There’s something intimidating about Mick Pyro. He’s known for his boozing yet under the gruff exterior he’s incredibly articulate to speak with and fronts one of the best live performances to come out of Ireland in a very long time. Republic of Loose have a dedicated following of their unique sound. Their large band consists of seven, Mick Pyro (vocals), Benjamin Loose (bass, vocals), Deco (keyboards), Dave Pyro (guitar, vocals), Brez (guitar, vocals), Coz Noleon (drums and percussion) and Barnes (drums and percussion), with percussionist Gargos and backing singers Orla La and Eve Ill Jones featuring throughout.
Their sound, for those of you who may not have heard their stuff, is, according to their website, a melting pot of 21st century sound . A mix of hip-hop, old school soulful harmonies and heavy riffs, Loose, rather than sounding all over the place as one might expect, somehow manage to get it just right.
It’s hopeful from their album that they put on a great live performance, but the size of the show can make it difficult to reproduce the recorded sound. It’s tough coz we’ve so much going on in our songs. If we’re doing a big gig, where we can afford to do it, we bring a brass section in and we bring full backing vocals. We’ve done that in The Academy, we’ve done it at a few gigs. Otherwise Deco plays the horn parts on the keys, but it’s tough to replicate live, but we’ve got a lot of experience now doing it, we’re getting kinda used to it .
Their newest album Vol.IV Johnny Pyro and The Dance of Evil was released last year and they have received huge radio play for each of the singles released, including their latest single Awful Cold. The opening track on the album, Got, is one of their most accomplished tracks to date, it’s a big song with so much going on. I wrote most of Got myself, different songs come about differently. Got was a song that was going around in my head for ages, that riff was in my head for ages and then the lyrics came, I could have done a better job with the lyrics maybe (laughs).
Known for their long albums, between 15 and 17 songs, reviewers have been critical of the length but it was released to much anticipation from their fans, People seem to like it. It’s very long, some people find it hard to wade through it you know, coz there’s so many songs on it. I’m happy with it. I’m not really happy with the mixes but the songs are great. With the mixes we could have taken a bit longer. 
They have been heavy on the Irish scene for the past 5 years or so. We’re taken a chill for the next while, we’re doing a few gigs over the next few months and we have the single Awful Cold too, it came out on the 20th of March . The next step for most Irish bands is either the UK or the States. Loose have released their last two albums in the UK and have played in a few high profile venues in the States, such as the world famous Whiskey a Go Go in LA where the likes of Zeppelin and The Doors have played in their hay-day and the ˜Oscar Wilde: Honoring The Irish In Film’ event in Los Angeles. No small feat for the band and certainly a stepping stone towards world domination? So how were they received in the States? Great, you know. We always get on very well in the States, it’s just a matter of industry-wise, trying to secure a distribution gig over there. We don’t know if that’s gona happen. We always get on very well when we do gigs there. We won’t be doing any more recording for a while I wouldn’t say, but we’ll probably be back over in the States,
just takin’ it easy for a while, playing some gigs .
They have also played one of the most famous festivals in Europe, the highlight on the UK music calendar. We get on well in the UK, we did well in Glastonbury, we did great, got a good reception. There’s a good audience at the gigs, but we haven’t had much radio play. We put out the two albums there, we didn’t get any radio play, we might put out another single there, and we’ll see what happens .
It was announced last week that Republic of Loose will be supporting U2 for one of their three Irish shows in Croke Park on July 25th 2009. The only question remains, are you with them?
Interview by: Trish Keenan
