Upset, August 2016 by Upset

THE NUMBER ONE ALBUM OUT NOW 9/10 Rock Sound ★★★★ Upset 4KKKK Kerrang!

TWIN ATLANTIC

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upsetmagazine.com Editor: Stephen Ackroyd (stephen@upsetmagazine.com) Deputy Editor: Victoria Sinden (viki@upsetmagazine.com) Assistant Editor: Ali Shutler (ali@upsetmagazine.com)

EDITOR’S NOTE August means

one thing. OK, several things, but some of us can’t take time off for summer holidays - after all, it’s Reading & Leeds at the end of the month. With Biffy, Fall Out Boy and Foals all taking headline slots, there’s a lot to be excited about. Elsewhere on the bill there’s Twenty One Pilots, Tonight Alive, Frank Carter, Modern Baseball, Creeper, Milk Teeth and loads more of our faves. One band who won’t be there are our cover stars Twin Atlantic. They’ve got other fish to fry, like their brand new album ‘GLA’. Turns out it stands for Glasgow, and not Glam Lads Assemble. You’re fooling nobody with that haircut, McTrusty. Elsewhere we’ve got the brill Field Mouse, plucky upstarts Black Foxxes, Frank Iero’s Death Spells and some lot called A Day To Remember? Never x heard of ‘em.

IN THIS ISSUE RIOT 4. BIFFY CLYRO 6. GOOD CHARLOTTE 7. ROAM 8. WATERPARKS 10. TONIGHT ALIVE 12. GREYWIND 14. FRANK CARTER & THE RATTLESNAKES 16. CROWN THE EMPIRE ABOUT TO BREAK 18. PUPPY 20. PARTYBABY FEATURES 22. TWIN ATLANTIC

30. FIELD MOUSE 32. A DAY TO REMEMBER 36. BLACK FOXXES 40. DEATH SPELLS RATED 44. MOOSE BLOOD 45. OWEN 47. FIELD MOUSE 48. TRACKS OF THE MONTH 49. PUPPY LIVE 50. 2000 TREES VS THE INTERNET 54. ALL TIME LOW

Contributors: Amie Kingswell, Corinne Cumming, Danny Randon, Heather McDaid, Jack Glasscock, Jade Curson, Jade Esson, Jasleen Dhindsa, Kathryn Black, Martyn Young, Phil Smithies, Poppy Waring, Sam Taylor, Sammy Maine, Sarah Louise Bennett, Steven Loftin, Tom Hancock All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of Upset. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which Upset holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of Upset or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally. P U B L I S H E D F RO M

THE BUNKER W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M

B I F F Y C LY R O Main Stage Reading: Sunday Leeds: Friday

& G N I D A E R “AT D N A B Y R E V LEEDS, E ST SEE!” IS A MU FY YEAR BIF IME, THIS T D N O C M C DA I D THE SE H E AT H E R ING FOR WORDS: HEADLIN . T C E P X H AT T O E A C T LY W KNOW EX

RIOT E V E RY T H I N G H A P P E N I N G I N RO C K

R+L

t’s 31st December 2015. After a year in hiding, Biffy Clyro emerge triumphant to a euphoric Hogmanay crowd, and bring with them a teaser of 2016, launching their new album, aptly, with a bang. That show in the cold Edinburgh streets was, as frontman Simon Neil explains, “like a pressure cooker. We finally let the pressure off. We needed that show; this is when music becomes a living, breathing thing, when you share it with people.” Fast forward to the present and their year’s work ‘Ellipsis’ is out and their new trilogy is officially, by their own terms, alive. “I think this is our grimy, anything goes trilogy,” he says. “I feel like the first three albums, we couldn’t top that kind of aggressive prog posthardcore sound. We peaked out on that. I felt the same after ‘Opposites’. I’ve no interest in retreading ground as a band. I would much rather make a huge mistake and make a terrible record than just play it safe. “These three records will probably be, in inverted commas, ‘studio albums’, where we’ll fully explore what the studio brings, very much be like a rock band but for the 21st century. This will be three studio records, I guess, the least organic trilogy. The nonorganic trilogy!” The ‘non-organic trilogy’ faced some

E V E RY Y E A R R E A D I N G & L E E D S I S O N E O F T H E M O ST I M P O R TA N T W E E K E N D S I N T H E R O C K C A L E N D A R .

T H I S Y E A R I S N O D I F F E R E N T. F R O M H E A D L I N E R S B I F F Y C LY R O A N D F A L L O U T B O Y , T H R O U G H T O T W E N T Y O N E PI LOTS , C RE E PE R , ROA M , F R A N K C A R T E R A N D M O R E , I T ’ S A W H O ’ S W H O O F AW E S O M E .

creative hurdles in its early days, with Simon finding it difficult to pin down songs. “When I started writing, I wrote with the stage and really big shows in mind, and I’ve never written music like that. Or rather, any of the music that I’ve written that’s any good is never with ambition in mind. I needed to basically sit my guitar down and not think about Biffy. “As soon as I did that, I started writing songs for me that were just kind of electronic songs and I fell in love with the innocence of writing music, and also enjoying writing shit music as much as writing good music. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say but if you imagine every song you’ve ever written to be the best thing ever, it can be an awful lot of pressure.” Location helped. He headed to Los Angeles where he has a lot of friends who are musicians. They’re not necessarily in bands, touring and making albums, and it was liberating to write with people who write for different reasons, for the love of it, he says. “I ended up writing about 15 or 20 songs, recorded at some of my friends’ studios, wrote some songs with my pals. I just wanted the music to flow and as soon as I did that I got back on track with Biffy. I remembered the joy of writing, and that pressure and ego is the enemy of good music. “Ambition is important once you’re recording a record, or bringing an idea to life, but when you’re actually coming up with an idea it needs to be

naive and innocent - unspoiled. That was basically why it took me a wee while. It took a synthesiser to get the fucking Biffy album on the go.” When it started going, little could stop it. Their lead single ‘Wolves of Winter’ spiralled from a defiance and protectiveness of what they’ve created. “It’s the first song that’s come out defending our band and our lives, saying ‘The only people that know our band is the three of us, myself, Ben and James’,” Simon explains. “It means everything to us. The one tough thing about any band getting slightly more successful and playing bigger shows is more and more people stick their nose in, and that’s something that I’ve always struggled to deal with. “I reached a breaking point this time and thought, you know what? I make music for myself. I make songs because that’s what I have to do. It’s not to make fucking money, it’s not to reach deadlines. It’s because we’re fortunate to have fans that care about what we do and we love what we do, and that’s what I wanted to take ownership of again.” The love of what they do is no more evident than when they’re on stage, and their upcoming tours are where Biffy really look to embrace themselves as a band. “This is the first album where we’ve already visited every part of the world, so it feels like everywhere knows our band now and that’s what’s quite exciting. I’m more excited at this point than potentially 5

I’ve ever been. “I think I’ve accepted our position as a BAND. I’m finally happy to pretend to be a rock star. This album’s about us embracing every opportunity and we want every show to be the best show we’ve ever played. If it’s not, then we need to fucking fix it.”

R+L

G O O D C H A RLOT TE The Lock Up Reading: Sunday Leeds: Friday

There is one weekend in particular that they have their sights on for raising the live show stakes: Reading & Leeds. It’s a festival they’ve headlined before, and the fact they’re about to do it again is something they’re struggling to get their heads around. But what is it about those festivals that makes them such a bucket list moment for bands? “Every band worth their salt has played Reading & Leeds multiple times,” he says. “You look at the bands who’ve headlined and it’s insanely impressive. What impresses me is when you look down all the other stages, it’s like every band is a must see. I love Glastonbury loads, that’s a really eclectic one, but it doesn’t really have heavy rock music - for me Reading & Leeds was my education. “When I grew up, every band that I really loved played, and sometimes I have to pinch myself about us headlining it again and having already headlined it because it’s everyone’s education. It’s a rite of passage, isn’t it? You don’t feel like you’ve lived unless you’ve done a Reading & Leeds - it’s an important time for anyone that goes, never mind the bands. We’ve played every stage, done unspeakable things in every corner. It’s very much a part of who you are.” You’ll see three guys who are back with a drive and knowledge of where their band can go, and nothing will stand in their way. “We’ve missed all our fans so much and I really hope that everyone thinks the album’s good enough to have had patience,” says Simon. “I truly believe it to be our best record. I don’t want to sound like a dick but I wouldn’t have devoted so much time to this, of my life to this band, if I didn’t truly believe we were one of the best bands in the world. I just appreciate everyone caring. “We have not forgotten anyone, so I hope they haven’t forgotten us and we will be back with a vengeance with kisses and cuddles.” P

GOOD CHARLOTTE G O O D C H A RLOT TE RETU RN TO RE A D I N G & L E E DS TO P L AY T H E I N T I M A T E L O C K - U P , A F T E R S E V E R A L Y E A R S A WAY . G O I N G B A C K I S I M P O R T A N T , S AY S F R O N T M A N

JOEL MADDEN. WORDS: JASLEEN DHINDSA

n Good Charlotte’s new album ‘Youth Authority’, you’ll find guest appearances from both Sleeping With Sirens’ Kellin Quinn and Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil: it’s fitting, then, that they’re all playing the same day of this year’s Reading & Leeds. SWS and Biffy are set for the main stage, while Good Charlotte find themselves headlining the small but mighty Lock-Up. “What we really wanted to try and accomplish with all our shows was ‘special’,” explains Joel Madden, “It’s kind of cool going to Reading and doing a small stage ‘cause we like what it says, we like that it’s different. “Our band is in a different place in our lives now, we’re just trying to do the opposite of what everyone thinks we’re gonna do, and that’s been our whole mission. To keep it special and to go against people’s

ideas of us, and to make it special for the fans and do shit that’s special. “When we talked about Reading & Leeds, we haven’t been back for many years and I remember the last time we played we were in between System of a Down and Metallica, and we got bottled. I wouldn’t change it ‘cause it’s a fond memory, and I understand why Metallica fans in 2003 don’t want to watch us, it was all metal. It was a funny joke they played on us, and I said I can’t wait to go back there one day. We didn’t walk off stage, we fucking played our songs and we accepted it, and that’s who we are as a band. We aren’t like “fuck you”, we’re like we’re here we’re still gonna play. “Going back to Reading & Leeds is a very important thing for us because we have good memories [of it], and it was my dream to play that festival when I was 16 years old. To go back and play on this little stage, for me it says everything about what we’re doing right now.” P

RIOT

READING VS LEEDS R E A D I N G O R L E E D S : M O S T FA N S H AV E A F AV O U R I T E ( A N D I T ’ S U S U A L LY T H E O N E T H E Y L I V E C LOSEST TO). BUT BA N DS G ET TO E X PE RI E N C E BOTH, SO W H I C H C O M ES OUT O N TO P FO R TH E M? ( T R O U B L E M A K E R S ? U S ? W H AT ? )

“READING! Leeds is such a wicked place, but the first time we played I was getting electrocuted from the mic right up until we had to play, it was an absolute disaster.” - Mark, Black Foxxes “Although I’m a native Northerner, I have to say Reading judged on last year’s reaction. I hope Leeds can prove us wrong this year and blow Reading out of the water, watch this space…” - Mattie, VANT “Whichever one isn’t getting pelted by rain? I dunno. I think I like the surroundings at Leeds a bit better, but don’t have much of a preference either way. We’ve had a blast playing both places. I guess it all comes down to the vibe of the crowd and the weather cooperating.” - Riley, Thrice “Well, Leeds is excellent because it’s full of glorious northerners, however I grew up with Reading, so I’ll have to say Reading (by a whisker).” - Matt, Heck “This is a tough question but seeing as I am from the south coast it has to be Reading. We managed to spend Saturday and Sunday at Reading in 2013 so have fond memories of our time there. Also Leeds took my shoes.” - Adam, Arcane Roots “Probably Reading because it rhymes with the word wedding.” - Seb, SWMRS “As a Southerner, Reading (sorry Leeds). Probably only because all my friends go to Reading so it’s more of an opportunity to see them.” - James, Deaf Havana THE WINNER: Reading, by a country mile. What do we learn from this? Mostly it seems that Southerners are more likely to answer silly polls sent them by music mags, and SWMRS are fans of marriage?

HOW WELL KNOW REA DO YOU DING + LEEDS... RO A M? A LOT H A P P E N S AT READING THEY GE & LEEDS: T GUESTS BANDS P U P O N S TA U L L O U T, SOME RE GE WITH A L LY O D THEM, TH D THINGS EY WEAR YO U R P I N (DRENGE EAPPLE D , T H AT ’ S YO U A N D RESS). R HIS KNOW OA M ’S M AT T R O S L E D G E TO K I L LY P U THE TEST TS .

