As Diamond Black open up about their darker melancholic sound, the band talk discovering ‘Through The Misery’, road wisdom, and why not being a dickhead matters.

Words by Cheryl Mann | Oct 24, 2025

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I joined up with Ben Christo (Vocals & Guitar), Adam Hart (Bass) and Jan-Vincent Velazco (Drums) to chat about all things Diamond Black after discovering the band by accident and instantly loving their authenticity and darker melancholic yet anthemic rock style 

The band shares some wisdom for new bands starting out – “ Treat people nicely, you never know who you are going to meet on the road, people who could give you opportunities down the road, so as much as possible don’t be a dickhead.” – Vincent 

I first heard your song Through The Misery and was hooked. This song is now special to me as it is the one that introduced me to the band. For my own interest and new fans, can you tell me more about this song’s creation? 

Ben – “That song was quite an interesting direction for us because up until that point we tended to do things generally a bit heavier, whereas that is more atmospheric. In terms of how the song starts, it has almost a Cure and Killing Joke feeling to it, which are bands we are into as well. We co write a lot of our songs with Jaani (Peuhu) who is the producer of the band and that was one he was quite involved in and he came up with this idea of the chorus, but he said it has to be (Ben sings it) ‘The Misery’ 

We found a way of changing it around so it wasn’t a depressing song, but an empowering song. When writing the title of the song, it was just called ‘The Misery’ and then Adam (Hart) had the brainwave of going, well that makes it sound like its a negative song, if we just put ‘Through’ The Misery, that suddenly changes the whole take on how you perceive the song. It’s about the process of working through something. Just that little twist was a really cool way of taking the song further. It was also a cool song because it was the first one we had done that had a focus on the rhythm section for the main thrust of the song as it began. So you have a bass and drum heavy intro to the song which was quite a different feel to something we had before.” 

I love deep poetic lyrics. I love that you have the option for the hand written lyrics with the new EP Dark Anthems (out now). When you write lyrics, do you use pen and paper or what is your technique for it? 

Ben – “My technique is to use the computer and a big screen, I used to do the pen and paper thing, more to jot down ideas, but I find working on a computer now much better for me than the phone. But one of the things that was interesting about the lyrics of that song was it was the first song I used ‘The Flow of Consciousness’ process, rather than trying to perfect it as I went through the song I used this technique, where I came up with concepts and ideas and I just ran with it, with the idea that no one is ever going to see these lyrics until I am happy with them and that was so much more freeing. That was a great technique that I learned from a chap called Pat Pattison, I read his book and it taught me about the technique of if you just do a flow of consciousness, you put yourself in a scene, you imagine things like what you can hear, what you can see in this place, the colours, the body movement and that really helped me to get into the world of the song. So when you are talking about things like the second verse where it’s ‘Nobody’s sleeping, in electric fear, the static that keeps me pleading…’ I really got into the sense of what it’s like, that feeling of when you are on your own in a room in the middle of the night, maybe you can’t sleep and you just are doom scrolling and you are just caught up in that kind of misery of comparison of feeling insignificant, feeling jealous and feeling lost, to just get inside that world. I was able to do that a lot more through this flow of consciousness, and I ended up being really happy with those lyrics for that song because I’d used that technique and I’ve used it ever since to help me in a way that I hadn’t done before, so again that song was a first for doing that.” 

You guys are very experienced musicians now, you have other projects going on, Ben I know you are also in Sisters of Mercy, but one of the most popular questions brand new bands ask me to ask musicians like you is, how to ensure that you don’t put yourself under too much pressure to be perfect straight away and avoid burn out?

Adam – “You don’t have to be perfect straight away, the band does evolve but you should also treat your gigs seriously because people’s first impressions are really important, and you never know who is in the crowd so you should try to give your all performance wise.”

Ben – “You can’t control what happens at your show. So much stuff has gone wrong for us over the years and we have learned from it and said, ok next time lets prepare for that, so I think also recognising that part of becoming the band and the sound that you are is about spending time together. The sound of what we are now, the aesthetic of what we are now is based on the time we have spent together as 3 people and you can’t fast track that and remembering that many bands that we love now didn’t hit their stride until album 3. We have all discovered bands and thought what a great album, and it turns out they did more albums before that. But they had to do that to get to the point before you discovered them.”

Vincent – “My advice would be to be yourself, and be authentic. I think that’s really important, because if you are a musician and you have been writing something that doesn’t come from your heart or you are following a trend then people can see that , fans can see that. That you are kind of faking it, so I suggest being authentically yourself, if you put in a lot of dedication and hard work people will see that too and will feel it.”

