Dan Lewin, lead guitarist of heavy as-all-heavy-things act Enquire Within (with some help from vocalist Jacob) tells us all about the band, and gets us all excited for EP Elysium!
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We’re from London, we’re actually all from the same town. 4 of us went to the same school, at different times.
How did you meet?
Henry and I went to school together and were in the same year. His brother Jacob was a couple of years above us and Erim a couple above Jacob. We met (re-met?) Erim at a festival in Gravesend, he offered to record some songs for us. He was starting his recording career in his studio.
How long have you been playing as a band?
Henry and I started playing together around 2013, kids in the garage kind of thing. We asked Jacob to us just before we went into the studio to record our first set of demos in 2015. They’ve mysteriously gone missing, which is probably for the best! I’d say that’s when we really became a band, so it’s been a journey. Erim ed a bit later in 2020ish, we were doing a tour with another band on our label at the time and he stepped in on bass to help us out. We then got the chance to play the O2 Academy, main stage, in Sheffield and Birmingham later that year / early next so he stuck around for that and our tour with Acid Reign, then the new EP… we’ve not gotten sick of him yet!
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
It’s really stupid, as you can imagine for 17 year olds at the time. We’re not great at naming things – we were batting around a few names at the time. Henry saw a sign saying “for applications, enquire within”. It had a ring to it, so we put it in the pot of names. It was the best of the batch and we thought, we can change it later if we think of something better. We did not in fact change it later.
What are your influences?
Our influences vary from member to member but it’s mostly early 2000s rock and metal – basically the stuff that was on channels like MTV and Scuzz back in the day. Slipknot, Avenged, Trivium, Lamb of God, Machine Head. I’m not a huge fan of the whole metal subgenre thing – I think it gets a little preclusive – but anything from Metalcore, groove or Nu-metal.
The specific influences for the EP Elysium though are Gojira (fantastic live show at Ally Pally recently), Trivium with the blistering riffs, Lamb of God for that groove and a bit of Machine Head for Jacob’s vocals.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
I think what makes us unique is that we don’t have a set-in stone style. We write music that we want to listen to, and we take on aspects of what we are enjoying in the moment. For example, if we are feeling thrash music, we write a thrashy song, if we are more in a metalcore mood then that’s what we are writing. We don’t have an “Enquire Within Sound Bible” that dictates how each of our songs should sound. It really is the rule of cool – if it sounds good, then it is.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
I’ll have to over to Jacob for that one!
Hello! I’m a rather morbid writer so a lot of my lyrics aren’t the happiest. We touch in topics from serial killers, mental illness, familial trauma and of course the apocalypse! Cheerful stuff!
If you like what we do, consider ing us on Patreon for as little as £1 per month!
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
Heavy and a lot of fun. We have to build in breaks because we’ve tired out an audience once or twice! I’ve seen a lot of bands that just go through the motions, they just play the songs. We try really hard to make sure that the audience get into the music, that they know what’s coming – a great example is during Battle Torn, we get them to sing the chorus and people always come up to us after the show saying they loved that one with the leader. (check out the song, it’ll make sense).
We’re about to go on tour with our new EP Elysium and we’re crafting the show right now. We’ve got some cool stage dressings and a few of the songs have intro tracks to really set the mood. I think it’s important to take your crowd on a journey through your music. We will play our 100th gig during the tour.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Jacob will appreciate this one, it has to be the show at the Dev on Camden. On a good night it is packed to the rafters and when we played there it was heaving. I enjoy getting as close to the crowd as I can and there was this one gentleman who obviously had a touch too much to drink. In a particularly heavy portion of the song he began headbanging violently and proceeded to headbutt J right in a place you do not want to be headbutted. Repeatedly! After the song he collapsed on the monitor and J had to gently but firmly peel him off. The next time we saw him, he had been neatly folded away in the corner.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
I play Schecter guitars, Mesa amps and use Boss for all my pedals. I know Henry has an Odery Fluence Jazz Fusion kit, mostly Zildjian A custom cymbals and Pearl Pedals.
I’ve always liked the neck profile of Schecters, they just feel right in my hand – a good balance between a fast neck and one that you can dig into for those heavy rhythm sections.
Henry and I went to Wembley Drum Centre to try out a few kits – we went through 4 or 5 before settling on the Odery kit. It had a really nice responsiveness to it and it came with 4 toms which meant we could use any set up we could think of.
What, if anything, are you plugging/promoting at the moment?
We are about to release our latest EP Elysium and on the back of that embark on our first ever Headline UK tour! Elysium really is the sum of our experiences over the last year or so, touring with Acid Reign, playing at the O2 Academies. It’s big, bombastic and absolutely brilliant. We’ve also printed it to vinyl for the first time which was very exciting as someone who collects records.
Quick shout out to our single – “Point of No Return”. The guys let me have my moment of shredderific guitar bliss. The single is coming out on 24th May, a week before Elysium drops.
What are your plans for the next 6 months or so?
We’re going on tour baby! UK Headline – the Gates of Elysium tour starting at our home, Camden’s the Black Heart on 31st May. We’re playing with our friends from the London Metal Coalition Halberd and Detoxen. If you’ve been going to underground metal gigs in London at any point over the last 10 years, you should know at least 1 of us! From there we’re going all over the country and up to Scotland and Wales as well. Dates and tickets are available on our website.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be ing and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
As much as I’d love to say someone like Trivium (which would be a dream gig for me), being more realistic, I’d love to go on tour with Evile. We played a couple of shows with them at the end of 2023 and we got on really well. It would be great to be able to play a longer string of shows with them.
For openers, there are some fantastic bands in the London Metal Coalition, Halberd are a favourite of mine – their stage show is very fun to watch, and their music is fast and aggressive. Evile, Enquire Within, Halberd would be an exceptional night.
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