Four months ago, when we last wrote about William Control, he had just release the third of his four part concept series to smashing success. Now, with the last of the series hitting the charts, we talk to frontman and mastermind William Francis about the origin of the project, the concepts at play, and the end.
Tell us your backstory, where did William Control come from?
At the end of 2007, I was nearing the end of a world tour with my band Aiden. We had been out of the road consistently for a few years and we were all pretty much burned out from the road. William Control was born out of frustration and the turmoil of my own personal life. I had started writing songs that didn’t really fit in the genre and decided a solo project could help me cope with my own demons. It wasn’t ever meant to be a full time band, that was sort of an accident.
Revelations has a deep meaning. Tell us the story behind the concept and making of this record.
Revelations is the last book in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It’s an apocalyptic description of battle between good an evil. When I was a kid, (and also a believer) revelations was always my favorite book. It’s written from the perspective of a man on acid who describes visions and prophecies and whores and demons and angels, all the fun stuff.
When we were writing this album I knew that it was going to be the end of the William Control story, by splitting it up into four separate EPs titled by the names of the horsemen of the apocalypse, War, Famine, Death, and Conquest, I could bring it to a close.
The plan worked. You made a single release relevant across a year by breaking a full length album up into 4 EPs, tell us how you came up with the strategy, how you ran your presale campaign and kept your audience engaged from release to release.
We live in the digital age of Instagram and Facebook feeds. You post something and a few minutes later it’s buried in your feed by photos of pizza and ass and fireworks. We knew we had to keep people engaged over the course of a year so we decided that splitting it into different albums with different artwork would be a better way to do it. If we released this record as a whole a year ago we wouldn’t be speaking now.
Now that the final EP of the revelations series is released, what’s next for William Control?
Nothing. That’s it for ol’ William Control. The records are there to listen to preserved on a digital platform that will last forever. I’ve played enough shows for a lifetime. I’m going to focus on the merch company, Control Records, working with other artists and spending time in the home I’ve worked so hard to build.
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