BIFFY CLYRO ARE HEADLINING IN 2016. IN WHAT YEAR DID THEY FIRST HEADLINE THE MAIN STAGE? I believe it was 2013, I watched them for the first time headlining so I hope I got that one right. Such a sick show. Pumped to see them this year. CORRECT WHICH ALBUM DID GREEN DAY PLAY LIVE IN FULL IN 2013? ‘Dookie’. Best band. Best album. CORRECT NAME AN ACT WHO HAS FAMOUSLY HAD UNPLEASANT THINGS THROWN AT THEM WHILE ON STAGE. Panic! at the Disco took a bottle to the face one year, I guess that’s pretty unpleasant. What about The Dillinger Escape Plan throwing their own poo at the crowd? I think that deserves an honourable mention. CORRECT WHICH WORLD RECORD DID ENTER SHIKARI BREAK AT READING 2009? Most crowd surfers in a set? I know they tried that one again in 2011 or 2012. CORRECT WHO WAS THE ‘SPECIAL GUEST’ MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE BROUGHT OUT

DURING THEIR 2011 HEADLINE SET? Brian May. My first and only time seeing MCR. Unreal. CORRECT WHICH FRONTMAN GOT TATTOOED LIVE ON STAGE IN 2007? Did Gallows play that year? I feel like that’s something Frank Carter would do? I’m not entirely sure though, I didn’t start going to Reading ‘til 2011. CORRECT IN 2006 PARAMORE HAD TO PULL OUT DUE TO HAYLEY WILLIAMS HAVING A SORE THROAT. WHO REPLACED THEM? I have no clue. I remember reading about it back then but I have no idea. WRONG. It was Sonic Boom Six, believe it or not. WHICH ONE ALBUM SUPERGROUP MADE A SURPRISE APPEARANCE IN 2009? Again, not too sure, a little bit before I went! WRONG. Them Crooked Vultures, feat. Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones, played a very packed NME/Radio 1 Stage. TOTAL: 6/8. NOT BAD.

R+L

RIOT

“I HADN’T REALLY EXPERIENCED BRITISH PEOPLE BEFORE...

W AT E R P A R K S The Lock Up Reading: Sunday Leeds: Friday

...ALL OUR EXPOSURE WAS THROUGH HARRY POTTER!” Waterparks are swiftly becoming a big deal. After a couple of independently released EPs, the trio teamed up with Benji and Joel Madden for the sugarcoated head rush that is their ‘Cluster’ EP. With a debut album on the way and their very first UK shows under their belt, Waterparks are set to make a big splash before the year’s out. SO, YOUR FIRST UK SHOWS, HOW WERE THEY? Awsten Knight: “I didn’t know people 10 upsetmagazine.com

even knew us here? People were singing along and I was totally caught off guard. ‘Cluster’ came out January over in the States and now it’s out over here. I knew people were familiar with it over here, ‘cause of Spotify, but I’m not sure what that means. We’d never left the country before until a few days ago so it’s all crazy and weird and cool. It’s weird to be the person with the accent. I hadn’t really experienced British people before. All of our exposure was through

Harry Potter, so to be around it, dude, everyone’s talking like it.” AND ‘CLUSTER’, WHAT INSPIRED IT? With the EP, we basically tried to hit a lot of different styles throughout each track so it’s not just this pop-punk EP but we still do get that. We’re working on an album and have been for almost a month. It should be finished by the time we go on Warped ‘cause it’s already over halfway done. If you were to listen to most of the songs on the album and say we’re a pop punk band, you’re dumb. With the EP, we tried to hit a lot of electronic things. There are a lot of beats and a lot of cut vocals and we tried to do some 80s style, big beat stuff. With the album, we straight up go pop, we go full on angry punk, then we do a trap sounding song. There’s everything on the album, it’s so tight. With the EP, we wanted to do as much as we could. With this, we said that was good but let’s do it even more. We just did as much as we could without going country. The thing is, since it is our first album, we wanted to do as much as we could. That way, for the future, we can do whatever we want. We just want to open it up entirely so we can do whatever we want forever. AND WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO TAKE FROM YOUR MUSIC? I hope they like it. I hope they like the band. I don’t know if there’s a common theme, really we just tried to do everything as hard as we could, and then evolve it. WHERE DOES THAT DESIRE TO BE SO BROAD COME FROM? I like a lot of things and it’s hard for me to stick with one thing. It’s really hard for me to be like, here’s a punk album, here’s a rock album, here’s an electronic dance album. I like most things and I like to put that out there. Here are most things. AND YOU’RE COMING BACK TO THE UK SOON. WHY SHOULD PEOPLE COME CHECK YOU OUT? If you like us, you’ll like the show. A lot of people have never heard of us before but said the show was so tight. That should mean we’re not shit live. I’ll let you put your fingers in Geoff [Wigington’s] mouth. And I’ll tell you his middle name. He wouldn’t like that. That’s enough incentive. It’s a decent show. P

R+L

TO N I G HT A L I VE NME / Radio 1 Stage Reading: Sunday Leeds: Friday

“I’M REALLY EXCITED TO COME BACK!”

‘

imitless’ is Tonight Alive at their most open. With its release earlier this year, the band left themselves exposed to criticism but connected to a wider world. It’s a gamble that’s paying off every day. “We understand that with an album like ‘Limitless’, it provokes a lot more than just listening to songs and liking them. I feel like that record is part of people’s lives now,” starts Jenna McDougall. “I feel like we’re past the point of critiquing and reviewing it. I think it is part of who I am now and part of the fibre of my being. I just feel like I’m a vessel for the album.” Currently bouncing around America as part of the Warped Tour, ‘Limitless’ has provided a grounding for the band to host daily workshops with their fans. They light incense, they sit in a circle and they talk. “Every day is different because fans relate to what we’re saying in different ways. There are new insights to share and that makes my day every day. This lifestyle can get very wearing if you’re not centred, which is why I wrote songs like ‘Human Interaction’ in the past.” Face to face with the world, there’s nowhere for Tonight Alive to hide with ‘Limitless’. Not that they’d want to. “Having all these opportunities to meet fans where we talk about the album, life, happiness and fear, we’re

getting a lot of feedback on the way our fans’ lives are changing; their journey towards finding their true self and living up to their fullest potential. ‘Limitless’ is like a soundtrack to our spiritual evolution. “We had a transgender man in our group and it was amazing because the first topic that we were talking about was feeling like everyone’s trying to change you, how our greatest fear is judgment and not being accepted. He just said ‘yeah, I hear that’ and showed us the scars on his chest from his mastectomy and talked about the past two years of his life on testosterone. People get to the point. People get real, really fast and I think that’s because of the album. People feel safe to talk about their experiences.” As Tonight Alive open up and accept who they are, they encourage others to do the same. There’s a Limitless lifestyle that goes hand in hand with the record. “The relationship we have with our fans and the type of fans that Tonight Alive attracts is really in sync. We never have fans that are rude or arrogant, the people that come to our shows and listen to our music are on a path to becoming a better person, to finding happiness and joy, and letting go of fear. I feel like we’re all on the same page. “‘The Other Side’ was the beginning of that, but it’s been a step-by-step thing. The message has always been there. With ‘What Are You So Scared Of?’ I was just figuring things out. I don’t know how I wrote that song at 18. I love it. I‘m so proud of the lyrics and I credit

RIOT TO N I G HT A L I VE A RE BRINGING THEIR ‘LIMITLESS’ AMBITIONS TO R&L. WORDS: ALI SHUTLER PH OTO: SA R A H LOU I SE BENNETT

so much of myself and my philosophies to that song and that point in my life. But I think since ‘Limitless’ everyone is blossoming and blooming.” Tonight Alive have been on a journey – literal, emotional, and spiritual – for eight years now. While the nature of the game means that a lot of it is a blur, Jenna does have “a really clear memory of when we were just about to go onstage in Newcastle earlier this year. I thought to myself, this is the happiest I’ve ever been. The album was just about to drop and I really believe in what we’re doing. I’m super grateful to be at that stage in my life. I feel really lucky.” Before the band take a break from a relentless year, there’s a return to the UK for Reading & Leeds on the cards. “I don’t want the year to be over,” admits Jenna. “I definitely have more fire in me. We played the festival two years ago and I’m really excited to come back. I remember watching The 1975, Don Broco and Die Antwoord in that tent and it was a great feeling. I’m pumped. The energy in the UK is so different, in the best possible way. I feel as excited as everyone else about music. You guys got a very special chemistry at shows. “It’s really exciting because the set’s shorter, you get to have a huge burst of energy in a short amount of time and excite people. Festivals are days that you never forget for your whole life. Even if you go to festivals every year, there are going to be moments. I want to make sure our show is a moment people don’t forget from that day on.” P

R+L At the start of the year, Greywind were a band that had released one Very Good song online, and then disappeared. After a year working on new material, the band returned with ‘Forest Ablaze’, went out on tour with Moose Blood and now Steph O’Sullivan and her brother Paul are heading to Reading & Leeds to let you into their world. HELLO GREYWIND. YOU RELEASED ‘FOREST ABLAZE’ EARLIER THIS YEAR AND EVERYONE LOVED IT. WERE YOU EXPECTING THAT REACTION? Steph: Not at all. We released ‘Afterthoughts’, then we went writing for a year. We didn’t know if people were still going to be there when we got back. Then there they were. YOU TOURED WITH OUR PALS IN MOOSE BLOOD EARLIER THIS YEAR, HOW WAS THAT? Paul: The reaction during that tour with Moose Blood was amazing. That was our first ever time on the stage in our entire lives. We were thrown into it. Steph: It went really well, thank god. YOU’RE RELEASING YOUR DEBUT ALBUM SOON. WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT IT? Paul: We recorded it last July in Texas, with Jason Perry. We’ve been sitting on it for a year, and we can’t

RIOT wait for people to hear it. Steph: If you like ‘Afterthoughts’ and ‘Forest Ablaze’, you’re going to love the record. Hopefully. Paul: It’s dark but beautiful. WHAT DRIVES YOU? Paul: People saying we can’t do it. Steph: It makes us want to do it more. Paul: We live in the south of Ireland and in our town, for years, we could never find a band. It was just the two of us and we couldn’t find other musicians. We put up posters and went off to Dublin and Cork, we tried message boards... We were always told we couldn’t do it, so we just decided to do it ourselves. We wrote ‘Afterthoughts’, posted it online, and now we’re here. It’s been amazing. YOU’VE BEEN SAT ON YOUR DEBUT FOR A WHILE NOW. HAVE YOU STARTED THINKING ABOUT WHERE YOU GO NEXT? Paul: Yeah, we’ve already started album two. We know the vision, the direction it’s going in, and we’re really excited. We’ve improved more in the last month than the last year. We already can’t wait for album two. P

TWENTY ONE PILOTS

Over the past couple of years Twenty One Pilots have gone from scene potential to one of the buzziest (and biggest) bands on the block. Watch them crown it in style. NME / Radio 1 Stage. Reading: Friday, Leeds: Saturday

BEACH SLANG

With a new album coming in September, Beach Slang are making good on the hype around their brilliant debut. Expect to hear ace new stuff for the first time in The Lock Up. The Lock Up. Reading: Sunday, Leeds: Friday

SUPERHEAVEN We’re more used to using festivals as an excuse to check out new bands we’ve not seen before - but this weekend is a chance to say toodle pip to Superheaven before they embark on the dreaded ‘indefinite hiatus’. Sob. The Pit. Reading: Friday,

GREYWIND

Leeds: Saturday

The Lock Up Reading: Sunday Leeds: Friday

“WE WERE ALWAYS TOLD WE COULDN’T DO IT.” 12 upsetmagazine.com

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RIOT PUNK VETERAN FRANK CA RT E R I S S H OW I N G T H E KIDS HOW IT’S DONE WITH H I S S E C O N D R AT T L E S N A K E S REC O RD. WORDS: ALI SHUTLER

ITH... TUDIO W IN THE S

FRANK R E T R A C

rank Carter crashed back into our lives last year alongside his Rattlesnakes with their debut album ‘Blossom’. “It was an exorcism. It was very cathartic,” explains Frank with a grin. “I needed to get everything out as quickly as possible and wasn’t really too concerned about how rough around the edges it was. It was a haemorrhage, pretty much.” Now, they’re in the studio working on a follow up, and “this time around, it’s much more considered. We’ve got an opportunity now to show who I really am, and I change a lot. We all do.”

“The whole point of ‘Blossom’ was to show people that I hadn’t weathered,” he starts. “I wasn’t worn out. I was fucking sharp and angry and I could present a performance at the same speed and intensity as all your favourite new bands. I’m thirty-two, most of these kids are twenty, but age ain’t nothing but a number. I feel like I’m in a really good place and with album two, we want to really 14 upsetmagazine.com

push the boundaries of what we were capable of.”

Frank Carter has never been static. With Gallows, Pure Love and now with The Rattlesnakes, he’s made a point to charge head first onwards. “We’re trying to change things up and show that there’s more to us than beat downs and blood. We write really good songs and that’s what we want to be remembered for. Not for the carnival around it. We want to be remembered for the songs and ultimately, if you’re in a band and people only go and see you because they think you’re going to be violent, that’s counter-productive. That’s not why I’m here.” From the first bite of ‘Fangs’, Frank Carter’s latest outing has been celebrated. “People seem excited to have me back. What Pure Love did, it drew a line for a lot of people.” Moving away from the angst and aggression caused people to move on. “They said, ‘I don’t back it’. What Rattlesnakes does, it comes up at time when those people have grown a little bit. I don’t want to say people are narrowminded, but people didn’t want me to

do what I was doing with Pure Love. As I get older, I start realising the people I find inspiring are the ones who do whatever the fuck they want. “As you get older, you gravitate towards those people and you think, I want to be more like that. I’m hoping with Rattlesnakes, they see this fairly hyper-aggressive record but there are tinges of rock, of punk and blues. ‘I Hate You’ is the most aggressive song on ‘Blossom’ but it’s a laid back twelve bar blues. ‘Devil Inside Me’ is probably the hit of the record, but it’s a rock song. We’re aiming to focus more on that rock stuff. I love it. I love crafting songs with a big chorus that I can sing and that will get stuck in

“I’ve never played guitar in my life, but the first song on the album is a song I wrote, sung and played guitar on so it’s a really special moment for me. It’s a minute long and it’s about my dog, but that’s not the point.”