Adam – “Yes that is perfect as people will always love the authentic side of it, and one tip is if you play the wrong note, then play the wrong note twice and it looks deliberate.”

Vincent – “Yes even now I still mess up live, no one is perfect, even the best musicians out there still mess up. If you think about bands like Rush and Metallica, they mess up, but no one cares about that, they are doing what they love and with us, Diamond Black, we learn from our mistakes, we just move on and carry on. Bands like Nirvana messed up a lot live.”

Adam – “That’s all the fun, how you get a unique show!” 

Ben – “People aren’t interested in perfection, they want authenticity, that’s how we connect with other people.” 

I love vocals! I always have and Ben you are really good at capturing emotion and vulnerability within the vocals in every song, do you have to go to a place mentally in order to pull that out when recording the songs? 

Ben – “Yeah definitely, when we were doing the album, when Jaani was producing the vocals, we had some parts where we would really talk about the story of the song, what is really happening, what are you feeling, where are you, as if it is a movie, where are you at

this point in the song, there are some bits where he actually made me cry because of the intensity where he was making me go, like emotional memory, and there are a few bits where there are genuine imperfections, because he said, I don’t care if the note is slightly sharp or flat, I can feel what you are saying and I thought that was a really cool way of doing it. It’s a weird sort of middle ground, where you have to on the one hand, have technique, and you have to be able to be in control of your performance and you still want to have a level of authenticity and emotion coming through. 

It’s a really good question Cheryl. What was interesting on the album which you won’t have heard yet, is that Jaani really encouraged me on the album to sing in my own accent, previously I’d been singing in more of an american accent, and getting that across on the album. Rather than sounding very Hugh Grant (Ben proceeds to impersonate sounding like Hugh Grant, which was actually pretty good) but finding that middle ground is quite interesting, and felt a lot more authentic and it dictated how some of the lyrics are written because certain vowel sounds would not rhyme anymore whereas they would have if I was doing an American accent or a Northern England one. So that makes it feel even more authentic and it made me connect even more to the new songs on the album because of almost sing-speaking some of the lines.” 

Do you guys have any recording studio rituals? 

Vincent – “We all have our own recording set up at home, it is a little bit different, I have my own set up here and I just record, I don’t have any of those weird rituals, although when Ben sends me the songs, I really try and absorb everything, listen to them, when im having breakfast or eating, I just try to absorb them. The drum parts, I will start writing them in my head before I even sit behind the kit, so I already have an idea, grooves, patterns and then I sit behind the kit and start playing. So it may sound boring, but I don’t have any rituals or to sacrifice anyone!” 

Adam – “When we recorded this album, it was done remotely, so I have my studio set up here so I guess I have to have a Dalek (Adam literally has a life sized Dalek in his studio that you get inside) I also like a nice zen atmosphere so nice lighting, that’s how I get into it.” Ben – “Yeah lighting is very important and I always have to have some sort of herbal tea even if it’s just a placebo thing to make my voice feel better. But I also recently realised that I like not wearing socks when I’m recording vocals, I will wear slippers but not socks, I don’t know if it’s the aesthetic but the socks feel restrictive so that’s definitely part of it.” 

Do you ever feel Imposter syndrome despite your success and long careers, and if so how do you handle it? 

Adam – “I think repetition helps, the more you write, the more gigs you play, the more confident you get and more better at it, and you get more objective with the feedback from yourself, you get more realistic with yourself.” 

Vincent – “Also I think for creatives, it is normal, whether you are a musician or artist, you can always doubt yourself, you always ask yourself is this good enough. I guess you just have to believe in yourself and believe in your work.” 

Ben – “Yeah and also having the others around you which is why it must be more difficult when you are a solo artist. Even if the guys aren’t saying this song is amazing, they are working on it, they are talented and have good experience, so I trust them, so the fact they are putting work into it means it must have something and that’s enough.”

Vincent – “Just remember that you can’t please everybody, there are people who are going to like your music and also who will hate your music so you may as well just release something you love that is authentic to you.” 

Ben – “Yeah and that’s a good point, the fact is that the bigger you get, the more people are going to hate you because there’s just more people involved in hearing your music. It means you are having an emotional impact so it is a good thing, You have people not just saying yeah its alright, you have them saying oh my god its amazing or I hate it, thats good it’s art. You are creating a response, a reaction. If you have 100 people that like you, then maybe 2 people hate you, if 10,000 people love you then maybe 2000 hate you and that’s ok.” 

