Interview: Jason of Ingested

On a chilly Tuesday evening in the West Midlands, I head down to the O2 Academy Birmingham early to meet Jason, lead vocalist and frontman of Ingested. He greets me with a warm handshake and invites me onto their tour bus, which feels very comfortable after two to three weeks of touring with Lorna Shore in Europe. We find a chill out room away from the bunk beds with a few bags and a couple of PlayStation controllers lying around. It's the first show on this run in the UK for Ingested and Jason seems to show a gentle, weary sense of relief for being in his home country.

Jason: How are you man?

The Razor's Edge: I'm good thanks, how are you?

Jason:  Yeah, really good man. We've just been smashing our way through Europe on the Pain Remains tour with Lorna Shore, Rivers of Nihil and Distant. All the shows have been wild. Now we've arrived in Birmingham to do the UK leg of the tour, so we're really excited to be back on home soil, to be honest.

The Razor's Edge: I guess you're two thirds of the way through at this point. Has anything been new or novel on this run?

Jason: (pauses) I mean, we've been a band for seventeen years now. We've toured Europe loads. When you're out and about, there's nothing really that you haven't seen before, all these places I've been to before. But the sheer size of the crowds is something I've not seen before on a deathcore or death metal tour. We played to 6,000 people in Munich.

The Razor's Edge: Really?!

Jason:  It's wild.
Actually, I do tell a lie. We went to Finland for two shows, which I've never been to before. We played an ice hockey arena, which is again, mental. There were thousands and thousands of people, it was a proper arena - we've never played in an arena.

The Razor's Edge: It feels since Covid that Lorna Shore has really blown up. As TikTok has got big and they've discovered the things Will can do with his voice, all the bands that are part of that wave have come up with them.

Jason: Well, this is the thing. All the hype around Lorna Shore, they back it. They back it with their music and they back it with their live shows, it's real! You get all these other hype bands that are all fur coat and no knickers, whereas Lorna Shore are the real deal. Another thing that I love about them is that they don't have to take bands out. They could do this on their own and the same amount of tickets would be sold, but they take their friends out with them.

The Razor's Edge: You can't take it for granted.

Jason: It's fucking brilliant. They want to share what they've got with their friends which is awesome. It's proper classy. There's other bands that don't do that, but Lorna aren't one of those bands. Big respect to them.

The Razor's Edge: It's quite cold out at the moment. I imagine it's quite difficult several weeks into a tour to keep your voice fresh. How do you like to stop it burning out in these conditions?

Jason: Just staying hydrated, really, and drinking lots of tea. I've got a contraption called a vocal mist as well, which is like a nebuliser. It comes with sachets of saline water, and it has a face mask where you just breathe it in for ten minutes. That helps hydrate your vocal cords, because the problem with vocals is that you can drink water, and that water will pass by your vocal cords but won't hydrate them for another 30-40 minutes. If I use the vocal mist, it shortens that wait time.

Lemon and honey's really good, ginger's really good, and turmeric's really good. Other than that, I use Vocalzone teabags. Not talking obviously helps.

The Razor's Edge: You were recently in Australia with Archspire and Werewolves. What was that like?

Jason: It was amazing, the shows were crazy! It was actually our first time down there.we only did six shows but it was brilliant. We'd talked about going to Australia for years, but for whatever reason we hadn't been able to do it each time, this time it all just came together and we were able to get down. We want to go back and headline next time. This sounds strange, but I had a really strong feeling that I'd never been so far from home.

The Razor's Edge: Do you prefer to headline or support when you're on tour?

Jason: There's pros and cons to both. The finances aren't as good when you're supporting, but you can go out and play to a bigger band's audience and be exposed to a lot more people. On this tour the crowds have been bigger than ever.

On headliners you get to play more songs to people you know who've come for you, but it's different when you're doing vocals. Three weeks of doing death metal vocals for an hour is brutal! Support slots are only half an hour. Also, it's not like I'm 20 and invincible anymore, so I can't get hammered after a show and just wake up feeling fine!

When I'm doing vocals, I get into work mode, so the adrenaline just flows through me when I'm performing. But after you step offstage after the final shows it's almost like you have a mental block and can't even speak any more when you get home.

We've been opening with a new one on this tour, but I can't really say much more than that!