Interview THE TREATMENT – meet Dhani and Rick, the bass player.

When you listen to THE TREATMENT’s second album, “Runing WIth The Dogs”, out on february 3rd 2014, you just visualize a 40-something band with guys dressed up in leather and spikes from head to toe, like MÖTLEY CRÜE. They sound like the greatest 70’s/80’s hard rock bands with heavy riffs and high pitched voice, but THE TREATMENT has only been founded in 2008, by a 15 years old drummer (!!), Dhani, whose father is a music industry veteran (producer, song writer, manager…) and all the members are in their early 20’s. So young and already so lucky : they finished their year 2013 touring with AIRBOURNE in Great Britain, after having spent a few months opening for KISS and MÖTLEY CRÜE on their US tour…yes just that !

Small but mighty, THE TREATMENT just prove the saying that if they’re good enough, they’re old enough !

Excerpts, check the podcast for the full interview.

We all live together as well, and we’re constantly writing, recording or doing something, for the future.

Leeloo : I don’t know if you speak french but… Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves for our listeners who don’t know you yet ?

Rick; : Sure ! We’re just a straight up, hard rock, high energy band. We come from Cambridge, England. There are five of us, all of us in our 20’s. If you haven’t heard us yet, please, check us out ! Hum, we love France ! (laughs) I don’t know where else to go !

Leeloo : That’s a basic so, it’s good enough! How did the band start ? I’ve read that you started in ‘08…

Dhani : I approached my dad, who has been producer and played in bands in the past and asked him if he knew people who would help me form a band. So he agreed to help me and we put out a few auditions. I found Rick, and then it was like a domino effect from there, he’d knew Tag the guitar player, and we eventually found Matt through Myspace. It all came together quite quickly. From then on we started like jamming some ideas. We were all in the same kind of music, like classic rock bands like AC/DC. So we kind of found our sound and took it from there.

At the same show we had STEEL PANTHER down the front that was singing all the words, it was pretty crazy !

Leeloo : Can you explain for our french listeners what the name of the band means, The Treatment ? Is it a cure for something ?

Dhani : There’s not really a big meaning to the name, it’s just a name that we liked and felt will be really rememberable.

Rick : Since then it’s like yeah, we’re the treatment for modern crappy music or whatever, but it wasn’t really intentionnaly like that

Dhani : The puns came after the name… we have a lot of medical theme, like with the song “The Doctor”. But we just felt it was a name that was quite original and people would remember.

Leeloo : “Running with the dog” is the 2nd album of the band, how did you write it ? Was it on the road, in studio…? Who writes what ?

Dhani : We all do it together. One of us would get an idea, we would record it down, and find all sort of thing, like we would get a vocal idea, we move forward, it took part, we all work with each other ideas, we get it to a certain level, and we take it to our manager, my dad, who produces us as well, and we always get him to advise us where we could make it stronger, like what if we can do an arrangement or else. All in all, it’s a group effort between us five and my dad. What we tend to do is, we’re always like… we’re always a band who likes to plan in advance but we’ve already started working on stuff for our third album. Constantly, cause we all live together as well, and we’re constantly writing, recording or doing something, for the future.

Rick : Absolutely, yeah. A lot of the songs of the second album “Running With The Dogs”, we’ve actually had for quite a long time, we’ve played a couple of songs on the KISS and MÖTLEY CRÜE tour that we’ve had the chance to try them out on our live sets, which was really really cool. Obviously tour really do gives you experiences that you wouldn’t normally have so some of that comes out in our records as well. But yeah, in general, like Dhani said, we’re always coming up with ideas, we already have like four ideas for the third album and the second is not even out yet ! We like to get stuff done.

Leeloo : What is the craziest thing you’ve witnessed during a concert; boobs, asses, dicks?

Rick : Girl flashing, obviously it’s great, but it’s not that crazy. It’s pretty cool.

Dhani : We’ve seen Nicolas Cage in the front of one of our shows !

Rick : Yeah, Nicolas Cage, the actor.

Dhani : Yeah, he was at the front on one of our shows, it was in Vegas, right, with KISS and MÖTLEY CRÜE…

Rick : Yeah. At the same show we had STEEL PANTHER down the front that was singing all the words, it was pretty crazy !

Dhani : Yeah and they got us up on stage ! When we were playing, we were playing in the Mandalay Bay arena, the main arena, and then you’ve got the House of Blues venue in the same complex, and they were playing as well so, we met up and they got us up on stage !

Rick : Also, one guys threw his flip flops at me…which is interesting…

Full interview to be found in the podcast.