Cult Called Man opened up for All Tvvins at the Olympia last weekend with an electrifying set that took us all back to the 80s. If the vibe of the music wasn’t enough, the entire band came decked out in their best outfits- red pants, printed suits, and, for frontman Razmo, silver glittering platform boots, the tallest I think I’ve ever seen. I got a chance to catch up with him and (mostly) the rest of the band. We all gathered around the venue after the gig; Razmo, guitarist Keane, bassist Sebastian, and keyboardist Joe. At that point, Razmo had abandoned the boots for an older pair of trainers. “I rehearsed in the boots for the past two weeks, just to make sure that I wasn’t gonna fall over,” Razmo explained. “But still I thought I would. It was good that I didn’t. If I did though, at least it would be a talking point for everybody.”
It was their first gig at the Olympia for the band. After a successful gig, they seemed optimistic about their future prospects. “We just did the Olympia, so the next big one after that’s gonna be the 3Arena, I guess,” said Joe. “We’ve never played at a place this big before.”
“It was absolutely terrifying,” Keane confessed.
If you weren’t lucky enough to catch their set at the Olympia, Cult Called Man can at least give you some kind of an idea of what you’d be getting into with their music. “You know Kevin Spacey and Jim Carrey?” Razmo asked. “Those guys, I’m really influenced by those guys. But musically, 80s funk rock. We’re going for new-age glam rock, man.”
“Basically, take the decade of the 80s and whack it into an album,” Joe summarized.
Keane spoke up with a clever description of the bands’ sound. “You know all those bands you hear on the radio everyday? Yeah, we don’t sound like them.”
“But we would like to be on the radio,” interjected Razmo.
The band has returned home after a tour promoting their new album, Cult Fiction, and Joe was happy to tell the whole story. “We just started branching out outside Dublin, taking all these gigs we could get, We just play everywhere, try and get in people’s faces around the country as much as possible. It was a lot of fun though, we had a van, named it Morrison, for Van Morrison, that was Keane’s idea. We like puns, if you couldn’t tell, with the name of the album being Cult Fiction. We’re gonna be at the Button Factory to send the album off in December. It’s on vinyl now, and we wanted an excuse to play the Button Factory, so there you go.”
“We’re not going anywhere anytime soon though, we’re around for a bit, so come see us while we’re here,” said Keane.
“Yeah,” Sebastian said, “Then you can say, I saw this band when they were no one.”
“Come now,” Joe laughed, “cause we still might be no one later.”
Cult Called Man are holding their album release show at the Button Factory next month on December 2.