Walsall-based rock four-piece Stone Broken celebrate the release of their brand-new single, titled ‘Remedy‘, supported by a short run of UK summer headline shows along with UK tour dates as special guests to Delain following in November 2024.
I recently caught up with Rich and Robyn from the band at the excellent Firevolt rock festival just before they went on stage as the Friday night Big Top headliners.
Antihero Magazine: First of all, welcome back to the Firevolt Festival. You played the first event a couple of years ago.
Rich Moss: Yeah, we did.
Antihero Magazine: I assumed there was no hesitation in saying, “Yes, we’ll do it again.”
Rich Moss: I mean it’s a nice sort of chilled atmosphere, which is nice.
Robyn Haycock: Yeah, everyone’s super friendly family. It’s great for the fans. Great all round. We absolutely loved it. So, it was like, yes, we’ll come back.
Antihero Magazine: Are you staying for the whole weekend or is it just one of those cases where you fly in, and fly out after you have played your set?
Rich Moss: We are heading back after the show tonight. I mean, we would’ve loved to have stayed and hung out and everything with schedules and life and that sort of stuff. But yeah, we are straight in playing the show, speaking, mingling with the fans, and then headed back.
Antihero Magazine: The band seemed to have been quiet for a period. Was that a conscious decision or due to outside factors and influences?
Rich Moss: There’s been a lot of things. It was a timing thing, really. Covid put a lot of things out of sync for us and we released Revelation, the album and we toured that twice and then we did go a little quiet about what we’ve been writing. We had a new single come out recently called Remedy, which we’ve been working on that was postponed as well. There have been a lot of things behind the scenes that didn’t quite go as we would’ve hoped, but now we are getting back into the swing of things, and hopefully, if nothing else goes wrong…
Antihero Magazine: What about the new single, if you want to talk about it a little bit. Can we discuss how it was created and the particularly sensitive and very personal subject matter?
Rich Moss: Remedy. It was born at the back end of a period of frustration of all these things that were happening. There was a little kind of dip in my mental health, and it was a good way to let it all out. The song was quite raw. The chorus is me shooting words, which is unusual for me, but there were a lot of feelings behind that, and Dan, our producer, managed to capture that really well.
Robyn Haycock: That’s one of the things that you did manage to capture was I think the frustration and the pure rawness of it. We kind of all walked into the studio wanting to create this absolute banger and just get everything off our chest, I guess, and just go ham in the studio and I think that worked.
Rich Moss: I think that’s what I wanted to come across. And the reception from the fans has been very similar.
Antihero Magazine: How did you personally get through that difficult period? Mental health has become more at the forefront these days.
Rich Moss: It was tough. It was tough. I didn’t realise that I was in a bad mental state until I was quite far into that bad mental state. Not wanting to get out of bed in the morning.
Antihero Magazine: I went through something similar a few years ago when there was just no motivation to do anything.
Rich Moss: Exactly, exactly. I mean, I’m quite fortunate in that I’ve got Robyn who’s got….
Antihero Magazine: A support network.
Rich Moss: Yeah. We’ve been together for 17 years, so I’ve had support and that’s one thing that we’ve been talking about more recently. We’ve done some collaborations with mental health organisations to shine the light on it. Not everyone is as fortunate as me having somebody.
Antihero Magazine: Must’ve been difficult for you as well. Like I’ve, I’ve been with this guy for a long time that’s like, and he’s hit rock bottom. Trying to actually get him back again. What was that like for you?
Robyn Haycock: Tough seeing people that you love struggling on a day-to-day basis. And you can only say so much. You can only do so much. We all go through our struggles and as much as I can be there for Rich and anybody else in my life, it’s ultimately up to them and I’ll always be there for them. We get through everything together. We literally do everything together.
Rich Moss: A lot of people struggle to compromise that, don’t they? A lot of people struggle to get their heads around us, being in a band together, but also we do so many other things. But yeah, it’s super important. And like I said, not everyone is as lucky to have someone. People understand. People will be there all the time and my heart goes out to the people who struggle in silence. I spent a lot of time struggling in silence. I didn’t want to admit it because…
Antihero Magazine: It’s difficult. Men generally don’t do that. It seems to be more difficult for men to open up in that way.
Rich Moss: There’s definitely a stigma attached to it. Even these days. Exactly.
Robyn Haycock: It’s just so good to just talk and just get things off your chest, even if it’s just a little list of things. It does so many wonders for your mental health.
Rich Moss: And again, we are lucky in that, regardless, we’ve got multiple outlets for it. We write songs, we tell stories, we have a platform to tell these stories. Not everyone’s got that. So, I can talk about what’s happening here in a song.
Antihero Magazine: Writing a song then about it actually serves as a form of therapy.
Rich Moss: That’s correct. Getting it from your head down onto a piece of paper is therapy and it’s an outlet. An outlet that we have access to and people might listen to. The songs might not even put two and two together.