RIOT people’s heads. All people’s heads.” And more than ever before, that’s what Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes are doing. It’s broader than anything that’s come before it. “It’s encompassing all fans from my entire career. What we’re aiming to do with album two is introduce us to new fans. I’m in love with all my fans, I really am. I owe them everything but I want more. Like a greedy son of a bitch, I want as many fans as I can get.” And the outlook for that is good. With arena-stopping performances littering festival season, and brand new track ‘Snake Eyes’ showing another new side to Frank, album two is living up every promise ever made. “It’s not quite there yet but we’re getting close. We’re closing the door on it and it’s exciting,” he shares. “I don’t know how much I can tell you, honestly. It sounds really sexy. ‘Blossom’ is a very aggressive record and in a lot of ways, this one is more aggressive but it’s a little more palatable for everyone. “There’s only one hardcore song on the whole record, but it’s the defining hardcore song of a generation, I hope. We wrote that and then I was like, ‘we don’t need anymore, boys. Let’s change tact.’ It’s been a lot of fun and it’s been really relaxing. We recorded the whole thing with Mitch [Thomas Mitchner] who is the bass player and then we had Catherine J. Marks mix it and she’s done a phenomenal job. Between the two of them, they totally understood the vision that Dean [Richardson] and I had and they’ve managed to bring it to reality.”

there from the start. Writing forty five songs last year (“a personal best”) the band have been in the studio since January bringing them to life. “I always have quite a clear vision of what I want to make. Whether you can actually achieve that on the other end though is tough. It’s one thing to see something, it’s another to make it happen but I’m trying my hardest and I feel like I’m getting really close with this. “The entire record is about human relationships and how they affect us, good and bad, and the communications surrounding them. There’s a lot in there about falling in love, there’s a lot in there about falling apart and there’s a lot in there about how we treat our fellow man and woman. Some of it’s good and some of it’s not so good. It’s inspired by everything I see around me. It’s nice, both these records have felt very immediate but this one feels quite classic as well. But we’ll have to wait and see. It’ll be ten years before we can decide that.” P

It’s a vision that’s been

“THERE’S MORE TO US THAN BEAT DOWNS AND BLOOD.”

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE ARE BACK, SORT OF

My Chem are reissuing ‘The Black Parade’ to celebrate its tenth anniversary; however the band have been quick to confirm they’re “not touring and there is no reunion planned.” Damn.

GOD DAMN RETURN

Good news, there’s a new God Damn album on the way. Even better news, you can check out new track ‘Fake Prisons‘ right now on upsetmagazine.com. ‘Everything Ever‘ is out 23rd September, and follows on from 2014’s ‘Vultures‘.

THERE’S LOTS OF AGAINST ME! NEWS

Against Me! not only have a new album due - ‘Shape Shift With Me’ is out 16th September - but a bunch of UK dates, scheduled for December. Find them on upsetmagazine.com.

PWR UP FOR DECEMBER

Up-and-comers PWR BTTM have signed to Big Scary Monsters and shared new track ‘Projection’, which you can hear at the usual address (come on, we’ve mentioned it twice already). They’ve also a December UK tour. Watch this space.

G N I N CROW Y R O L G RIOT

TEXAN POST HARDCORE TROUPE CROWN THE EMPIRE A R E G R O W I N G U P, A N D

TA C K L I N G B I G G E R T O P I C S THAN EVER BEFORE.

rown The Empire went into their third record with a lot of questions. More reflective, self-aware and open-minded, ‘Retrograde’ is a very different shade of Crown The Empire but it’s one that has answers. Catching Andy Leo inbetween a signing on Warped Tour and an afternoon at the amusement park next door, we caught a glimpse into the band’s colourful new world. SO, ‘RETROGRADE’. HOW YOU FEELING ABOUT SHARING IT WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD? Stoked. I can’t believe it’s finally happening. It’s a surreal experience because this is the hardest I’ve ever worked on anything in my life. To see it finally come into fruition, it’s exciting. ANY WORRIES PEOPLE WILL PUSH BACK AGAINST THE GROWTH YOU GUYS HAVE MADE? I think it’s to be expected. It’s pretty different to what we’ve been doing before. It’s not the same shit, so maybe there’ll be a push back on that. We’re just prepared that there are going to be fans who aren’t stoked that we haven’t done exactly the same thing as before. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, BEING ABLE TO SURPRISE PEOPLE MUST FEEL GOOD? Hell yeah, I cant wait for the people to hear it and realise ‘oh shit, this is actually pretty tight’. WAS THERE A VISION FOR THE RECORD GOING IN? We definitely had a vision, or at least a mindset that we wanted to be in. At first it all started with some 16 upsetmagazine.com

WORDS: ALI SHUTLER

self-discovery, looking at ourselves and trying to figure out who we are as people, growing up and where we wanted go to as a band. What we wanted to say and everything like that. We hadn’t really thought about it too hard because everything we were writing before was just a story, y’know? AND DID IT MAKE SENSE

STRAIGHT AWAY? I was on board immediately. I was excited to go into the process of creating and collaborating with people. It’s the whole point; it’s the best part. WAS THERE A SONG THAT MADE IT ALL FALL INTO PLACE? ‘Kaleidoscope’. It’s one of the later songs on the album but it was actually

the first song that had a spark of where we were going to go for the rest of the album. We figured, since we had so much time to write, why not go as far out there as we can? Be super weird and if it’s just too weird, we can pull it back but let’s try it and see where it takes us. From the first moment we saw that, we realised that this could be really cool.

IS ‘RETROGRADE’ THE RECORD YOU THOUGHT YOU’D MAKE? We had no idea what was going to happen. But we are so super fucking stoked with the result. We’re always going to be constantly changing and improving but this is what we wanted to do as a band. We’ve been working hard, man. It pushed our expectations.

WHAT DOES THE PHRASE “THE WORLD IS YOUR KALEIDOSCOPE” MEAN? The world is what you make it. Everyone has their own perspectives and vision to see themselves and the world. We didn’t really think about that before. Looking through this different lens and honing in on what was important, the music and the lifestyle and everything we were doing before, it was the perfect way to describe what we were doing now. And also the psychedelic sound of what the song really is. It was the perfect deal.

THERE SEEMS TO BE A SENSE OF WANTING PEOPLE TO LOOK AT THE BIGGER PICTURE WITH THE RECORD AND WITH WHAT YOU’VE BEEN POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA. WHERE DOES THAT COME FROM? We’ve noticeably seen how vastly different the internet has changed people’s opinions. The transfer of information is instantaneous now. You can’t censor it, because it’s everywhere the minute that it happens so, for us, we took a lot of parallels to the sixties. That’s the easiest thing to compare

it to. That generation of people were exposed to things that they’d previously just been told stories about, they understood things that happened with the Vietnam War and television was able to broadcast those images to people’s homes. There are a lot of heavy parallels between what was going on back then and today. We’re not standing in a political sphere. We’re not trying to say anything other than, real things are happening and maybe you should be paying attention? THIS RECORD TACKLES BIGGER TOPICS. DOES THAT COME FROM THE WORLD YOU FIND YOURSELF SURROUNDED BY, OR HAVE YOU JUST GROWN IN CONFIDENCE AS SONGWRITERS? It’s just what we do. We’ve always been nerdy guys who watch movies and we love documentaries. It’s what we’ve learned and observed. We’re not part of actual society, we don’t live a normal life but looking at it from an outside perspective definitely gives you a different opinion on what everyone is doing. A lot of the song ideas would come from us sitting, saying ’you know what’s fucked up?’ and just talking about it. DID YOU REALISE THAT PEOPLE WERE LISTENING TO WHAT YOU HAD TO SAY? Absolutely but we didn’t realise how much power that really is. We have like, a million likes on Facebook who are real people who are following us and seeing what we have to say. Actually having something to say this time around rather than ‘oh, I’m so drunk right now’ or just saying things just to say them, is important. WHAT MADE YOU REALISE THAT? It’s just growing up. I was seventeen years old and didn’t know anything about anything. ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING LINES ON THE RECORD IS “WE TAKE BACK OUR LIVES FOR THE FIRST TIME.” IS THAT HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT CROWN THE EMPIRE AND THIS RECORD? Yeah. We’ve been in a position where it felt like we were just another number. We were lumped into this group of things and it felt like people were writing us off and we had to appease fans. With this record it felt like, okay we’re going to say something that may not appease everybody but this is our record to make. We’re doing this for nobody but ourselves. P

ABOU T TO

BREAK

THE BEST NEW BANDS TH E H OT TEST NEW MUSIC

PUPPY T E AC H I N G A N E W D O G SO M E O L D T RI C KS . WORDS: ALI SHUTLER

fter a triumphant set at Download, Puppy stayed for the rest of the weekend, and had a lovely time. On the Sunday night Will Michael burnt his tent and the band got rid of most of their camping stuff. Their festival season was over. They’d conquered it. Except, they’d forgotten they were playing 2000 Trees a fortnight later. It was only as the band drove onto site that Will realised he didn’t have a tent. See, Puppy aren’t the most organised of bands. But who needs organisation when you make music this good? With their first track only released at the start of last year, Puppy are growing up fast. They’ve got one EP to their name with a mini-album, ‘Volume II’, out this month. And it’s with this that their story really begins. “The main thing starting this band was having that metal influence and wearing it on our sleeve,” starts Jock Norton, before Billy Howard takes over: “Jock and I have played together since we were thirteen. Whenever we’d be rehearsing, we’d always end up doing a Van Halen riff, or a bit from Pantera. The most fun bit of rehearsals was when we would just fuck around. That became the ethos behind Puppy.”

trees,” concludes Billy, as the trio fall about laughing. Turns out Puppy aren’t all that serious either. “The first EP was bang, bang, bang, bang,” explains Jock, composing himself. “The songs were all a similar tempo. We essentially tried to write four singles and make that into an EP. With this one, we weren’t able to write four singles.” “There’s a lot of filler,” laughs Will. The wicked grin returns. “There’s a bit more light and shade to it,” continues Jock. “Listening to the album start to finish, you get the whole journey, ‘Here At Home’ is probably the lightest thing we’ve done.” “But similarly, that song is very metal,” explains Billy. “You used to get that on a lot of metal albums, where they’d have one instrumental track. That song was an attempt to do something like that but make it into a full song,” explains Jock, letting the jokes drop and exposing

SO, PUPPY. WHAT MAKES A MINI-ALBUM A MINI-ALBUM AND NOT AN EP? Jock: “One extra track.” Billy: “Did we ever call it a minialbum?” Jock: “Nah, someone else called it that.“ Billy: “But I quite like that.” Will: “There’s literally no difference.” Jock: “Four tracks is an EP, five is a mini-album. Between five and seven, you’re in mini-album territory. Eight tracks onwards is album. Black Sabbath’s ‘Master of Reality’, The Stooges’ ‘Raw Power’. Will: “That’s a great album. We should have just written three more songs and called it an album.”

of the volcano,” interjects Billy, which would certainly explain the band’s unpredictable style – if only the band weren’t taking the piss. “We funded it ourselves, we did a bit of a Kickstarter and the Pope was involved because obviously, Vesuvius is in Italy and he wanted to have a say in that. He’s very liberal for a pope.”

“LET’S BE WEIRDOS.”

Writing pop songs as metal songs and being totally unashamed of it, Puppy stand out in their London scene. And they play up to it. “Let’s be weirdos in the scheme of these other people,” grins Jock. “I’m real proud of it. It’s everything we like, it’s quite unique which is never a thing I’ve really had before. It’s great to feel that, maybe not that we’re onto something but that we’re in this weird corner of the musical landscape.” “But we’re still saplings,” grins Will, as Jock promises: “One day we’ll be a mighty oak tree…” “…amongst 2000

the forward-facing brilliance of Puppy. “Then we’ve got ‘Entombed’, which is the heaviest song we’ve done. It’s a bit more of a spectrum. As a body of work, it’s got a bit more of an art to it. It ends with a real quiet song, and starts with a real loud song. For us, that’s a journey. That’s us trying our hardest to be Pink Floyd and having a concept mini-album.” “And we recorded the whole thing in Mt. Vesuvius, obviously. In the shadow

But ‘Volume II’ didn’t come from some grand vision or quest for greatness. “Being sad and stuff, that was a major theme. That’s our go to, being sad.” From there, Puppy “just started writing more songs, recording more songs and just boiled it down to a bunch that we were happy with. “We went into the studio with about seven songs we wanted to record and whittled it down. And it feels nice. It’s got a nice arc to it. Maybe that’s not the sexiest answer to give,” admits Jock. “Mate, maybe you should run with the Pope answer,” offers Billy. “That makes us sound like badasses.” P

PARTYBABY

PA R T Y B A BY A R E A L L ABOUT FUN.

