Nah.

The band's frontman Joel Stoker explained: "We'd just been making stuff in our bedroom and the band didn't sound anything like how it sounds now.

"We just liked the sound of the name.

"The band's not named after Eton Rifles. But the sound of the band has gone more down that route."

Paul Weller's appearance with the band was nothing to do with the name either...

Joel revealed: "We share the same booking agent. And about two Decembers ago, he asked if we wanted to support him on a few of his gigs. He really likes our stuff, and he stayed in touch."

Earlier this year, they played at London's Forum and Paul Weller made a surprise appearance.

The Rifles played the Weller song She's The Only One, then Weller himself appeared onstage with them (see video below).

Joel explained: "He said he fancied playing one of our songs at the Forum and we could do one of his!"

And the man the word calls "the Modfather" has taken on a godfatherly role for the young band.

"He just really takes us under his wing and puts us on when he can," said Joel.

The Rifles follow-up album to 2006 debut No Love Lost should have been with us by now, but there's been a change of plan and it's now scheduled for a January release.

"Pretty much everything is in place already for the release in January," said Joel.

"There's no point trying to release it before Christmas because of all the X-Factor stuff.

"But the frustrating thing for us is that we haven't had anything out for a long time. For people coming to see us, they're now going to have to wait that much longer to get hold of the new stuff. And we'd booked up this whole tour thinking the album would already be out.

"We'll probably play some of the new songs.

"But if people have never heard stuff before, and you're listening to it for the first time, you don't want too much."

The good news is that an EP out last month includes the new album title track, The Great Escape.

"We're did the EP with a couple of new songs on it and if you buy the EP, you get a couple of pounds off the album in January," said Joel.

So why the delay for the album?

"It just took a bit longer to record it than we thought," Joel explained.

They've used two different producers – Dave McCracken, who produced Ian Brown's Music Of The Spheres album and Stan Corbert, who brings a different feel to the songs he worked on.

"We wanted Dave because we thought he would take the music in a different direction – and he did. But it sounded too much one way. So we picked out songs we thought were working well and then went to Stan for the others, so we've got a good mix on the album."

"We did some of it in London at Ray Davies's brother's studio in Crouch End. We also recorded some of it in a studio in Norfolk called Leader's Farm. We'd been looking for a residential studio. It's kind of dying out, so we found this place that's owned by the guy from The Darkness. It only opened last December and our producer looked at the equipment and decided we should go there.

"It's at an old farm. The studio had these double doors and it was great weather, so we had the doors open all day and you can play as loud as you want because there are no neighbours."

Talking of neighbours, The Rifles' home turf Walthamstow in East London is often seen as the patch of the city's old-fashioned gangsters.

"We're more in Chingford really," said Joel. "We're right on the edge of East London and Essex.

"It's a nice place to live, but I read somewhere that 80 per cent of East End gangsters come from Chingford!"

* The Rifles gig, scheduled for the Ironworks tonight (Thursday), has been moved to The Raigmore, Inverness.

entertainment@highland-news.co.uk

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