What inspired your band name?
Three of us live on Cashew Road, just off Bukit Timah. We’ve lived there almost all our lives so we believe that the serene environment influenced our sound. We use “Chemists” because growing up together, there’s such a deep chemistry among all of us. We also experiment with music like chemists working in a lab.
Why did you trade your heavy metal act for your current pop-rock sounds?
We’ve always listened to softer styles of music. Some members just had to come out of the closet.
How do you come up with original songs?
Our vocalist Yuji Kumagi writes most of the songs with me and we pass them round the group for input. We also have a five-minute rule: If we take longer than five minutes to complete a song, we trash it and start over. The perfect song should flow in seconds.
We hear you have an interesting mantra.
We believe in “the toppermost of the poppermost, if possible”. It means we want our music to reach as many people as possible. We want to share it with the young and old, musicians of different backgrounds, people who don’t listen to much music and those who have their ears plugged 24/7.