WORDS: ALI SHUTLER

t sounds like the plot of a questionable Hollywood movie, but Partybaby were never really meant to be a band. They made a record, sure, but it was just for them. Locked in their studio in LA, the band started making music away from the rest of the world until their friends, who used the back room as an office, heard snippets and wanted to hear more. Eventually Noah Gersh and Jamie Schefman let them in. Word spread, a CD was burned and stolen by a buddy who was also an up and coming A&R at a record label and, well, there’s no escaping it now. Partybaby are here for a good time. “He stole the songs off of the computer when they were demos in their infancy,” starts Jamie with a grin. “And he gave them to the head of a very big record label which started a very wild chain of events which led us here,” continues Noah, smiling, as he looks around the Brighton seafront, having just played their first ever show in the UK. There’s a bemusement to how the pair got to this point, but they’re not the type to dwell on the past. They’re just happy to be here. That first show outside of America was “really special,” they

explain. “You never know what’s going to happen, you feel like you could implode on stage pretty easily but everyone was super nice and no one got super fucked up and the energy was really good. You can’t ask for much more.”

we have our own space and we don’t need to ask anyone’s permission to try a song. We can spin ourselves in circles. It’s really nice to be selfsufficient in that sense and because of that, we can write, record and do everything really fast.”

Partybaby have crashed into our lives with three tracks to their name, ‘I Don’t Want To Wait’, ‘Your Old Man’ and ‘Everything’s All Right’, but there’s more to come. “We made all this music before there was ever an idea to be a band. Those three songs are part of an album. We wrote, just the two of us, just to have some fun,” explains Noah. “There were all sorts of limitations set on it. We’re never going to play a show. We’re never going to give it to anyone. We were really, really just doing it to have fun.” And while they haven’t exactly stuck to the plan, Partybaby are very much up for the ride. “It’s crazy every single day that people are even the slightest bit into it.”

“And try,” adds Noah. “We can try a lot of stuff. This project was about finding our way back to joy and happiness and doing it through it the means of what used to get us there, which was music. We had to reconnect to that. Nothing gets put to tape that doesn’t make us feel that way. I think Partybaby is about being disillusioned with the world. We’re tremendously anxious people and it’s pretty heavy, it’s kinda like letting people read our diaries a little bit but also, that’s why it’s so cathartic.”

“The idea behind everything we do is get back to wherever makes you the most happy and that’s what this music is for us. The fact there are people here to share it with, it is the craziest thing in the world but it’s why you wake up every day,” admits Jamie. “We make everything ourselves. We don’t need to ask permission to book a studio because

“Right!” agrees Jamie. “We’d become a little bit jaded with music and the business, as it were, and in our own lives as touring musicians in other projects. We wanted to get back to that feeling of when you’re ten years old, holding your first guitar that you don’t know how to play and singing along to your favourite record in front of the mirror. Everything that we do tries to stem from that, that point of joy and honesty and self-worth. There’s some primal, inner honesty to this band and some people seem to connect to it.” P

“YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN.”

Recorded by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Joyce Manor), Happy Diving’s sophomore studio album Electric Soul Unity is available everywhere August 19, 2016 on CD, vinyl, cassette & digitally from Topshelf Records.

Also available from TOPSHELF RECORDS:

MOCK ORANGE

Put the Kid On the Sleepy Horse

NO JOY Drool Sucker

CLIQUE Burden Piece

FIELD MOUSE Episodic

7” / CASSETTE / DIGITAL - OUT NOW

CD / LP / CASSETTE / DIGITAL - OUT NOW

CD / LP / CASSETTE / DIGITAL - AUGUST 5, 2016

CD / LP / CASSETTE / DIGITAL - OUT NOW

New 2016 releases coming from Special Explosion, Mouse On the Keys, Ratboys, LITE, Bellows, Del Paxton, Enemies, Eerie Summer, Dangers, Artie Tea & more.

tsr-store.com topshelfrecords.co.uk

CIT SLICKERS

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T W I N AT L A N T I C ’ S L A S T A L B U M S AW T H E M C R O S S A T H R E S H O L D . W I T H T H E I R N E W O N E , ‘ G L A’ , T H E Y ’ R E T RY I N G S O M E T H I N G D I F F E R E N T. W O R D S : H E AT H E R M C D A I D .

PH OTOS: PH I L SM ITH I ES + JA D E ESSO N.

n Glasgow there’s a spaceship. It glows every spectrum of the rainbow on dark and drizzly nights, and inside it is a stage that’s a bucket list goal for most bands in these parts. In May 2015, Twin Atlantic walked triumphantly onto that stage after years of hard work, and saw off their ‘Great Divide’ tour run in style.

There were a few other events – the odd gig here or there, and the small matter of headlining the second stage at T in the Park – before the run really ended, but that Hydro show was symbolic of how far the album had catapulted them. “It’s funny,” notes singer Sam McTrusty. “I’ve actually been able to relive it quite a few times because we filmed it all and made a documentary. When I was watching it back, I felt as nervous as I was going out on stage because we’re obviously not a band who signed a record deal a year ago, made an album and then the album got big or something. It’s a seriously long build up to that moment – I felt emotional, proud, scared – it was every emotion you can feel. I was probably hungry, because I was too nervous to eat. “I’ve got this thing that as soon as I take literally one step on the stage, like [snaps fingers] I’m fine. It’s a bit cheesy, a bit of a cliché, but my adrenaline just spikes so high that I

go into like super focus animal beast mode, so it’s pretty good.” Super focus animal beast mode was activated and Twin rose to the occasion and then some. Job done - for the time being. “We don’t even drink champagne or anything like that,” he laughs, “but there’s always someone who opens one when you do a big gig like that. Even if the band goes for another twenty years or something, that will be a landmark moment, coming off the stage, sitting in the dressing room and just looking at everyone, our friends and family. We got to close down a bit of the Hydro and there was like, I guess, 150 people, all our friends, and their friends and cousins there.” But when they walked outside the Hydro and back into the real world, the obvious question was, what next? Unlike most tours, they got to close it off at home, “so we actually got to stay in Glasgow. I got a new flat. Ross and I got into the production side of music and we were buying bits and bobs and setting up home studios. Life kind of happened, and then we started digging into music, production, which we’d always kind of done, but we’d always started with a full song and then done it. I had ten or twelve acoustic demos on my phone, and half of them sounded like us, and the other half sounded like this interesting new thing. We just decided - we didn’t even decide, we were just drawn towards the most interesting stuff.”

In a whirlwind week in summer 2016, that interesting new thing was brought to life with a vengeance, a red and black, capitalised vengeance. ‘No Sleep’ was unveiled, a tiny King Tut’s club show was announced, and news of ‘GLA’, their new album, was everywhere – their fleeting break was over. The 0-100 nature of the album’s unveiling is pretty on point. Their last album took months upon months to record, ‘GLA’ took six weeks. They were on fire, and trying anything that took their fancy “I’ve learned to embrace that it’s 2016 and that I can actually use some of this shit to help us,” he says. “On all of our other albums, we wanted the same experiences as our favourite bands that we’d read about in books. We wanted to make an album the way the Foo Fighters made a record – that was like, what, 25 years ago? It’s kind of stupid when you kind of think about it. “Once we got over that, Ross started writing songs by himself, which probably gave him a bit more confidence. Like, ‘Gold Elephant Cherry Alligator’, Ross did all of that by himself, and it gave me space to be more like a music producer. Sometimes I don’t play guitar on any of the songs so I got to totally focus on the words, the melody, make it a bit more unpredictable - that’s what made it fun and challenging.

WANTED TO TRY AND SCARE OURSELVES.” “WE

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“We always used the studio as another instrument but it wasn’t until we were in the studio, and by then it’s almost too late to hear its influence, whereas this time we kind of used all of that stuff when the song was being born. I had a studio set up in my living room – it’s not fancy, it’s not like all of a sudden we played the Hydro and I’m pure minted and I bought all this shit! I had a laptop, some wee thing that cost about £200 that you get on the Apple Store, and then my guitars and my pedals and stuff – anyone can do what we were doing. “But I think it was probably inspired by the other ways we’d make music, that we’d done it before. It’s not that we don’t love that - we just didn’t want to do ‘Great Divide’ part two. We wanted to try to scare ourselves.” They had previously become

you can get too formulaic, too correct with what’s expected of pop structured music and that was why this worked so well. Ross was really good at ironing out my crazy parts and I was good at spotting his really good hooks and parts that had huge potential, that usually wouldn’t have gotten noticed because of the way we were working.” “I was also guilty of trying to iron out too many of the interesting parts of Sam’s songs to make them more universal,” admits Ross. “It got to a point where we had to try something different, to start afresh. I just really enjoyed it, because I had never done it before. I didn’t have any expectations or stress, like Sam had a bit of a weight of trying to deliver things, whereas I was just able to have fun. Having Sam look at things that I had been writing rather than the other way around was exciting for [him] as well

“FUCK

your own skin and making a change, putting the guitars down and not hiding behind the ‘idea’ of a band, and that it has to be this way or the way that all our heroes made music. “Since we abandoned that, everything’s been so easy and carefree. Even naming the album was funny. I remember we were like laughing when we decided that one. It took like two seconds. I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool, because we’re from there, to call our album Glasgow? So we can call it G-L-A.’ We were all like WAAAAYYY and that was it. Before, I was like ‘Guys, I’ve got an idea for an album’ and I’d sat on it for like two months and totally thought how I was going to tell them. Everything’s just been way more carefree.” ‘GLA’ is by all accounts a massive leap for Twin Atlantic. It’s a little more

IT. JUST

YOURSELF.” somewhat caught in the hunt for the perfect song, and ‘GLA’ took it back to basics. It became about the fun of writing without an end goal in mind. “We didn’t even know we were making an album, we were just fucking around with studio gear, and at the end of the day we’d have a new song and go: ‘Fuck, I quite like that’. We were reacting to stuff rather than sitting for hours and thinking it through.” For bassist Ross McNae, it was a new experience entirely. “I just started writing for fun,” he says. “Sam has such a different approach to it than me because he’s ten years deep in it, I was trying for the first time and it was really instinctual what came out.” “The honest thing is in some parts I got too good,” picks up Sam. “That sounds really arrogant but in music

as exciting for me. It kind of gave the whole thing a freshness.” Which brings us to that show in Tut’s. It’s not to say that Twin weren’t having fun on their last album run, far from it, but the energy in that room, the show they put on, it just felt that this was kicking off on an entirely different level. It made you feel like they had one hell of an album in their pocket – it was carnage. “That’s actually how we are as people,” says Sam. “See that Tut’s gig – we represented it with our music before, but never had the confidence to just – fuck it, just actually be yourself. It’s probably an age thing. It’s probably not actually being sure who you are. That sounds quite deep. But all the travelling, all the life changing experiences, big gigs or travelling all over the world and stuff like that, you start to be a bit more comfortable in

ragged around the edges than ‘Great Divide’ and is the kind you could pick from the record and plonk on a stage and have a thoroughly nice time over. Like the title of the album, there’s not a great deal of mystery to what they’re doing. ‘Overthinking’, an infectious confessional of sorts, is a prime example. “Sometimes I do this thing where I zoom in on the details of something to the point of how it feels in your hand and then zoom right out and do a full landscape coverage of the idea. ‘Overthinking’ comes in because I realised I am a victim of that big time, I can get lost in my own thoughts to the point of having quite bad anxiety or make myself fucking sick over thinking, basically slagging myself.”

It’s streamlined a lot for the band. There’s no hidden meaning for fans to unravel, no great mystique for interviewers to delve into. It is what it is. “We have taken a lot of the distractions out of the way and simplified it by giving things like the album a pretty obvious name,” explains Sam. “The lead single [‘No Sleep’] - you go into a lot of radio stations and they’re like ‘What’s the new song about?’ and you’re like ‘It’s about not getting any sleep’,” he laughs. “All you have to do is decide whether you like it or not.” “It’s been quite exciting,” says Ross on the response they’ve found so far. “Some people are like, I can’t believe

place in the city as an adult, and all the horrible clichés that exist - they’re all in there. I wrote that after we named the record. “It’s love and hate - or not so much love, more that it’s no matter where, it’s a total omnipresent thing. You’re from Glasgow – that’s it. You have all its bad points follow you around; we would walk into a room and people would talk about really light-heartedly, ‘Rangers or Celtic! I don’t want to cause any trouble, blah blah blah’. “You’re like mate, it’s funny for the first year or two and then you’re like ‘Fuck, that’s quite embarrassing’. Then another year or two and you start

everywhere from playing full albums to going to other cities and having themed evenings like GLA, MCR, LDN. At the moment, they have no idea, but it promises to be good fun. The scope is limitless when they do think about it, and the general feeling remains doing what they want, seeing where it goes, reacting not planning. The ‘GLA’ era is here. It’s an album that they agree was made purely to make them happy, and it reflects in every area, from their live shows to just chatting to them about the experience. “Ten years of playing the game and evolving your mind into like a song writing mind and doing all that... Let’s for a change do an album that’s about

“WE JUST FUCKING DID IT.” you are doing this again, this is like the old you.” Those who missed the heavier sounds the first time around are now getting their introduction to this side of the band, which in a sense is just as exciting to them. The road that Twin have been on over the years has taken them all over the world, but it’s always brought them back to the same place: Glasgow. ‘Mother Tongue’, the album’s closer, is their way of embracing and celebrating all that comes with the city. “It’s what it feels like for me to be from Glasgow, leave it quite a lot to go do this selfish music thing we do, but then coming back and finding my

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getting passionate about it and you’re like ‘It’s not like that anymore’. I guess it’s my take on what it’s like to be this age, be from there and have Glasgow evolve into this. It’s kind of above all those old clichés people associate with it, but on a bigger scale [‘Mother Tongue’ is] about talking about where you are from and having pride in it but also loving all the shit bits cause it makes it home in a way.” Glasgow has been many things for the band, and soon it will be where they play a three night stint at the infamous Barrowlands, a venue they’ve packed before. As for what to expect on that run, the idea mill has stopped

the music. It sounds so fucking comedy obvious out loud, but we will just react to stuff as it goes. That’s the way we made the record; rather than trying to think ‘How are we going to do this?’ we just fucking did it.” “We’ve been joking,” Sam says, “saying ‘GLA’ is a pure state of mind, like an attitude, it’s whenever anything comes up, we will just be like fuck it.” On top of a great album and new era for Twin Atlantic, it sounds like a state of mind we could all do with embracing once in a while. P Twin Atlantic’s album ‘GLA’ is out 9th September.

