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God Complex provide a harsh reality as the voice of the people. Spawning from the city of Liverpool, the quartet utilise down-tuned guitars, ruthless white noise and devastating beatdowns to instil a feeling of dread as a rude awakening to the current state of the world. Modernising their sound with defiled electronics and twisted melody, the bands northern grit powers their sound further than their hangar-sized ambition. Only in their infancy, God Complex continue to evolve. The debut EP, Created Sick, was released on the 5th of October 2018.
IMAGE HARRY
HARRY RULE I actually wasn’t a founding member of GC, I joined a little bit later on. Things didn’t work out with their original vocalist, and I wasn’t involved in anything musically at that time. I’d played in local bands for years and had developed a good reputation for being solid both live and in the studio. I got a message one day from a good friend of mine, and their producer, Erik Bickerstaffe asking me if I would be interested in joining the band. I said yes without any hesitation. I knew Alex and James from the Liverpool hardcore scene, they are serious musicians so I was excited to be invited to play with them. I knew of Kyle but didn’t know him personally, after hearing some of the stuff he was working on I knew I had to get involved, that was nearly two years ago now. There’s a few different aspects of GC that I’m very proud of. I love our use of silence. Playing with empty spaces in songs can really add a lot of impact and tension to the music. Another thing that makes us unique is our sheer versatility, we can go from a caveman riff to a wall of white noise very quickly. My life revolves around GC, we all put as much work, money and time into the band as we can afford to and more. It sometimes feels like a tragic romance. There can be times you pour all of your energy and soul into something just to have your heart broken, but you wouldn’t leave it for the world. I’m immensely proud of what we’ve created so far.
ALEX CHAN I was out of music for around 6 months from my previous project when Erik from Loathe asked me if I was looking for a band and wanting to do music again. I obviously agreed and later on I found out Erik had asked James, who was in my previous band, to join as well. Before GC James and I had been playing together for a couple of years already. What I like about GC the most is the mix of sub-genres. We have all sorts of different influences worming it’s way into our music, which for me is a great selling point for the band as you’re not categorising things or putting yourself in a box. By being open minded, to try adding new influences and styles, you can have a bigger reach. The 90s grunge looking image was something we worked at to make ourselves stand out from the norm. GC tends to take up a lot of my time as we want to do this as a career. With working 9 hours a day in a Monday - Friday job, it can tend to be a bit exhausting. As stressful as it gets, playing on stage makes it all worth it. Especially if people are there to watch you and actually dig what you’ve been working on for so long. It started off very busy on my end, I took on too much for quite a while but the guys, especially Kyle, have helped me a lot in terms of stress. I feel that the rest of the band pitching in has made it a lot easier on my mental health and it feels more productive. I couldn’t not do music now or not be involved in something to do with “the industry” after being in God Complex. Along with the friends I’ve made whilst being in GC, it feels there’s a group of mates in different bands that seem to be coming up all together which makes it even better when you see them smashing shows and getting on to big runs with artists you listen to etc.
CHAN IMAGE
KYLE HOLT God Complex came about as an idea in mid 2016 when I and our original vocalist decided we wanted to form a band similar to the likes of Kublai Khan and Knocked Loose. From there we formed the band through a mutual interest in wanting to record and play some of the heaviest music out there and developed the sound into what you can hear on our EP. It was a breath of fresh air to be a part of a band where I wasn’t restricted creatively. This is the first band that I have written music for as I was always pushed to the back in a creative sense in previous projects, so that in itself was another motive for starting up this band on a personal level. In some ways I really love how rough around the edges we are. Our sound is well produced but not overly polished to the point of sucking the human feeling out of it. Our music stems from a hardcore/old school metalcore framework so it made sense to maintain that kind of aesthetic. On top of that I enjoy how we throw little passages or ideas from a range of heavy influences in to the mix, nothing is really off limits for us as long as it comes about organically and flows into the song in a natural way that excites us. We always try to strive to write about something that we feel strongly about or believe to be important whether it be on a personal or global scale. We do write about a lot of current issues in the world and as such our topics are universally negative in nature, but we live in a frightening time and we feel that these things need to be discussed and not swept under the carpet. Whether that’s the state of global warming, the housing crisis, the war in Syria or any other topic. God Complex is easily one of the main focuses in my life, the majority of my time and money goes into this and I have to plan a lot of my life around what happens with the band. The same goes for all of the others as well. We are in this for the long haul and won’t be satisfied if we don’t try our absolute hardest to take this music to the highest place it can go. It can get quite stressful and is a real test on organisation, time management and patience in general.
JAMES LYON Like Alex, I was put in contact with the band by our mutual friend Erik Bickerstaffe. I was working as a session drummer at the time, but I was eager to be involved with a full-time project again. I emailed Kyle and asked for some material and he sent me a demo of Breeding Filth and the track that would go on to be Created Sick. Most of the bands I’d been involved in at that stage had been tech/death metal bands, so Kyle’s material was a total breath of fresh air to me. I hadn’t listened to a lot of hardcore, so I was incredibly excited to apply my creativity to a style of music that was a little outside of what I was used to. It’s very fulfilling to be part of a band that tries to explore political themes and use music as a vehicle to examine the events and topics we find urgent or valuable. All artists do this to some degree but the vision that we all share with GC isn’t simply to be uncompromising in what we write about, but to craft songs that cohere within the larger narrative we want to create. We have songs on the EP about the housing crisis, climate change and the Syrian civil war but they all connect to the larger theme of the EP: namely that even from birth, forces more powerful than ourselves have so much control over our lives and use that control for terrible purposes. This is reflected in the name of the band itself – who doesn’t know someone who arrogantly tries to control people even in small ways and act like they’re better than everyone? As cliché as it sounds, it’s so gratifying to be able to play shows and to put out art that our fans connect with. I absolutely don’t take it for granted. Knowing that something I helped make affects people on an emotional level is amazing. We just finished up a run of shows supporting King 810 and ended the run with a gig at Scala in London. Walking out onto a dark stage and feeling the palpable excitement from the crowd is something that’ll stay with me for a long time.
