Useless Children are about to head to the States in support of their new 7" EP Skins. Recorded by master engineer Sloth at Headgap Studios in Preston, Skins focuses the post-grunge trio's sound into a dense and dark three songs, each one far greater in depth (and length) of anything previously recorded. Released by innovative and respected independent label EXO, their self-titled 2008 EP was a brief punk burst of excitement, and their full length 2009 album Sky Is Falling (as with the EP, recorded by Eddy Current Suppression Rings's Mikey Young) led them to a lush, brooding mix of driving, carnal rock. This new release sees them stepping back from their punk roots (that is not to say that this EP isn't distorted - they literally ran everything through Big Muffs), but the songs are well paced, dynamic and more biting and dramatic than anything they have done before. The 7" is being pressed and released in the States by revered and influential Chicago label Criminal IQ, and will find local release via Fuse on the group's return. Their two month coast-to-coast tour takes them to such musically important cities such as Austin, Seattle, New York and Washington. It's an interesting and decisively daring move to tour a country that hasn't heard them before, but as we talk to guitarist Rob about the decsion, we find that it's a tour based more on necessity than reason.

Useless Children are about to embark on a tour in the States – why America, and why now?

Well we would have liked to go to Europe, but we really have no points of contact there, we really don't know any current bands in Europe. It might be ignorant on my behalf, but I listen to more bands from America so I figured I'd just write to those people and see if we can tour there. The label Criminal IQ from Chicago – who are releasing our record there – is organising our tour and we're playing with some pretty cool bands like Pissed Jeans and White Mice from Rhode Island who I'm really excited about playing with. It's getting pretty exciting really.

Is this release intended just for the US tour or were you planning on doing it anyway?

It was just our next release, and it's good that we got a US label to do it. But I suppose we would have got someone over here to do it if that fell through. It should be out in the next couple of weeks. The recording process was awesome. It was taking forever to do shit, and Sloth took forever twiddling knobs before we even heard a tape of anything but by the time we did a take he'd already mixed everything! He did so much work before we even did the takes that it was so easy to actually mix everything afterwards. It was a really good process.

You've been playing songs off your upcoming 7" live for a while now, are you getting sick of your old songs?

Well I can't stand any of the ones on the album, and I'm starting to warm up again to the ones off the first EP. I grow to hate old songs, so we're always driving to get new material. I think the 7" is a lot heavier, it's sort of the darker side of the album. In a different recording method it's come out a lot fuller, I suppose we had the option, we had the time and a greater amount of tracks to do it with, so it worked out really well. It's definitely a lot heavier and a lot noisier.

Is that a direction that the band will pursue?

I definitely think that this is a sound that we've been leaning towards for a while, that we've been working towards, and we've finally achieved it with this record and we can grow on that in the future. And as long as we like it I don't really care what anyone else thinks.

So what is happeneing with this release? 

The label that's releasing it have Australian distribution through Fuse so in theory the records should make it out here but we're going to bring some extra copies back for ourselves. Criminal IQ is run by this guy Darius, he's had some pretty cool bands on the label, lots of cool Chicago bands like Functional Blackouts and this great Italian band called Out With A Bang who I really like. And they do all the M.O.T.O. records.

So what are your plans for when you come back to the States?

We don't know who we're playing with yet but we're touring in June in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and hopefully Adelaide as well. 

Interview by Dante Gabriele
Image taken from myspace.com/uselesschildren