FIELD DAYS F I E L D M O U S E ’ S N E W A L B U M ‘ E P I S O D I C ’ W I L L D R AW Y O U I N Q U I C K E R T H A N Y O U C A N S AY ‘ H E Y L O O K , I T ’ S A N O T H E R G R E AT B A N D F R O M P H I L LY ’ . WORDS: SAMMY MAINE

“W

e have never been a scene band.” Rachel Brown is the vocalist and guitarist of Field Mouse – a band who have just made one of the best albums of the year with their third full-length ‘Episodic’. As a semi-Philadelphia based band, it’s easy to lump them in with the (very good) bands that have been pouring out of Philly for the past few years but as Rachel insists, they’ve never really seen it that way. “We’re all totally fine with that,” she continues. “Some of our members live here, and some live in Brooklyn still. While I do hang out at a lot of Philly shows and have a lot of friends in bands here, I don’t think that Field Mouse is a ‘Philly scene band’ at all.” Scenes aside, Field Mouse do have some great friends in high and helpful places. ‘Episodic’ was recorded by Hop Along’s Joe Reinhart, with the band approaching the record for the first time as a five piece. Rachel explains that their previous releases were often “some older songs and some things we did last minute,” describing the last album as a sort of “hodgepodge” but with ‘Episodic’, the band wanted to produce a fully cohesive record. “I cannot say enough good things about Joe Reinhart,” she enthuses. “He was so fun to work with, and it’s cool recording with someone who is a producer but also has to record his own band, and has to think about new ideas that maybe no-one in our band had come up with. It was like having another member come in with cool potential ideas. Super fun.”

wasn’t there. They thought they were ruining my album, but then said ‘oh, we’ll just come and sing on it!’ so it was a good trade-off. I love everything all three of those people do, and was so glad they were into it.” Moving from a two to a five-piece is going to bring along some bumps and bruises but as Rachel continues, it sounds like it couldn’t have been easier. “There were never too many cooks. The first week was rhythm stuff so Timmy came down and did a few weeks of drums, and Saysha did bass, and because they live in Philly, they just kind of did their parts and peaced out. Andrew and Zoe and I were there every day with Joe, and I don’t think that was too much. Just a lot of me and Joe gently arguing. Nothing hostile.”

During the writing and recording process, Rachel’s family were dealt a blow with a sudden and very real illness; the recording process, she says, was a way to feel normal. “You’ll do anything to distract yourself from what’s going on, so I use writing and playing music as a way to detach myself momentarily from that stuff,” she continues. “It was a crazy year and I’m not sure if it’s obvious that that’s what a lot of [‘Episodic’] is about, but it definitely is.” And it’s not just songwriting that Rachel finds a cathartic process – if you head over to her website, you’ll find a selection of abstract landscape paintings and a wealth of original poetry. Describing herself as a “hobbyist” painter, she explains that she often paints the “woodsy” areas of her youth to escape her now industrial surroundings. Rachel also finds her fun in hunting down her one true love – the burrito. As she discuss her sheer outrage over the extra-charge on guac – “it’s always something about the avocados being more expensive because they come from Mexico or whatever, and it’s like, just get it together” – she says silly stuff like this is a welcome escape from our often nightmarish surroundings. “One day, I’ll wake up and read the news and think ‘what’s the point?’ and think that I need to go and be a nurse and do what little I can to help like a hundred people in my lifetime,” she says. “I think some days you’re able to ignore it, and some days you’re not.” She’s also pretty passionate about star signs, using a star sign app when she feels a little lost in life. “Usually it makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of these experiences are totally universal, and they’re going to be helpful no matter what your star sign is, but they definitely interest me.”

“I TRY NOT TO TAKE MYSELF TOO SERIOUSLY.”

Hop Along aren’t the only band connected to Field Mouse on this record; Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis, Swearin’s Allison Crutchfield, Cymbals Eat Guitars’ Joseph D’Agostino and Palehound’s Ellen Kempner can all be found collaborating in some wonderful shape or form. But instead of this being a planned get-together of some of the greatest artists around, it turns out to be just a couple of buds having some fun. “One day – I think the day after Christmas – I went on a hike with Sadie, Joe and our friend Ellen, and it was the first day of recording and I

The band introduced the album with ‘The Mirror’ – a song that quite literally tells you to fuck off within the first line. It’s this kind of vigour that makes ‘Episodic’ a stand-out effort but as with almost any project Brown puts her hand to, she brings a certain unabashed vulnerability that makes that juxtaposing bite all the more encompassing. Andrew [Futral] brought the song to the table musically, with Brown bringing the lyrics later. “I think it was always intended to be the first track. I was a little trepidatious about having those lyrics as the first on the album, but usually everyone votes against any kind of trepidation I have. I guess it’s attention grabbing if nothing else,” she laughs.

With Jurassic Park band t-shirts – “my sister and I were obsessed and used to dig for dinosaur bones in our backyard” – it’s clear that Field Mouse are here to have fun. Something that Rachel concludes is hugely important, “I actively try to not take myself too seriously. I don’t see another way in this state of the music industry.” P Field Mouse’s album ‘Episodic’ is out now.

IF N E “EV E, S O L E W

WE WIN. ”

N MOST: ARS THA G FEW YE N I Y R T E ON MOR W ALBUM E HAD A AND A NE B E R H AV , M D E A M E E H R TO A A D AY T O COMING RT CAS E HEIR COU T H T I W D. BUT ING GOO â&#x20AC;&#x2122;RE FEEL DS, THEY T H E CA R ASSCOCK JAC K G L WORDS:

ast your mind back to March and you might recall a certain Jeremy McKinnon assuring fans that although A Day To Remember’s new single ‘Paranoia’ was premiering, there was not an album coming any time soon. “Well, come on, I was technically not lying though,” pleads Jeremy, tongue firmly in cheek, after the band revealed that there is in fact an album dropping in August. “It wasn’t finished at that point, we didn’t have an album cover, we didn’t have a release date; I wasn’t lying,” he continues with a cheeky grin. “At that point it had just got mixed and mastered. So we did have an album recorded, but there was so much more to do. So technically I was not lying, just saying,” he affirms, before his bandmate Kevin Skaff smiles and chimes: “You lied.” “The anticipation for ‘Common Courtesy’ was way too high,” explains Kevin, “so we were just like, ‘Let’s not tell anybody about this one…’.” While the Floridian bred boys are implementing some of their token ironic humour, there is perhaps a more serious reason why A Day To Remember toyed with the audience about the possibility of a new record. The ability to decide exactly when and how they release an album is a sign of the band being back on their own terms again. Come November, A Day To Remember have their final court date in Chicago that will decide their fate in a battle against their label, Victory Records. Alas it’s not a case of formality or a step through the motions to award them their freedom, it’s still very much in the balance. “It’ll be in the hands of an American jury,” Kevin states somewhat despondently. “Yeah, real deal court case,” Jeremy continues. “We’re going to plead our case to a jury. He’s [Tony Brummel, label founder] going to defend himself and then these random people from Chicago are going to decide our fate.” Jeremy quickly disturbs the intensity of the subject matter: “But it’s great man.

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I’ve been telling people this from the start; even if we were to lose every single thing that we think we should win, we still come out on top. That’s what everybody needs to understand. We were in such a bad place, that just someone saying ‘No, this is what your contract means’ is a win for us. So that’s what’s exciting about it; even if we lose, we win.” The excitement around the band’s upcoming court date and particularly Jeremy’s overtly optimistic stance shouldn’t trivialise the hardships that A Day To Remember have encountered, endured and overcome over the last “fucking four years.” “It’s like, ‘just tell us’,” explains Kevin with an air of exhaustion. “Read the case and tell us ‘no’ or ‘yes’, we just want one fucking answer.” When broached with the question of why the case has taken so long, Kevin can only breathe a heavy sigh and admit that it’s “because our judicial system is apparently very screwed up. We didn’t know that it was like that. We thought it was like the movies where you go to court like a month later, after everything is prepared, and everything is done. It’s not.”

didn’t happen,” Jeremy continues, “because that was actually Victory’s plan, but the judge was like - ‘No, it’ll ruin their career. They can put it out themselves and that’s cool’.” “Everyone thinks we won the court case that day and to be honest with you we kind of did. That was the end of our career, if he had sided with Tony, because November 2016 is still when we would have had the court case, which means ‘Common Courtesy’ to this day would still not be out and we just wouldn’t have been a band” he concludes, before adding “crazy shit”, as if he still can’t believe the lunacy of the whole thing. You have to be in awe of A Day To Remember at this point. Self-funded and self-released for four years and a gold record on the way; a lawsuit looming over their heads all the while, preventing them from doing a whole plethora of things. What they’ve done has taken truckloads of courage. With the end in sight, are they proud? “Absolutely,” says Jeremy immediately. “There’s nothing that would be cooler than to win this court case.” “That is a movie,” suggests Kevin.

“The guy who is overseeing this case is a federal judge. Those guys are appointed for life and he deals with really big things in the city of Chicago, so we were just the back-burner case,” Jeremy explains. “We were like the least of his worries and I do understand that. It’s understandable, but there should be a protocol for it, like ‘this guy is busy and this is ruining our lives, can we get a new judge?’. We were always told that we could request that, but they told us that if he is offended by that it could affect the outcome of your court case. Therefore, we just sat here for four years waiting for him to have time to make a decision about our case, which is very frustrating. It should not happen for people who are funding it themselves against a corporation.”

“That is a fucking movie,” Jeremy confirms with more than a dose of enthusiasm. “The garage band from the middle of nowhere that blows up, this guy fucks them over and then they beat him after four years of waiting around, and they didn’t get destroyed by the court case. That is a fucking movie.”

It’s admirable that Jeremy is understanding of the length of time the judge has taken to get to their case considering what an impact it has had on his and his band’s life, but it seems that it could have been a lot worse. They could have put the whole band on hold for four years.

“It was terrifying. It was important to get everyone involved, get everyone attached to the songs, get everyone playing them in a room. Right now, 2016, A Day To Remember couldn’t have made a record any other way and continued to be a band.

“The judge himself is the reason that

So while in many ways A Day To Remember are on the brink of realising their goal of unhindered autonomy, Jeremy has seen himself relinquishing some of his control in the studio while recording ‘Bad Vibrations’. “I took a more backseat stance on this record, which was important to me. It’s the first time I’ve really let go of production since ‘For Those Who Have Heart’.

“I kind of felt like people pulling back a little bit, like going through the

A “ I T WA S motions just because they weren’t attached to the songs as much anymore. Yeah, that was more important than anything because at the end of the day if people don’t want to do it anymore then it’s over.” Sober words for a band so close to accomplishing the impossible and overcoming more hurdles than most would ever dream of even being faced with. “Exactly. That’s not a movie,” Jeremy states plainly. “We got pretty disconnected as a band for a little bit,” Kevin ventures. “I don’t think there was ever a point where we were like, ‘I don’t think we can do this anymore’, but there was definitely a point where it was like ‘do you guys still want to do this?’. “That’s why this record had to happen this way,” concludes Jeremy. It’s been a rollercoaster in the A Day To Remember camp, and understandably so. As such, the most collaborative and defiant album in their discography is by far their most melancholy in tone. “We’re coming from the bleakest point in our career,” Jeremey explains. “‘Common Courtesy’ was written at the time when it was all exciting, like ‘we’re going to get out of this and the judge is going to have our back’. We had an abundance of good ideas. It

HUGE RISK. S CA RY

As Kevin adds, “how did this happen?”. They’re both reduced to laughter. What more is there they can do?

Jeremy is quick to say “thank you” to anyone that bought that album. “It’s the only reason we’re still here today, because we paid for that album ourselves. If it didn’t do well, we were in trouble because we would have no money to fund the court case; nothing. It was a huge risk. Scary shit.”

SHIT.” was just a really positive, exciting time. Then, you’re involved in a super, super stressful court case for four years; it’s not surprising that this is the bleakest record and the most raw sounding.” The tone of the album is a necessity. It would be wrong for ‘Bad Vibrations’ to ignore what has happened over the course of the last few years, but A Day To Remember have been far from pessimists in all of this. They’ve made the best of a shitty situation and many would be hard pushed to tell you that they’ve been tackling a lawsuit because they’ve hidden it so well with their successes. “It’s a lot to do with our fan base for supporting it. There’s not a good track history for bands that put out their own records. That was the scariest thing. So to have people continue to buy this record and for it to be even close to going gold one day,” he pauses, “what is life?”

