. We’re all very detail orientated people in this band, and we spent a long time debating the minutia of section lengths, single wrong-or-right notes in tiny runs… we got there in the end though.

Nick: We’re 4 people locked in a room with contrasting musical opinions on occasion. It can’t always be sunshine and rainbows.

Will: It raised questions about what we do and don’t include, even to the extent we rerecorded a track that hasn’t been included and added one after the main recordings happened!

Chris: I have to be in the mood for the song I’m writing lyrics for, otherwise I just pen things I’m not happy with later, which sometimes can be a bit of a pain. As the boys have said, we have a lot of stored up material musically, so I do feel like I often slow the process for us, as I’m the lyricist, Will can write lyrics, but he doesn’t like doing so for us. One song that is a reworked older song is Rescissory which is going to be a single in the next few months, and it was written for Silent Sound and had completely different lyrics, which to be honest, I’m really glad we never went with. After that poor kid washed up on the beach, I rewrote the lyrics to what they are now and I think it’s a much better use of our music to try and combat the hate in this world highlighting what people should be angry with, rather than what they’re being aimed at by others.

Who designed the album artwork?

Will: Andy Pilkington of Very Metal Art, big shout out to him for getting us something we were so happy with, we’re awful for liking artwork so the fact we all agreed instantly that we liked what he had done was incredible.

One of the tracks is the single ‘Sleep Dep.’  What was the story/inspiration behind the track?

Chris: I had been going through a bout of insomnia and was finally getting back to sleeping normally when Will mentioned that he was going through one. We started talking about it and I laughed and mentioned that sometimes I got to a point where, and it’s totally irrational, but I ended up just resenting Will’s sister, my wife, for being asleep when I clearly couldn’t. Like I knew it was irrational, but I’m lying there and it just felt like she was rubbing it in by sleeping whilst I’m tossing and turning, desperately trying to get to sleep for the 3^rd day in a row haha. It’s not their fault, you’re just jealous that they’re asleep and you’re not. Sound wise I think because it has such a Jamie Lenman/Reuben vibe to it, I’d taken a lot of influence from songs like ‘Party Breaks Hearts’, which is where the joviality of it comes into it, but at the same time I was listening a lot to Enter Shikari and ‘No Sleep Tonight’ is one of my favourite songs, which we do a little nod to in the chorus.

Do you have any visualisers?

Matt: We have 3 music videos, one for each of the singles.

Where is your hometown and could you please describe it in five words?

Chris: We’re spread out around South East Northumberland, but we just say Newcastle for ease.

Matt: Lightly stained tracksuits & Greggs.

Chris: I mean, say no more.

How do you look after your voices?

Will: Vocal Zone and prayers mostly haha!

Chris: I’m a pain for not really doing warmups and I should know better, I did vocal training for stage acting in my teens. I do my own thing, but not in the traditional sense anyway. I will gently sing along with songs in the shower or the van, doing easy harmonies, etc and build up from there. After that, Vocal Zones as Will says.

Matt: For me, it’s knowing when to back off. I’m really excitable live & have a habit of pushing my voice too hard and screaming from the wrong places (years of bad technique doesn’t help…), so just learning to control myself a bit goes a long way.

Nick: We’re supposed to look after our voices?

Do you have any live dates planned in the UK/Europe in 2026?

Chris: We have a lot, we’re all over the UK this year, you can find out where via our Linktree www.linktr.ee/ruledbyraptors or the best way is searching for us on bandsintown.com and following us and you’ll get an e-mail when we’re touring!

 What two things do you hope to have achieved once you have left the stage?

Will: Hopefully we’ve left a good impression and given someone a new band they want to follow.

Matt: No string breaks (highly unlikely), no physical injuries (50/50).

Nick: I want people to feel something after we come off. Ideally, I want them to feel like they’ve had fun.

 Do you have any favoured stage instruments, effects, pedals, microphones etc?

Chris: Someone told me a while ago that my Black Japanese Fender Jag Special was my trademark instrument. I’ve played with it for almost 20 years now, but I’d never really thought about it. I also have my modified Mesa Boogie Dual Rec, which if I can, I prefer to use my cab with it, as the head can be a bit finicky with certain cab brands.

Matt: I’ve had my blue Strat since 2008, I can’t imagine a scenario where I won’t use it. I’m the band’s resident gear dork, and my pedalboard has been through a million iterations, but the staples haven’t moved much since this band began: Suhr Riot & smallsound/bigsound Mini for drives, Line 6 DL4 for delays. I’m a sucker for pitch shifters too, so there’s always something to fill that niche around.

Nick: My sound is really driven by my Darkglass pedals. The distortion pedal makes everything sound massive.

 You are given the opportunity to write the score for a film adaptation of a novel that you enjoy. Which novel is it and why?

Chris: In all honesty, I don’t read much in the way of fiction. I used to when I was a kid, but I presume due to the ADHD, I’d often forget where I was and have to keep going backwards and forwards rereading bits I’d already read. I’d always prefer to read a science paper or article.

Matt: I’ve always wanted to do a score! I’m big into ambient music, so I’d probably want to just convey the most atmospheric sense of dread possible. Maybe something like Haunted by Chuck Palanuik, it’s such a mental book, with all the interspliced short stories and the descent into madness in the main plot, I think the score to that could be a great challenge, and equally as nihilistic & twisted as the source material.

Nick: While I’m a bigger fan of comic books and graphic novels. Though now that I think about it, as a little nod to our buddy MC Lars, it would be a lot of fun to do a score for an adaptation of one of Edger Allan Poe’s stories, maybe The Masque of the Red Death or The Tell-Tale Heart.

Who are some of your musical influences? Do you have any recommendations?

Chris: Most people know mine, in terms of RBR then the influences are Reuben, Hundred Reasons, Jamie Lenman, Glassjaw, At The Drive In, Finch, Biffy Clyro, Million Dead…  Mahumodo in parts. But in terms of music I like and recommendations, I’m into a lot of music, so this could go on for a while. I was at Slam Dunk Festival this weekend and I was drawn towards bands such as Static Dress, Malevolence and Knocked Loose.

Matt: I’ve spent most of my years as a musician ape-ing hardcore, math rock & progressive metal bands, so I’d point anyone in the direction of Enter Shikari, Arcane Roots, The Fall of Troy, letlive & Alexisonfire.

What makes Ruled By Raptors happy and what makes you unhappy?

Chris: Gigs where the crowd are engaged make me happy. Fuel prices make me unhappy.

Matt: Happy? 2am post-unreal-show McDonalds in the van. Unhappy? Newcastle United Football Club.

Feature Image Photo Credit: Jamie Bott

Ruled By Raptors latest single ‘Sleep Dep.’ is out now. 

Download/Stream Here: https://ruled-by-raptors.ffm.to/sleepdep

Their mini-album ‘A Shadow That Never Moves’ is released on Friday 2nd October 2026. 

Official LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/ruledbyraptors