Antihero Magazine: And other people might also then be able to personally connect those lyrics to something that they have also personally gone through.
Rich Moss: People might. And we’ve had a few people get in touch with us, say, listen to them, that’s what you want. You want to be able to help people because we can’t personally talk to everyone.
Antihero Magazine: You talk to everyone through the song though.
Rich Moss: The song. That’s exactly it. So that’s kind of the objective that’s always been an objective is to try and create positivity through music. Or inspire or get people to talk. We’ve touched on a lot of issues through our songs in the past and when we release a song that it’s unmistakably about something, we tend to have people reach out and say, thank you for writing that to us.
Antihero Magazine: “Wait for you” I guess would be another song that fits into that category.
Rich Moss: “Wait for you.” Yeah.
Robyn Haycock: The stories that we’ve had through messages and emails from fans about that song.
Rich Moss: Astonishing. Yeah. I mean that’s always been a statement. Then also we’ve had so many stories from awesome fans saying, we use your song as their wedding song. Or this was the song that I sent to my partner when we were first getting together.
Rich Moss: Connection. It’s got a sentiment of value for people, which is amazing. And you can’t predict that when you write a song. No. You can just put a song out and hope that people like it and White View is one that really grabbed people. Also, another one that we put out was Heartbeat Away, which is about domestic violence. And we had a few people reach out about that as well, which it was great to be able to put something out and put something on a platform and say, look, this happens. So it’s good for us to have that platform and now I’m almost using it as my tool to get everything out from my brain onto a piece of paper and make art.
Antihero Magazine: We have discussed the new single which has just recently come out Do you have other songs written and will there be another Stone Broken album released soon?
Rich Moss: We have a bunch of unfinished songs on it. Yes, we do. Which I’m pretty sure is common for every single band. We’ll put out an 11-track album and we’ll have 50 unfinished songs, but we do have stuff that we’ve been working on and we’re hoping to get back into the studio pretty soon. Again, it depends on availability for producers and studios and stuff like that, but yeah, we just like that revenue’s gone down so well because that gives you more confidence to go and trade more.
Antihero Magazine: After the festival dates, you’ve got a tour with Delain. Are you familiar with them? I assume you guys don’t pick what tours you play on? It’s all management PR people that do that.
Rich Moss: To be fair, we have conversations with them and that all was brought forward to us saying, would you like? And we said, yeah, I know Kieron listens to (Delain).
Robyn Haycock: Kieron is a big fan.
Rich Moss: And we are super familiar with their stuff and it’s kind of a slightly different audience to play to. And I think that’s a great thing for any band is to push themselves out of their comfort zone a little playing in front of the brand new people as well as bring the crowd along.
Antihero Magazine: Sure. Attract a new audience.
Rich Moss: Exactly. So yeah, we are looking forward to it. We haven’t supported anyone on a tour for five years, so it’s all been headline stuff. There’s so much stress.
Antihero Magazine: So much stress, less pressure in a support band slot?
Rich Moss: Right. That’s it. So it’s going to be nice to get back out. on some support shows again.
Antihero Magazine: What about your own shows? Will you also be doing some of those before the end of the year?
Rich Moss: So, we’ve just done a few dates to support the single release. Then we have got this tour with Delain, then we go back to the drawing board, see what our next step is.
Robyn Haycock: Currently our team is working on plans for 2025.
Rich Moss: Yeah, I mean there’s discussions happening all the time. It’s always difficult being in a band because there’s a lot more things to discuss and plan.. So this week we’ve had a conversation about another potential support slot with the band that would take us into Europe again, which would be awesome. Again,it’s in the hands of the gods.
Antihero Magazine: You never know.
Rich Moss: So yeah, it’s an ever-moving thing with plans, the plan is not to be out of the programme, that’s for sure. One way or the other, we want to be out on the road, make shows, meet new people, and see people who thought that we had broken up.
Antihero Magazine: Just a final one, if you wouldn’t mind sake. And if the roles were reversed. Who would you like to sit down and interview? Not even maybe a musician, maybe someone that’s personally inspired you and influenced you even outside music.
Rich Moss: Do they have to still be alive?
Antihero Magazine: No.
Rich Moss: If it got back in time, I would probably love to speak with Chester (Bennington). The first album I bought was Hybrid Theory, and he was the person that got me into what music and I’m sure has influenced so many musicians out there. So that would be mine.
Robyn Haycock: I’d say someone like Myles (Kennedy)—another big band for us. I haven’t actually met Myles, such a great vocalist. I would imagine he’d be a great to sit down and talk to. I’m guessing they’ve got quite a lot of stories to be fair. Again, that’s a band that we’ve been listening to for years and years.
Rich Moss: We’ve been to countless shows.
Antihero Magazine: Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you both for chatting to me this afternoon. 
