Interview by Tarja Virmakari

London-based SKINDRED is totally unique and remain without peer in music today. The quintessentially British band is the only one to have combined elements of punk, rock, metal, reggae and electronic music with such success. 2012 has so far seen Skindred headline a Sold out Brixton academy show (5000 capacity) and at Download Festival and a number of other key festivals globally, the future looks red hot for Britains most exciting Live act. Recently Metalshock Finland‘s Tarja Virmakari had a chance to interview Dan Pugsley (bass), please join the conversation…

1. Hi Dan, I’m Tarja, welcome to Metalshock Finland! we had to do this interview at Myötätuulirock in Finland (in august), but only a couple of days before you had to cancel your show… what happened?

Hi Tarja! We were set to play a festival the day before in Czech called Sazavafest and sadly they cancelled us which left us unable to book flights from direct from the UK without it costing either Myötätuulirock or us to much money as flight costs had risen considerably. Sadly sometimes things happen that are beyond our control and we truly wanted to rock the festival and were really looking forwards to it.

2. Your genre can be considered quite unique, you yourself call it “Ragga Punk Metal”, it’s a mix of heavy metal, punk and reggae, with elements of dancehall, jungle, hardcore, ska, hip hop and what else… but how did you find it?  

We see what we do as a decedent of the artist’s like the Clash and the Specials personally bands like the beastie boys and Massive attack growing up meant i was exposed to samples of reggae punk jazz and all manner of musical genres that would have other wise passed this metal kid by.

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