Interview: Trank (Written – 2025)

Let’s catch up with alternative rock band, Trank, and find out what they’ve been up to recently and what they have planned going forward.

1. Hello! Welcome back. It’s been a little while, so first things first, how are you and have there been any significant changes since we last spoke?

Well, first off, we’re happy you haven’t lost interest in all this time . And then we’re very proud of our second album, which has been something like three years in the making. Proud and tired, as it’s been hard work and a turbulent time, with pretty major line up changes happening. Our lead guitarist and co founding member, Julien, chose to leave the band early in the process of recording the album, because there was too much going on in his personal life to keep up with the work needed for us to sound the way we want to. David, our bass player, was in fact always a guitarist, and had gradually taken over much of the prep and performance work for the songs that ended up on the second album, so he naturally slipped into the role; which means we had to find another bass player, Arnaud, and also another guitarist, Nico – because the new songs were clearly written and arranged to be performed on stage with two guitars. Last but not least, we’ve finally hired a competent manager – Emma, who also turns out to be a very skilled keyboard player and backing singer, so she’s with us on stage performing most of the synth parts – there’s very little left for the sequencer to do. All ends well that ends well – we’re still very good friends with Julien, and we sound bigger and better than ever.

2. So, what’s new? What’s keeping you busy this time around? A new album/EP/single release? A new video? Playing live, or planning ahead?

Mostly it’s our second album, “The Maze”. The digital versions have been out since November 29th last year, and we’re finally releasing it on audiophile grade vinyl as well in April. For a lot of reasons, we couldn’t do that the first time around, but this time the stars aligned, and we’re really excited about it – two of us in the band are massive vinyl fans, and our mastering engineer, Andy Van Dette, is famous for his vinyl mastering skills : he was the one behind the incredible sound of Porcupine Tree’s “In absentia” – which is one of the very best sounding records ever.

3. Describe what fans/listeners can expect.

Well – it’s an evolution from the first album. It’s still “big sound, big emotions” as one reviewer said, which we think perfectly summarizes what we’re trying to accomplish. Another one said that each of the songs was like a self-contained film for your ears, and that’s also good – we want that sort of widescreen effect, that combination of rock power and electronic atmospheres that creates a vivid picture in your mind, in the service of what the song has to say – melodically and lyrically. It’s more diverse and crazier at times than the first one because we’ve allowed ourselves to go full-on in whichever direction each song called for – as opposed to a slightly more self-conscious, self-constrained manner of sticking to our own formula on the first one. It’s freer. We haven’t become better than last time at giving it a tag or a label though – we’re told it’s alternative hard rock, or heavy alternative rock, and they’re both probably true. It’s a cross between a melodic metal influence (David, who composed the backbone of most of the songs, is a big fan of Alter Bridge, and we’ve been flatteringly compared to A Perfect Circle as well), and the sound of stadium-filling electronic post punks like Depeche Mode.

4. Tell me about the work that has gone into making it a reality and what it means to you to see it come to fruition?

Oh the work was NEVER ENDING, mate. We’re old school perfectionists in all the wrong ways, so we spent a lot of time building not just the melody, but the arrangement and pre production of each of the songs before going into the studio. Then it was months of recordings to get exactly the sound we wanted, including recording REAL live drums on an analogue console (Brian Robbins, who again mixed the album in NYC, says we’re pretty much the only band left that he works with to use live drums and not virtual emulations). And of course there was only three of us, plus our rec engineer and co producer of sorts, Yvan Barone, carrying the whole thing through. So it did feel like a marathon. But it’s very gratifying to sit back and get that feeling that you’ve made the album you had in mind, with no compromises made or corners cut.

5. Sum up what this latest development says about you and where you find yourself at this moment in time?

On the one hand postpartum depression. When you spend so much time and effort perfecting every nook and cranny of 45 minutes’ worth of music – it does feel like you’ve made someone. But on the other hand – beaming pride.

6. Has the time since we last spoke been a mostly positive period and has there been any one thing that stands out as being good?

It’s been life : ups and downs. But managing to make the album exactly as we wanted it is a big plus. Also it has what is possibly our first ever explicitly OPTIMISTIC song on it, called “Queen of the Broken” – so we must have felt good at some point, somehow. TRANK songs typically deal with fairly intense subjects, mostly observational and pretty intensely emotional, and what we do is make those 3 or 4 or 5 minute movies-for-your-ears to create catharsis. This one particular film / song has a happy ending – or at least the character in it believes it.

7. How about something that has challenged you since we last spoke? Has there been any particular thing that tested you, and if so, how did you overcome it?

Well, losing your lead guitarist certainly qualifies. But I think the biggest challenge was – well, the first album was basically us defining our sound, our territory, that blend of lyrical intensity with power riffing and cinematic synths. How do we stay true to that, which we love, but expand our own world and avoiding repeating the same record ? From that point of view, writing and arranging as a three piece actually helped, because it was literally not quite the same team – so it couldn’t be quite the same album. But it was a challenge, still – because we’re still very proud of the first one, so it was tempting to repeat it.

Another challenge was that we included a cover of a pretty legendary song on the album – Pink Floyd’s “Hey You”. We had recorded a first version during the 2020 lockdown, because what better way of dealing with the frustration of not being able to play together, then performing one of the best songs ever written about the inability to communicate ? We were very proud of our arrangement of it – so it was obvious from the fist discussions about the second album’s song list that it had to be on it. We re-recorded it entirely in the same studios where we made the rest of the album, to do it full justice, and Yvan did a beautiful mix of it – still, it’s a bit of a monument, that song, so you always worry about what the fans are going to think… But it seems to go down really well, and pretty much every review we’ve had so far has singled it out in a positive way, so we’re relieved.

8. What is a realistic goal you’d like to achieve over the next 12 months?

Not have another line-up change; and play live as much as we can. That’s what those songs are made for, no matter how long we take to perfect them in the studio. There is that schizophrenia with us – we’re slower and more nitpicky than bloody Steely Dan, but what we live for is the stage.

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