This period in the history of humanity has been one of the most testing for everyone around the world, with life being put on pause for a lot of people. Being a musician in this period has been hard, with tours being cancelled and postponed, taking away the most vital part of being in a band: playing to a live audience. It has allowed artists the opportunity to be more creative, whether that be via a new medium, or a new record. For Holding Absence frontman Lucas Woodland, it has also been a time of frustration. "We finished recording this record a year ago, and due to the world being the way it is, we’ve had to sit on it all this time. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times and now I’m excited to see what the fans think."

The day this interview took place, Lucas Woodland was unveiled as the cover star for one of the UK’s premiere music magazines. It’s all systems go for Holding Absence, as they gear up for the release of their sophomore record ‘The Greatest Mistake Of My Life’. Inspiration came to Lucas from his Grandmother who, after giving her a copy of the band’s self-titled debut record, told him that his Great Uncle had recorded a cover version of Gracie Field’s ‘The Greatest Mistake Of My Life’. After listening to it, Lucas felt an immediate kinship to the song. So much so, he covers it as the final track on the soundtrack like album. 

Like everyone, Lucas has been subject to lockdown but has used the time to be creative. “Ultimately, I’m doing okay, I’m at peace with myself. I feel like life is better now than when we went into lockdown, I wish it hadn’t happened but I’m a happier and healthier person than I was before. I really got into writing. I’ve started work on a book and a comic. Everything’s in the fledging stage and I don’t know if anything will ever happen with them. I spent hundreds of hours just poring over words so I’m hoping that album three’s lyrics are better than ‘The Greatest Mistake of My Life’.”

Every record release means the start of a new era for a band, and Holding Absence are no different. This album could’ve been the difficult second record that many bands have issues with but listening to the record, it’s clear HA have avoided that with ease. “I don’t know if we did anything different, but I think we did everything better compared to the first record. Lyrically and vocally I’m the best I’ve ever been. The band is the most progressive and brave it’s ever been. The production and experience were also so much better. I don’t feel that we tried to reinvent the wheel with this record, we just tried to make a much better wheel than we did last time. We’ve been sat on this record for about a year now, we finished recording it just before the first lockdown started, and now we’ve reached the one year anniversary. It does feel, and by no means do I mean that I’m over the record, but I’ve listened to it at least a hundred times. I’ve spoken to maybe six people who have heard it.”

While a kindred spirit of the debut record, there are different influences that can be heard, especially on ‘Drugs and Love’. “The idea for that song was to go for a Deftones’ vibe in the verse, big Chino Moreno vibes – the idea of not doing much with the vocals, and still feeling your way around the sounds. I really enjoy that we get so many different vibes from so many different places and it makes it unobvious what we are influenced by.” Throughout the record, each song bleeds into the next, making it sound like a movie soundtrack, making this record a complete body of work. “It was conscious, of course it was conscious to have each song blur over each other, but I’ve never thought of it as doing what a soundtrack does, with scores climbing over each other into other things. To be honest, the soundtrack idea is a subconscious thing, we definitely wanted the songs to overlap. The thing is, when you write albums, especially the way that we do, you want people to listen to every second of it, in order. It was a kind of spiteful way of making people have to listen to it in full. Even if you don’t listen to it in full, you’ll still have that awkward, lingering note from the last song at the beginning of the next song.”

Last year, Holding Absence released two standalone singles, ‘Gravity’ and ‘Birdcage’ which do not appear on this record. While everyone thought the new era started last year with these releases, that wasn’t the case. “I’ve always been transparent that this is something that we enjoy doing. We started our career with six staggered singles. These two songs were kinda us doing that again, and being transparent as always, I’d love to do it again, I’d love to do another split release again. I feel that this album was written as a full album, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. It’s cool that they have their own space. Fun fact, we wrote ‘Gravity’, ‘Drugs and Love’ & ‘Afterlife’ in the same week when we went to write with Dan Weller, the producer. We went up to see him in the summer of 2019, as we go and write with him sometimes.” 