Moving forward, A Day To Remember just want to maintain continued relevance and ensure that all they’ve been through is profoundly worth it. “It’s ending in November, this album is coming out in August. It’s like, if any of this shit matters to someone it’s going to be so special to us. It’ll be so gratifying that we can do it all five of us together and have songs that matter to the fan base, and we’re also out of all that bullshit. I will tell you this: if we have a song that does well on this record, the next record will not be a bleak record.” Now the wait begins for ‘A Day To Remember: The Movie’. P A Day To Remember’s album ‘Bad Vibrations’ is out 2nd September. 35

X X FO IN

THE

BOX

IRDOS R THE WE ING IT FO O D E R A OX X ES B L AC K F XPLAIN. ,” THEY E NUMBERS LER ALI SHUT WORDS:

MFOR . “IT’S CO

T IN

he title of Black Foxxes’ debut album says it all really. More than a warning or a confession, there’s a pride to the band’s honesty. Despite the scrawled, heart-on-sleeve admissions and open-book clarity, Black Foxxes are more resilient than you might expect. Turning their pain, confusion and anxiety into strength, ‘I’m Not Well’ is more than a statement. It’s something to live by. “It’s positivity out of sadness,” starts Tris Jane. “It’s dark and light. It is doom and gloom because the subject matter is Mark and his battles with anxiety but it’s done in a way makes people feel better about those things.” “It’s safety in numbers,” continues Mark Holley. “A lot of people ask me if the worst part of my anxiety is playing shows, but that’s the easiest part. The one thing I’ve noticed is that when you suffer from anxiety, there could be so many people in the crowd suffering as well. You’re among a crowd of people that are going through the same thing. It’s comfort in numbers. There are a lot of other weirdos and freaks out there,”

he smiles. “It’s cool to be weird.”

pretty big step for me,” he admits.

Black Foxxes, as we know them today, formed a little over three years ago. That’s when Ant Thornton joined the existing two-piece of Mark and Tris, made their new friendship Facebook official and things fell into place. It took a couple of months for them to find their rhythm in the scout hut that was (and still is) their practice space but when it clicked, it clicked hard. “That’s when we really started writing stuff we liked and thought, fuck, this is really cool. This is us.” The band swiftly released their ‘Pines’ EP, eager to share the magic, and have been building ever since.

“You used to get really nervous, didn’t you?” asks Mark.

“I’ve only ever been in bands with friends before,” starts Mark, recounting a history of filling in holes in other people’s visions. “’Your pop punk band needs a guitarist, oh, I’ll play’. I’ve never really done a band where I’ve put my whole time and effort into it or that was something I really loved. This is different to anything I’ve ever done before. It would feel weird to do another band now.” It’s a similar story for Ant: “I’ve been in a number of bands that haven’t been very interesting. This is great.” And Tris: “Before this band, I’d never played shows outside of Plymouth. It’s a

“Yeah.” Tris confirms. “I guess it gets to the point where you don’t really think about it any more. As weird as that sounds, and not in a big headed way, it just stops phasing you.” Black Foxxes is built around the idea of support. It’s not just a confidence in playing live they’ve brought each other. Their openness only came from within. “These guys brought out the best in me,” ventures Mark, before pausing. “If you think my lyrics are good, that is. If not, then it’s not the best, is it? I’ve been in bands before where I’ve come in with lyrics and someone’s just told me ‘Nah, I’m going to write the lyrics. Those are shit’. I did a songwriting course at university and I’ve always been told things have to be a certain way. I fucking hated that.” Ignoring all that early on in Black Foxxes, Mark felt comfortable enough with this unit to start sharing his ideas. Songs like ‘Rivers’ could be brought to the table because Mark didn’t feel embarrassed opening up. “I guess that’s just how it took off. I’ve grown from that. Without these guys, I

wouldn’t have been able to write the songs that I did.” With ‘Pines’ causing a fuss, Black Foxxes quickly set about work on an album so when the labels came knocking, they wouldn’t feel rushed. Despite the growing buzz about the band and the swelling support live, the trio pushed that to one side to focus. “We’ve only ever written for ourselves,” says Mark. “I think once we got the album together, we knew there’d be this hype around us because if there wasn’t, we’d be doing something wrong. If we didn’t get any hype around it, we shouldn’t be a fucking band. It hasn’t affected us though, it’s just made us feel like we’re doing something right.“ More of an evolution than an expansion, ‘I’m Not Well’ comes bearing a maturity. “As soon as we do something, we ask how can we do better,” explains Ant. “How can we be better? How can we progress? We’re always looking to the next thing.” ‘I’m Not Well’ is definitely better. The title track builds from bedroom confessional to stadium-levelling anthem, all while maintaining eye contact. ‘Husk’ is a slugger, all playful punches on the arm and knockout blows while ‘Slow Jams Forever’ is the sort of introspective plea that should be on t-shirts and online handles. There’s a lot going on but at its heart, is heart.

“IT’S DARK AND LIGHT, IT’S DOOM AND GLOOM.”

“It’s a body of work that’s really personal to me and I think, if it can help people in any way like music’s helped me, well, that’s why you carry on. That’s why you get through shit. It’s nice seeing people relate to it ‘cos that’s the most important thing. We get messages from people saying that, because of the lyrics, they’ve been able to get through things. As a musician, that’s 100% why you do it.” The band have been steadily attracting a following because of the magical pairing of great songs and a great live show but their reason for making music isn’t going to change. Ever. “It’s weird seeing the Twitter numbers and stuff go up rapidly but as far as we’re concerned, we’re just a band. We’re just a three-piece who practices in a scout hut. Nothing’s different. We

can go from The Pit, to the Radio One stage, to the fucking Main Stage. We’ll still be a band who play in a scout hut and I think that’s why people relate to it, because it’s honest.” There aren’t any gimmicks or tricks to ‘I’m Not Well’. It is what it is. “The thing that sums up the sound the most, is three guys practicing in a scout hut. That’s how we wrote and I think that’s how it comes across with the songs. It’s rough and ready. There’s no insane amount of time spent on one bit, over polishing or anything.” The record captures a moment that the band want to live forever. “We all want it to be, and feel it can be, something that in ten years time, is still relevant,” states Mark. “We didn’t want to make something that is only going to be relevant for a couple of

years and then the scene will move on in some way. I don’t think we fit into any scene. We don’t have this clique of bands that we go off on tour with and we like that. I feel like we’re doing something that’s just our own thing and I hope in ten or fifteen years time, if anyone listens back, people will be able to say that it’s still current. If you put on Hundred Reasons’ ‘Ideas Above Our Station’ today, it would still stand up.” “I just want to make records and see the world a bit,” says Ant, while Mark wants more: “I want to make important records. I want to make records that are going to help people. “Hopefully it does well and we can go on and write another album. That’s the focus right now.” ‘I’m Not Well’, despite the lyrical content and the bold statement held aloft, doesn’t dwell. It’s a record looking up, out and forward. Black Foxxes are the same. P Black Foxxes’ album ‘I’m Not Well’ is out 19th August. 39

D l u CoIt Be ? A c i g M A KING MORE OF ES DEWEES MA IERO AND JAM K N A R F : S L L R E E UTL D E AT H S P WORDS: ALI SH INK POSSIBLE. YO U ’ D E V E R T H N A H T T E K C A R

eath Spells’ debut album is disgusting. From the goose-bump fairytale of ‘diluted’ through the broken anarchy of ‘why is love so disastrous’ until the droning pendulum of ‘i don’t know much but i know i loathe you’, ‘Nothing Above, Nothing Below’ is twisted. In this world, hooks don’t exist. It’s noise upon dirty noise and the whole record feels grimy. But that’s sort of the point. “It’s not the type of music that I expect anyone to enjoy. The original idea was that Death Spells was anti-everything,” explains Frank Iero who, alongside James Dewees, created this monster. “It was a reaction to our surroundings, a reaction to the music and the people we were meeting at that time. I think it’s also a reaction to the feelings we were having, just with our own worlds crashing down around

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us. What you have are these people who are, on a constant basis, creating in a stasis where they’re told they’re not really allowed to create. It’s a rebellion against that.” Starting in a Hollywood apartment in 2012 while Frank and James worked on the fifth My Chemical Romance album, Death Spells was a knee-jerk push back against the world they went back to each night. “It was never supposed to be a band. It was us two locked in this weird apartment, feeling like two strangers in a strange land. And that was our battleground. We were just trying to create noise and trying to offend as many people as we could.” Going back and forth, Frank and James would add layer upon layer, trying to be more offensive with every turn; a nuclear arms race of noise and din. It only became something more when Frank realised he had something to say. “And then, the songs started to take shape. It started to be less of just retaliation and reaction and it started to be more of a stance.”

‘Nothing Above, Nothing Below’ was finally finished this spring. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for years. There were times when I didn’t think it was going to happen and I was able to move on from there, but not fully. I would always come back to it. I felt like there was something really special missing. This feels like a completion of sorts.” But instead of the shapeless anarchy that sparked it, this Death Spells record comes complete with a purpose. The message that “things need to be dirty, they need to be ugly,” rages throughout. “Life is just not about what comes after and the bliss. Life is all over the fucking place and what’s important is what we have right now. We can’t concern ourselves with what comes next if we’re not prepared to deal with what’s here.” On first glance, the grime and the darkness that clings to Death Spells makes it look bleak and uninviting but just below the surface, lies a clarity. “It started off as this retaliatory reaction

to these things that were going on around us and it slowly started to grow into an emphatic statement. A feeling that we were taking this stand together,” explains Frank. “We really formed a cohesive bond through the writing process of however many years.” Existing in frantic bursts between other commitments (Frank’s solo project, James’ band Reggie And The Full Effect) Death Spells has only ever lived in intense circumstances. More off than on over the past four years, to the outside world it looked like Death Spells was dead, buried and forgotten.

In fact, the announcement of ‘Nothing Above, Nothing Below’ was the first we’d heard from the band since 2013. “The stars just aligned,” offers Frank to why now. “I was writing a record and came to this point where I couldn’t for the life of me finish it. I didn’t know what it all meant and I just hit this wall. James hit me up, he was free and I said I really feel like we need to finish this Death Spells thing. I feel like we need to get that record out.” Conversations started and the pair ended up finishing the record. ”Once Death Spells was finished, I finished my record. I felt like I could

finally move on.” Since the breakup of My Chemical Romance, we’ve been getting to know Frank Iero through The Cellabration. We’ve seen him step into the spotlight and learn to work it. However, Death Spells shows a very different side to him and people are going to be shocked. It’s okay though, “I love that shit,” laughs Frank. “That’s the thing, I love creating. I can’t not do it. And at times, as much as I love it, I fucking hate it. It’s my life source and it’s also going to be the thing that fucking kills me, I know it. I can’t make just one thing though. I need to be all over the place because that’s the person I am and this band is one of the facets of my personality. As was My Chem, as was Leathermouth, as was Cellabration. It’s the same thing with the solo records, every record is going to change. I can’t do the same thing over and over. It’s got to be different. It’s got to be a different band completely, otherwise why are we doing it? You’ve got to be a shark, man. If you’re not moving forward you’re dead.” There’s a fearlessness to that attitude and to Death Spells. It was there at the very beginning as they set out to offend the people living around them and it’s here now, sprawled across ‘Nothing Above, Nothing

I S T H I S I T F O R D E AT H SPELLS?

I don’t know. It’s weird, I had an idea for a song the other day. I’ve written it down, I’ve locked it away so I don’t know what’s going to happen with that but here’s a funny thing, whenever James and I are in the same room, we end up creating something so I’m curious to see what touring with him makes. It’s been a while, so you never know. W H A T D O E S D E AT H SPELLS MEAN FOR FRANK I E RO’S OTH E R PROJ ECT?

I feel like these bands, although very different, are all within the same universe. They’re all connected in some way. And that’s another reason why I felt so strongly about having this record come out. It feels like I’m building the

skyscraper and there was this missing floor. And you don’t understand the full architecture of the building without getting the foundation, or that fifth floor. I feel like there are certain lyrics or references or certain places that I got to with Cellabration, but also with the new Patience record, that I wouldn’t have been able to get to without Death Spells. Having that come out makes more sense. I felt like without it coming out, there was this missing chapter that I was really affected by that other people didn’t get to pay witness to. There wouldn’t be those two bands without Death Spells so that’s why I felt like it was so important for this to have its day. After Death Spells comes out and The Patience record comes out, I think people are really going to understand where certain things came from and how it got to that point.