LIVE SHOTS
BREAKDOWN Insignificant The current political climate of Britain and the world in general was a big influence on this song. Form from our concern with poor leadership from the government and the bigotry and closed mindedness that stemmed from it. Breeding Filth This track came around after reading about a chemical attack on a Syrian town called Khan Shaykhun back in 2017. While originally directed at the hatred encircled within war, the track grew into a more all encompassing commentary on the dark side of human nature and our capacity for hatred and violence towards each other and the earth. Slumlord It draws on some more personal experiences and was used to draw attention to the housing crisis and the landlords that prey on poorer tenants and their financial position. The song was named Slumlord after the tyrants that run third word slums/favelas profiting in anyway they can off the people. Stone Hand Stone Hand describes a possible future in which humanities incessant greed for oil will cause it to run out entirely along with other natural resources and will send us back in to the Stone Age. Created Sick & Ordered To Be Well These two tracks are linked together thematically by a concept. They centre around the doctrine of original sin which details the belief that we are all born sinful and must atone for it throughout our lives.
RUNDOWN Kyle Currently I am using an ESP LTD Viper-200B Baritone guitar with a 3 piece maple neck and basswood body, tuned to Drop A. I strictly use the bridge pickup for a brighter sound and to cut out any of the muddier low-end to give the music more clarity while we play in a very low tuning. The EP was written in Drop F# so I use a Digitech Whammy/DT pedal as a pitch shifter to drop the tuning for live performances. I run my guitar through a Line 6 Pod HD Pro X, a tube drive and classic distortion presets from the pod are used in conjunction with two noise gates to make the dirtiest tone possible while minimising feedback issues. At the moment my pedal board is incredibly minimal only containing the receiver for my Line 6 Relay G30 wireless system, a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner Pedal and the previously mentioned Digitech pedal. I am hoping to upgrade my pedal board and build a more intricate setup with a multitude of effects including a footswitch for some built in effects that I use in the Pod for recording. James A lot of people comment on my set up. I use two floor toms but put them on either side of the snare and pair that with two sets of hi-hats for a symmetrical setup. I play open handed which means I never cross my arms over and arrange my cymbals so that the low pitched ones are on my left and the high pitched are on my right. This helps me play more melodically and compliment the other elements of the music. If I’m writing a groove to go with a big open riff, I’ll use the lower hi-hats on my left, but if it’s something fast and staccato I’ll use the high pitched hi-hats to give the groove a little more bite. I always try to use snare drums with a metal shell to cut through the guitars and provide a lot of power. Right now I’m using a Pearl Reference brass snare and Puresound. I use Pearl drums and hardware, Remo drumheads, Sabian cymbals and Vic Firth sticks.
RUNDOWN Harry I played guitar in a band called Forbidden Breed when I was in college. They were all a bit older than me, really nice guys and sounded like Trivium. One day I just tried to do some backing vocals and they sounded terrible, but the band seemed to be into them. Fairly soon I was being asked to front my friends bands as there really wasn’t many people who could scream around at the time. The cool kids all listened to Underoath and Every Time I Die at the time so I tried to sound like Spencer Chamberlain, which I failed to do. As my abilities grew, I formed my own style with techniques that worked for me. I’ve been in way too many bands to list, so I won’t try, but before God Complex I was in the most fun hardcore band ever. We didn’t give a shit, we wanted to sound like Beastie Boys meets Stray From The Path with naughty ‘twoeys’ and I think we achieved that. We were called Antihero.
Alex I currently play a Fender Squier Vintage Modified Jazz Bass ‘77, black on black with a agathis body & maple neck. A bright sounding guitar to cut through the low end, down tuned guitars. It’s paired up with a Line 6 POD HD Pro X which has 2 signals into 1. One signal is mostly low end and the other is mainly high end with distortion along with a built in noise suppressor within the interface. It’s the same tone we used for the EP which Erik made so it’d make sense to buy pods. I’m currently in the middle of putting together a pedal board but what I use right now is just a drop pedal, tuner & wireless system. You’ll have to wait and see what we’ll be doing with new effects.
THE FUTURE We want to keep progressing and to keep pushing this band as far as it can go until it doesn’t make sense anymore. We’re playing a few shows later this year including Fury Fest in Manchester on 13th April, and our first run of shows as headliner at the beginning of May. We are currently writing for our next release and will be going in to the studio in the last week of March. You’ll have to wait and find out for what kind of release. We just plan on building on what we’ve already made and topping it. The music is going to be heavier but with more mature song writing. We’ll be incorporating a range of influences including stuff we haven’t really touched upon so far. All the facets of our music that people have come to enjoy will definitely stay as a key part of our music.
All photos by Olli Appleyard. Many thanks to Harry, Kyle, Alex, James, Olli & Venn Records Made by Ashley Hall
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