Every new era brings changes, whether that be in the music or with the aesthetics of how the band present themselves. The ‘This is Holding Absence’ era saw a black and white colour scheme, but with the release of ‘The Greatest Mistake of My Life’ everything is now in colour and with a retro look, more in keeping with the title track’s original release timescale. “They weren’t specifically tied to one another, the vibe that we had did tie them together. Trying to be cinematic and with Holding Absence, we’ve always tried to be really epic and we thought about leaving the black and white behind and we questioned how do we do this? We just thought, let’s just do it as hard as we can, make it as grand, royal and regal as we can. The videos, going back to the music videos and the artwork, we wanted to make the imagery very grandiose. We felt the clothes was a good way of doing that. The idea of making everything feel timeless, the same way that the song is, like a hundred years old, we’re in clothes that would’ve been fashionable sixty years ago.”

Recently, Holding Absence saw the departure of founding member James Joseph, who left to further his musical aspirations with ‘James and the Cold Gun’. This was another lineup change for the band, with Feisal El-Khazragi who left before the release of the debut record to join Loathe. “James is on every song, every bass part is played by him. He left after we had recorded the album. I think lockdown made him realise that he wanted to be in his own project and I don’t think he really enjoyed playing bass that much. It was a purely artistic decision on his end and as his best friends, the guys who have done everything with him, we just wanted to respect whatever made him happy to be honest. James had a lot of input on this record, and not to drag James, but a lot of the record is me and Scott. After doing this record, I’m not worried about album three. We’ve known each other for so long, I knew James before he ever played a gig, I met him when he was going out with my Mum’s friend’s daughter, so we go way back. It was as surprising as it wasn’t really. He had dwindled in terms of interest over the last year or two, which is fine, we didn’t pressure him. He naturally gravitated away and to be honest, I never thought he would leave, I thought that was it forever. When he did leave, I was shocked, but looking back it makes sense and definitely was the right choice for him.

“In my mind, there have only been two big line up changes really for us. Gio & Chris, when they both left, they weren’t particularly core members, so we knew that we could carry on without them. But when Feisal and James left, both times they were big. It was hard for me emotionally and as a person, they were both best friends of mine. Knowing James for a decade and having lived with Feisal, it was harder on me on a personal level. Realistically, we always used to say and we still believe that Holding Absence is bigger than anyone. It doesn’t matter who is in the band, it just matters that the band keeps on going. If we had split up, Feisal and James would have been really upset about that, I knew that myself and Ash wanted to carry on no matter what.”

Going back to speaking about the record, ‘Holding Absence’ released their third single ‘In Circles’ recently and when asked about it, Lucas is very articulate in his answer . “I think it’s a very epic, clever, subtle track. It’s about how life is boring and how people never try to achieve their dreams and how sad that is really. It’s not a commentary on my end talking about people. It’s a commentary that I am talking as a person. It’s so easy to not try in life, so easy. I think that’s dangerous as hell, I’m really glad I’ve been given the opportunity to try things in life and achieve some of my dreams. Lyrically the song has a real strong, subtle underlying message and as far as a song goes, it’s a real mission statement that we can do real epic music but also quite linear smart music as well.”

Holding Absence have always been a brave band, not willing to sit still and stay in their lane. With big choruses in some songs, and big riffs in others, they are a band who can do so many different types of music and still keep it together under the umbrella of Holding Absence. Feeding into their heavier side, Lucas was asked to be a guest vocalist on a remix album by Australian Metalcore outfit Void of Vision. “I’ve gotta be honest, I’ve never spoken to or met any of those guys. The vocalist, Jack Bergen, emailed me about working on a song. To be honest, I’ve not done guest vocals for years, I’ve turned down hundreds of guest vocal requests, as I didn’t want to spread myself too thin. I thought to myself though that music has to change, the industry is growing old and changing in front of us. We need to embrace that. What Void of Vision did with that collar record, it was like ‘Thriller’s-Plastic Beach-goes-metalcore’. Every song has a brilliant artist with their own spin on things. I just thought aside from the fact that A) the band is sick & B) Jack is a legend and so is every other member from what I’ve heard so happy days, for me, it was about the project and I believed in the project and I wanted to be a part of it. There’ve been polarising comments about my voice, but if they’re talking about you whether good or bad, they’re still talking about you so I’ll take that.”