Your song In Venom was a collaboration with Chris Harms of Lord of the Lost, can you tell me how that collaboration came about and how important collabing is for rising bands? 

Ben – “I’ve known Chris from a while back, we played in a one off covers band at a festival and that’s how we met and we stayed in touch ever since, when we were approaching the song as a fledgling band, we were thinking, what can we do, what contacts have we got that can help us at this early part of the journey, people to do collabs with, we also had some great people from bands give us some great testimonials and those things really helped (The Mission, Therapy? And The Birthday Massacre to name a few). Because of the low nature of the verses I knew that Chris would really lend his voice really well to the song and it turned out fantastically, so that song when it came out was the first time that we had really done anything like that and we really enjoyed having access to Lord of the Lost fans as well who we thought were like a relevant fan base for us.” 

I love your Podcast Diamond Cast on Youtube, who was the genius behind it as I feel more bands should be doing this? 

Ben – “That would be Mr Adam Hart. I had no concept of it, one of the things I’ve got great respect for is when bands can do indirect ways of pushing their band forward, there isn’t just time and time again , listen to our song, listen to our song, its like how do you make people interested in your band and your message without just throwing your song at them all the time, and this was just a clever thing that Adam came up with. How did you come up with the concept Adam?” 

Adam – “I don’t know, I was watching another and thought we could do that, we said earlier we really know each other quite well because we have been playing together but the podcast really helps doing that as well, it’s like we are hanging out every week even though we are in different places and the reason why we thought about doing a podcast was because we are a band. We put one music video out once every few months which gets a load of traction for a while and then disappears off in the algorithm in between times, so there is nothing happening so this is a good way of keeping a constant stream of content for everyone as well and keeps the band in people’s memory.” 

Ben – “It also allows people to connect with our personalities and our character as a band and individuals, it’s almost like watching a tv show. So I think it’s a really strong indirect way of building a following and it’s then naturally spawned into other great things that Adams put in like the discord which is a community where the fans outside of interacting with us would interact with each other and share themes that are encouraged by the message of the band with mental health and the community which is so cool that I’ve never had with any other band before.”

Adam – “Actually quite a lot of being in a band is not doing music, there are many other things that help the band along the way.” 

Random question time – as we are in spooky season now, what was your best ever Halloween costume that you have ever dressed up in? 

Ben – “Well I can tell you my worst ever costume, it was pathetic, what I did was I wore a black vest, which I always wear anyway and I cut out a series of little lines that I stuck like paper lines down the front with a sense of perspective, so it was meant to look like you are looking at a road and the road was going away from me so you got this like white lines in the middle of the road, as if you are looking down the road and I wore a pair of devil horns. What do you think it was?” 

Vincent – “Ummm, AC? No…” 

Adam – “I don’t know” 

Ben – “Vincent you are on the right track” 

Vincent – “The demon from ACDC or whatever….” 

Cheryl – “Highway to hell?” (I very sneakily jump in off Vincent’s hard work to take the win) Ben – “You got it Cheryl, that was it, Highway to Hell, however all everybody ever said to me was are you like a skeleton or something? Conceptually it was good, but the delivery was very poor.” 

Adam – “It was a song too, I wasn’t thinking of a song, I was thinking of a film, that was quite abstract” 

Adam – “I can’t really think of one, I’ve done the puppet from Saw before. I used to try and scare my nan all the time, but she’s not around anymore so I don’t dress up as much Vincent – “Mine is so boring it’s not even worth mentioning because I just dressed up as a rock star, I wore a leather jacket and it’s boring, it’s just lame.” 

So I want to talk about touring now, you guys are well versed in this now, and have a tour coming up starting October 24th for the UK. Have you learned any mistakes from your time touring that you can pass to new bands and kids starting out so they don’t make the same mistakes? 

Ben – “Lots!” 

Adam – “Take care of your body at the start of the tour. I always end up breaking something, I broke my toe on the first day of our tour last time and I had to hobble around for like 2 weeks and couldn’t carry anything so yes try to look after yourself.” 