Below’. “Some people set up rules when writing songs. They set up barriers where you can only do one thing and that’ll be the formula for the songs. I didn’t want any of that. The only thing I wanted was there to be no fucking rules. The only rule was that you had to break down every barrier you had set up for yourself. I wanted it to be full blown, I wanted it to be naked but drenched in poetry. There’s a lot of dirtiness and a lot of ugliness to hide behind but I don’t think we really did hide on this record. It’s exactly what we wanted it to be.” The Death Spells record feels like a futuristic wasteland, plagued with nightmare and fantasy. It isn’t though. “I have a hard time making up stories,” admits Frank. “I enjoy doing that in writing free verse but lyrically, I was never one to draw from fiction. It’s always been life experiences or things I’ve witnessed other people go through. This record is the same. These are all feelings that I’ve had or experienced through people close to me.” ‘choke on one another’ is about “being villains with a loved one and basically being the worst for each other and wondering where that’s going to end; if you’re going to wisen up or if it’s just going to end in the total annihilation of everything. ‘i don’t know much but i know i loathe you’ is about love and hate truly being almost the same emotion. It’s about hating someone so much, that you want to be them, possibly to destroy them but also maybe because you hate them so much because you want to be them but can’t.” Elsewhere, ‘fantastic bastards’ “is about surviving abuse and destroying your abuser,” and ‘end of life’ is literally about that. “It’s about passing on, wanting to still be with the one that you love and to give solace in some way but also the selfishness of still wanting to be with them so much, you end up haunting them and possibly destroying them.” The record is dark but it’s challenged by an awful lot of light. It’s a reflection of what we all go through. “You can’t experience the bad without the good and the sweet without the bitter. Every time you listen to a record, you need that little bit of a ride to be taken on. I don’t think anybody can be punched in the face for 45 minutes straight. And who wants to be?” Over the past four years, Frank and James have had their ups

“It’s NoT

D N i K e tH oF MuSIC

Ct e p x e D I’ to E N o Y N A

ENJoY .”

and their downs. Cultivating those experiences and feelings from such a stretch of time gives ‘Nothing Above, Nothing Below’ a fully-formed weight. You can look at the title and see darkness but really, it’s an empowering stance. “This is the most uplifting statement I feel like I could make,” explains Frank. “There’s nothing above us, there’s nothing below us. We’re so concerned with what comes next that we’d kill each other over what we believe happens after this.” Instead this record asks, “How would we really, truly act if we felt like there was nothing else. If this was all we had and all we had was where we are and the people that we were with, how would we conduct ourselves? If you think about it in that context, this is it. This is heaven, this is hell and this is the gift we can all give each other.” Frank pauses. “I think it’s a very uplifting place to be. I think life might be a better place if we all felt that way,” he adds, before laughing. “Or it could all go to shit. Who knows. At least you’d know where you stand.” Death Spells aren’t expecting their

music to have some sort of mass appeal. It’s niche but “I know there are people out there who will get it. That’s the beauty of creating something, you have no idea what it’s going to do when it gets into other people’s hands. Relinquishing control is the scariest fucking process but it’s also the most rewarding. It takes on its own life and you get to see it grow and either destroy or create, or turn into a monster or an angel. As far as what I hope people get from it, I don’t even pretend to have that much control but I do hope it affects them in some way. I hope they’re not indifferent to it.” Whether you adore the neon-drenched nightmare that is ‘Nothing Above, Nothing Below’ or want to run from it as quickly as possible, it’s a record that forces a reaction. That’s how Death Spells started. That’s how they’ll end. As for Frank, “I don’t know about you, but when I listened to it, I felt dirty. You feel like you need to take a shower after. I like that.” P Death Spells’ album ‘Nothing Above, Nothing Below’ is out now.

RATED MOOSE BLOOD BLUSH

Hopeless Records

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ome bands emerge from the underground. Others break through. With ‘Blush’, Moose Blood are unlocking the door and strolling in. From the sunshine grin of ‘Pastel’, the band settle down with who they are. Set amongst wide-open spaces and battling an ever-growing distance, Moose Blood manage to maintain that feeling of intimacy while going bigger and getting better. While their debut, still fantastic, had moments that sent your mind drifting to their points of influence, ‘Blush’ makes sure you’re wholly 44 upsetmagazine.com

theirs for the duration.

while ‘Freckle’ hammers it all home.

Cutting themselves open and putting it to paper, ‘Blush’ sees Moose Blood baring all. There’s blood, guts and spirit but there’s a control to it. A confidence in exposure. From the fizzy sparseness of ‘Shimmer’ to the clenched fist of ‘Honey’, the band fit together as one. Moose Blood have played a lot of shows to get to this point and each and every one can be felt in this unity. Emo might be a gang but Moose Blood are one.

There’s an intensity across ‘Blush’ that’s a new look for Moose Blood. Energetic but never in a rush, every idea is developed but not over-saturated. The record shines bright but still has that rough and ready glint in the corner of its eye. The band have managed to carry forward every single reason people fell for them in the first place, yet ‘Blush’ feels new. It sparkles in the spotlight and feels warm in darkness. Despite the expansion, the changes and those choruses, ‘Blush’ is a still a Moose Blood record. They own their evolution. It’s just that this Moose Blood, comfortable and with a hint of confidence, aren’t afraid of growing up. Ali Shutler

“I guess it’s time to write another one about being drunk,” start the band on ‘Sway’, self-aware but still exploring. Elsewhere, ‘Spring’ is sheer heartbreak, all lost questions and confused looks

Q+A

OWEN OW E N - A K A C H I CAG O’S M I K E KINSELLA, ALSO OF A M E RI CA N FO OT BA L L - H AS JUST RELEASED HIS NEW A L BU M ‘ T H E K I N G O F W H YS ’.

HELLO MIKE, HOW ARE YOU? I’m good, thanks. Just got home from a kidless vacation. ‘THE KING OF WHYS’ IS YOUR FIRST ALBUM FOR WICHITA RECORDINGS. WHAT BROUGHT YOU GUYS TOGETHER? I’ve been way into a bunch of bands of theirs and my manager knows them from working on other bands together, and then they said they’d do it and I’m super stoked! HAS THE RECORD BEEN A LONG TIME IN THE WORKS? WAS THE PROCESS AN EASY ONE? Yeah, the writing part doesn’t come too easy to me. I sort of struggle getting motivated to organise / finish any of the millions of guitar noodles and/ or drunken notes I have written down. Eventually (hopefully...) things start to fall into place and some of the noodles get paired with some of the notes and the songs start to take shape. WHAT DID YOU FIND MOST CHALLENGING? This was the first time I left home to track an Owen album, as well as the first time working with Zach and Sean,

so I was a little nervous wondering how it would go and if our processes were compatible. I was already a fan of their music, so I knew I’d like their ideas. But it was a bit of a trial by fire, being dropped into a situation I’ve never been in before with people I didn’t really know. WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT CREATING MUSIC SOLO? I get all the beer at the shows. YOU’RE PRETTY PROLIFIC - FROM WHERE DO YOU DRAW YOUR INSPIRATION? DO YOU WORRY YOU’LL RUN OUT OF IDEAS? Oh, I’m pretty sure I’ve run out of ideas a long time ago. I used to travel a lot more and meet a lot more people, so there was always new first-hand or observable interactions to ponder. But as I’ve become more old and sedentary I find myself rehashing a lot of the same subjects. The goal now is to approach familiar subjects (family, friends, mortality) with different perspectives as my role as a father, friend, and ageing human keeps changing. HOW MANY MUSICAL PROJECTS DO YOU TYPICALLY HAVE ON THE GO AT ANY ONE TIME? I’m really only playing with Owen and American Football now. Owls is on an indefinite (until we all get bored doing what we’re doing at the same time, which seems to only overlap every 12 years or so...) hiatus, and I think Their They’re There is done? It’s pretty easy to stagger the work between the two, as AF has to plan everything quite a bit in advance (due to different work / kid’s schedules / cities) and then I can concentrate on Owen stuff in the

interims. Every so often I’ll pack up to play a show and have to pause to remember which songs I’m supposed to learn to play the shows. It’s like having two awesome part-time jobs. WOULD YOU SAY ‘THE KING OF WHYS’ IS YOUR FAVOURITE OWEN ALBUM TO DATE? Yeah, it’s (obviously) the one I can relate to most, and maybe the most satisfied I’ve ever been lyrically with an Owen album. And I’m really in love with a lot of the tones and flourishes that Sean and Zach achieved. WHAT’S THE MOST EXCITING THING - ALBUM ASIDE - YOU’VE GOT PLANNED FOR OVER THE SUMMER? I’ve got a family road trip / tour planned in a few weeks! The wife is spending a week in New York for a history seminar (she teaches high school history) and the kids and I are going to drive out there and pick her up. Then we’re going to take the long way home, stopping in Niagara Falls and playing a couple solo shows on the way. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE UP TO RIGHT NOW? ANYTHING AMERICAN FOOTBALLRELATED, PERHAPS? I’m really not supposed to say anything, but I think we’re going to add La Croix to our rider... P

OWEN

THE KING OF WHYS

Wichita

eeee Were it not for Mike Kinsella, the North Eastern US scene (and indeed its many uprising emo darlings) would be little more than a speck on the musical map. For his eighth solo full-length, relocating to Wisconsin and taking a deep breath of brisk winter air has allowed him to embrace some of the textures that have previously taken a back seat. ‘The King Of Whys’ is a far more expansive record both in terms of its personnel and its palette of sounds, but it still has the intimate and intoxicating charm that allows Owen to consistently burrow deep into your soul and invigorate your most tender of feels. Danny Randon

DEATH SPELLS

NOTHING ABOVE, NOTHING BELOW

CREATIVE ADULT FEAR OF LIFE

Run For Cover

Vagrant

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“My love and my hate for you are infinite,” promise Death Spells at the opening of their debut album, signposting the two roads you’re about to be offered. Burying pop choruses in layers of glitching electronics and dirt, they do all they can to keep you at arm’s length. Peel back the thin layer of grime though, and you’ll find a bright, rainbow soaked record of theatrics and fantasy. ‘choke on one another’ is driven by a pounding trance, ‘quaainterlude’ is an eerie respite, all goosebumps and beautiful dread and ‘hypnotic spells’ dances in the distance, enticing you to give chase. In-between these moments of calm, Frank Iero and James Dewees take great pleasure in shocking at every turn. Twisting about the place, falling through the floor and changing all the rules. It’s wonderfully fearless. Ali Shutler

Described as sitting ‘somewhere between abstract art and pop music’, Creative Adult’s second full-length actually lives between two far more complementary but not immediately obvious bed-fellows. The sprightly upbeat-on-a-downer tones of 80s UK indie ring loud - from The Cure to The Smiths, but alongside sits a more 90s grit that could have been forged in the northern boozers of Oasis. For a British band, such comparisons would be seen as shorthand for uninspired, but where ‘Fear Of Life’ is concerned, they’re a potent combination. It means ‘Know How’ has a gut of iron, able to take the punches without a flinch. ‘Moving Window’ sparkles, but never feels like it may lose its grounding, while ‘Charged’ sits at the midpoint of the two. A combination with brains and brawn, Creative Adult have little to be afraid of. Stephen Ackroyd

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MY IRON LUNG

STORM THE SKY

Pure Noise Records

UNFD

Taking post hardcore in its stride, this second full-length from My Iron Lung is everything most loved about the genre. Filled with angst and melody, the band have found their focus and developed upon their previous releases. There’s a reason they’ve become one of the scene’s most talked about bands, and here they manage to flirt the line between straight aggression and emotion, with lyrics that match Matt Fitzpatrick’s vocal assault. Instrumentally their strength lies in the restraint show by the guitars while the drums power through to give the music its fast-paced heartbeat. There are few dull moments on this record. A soon to be unstoppable force, ‘Learn To Leave’ is hopefully the next major step in this flourishing band’s career. Steven Loftin

With peaks and troughs that betray a lack of consistency, this new effort from Storm The Sky is a puzzling listen that struggles to launch. Moments of aggression are routinely pushed away by weakness elsewhere: it’s as though they have the pieces of what could be a good album, but haven’t quite placed them together properly. ‘Jaded Ghost’ has promise but gets lost in the mix - a common issue throughout; acoustic number ‘In Vein’ also has merit, but in the context of the album is something of a mood killer. On ’S.W.F.Y’ you can finally feel the band bare teeth, while the most ambitious track here, ‘Burning’ is perhaps their finest moment. It exhibits the same rollercoaster style as the rest of ‘Sin Will Find You’, but it does so with complete intention. Steven Loftin

LEARN TO LEAVE

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SIN WILL FIND YOU

BLACK FOXXES I’M NOT WELL

Spinefarm Records

eeeee From the opening hush of ‘I’m Not Well’, Black Foxxes are in complete control. As the title-track explodes, so does your heart as the band somehow marry a last chance saloon with the self-belief to take on anything and everything. Drenched in emotion but drawing power from those admissions and confrontations, Black Foxxes set the agenda quickly. From here on in, this is their world. Welcome to the party. It’s slow jams forever. After an extensive build, expectations for the band’s debut were running high. ‘I’m Not Well’ goes above and beyond. Using every moment as a chance for expression, the album is a vibrant, shuddering beast. Rugged, unpredictable but beautiful, the eleven tracks tumble together to form a welcoming landscape. ‘Whatever Lets You Cope’ is refrained and distant, ‘Husk’ gets close enough for you to feel its breath on your cheek and ‘Waking Up’ is a bundle of nervous energy, skipping about the place but desperately trying to keep eye contact. See, after the opening admission of ‘I’m Not Well’, the rest of the album climbs upwards. Instead of dwelling and picking at itself, Black Foxxes’ debut accepts, discusses and rages. Because the record is so fraught, so honest and so open, there are some obvious comparisons to be made. But what Black Foxxes are doing is brand new. Not only do they offer comfort, they create a powerful cinema to proudly let it all out. And let you all in. Black Foxxes’ debut is deeply personal. You can feel the battle behind every moment but it’s also a thrilling ride. From the destruction of ’How We Rust’, through the agility of ‘Maple Summer’ and out, towards the pointed ‘Home’, ‘I’m Not Well’ is a record to get lost in. It’s also a record to find yourself in. Ali Shutler

FIELD MOUSE EPISODIC

Topshelf Records

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Recorded with Joe Reinhart of Hop Along, ‘Episodic’ is the result of a band-producer match made in heaven. Field Mouse have a distinct identity, one that comes from an inspired interweaving of dream pop entrancement with snarling, grunge-rooted attitude. Instant earworm ‘The Mirror’ opens proceedings as a blissful adrenaline rush, before ‘Half-Life’ subdues things – only to soon explode into something equally invigorating. It’s a similar theme for the remaining 25 or so minutes of dream-grunge delight. And if dream-grunge wasn’t already a thing, then Field Mouse have bloody well made it one. Tom Hancock

