GLASGOW group Servant Sun are part of a fresh wave of hard rock bands emerging across Scotland – but they reckon there’s more to them than that.

The five-piece take equal inspiration from disco beats as they do heavy riffs.

“People always have a preconceived notion about what we are going to sound like,” says bassist Will Keogh.

“We have quite a diverse sound, though – there's a lot of melancholic melodies in there, which comes from Andy’s style of singing, and we don’t play really heavy metal all the time, although there’s parts of that in there.

“But there’s disco beats too, there’s weird poppy melodies and that’s the good thing about the tour we’re on just now – people have been going ‘oh, I never expected that’ after we’ve played.”

That current tour has seen the band hit the road with fellow hard rockers Derange, travelling across England before heading back home tonight for a gig at Audio to launch their new EP, Hundred Waves, which follows on from their well-received debut effort last year.

This time the band – who include Andrew Macdonald on vocals, Ronald O’Kane and Colin Nicol on guitars and Will O’Brien on drums as well as Will – wanted to tap into all their different influences, from the all-out rock of the title track to the brooding A Taste Of Silver.

“It was just about expanding ideas and taking a risk,” says Will.

“A song like Misgiver is more poppy and having disco beats in there was about experimenting and going with what we’d like to listen to rather than anything else. We’d hate to put out something that sounded exactly the same on all four songs and we wanted something that gave a piece of everything that the band are into.”

The band formed when guitarists Colin and Ronald met, and they soon added Will on drums. He then suggested Andrew Macdonald for the frontman role, with bassist Will completing the line-up a little later on. He was left surprised when he found out just how many songs the group were working on.

“I asked what amount of material we were looking at, and Ron went ‘there’s about 150 songs on the dropbox’,” recalls Will.

“I thought he was joking but there it was!”

Last year’s EP suggested they were ones to watch, as more Glasgow bands started to emerge with a harder edge. Although the city remains dominated by indie acts, the likes of Halo Tora, Hershel’s Head and Vukovi are currently showing that Scotland’s hard rock scene has plenty of life in it.

“I think now is a great time for Scottish rock bands to be coming out,” says Will.

“Obviously there’s a lot of indie stuff, but bands like Halo Tora and Vukovi are doing really well for themselves. It’s a massive scene, so it can get saturated and you need to think outside the box to get noticed, but the Scottish scene has some incredible bands.

“We’re big fans of Halo Tora and it was an insanely good show when we played with them (last year, at King Tut’s) so I’m excited to see what they bring out next.”

Currently the band are finishing up their tour with Derange, a heavy rock foursome from London. It’s a jaunt that came together through social media.

“Derange have been amazing, and so far it’s going really good,” explains Will.

“We were fans of them on Facebook, and that’s how we ended up getting the tour together. We liked each other’s bands on Facebook, and eventually went ‘this could be cool, let’s tour together’, and so we did. Social media makes things so much easier for things like that.

“We’re in the home stretch now and really working towards the Glasgow gig. We can’t wait.”

Once this tour and the EP launch have wrapped up then the band are hoping to land some festival slots over the summer. An album, however, might still be a little bit in the distance.

“I think an album is still a wee bit away,” adds Will.

“The plan after the EP is to put out a run of singles that would stand alone, maybe streamline the sound and try to get a bit more attention before an album.”

Servant Sun, Audio, tonight, £5, 8pm. The EP can be bought from https://servantsun.bandcamp.com/album/hundred-waves