Ben – “Good advice and I guess having spares of stuff is really useful, being mindful having spares for things, understanding about your gear so if anything goes wrong you can fix it, having Plan B for things, so having that flexibility of getting on the road and having options and things and being ready to pivot if something goes wrong. So yeah it’s about being prepared but also having the attitude that this is an adventure, this is meant to be a great experience and approaching it with that curiosity rather than what I used to do. I used to approach every single gig with terror and anxiety of something going to go wrong and not knowing how to handle it, so I never really enjoyed it until the gig was done.” Vincent – “Always be on time. Don’t be a dickhead because there are a lot of these bands, and I’m guilty of it too, when I was younger in my other bands. When you are touring you are excited and you want to drink, you want to trash the hotel rooms, and stuff like that. Trust me you will never get far with that kind of attitude. Number one is drinking, you can have a drink, but if drinking affects your performance , the way you deal with people, promoters and stuff, like I said your band will never get anywhere, always be on time and always be

professional. Treat people nicely, you never know who you are going to meet on the road, people who could give you opportunities down the road, so as much as possible don’t be a dickhead.” 

Ben – “That’s a really good point, there are so many bands out there why would you want to give anyone a reason to dislike your band. It’s so hard to try and get anywhere, I read something the other day and its people don’t remember what you say but rather how you make them feel, so if you have made someone feel negative in a gig situation they wont remember what it was but how it made them feel. It’s so important to be on time and professionally, it’s such good advice Vincent.” 

Vincent – “I have heard so many stories from bands, from crew about other bands on the verge of signing a major deal but because they fucked up the last minute they were dropped.” 

Adam – “That happened to my band when I was 18, I went to a meeting with the record label drunk.” 

Vincent – “I’ve heard so many of those, and not just the band but the musicians, the individuals themselves. l’ve seen and witnessed people just wasted and messed up a big opportunity because they were drunk or they were just a dickhead and they lost a gig, they got fired because of their attitude and that’s why it’s so important.” 

Ben – “Yeah and it’s not fair cos you have 3,4,5 people in the band and 1 person lets everyone down and that’s it over and it’s really unfair.” 

I have another final random fun question I love to ask bands, if you could take Diamond Black back to any decade would you go back in time or would you risk it all and go forward in time? 

Vincent – “What an interesting question.” 

Ben – “If we go back to 1703 are we allowed to use electricity?” 

Cheryl – “No!” 

Ben – “Right so we have to do an acoustic set.” 

Adam – “I guess we would be safe in the 90s wouldn’t we.” 

Ben – “Yeah or maybe if we went back to the 80s and we did what we do then, it would be so ground breaking.” 

Adam – “We would kill hair metal off.” 

Ben – “We would instantly become hugely successful, maybe or maybe it would be the back to the future effect, like you said Adam, you guys might not be ready for this, but your kids are gonna love it. I guess if you went to the future, that’s weird isn’t it, I’m starting to get into all kinds of weird paradoxes and stuff. If we are in the future and we already exist now, then we would then exist in the future as well as we do now and people would be like but you guys are from the 2020s and how are you here, it’s too complicated I can’t deal with it.” 

I love the song and also the video for Fall Into The Silence, which does offer me nostalgia to my Him days of early 2000s, with the video for The Sacrament which is filmed a certain way in order to create the dream-like slow motion effect, so it’s filmed sped up and then slowed down in production. Can you tell me if the video was made this way, am I right in noticing that and is it still done with a certain camera or is there a more modern way to do it now? 

Adam – “Yes we did do it that way, it’s still done at double speed. So you do a lot of takes normally and then a couple of takes at double speed and you just have to sort of perform and play all the notes right.”

Vincent – “So for the drums, instead of playing at 90, we play at 180, just double time so really fast and I remember we didn’t even rehearse it, our videographer Charlie just said play in double time and I didn’t have time to rehearse it was just like ok, play along with it and the result is quite amazing.” 

Ben – “Why it works is because it’s exactly double so it means it’s still in time so it means you can manipulate it better.” 

Adam – “You just double the frame rate when you record it.” 

Any final words of wisdom for new bands that you wish you had known at the start? Ben – “I think it’s just having persistence and always having communication with the other people in your band because the reason why bands in the past have fallen apart for me is because people haven’t talked about how they are feeling and things have festered and things have gotten blown out of proportion.” 

Vincent – “It is important to love what you do. There’s going to be a lot of frustrations and struggles along the way if you don’t love what you do, you might end up just being frustrated or just completely giving up so love what you do and do it with passion, do it with integrity.” Ben and Adam – “The only person who ever stops you is yourself in terms of achieving a goal.” 

What else have you got coming up aside from the tour and EP release? All 3 – “Our album!” 

Ben – “We have our 10 track album that we have been working on for about a year in terms of the writing and recording, now we are on the mixing stage and that’s taken up a lot of our time but we are really pleased with it.” 

EP Dark Anthems out now on all streaming platforms