When speaking of collaborations, it comes to light that there is a female singer on some of ‘The Greatest Mistake of My Life’ to which Lucas reveals the mystery lady. “Every interviewer ever has asked me this. It’s my sister. I’d written a duet song called ‘Die Alone (In Your Lover’s Arms)’ and we tried to get a guest vocalist and that didn’t work out. We had this song, and it was wicked and deserved to go on the album. It was written as a duet and we knew it needed to be a duet, and I thought ‘who better to sing that than my sister who I’ve been singing with from the age of two onwards!’ She’s always been a part of my musical life, it was a special thing but we didn’t want to make too big a deal out of it. The point with collabs is either you go hard or you go home with it. If we had gotten a big artist on it, we would’ve been like ‘blah blah blah featuring blah blah blah’ but because it’s my sister, we thought it would be cooler to not mention her at all and let it feel like part of the song.”

Looking at the rest of 2021, Holding Absence have two tours lined up. A headline tour to celebrate the release of the record and the main support slot to Creeper. “Disclaimer, I’m more excited for our headline tour, playing in venues that we’ve never played in before, we’ll be playing hella songs off of the record, and nothing beats playing to your own crowd, absolutely nothing. I’m ecstatic and so excited. At the same time, the Creeper tour, the lineup is stupidly good. Every best band in the UK is on that, and it’s been postponed like five times. It does feel like ‘oh let’s just do that bloody tour already’. I’m super excited for that as well, Creeper are a band who I’ve admired for a very long time. Ever since they were side stage watching us at 2000Trees, I’ve always respected their support for us. Every interviewer has said to me ‘you know Wargasm and Static Dress are supporting, y’know the two coolest bands going at the moment’ so we’re excited. When headlining a show, the mentality is that the crowd are there for you, give them the best show that you can, thank them as much as possible through the music that they believe in. Being on a support tour, you’ve gotta work for your food every night, grab as much attention as you can, with the best performance you can whilst remembering who you are and being humble. One of my biggest issues with being a musician is that you’ve got to be arrogant a lot of the time, like the magazine cover of me is hysterical, cause I don’t look like that, but I’ve gotta look like that and be the strong, confident guy. Headlining a stage, you have to be strong and confident, whilst supporting you’ve gotta be humble and respectful. You’ve gotta work hard.”

Looking to the future, in the immediate, ‘The Greatest Mistake of My Life’ comes out in April, and with two tours already booked, Lucas sets out a strong mission statement for the rest of the cycle. “We wanna do everything, we haven’t done before to be honest. This feels like our actual first start. When the America tour got cancelled, that was a huge thing that got taken from us, then COVID hit and then James left. When the album comes out, we’ll have a strong stable lineup, a brilliant album to tour, and we’re going to have a new found sense of urgency. Get me out there, take me to Australia, Japan, America, everywhere that I haven’t been so I can play music for people.”

Holding Absence have long been lauded for their work ethic, touring the country up and down, entertaining and gaining recognition for their music. ‘The Greatest Mistake of My Life’ certainly isn’t a title that reflects them. This record is a triumph and really takes the band forward, it’ll be the record that catapults them into the bigger venues. and they now have two stellar albums in their discography. Summarising this release, Lucas says; “It’s hard because it’s lazy to say that this is so much better, it’s the laziest answer but it just is. It does everything so much better, it does everything I wanted the debut to do and more. I’m just so proud of it on a personal level and a professional level. The reviews and feedback have been so great, I’m really positive that it’ll connect to people and be a special album. The main thing is, I’d hate for people to miss out on it. I think music changes lives and the concept of this album changing anyone’s life is so cool. I love the thought of everyone on Earth giving this album a listen for that reason.”

Everyone should be giving this band their time of day, with the big choruses, emotional laden lyrics and genuine humanity, this is the band that should be championed as the big hope for the scene, to break out and become a mainstay in the big venues. This Is Holding Absence… Now in Colour.