Behind The Bastards

FIST FIGHTS, RUNAWAY SUCCESS AND A STORY THAT’S BEEN UNFOLDING IN PLAIN SIGHT FOR ALMOST A DECADE... THIS IS HOW PALAYE ROYALE MADE THEIR DARING NEW ALBUM ‘THE BASTARDS’, EXCLUSIVELY AND IN THEIR OWN WORDS.

- Andy Biddulph

Remington Leith and Sebastian Danzig are beating the living fuck out of each other in a car park.

Over in the UK for Reading & Leeds Festival, and driving from a raucous set at the latter to an even more career-defining slot at the former, Palaye Royale’s vocalist and guitarist have taken it upon themselves to have a wrestle in a motorway service station.

Punches are thrown back and forth, some fucking awful things are said between the two, and when they’re done, they hop back in their van and head to the show.

For the trio, completed by the pair’s younger brother and drummer Emerson Barrett, this has become a regular occurrence.

“I and Remington got back into a van and were like, ‘We can do a van for two shows…’” Sebastian - the elder of the three brothers at 27 - remembers.

“I was completely wrong. We just beat the shit out of each other.

“It started about arguments about music. And then it got personal.”

At the tail end of over 600 shows in the span of four years that’d taken them from homelessness to sold-out shows across the globe, the cover of magazines, and the cusp of stardom, they were, for want of a better phrase, done with it.

“We all used to do everything with each other,” Sebastian explains.

“Now? I got engaged. Remington and Emerson have their things. Your lives kind of separate. We don’t have to live in one room anymore. We have our own places, we’re our own individuals, and trying to come back and make this band an individual band is just not working.”

“I was fucking shit up,” remembers Emerson. “I became insane, I think we all did.”