We got the chance to have a chat with Bristol's purveyors of Amphibious swamp-doom, Froglord, after they had the honour of opening up the new and improved Sophie Lancaster Stage on the Saturday morning at this years Bloodstock Festival.
The 'Froglord' himself, vocalist Benjamin Oak, guitarist Jordan 'Caudata' Cross, bassist Luke 'Bufo' Clemenger and drummer Chris 'Anura' Seldon. Having previously played on the New Blood Stage at 2024's festival as winners of the Bristol Metal 2 The Masses that year, we spoke about returning to the festival and playing bigger stages, what recent touring life has been like alongside Cancer Bats and what the goals are for the future.
MSM: So you guys are Froglord and you played on the Sophie Stage this morning...how was that?
Benjamin: We are Froglord, we did play on Sophie stage this morning, and yeh what was that like, yeh that was freaking great, wasn't it?
The tent looked absolutely rammed, which must have been cool for that early in the morning
Chris: Yeh that was wild for 10:30 in the morning.
Benjamin: Without a shadow of a doubt that was the largest swamp we've ever played to.
Luke: Yeh that's the record holder right there.
Benjamin: I mean the previous record holder was the last time we played Bloodstock.
images @siarinze
Yeh, because you boys played on the New Blood Stage a couple of years ago, so getting to step up to what is now the newer and bigger and overall improved Sophie Stage must have been pretty cool?
Luke: Yeh....errrh pretty daunting that, the fact that it was way bigger.
Benjamin: Our frog legs were shaking before going on.
Obviously you guys have improved since the last time you were here; you've got a lot more production on stage, and you even had backing dancers and everything today. You can see the step up and the progression since then, is that where you guys are trying to get to?
Luke: We just want to get more frogs...bigger frogs...frogs in every way.
Jordan: It comes naturally, as you start getting asked to do more serious more professional shows, well I guess we better get some more frogs I suppose.
Chris: Yeh more frogs, big frogs, any kind of frogs.
You were recently out on tour with Cancer Bats; seeing some of the stuff that you got up to on that tour looked fun as all hell, what was that experience like?
Benjamin: That was a crazy experience to be able to go on that one, a little story on that, in about January Liam Cormier, the lead singer of Cancer Bats, he DM'd us o Instagram, he sent us a message saying "hello my name is Liam and I sing in a band called Cancer Bats" I immediately closed the message thinking, yeh f*** off, of course you do mate; expecting the next message to be like "our tour van's broken down, send us £500 to get back on the road". I came back to it a couple of minutes later and was like wait a minute this is the real deal and then to do that tour was like mid blowing.
Luke: That tour was something else, to be able to play in those sorts of venues it was massive.
Jordan: We've had three grand experiences over the last month, the tour with Cancer Bats, phenomenal, phenomenal guys, super fun to be around, then we had Canada...
Benjamin: Yeh, we did Canada for a few days and then culminating here in the greatest of Blood-swamps.
images @siarinze
So, on the touring vibe then, who is in charge of the AUX chord, who sets the playlist when you're on the road?
Benjamin: To be fair, it's mostly us two [points at Jordan] doing the driving. I reckon I did about 70% of it, so we're mostly in charge.
Jordan: (in Kevin & Perry voice) Yes, I am mostly your fellow DeeeJay.
Benjamin: We like a good bit of Madonna, and we love our Cher.
Jordan: Yeh, we bloody love Cher.
Luke: Like most metal bands I recon, metal music is probably the last thing that we'll listen to.
Chris: We'd rather be listening to the Venga Boys or like Jamiroquai.
Benjamin: Post show travelling back to the travel lodge like some 90's euro-trash, sometimes dungeon synth.
That leads nicely into the next question: taking heavy music out of the equation altogether, is there one artist, one band, one genre that you would say influences your sound completely outside of metal?
Benjamin: I'm really into my blues-grass, so a lot of that kind of vibe...ah you've put me on the spot and now I cant think of a single artist...
Jordan: I like Eric Clapton outside of metal, we're very blues orientated.
Benjamin: Yeh we play "stoner-doom" so blues is what we heavily lean into.
Luke: Ha, yeh the thing I'm trained in, I can actually play.
images @siarinze
This time next year, if there was one bucket list thing, one big goal to achieve that you could manifest, what's it going to be?
Benjamin: BIIIG FROG!!!
Chris: Haha yeh, Big Frog.
Jordan: Big Frog.
Luke: Every time we set a goal or a threshold we get randomly offered something that completely bypasses it we're like what do we look forward to now, every time we think this is the biggest thing we're about to do, something else comes up.
Jordan: Lets pick something really really big then.
Luke: For next year I can't even imagine.
Jordan: Let's tour with Rob Zombie then.
Benjamin: (In his best Gru impression) "Tonight we steal the moon".
Final question; if you had to add one extra member to the band but it had to be an animated character, a cartoon character, or something fictional completely made up, who are they, and what are they playing?
Luke: (Whilst doing the voice) Kermit the Frog playing the banjo.
Jordan: Yeh Kermit the Frog playing the banjo is probably the right call there.
Benjamin: Yeh no, I can't top that.