DESCENDENTS A DAY TO HYPERCAFFIUM SPAZZINATE REMEMBER Epitaph eeee Legendary punk rockers Descendents return with a typically stimulating first fulllength release in over a decade. Frontman Milo Aukerman mentions how the band have stayed “inspired over the years [by] having the music as an outlet for [their] frustrations” – and it’s an outlet they’ve utilised to full effect here. Some of the sixteen tracks that make up ‘Hypercaffium Spazzinate’ are drawn from very specific personal experiences; ‘Testosterone’, for example. Others are more instantly relatable, such as the rejection-tackling ‘On Paper’ and rather self-explanatory ‘Victim Of Me’. Autobiographical finale ‘Beyond The Music’ is an affectingly nostalgic trip down Descendents memory lane, a celebration of how the band has kept the members bonded all these years. It proves that they’re still rocking, still relevant, still unmistakably Descendents. Tom Hancock

BAD VIBRATIONS

ADTR Records

eeee ‘Bad Vibrations’ is the soundtrack to A Day To Remember’s four years of painful waiting for the court hearing to finalise their fate in a battle against their record label. It’s unsurprising then that it’s far darker in tone than anything the band have penned before. While their hardcore element has always gone hard and brutal, it’s the unparalleled bleak undertone that makes this album so unique in their arsenal. A glance at the tracklisting shows you the mindset of the band going in to record: ‘Paranoia’, ‘Naivety’, ‘Exposed’. It’s a hall of fame for brief, pertinent and disillusioned song titles. ‘Bad Vibrations’ is a different side to A Day To Remember that they didn’t want to have to show us. It’s a product of necessity and it would have been wrong for the tone of the record to be anything but darkness given what they’ve been through. Jack Glasscock

COLD PUMAS THE HANGING VALLEY

Faux Discx / Gringo

eee ‘The Hanging Valley’ is the second album from Brighton’s Cold Pumas. A good four years have passed since their debut, which was a stompy, retro groove-based record; this one sees them mature into a billowing swirl. It’s comprised of lots of lush, extended jams, not unlike the most recent Parquet Courts album. It’s like listening to a band peruse through a collection of motifs, which can sometimes come across a little self-indulgent, but here it feels like the natural progression. The first half of the album sees a woozy, roughness reign, like a heavy head. But then ‘Human Pattern’ sees the band crack, into what feels like paranoia, the clashing close harmonies and repeating patterns building into a wash of noise. Despite its name, ‘The Slump’ is packed with tension and raw energy; the rest of the album providing a come down from this intense build up. Poppy Waring 47

TRACKS OF THE MONTH DOE - SINCERE There’s a lot going on with Doe’s ‘Sincere’, all over lapping vocals and shimmering instrumentals, but one thing shines through. Doe know how to write a brilliant song. Busy but never cluttered, there’s a frustration to the track that slowly builds until they just can’t take it anymore. With a pop, Doe let it all spill out however they’re never in any danger of losing their tight grip on what’s going on around them. AGAINST ME - 333 Against Me are back and as fantastically brilliant as ever. They’re one of the most consistent bands in punk but always manage to find new ways to surprise and delight. ‘333’, the first taste of their new album ‘Shape Shift With Me’ is no different. Because it is different. With us so far? Good. Outward facing but with plenty of heart, there’s a pace to this track that gives the band space to say everything they want. They’re not mincing their words though. Direct and to the point, ‘333’ is inescapable. PWR BTTM - PROJECTION PWR BTTM’s ‘Projection’ is about “throwing a shiny, glorious middle finger to those who doubt you,” and what better way to do that than with an absolute banger. Hyperactive yet focused, the track playfully bounces between frantic and refrain but never breaks eye contact. Not only does this song provide the perfect introduction to the band and their glorious debut, it also expands on everything that’s come before it. There’s really no excuse not to get involved. PROPHETS OF RAGE PROPHETS OF RAGE What did you expect Prophets of Rage to sound like? Yeah, they sound like that. It’s not them that are broken though, it’s the world around them and this supergroup are out to do something about it. The first track released from the members of RATM, Cypress Hill and Public Enemy is as to-the-point, groove-laden and incendiary as their past suggests but maintains an energy and a fire that’ll spark something. Clear the way.

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DINOSAUR JR

GIVE A GLIMPSE OF WHAT YER NOT

JAGJAGUWAR

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It’s a sign of a great album when it instantly feels like you’ve heard every song, every riff, every solo, countless times before and it’s immediately embedded in your head. It feels like you could say that about every Dinosaur Jr album since their late 80s breakthrough, yet their eleventh album ‘Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not’ succeeds in making an age old formula sound as fresh and stirring as ever. All the classic sounds are in place right from the opening blast of ‘Goin’ Down’ and its addictive riff. The album is focused and honed to perfection. As usual, the songs are high on melody, punctuated by turbocharged J Mascis solos, but there’s a charming tenderness at work on bruised, wistful laments like ‘Lost All Day’ that lift them beyond simple punk thrills. So, it’s same as it ever was for Dinosaur Jr - and that’s pretty much the way everyone wants it to be. When they’re making classic indie rock flecked with air punching guitar solos then all is good in the world. Martyn Young

BAYSIDE VACANCY

Hopeless Records

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“I am the last of my kind,” belts Anthony Raneri on ‘Enemy Lines’. As they approach the release of ‘Vacancy’, it’s worth noting that Bayside are indeed a rare breed: ol’ faithfuls still around from the noughties, who keep on keeping on. They’ve always been just good solid, good music. They were honest, relatable and told one hell of a story. ‘Vacancy’ sees them push it - they’re fearless and whimsical, their lyrics laying it bare almost brutally at times. ‘Mary’ is their storytelling lilt at its finest, where ‘I’ve Been Dead All Day’ is as wild a ride as they come. From the opening second, they command everything. So what do you expect from a musical stalwart? You expect quality; in the case of Bayside, you also expect a hook. Though Raneri admits that for a while he wasn’t sure where anything was going, the road he and the band have taken has led them to this. Bayside are here in all their glory, with an added southern swagger. ‘Vacancy’ doesn’t just deliver - it comes out with a bloody vengeance. Heather McDaid

THE AMITY AFFLICTION

APOLOGIES, HAPPY I HAVE NONE DIVING

Roadrunner Records

Holy Roar

Topshelf Records

From the initial chimes of ‘I Bring The Weather With Me’, through its charging guitars and layered synths, to the melodic, unforgettable chorus, it’s a winning opener. Add to that an unapologetic guitar solo and it’s no surprise the Amity Affliction are already such a big name. Title track ‘This Could Be Heartbreak’ has a way poppier edge but the screams of Joel Birch stop it sounding too radio-friendly. Crashing into ‘Nightmare’, it follows a similar vein, growing from pop rock chorus to growling metal breakdown and back again. ‘All Fucked Up’ is the ballad of the hour, with a chorus made for singalong encores, while ‘Fight My Regret’ takes a different approach to the subject of mistakes made. ‘This Could Be Heartbreak’ nails the contrast between light and dark, optimism and realism; it’s a strong effort. Kathryn Black

In their own words, Apologies, I Have None are all about progress towards perfection, and with each release they have taken bigger strides towards achieving just that. Expectations, therefore, are understandably high. But while ‘Pharmacie’ retains the anthemic quality the band have brought to the fore since ‘London’, they have forfeited the raw anger and immediacy which made the ‘Black’ EP such a compelling listen. This is none more evident than during the reworked version of ‘The Clarity Of Morning’ which, in the transition from EP to album, has lost all trace of its original intensity. In ‘Everybody Wants To Talk About Mental Health’, McKenzie sings “stagnation is the deepest fear I hold”. But with such a marked loss of the vibrancy that made the earlier records such a rewarding listen, it might not be a fear without foundation. Jade Curson

Now on their fourth record in three years, Happy Diving are going from strength to strength: ‘Electric Soul Unity’ is chock full of guitars that sound so large you can’t help but wonder if there’s an entire orchestra of axes behind it, and the solos are so pleasing and filled with resolve that it’s impossible to not pick up your own air guitar. While the formula stays pretty much the same throughout the tracks featured, there’s always a very slight differentiator, be it a more fuzzy and feedback driven sound, or just a mildly slower tempo. Lead single ‘Holy Ground’ furiously highlights the very best of the entire record. For those who are fans of Dinosaur Jr, or the even more closely compared Japandroids, you’ll lose your shit to this record. Steven Loftin

THIS COULD BE HEARTBREAK

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PHARMACIE

ELECTRIC SOUL UNITY

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PUPPY

THE HOLIDAY

Self-Released

The seeds of 90s nostalgia have been sown generously across the young crop of British alt-rock, but Puppy’s entanglement of roots are planted deeper than most. Over the course of their second EP, the London trio deal out vibes of everything from ‘Black Album’-era Metallica to ‘Siamese Dream’-era Smashing Pumpkins, all while sounding fresh and completely unpredictable. If the Deftonesjamming-with-Ghost entrance of ‘Entombed’ doesn’t boot your brain around in your skull like a worn-out hacky sack, then the even meatier riffs in ‘My Tree’ will leave you no less than baffled. It’s ‘Vol. II’’s latter half, however, which shows the real promise that Puppy hold. This is a masterful and mind-bending/muddling/blowing EP from one of the country’s most perplexing new bands. Danny Randon

At seven tracks long, ‘The Good Life’ is a pretty long EP and a fairly short album, but one that’s packed with bangers and brilliant pop rock tunes. ‘The Opener’ wastes no time starting the action, with charging chords and a rollercoaster of a bassline. The chorus is simple but so catchy. There’s a “da da da-da da” singalong section and mid-tempo chorus in ‘Listen To Me’ that sounds undeniably like a You Me At Six track. ‘All I See’ has a moodier sound, swapping bouncy melodies for extensive, brooding sections. ‘Headliners’ feat. Tiffany Robinson is an understated but unforgettable way to close the EP. Faultlessly summing up the feelings of a lost generation stuck between leaving their youth behind and not knowing how to look forward to the future, The Holiday have a debut to be proud of. Kathryn Black

VOL II

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THE GOOD LIFE EP

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LIVE

2000 TREES TEN YEARS IN AND STILL PUSHING T H I N G S F O R WA R D S .

Words: Ali Shutler. Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett & Amie Kingswell.

2000 Trees is a very polite festival. Born out of a desire to do away with the disconnect the organisers felt at other events, the festival has been slowly building a community for the past ten years. Onstage, the bands are quick to thank everyone working behind the scenes and the crowd use the bins provided. Chaos is in short supply. With 2000 Trees building itself around the twin pillars of Frank Turner and Reuben, it makes sense that the Thursday sees Xtra Mile (who’ve used the same foundations) take over the third stage for a showcase of its ever-increasing roster of singer-songwriters. Rob Lynch, with his energetic suburban-shanties and a new album about to drop, is by far the most adventurous. There’s a vigour to his set and his tales of lost friends and runaways are very much on home turf here. Elsewhere there’s a “secret” set by Frank Turner, Beans on Toast plays (and gives out the press Wi-Fi password onstage, the scoundrel) and Ben Marwood makes his return to the festival. It’s nice enough but it’s all very safe. As is Jamie Lenman’s solo set. It’s 2000 Trees by numbers and with so many people returning year on year, it’s hard to get excited by another rousing rendition of “I Still Believe”.

It’s a good job then that the festival is determined to keep moving things forward. The real excitement comes from the future-telling crystal ball that 2000 Trees becomes. Maybe it’s the friendly atmosphere or the determination to see as many bands as possible but there’s an openness to pretty much every set across the weekend. Switching their breakneck intensity for something more smirking, Milk Teeth are less furious but no less brilliant. It’s the same for Black Peaks who are somehow even bigger than at their defining set at Download a few weeks back with both bands proving that there’s still a lot of exploring left to do. Muncie Girls are as charged as ever but it’s the three new songs aired during a woodland solo set from Lande that give us our first real taste that this band won’t be settling for more of the same on album two. They inspire growth and self-belief and if ‘5 Miles Home’, ‘Blankets’ and ‘Locked Up’ (all titles followed with an “I think”) are anything to go by, Muncie Girls are listening to themselves. Puppy are ridiculously good. Meeting 52 upsetmagazine.com

in the middle point of some eclectic Venn diagram but pushing at the walls, their set is constantly moving, getting sidetracked, then charging off once more. Press To Meco are more focused but no less joyful. Grinning with melody and boasting an impressive knack for weighted acrobatics, they deal in that quintessential British Rock landscape but are far more colourful. Grumble Bee is just as bright, wringing an energy and an enthusiasm out of everyone present with lofty scope and a rugged charm.

suitably grand. Doused in pink light, every moment is magic and those new songs really come alive onstage.

Elsewhere both Creeper and Counterfeit are given their first crack at a festival main stage, and they both make it look easy. Counterfeit’s snarling abrasion is difficult to ignore but there are more than enough moments of warmth, heart and soul to drag you closer to their crooked world while Creeper fire on all six cylinders. It’s big, it’s pompous but it’s never too far out of reach.

And while Moose Blood and Twin are the perfect bands to close the 2000 Trees that we know, it’s Refused’s set on the Saturday night that shows how far the festival has come in ten years. “Firstly, we are not new, underground or British,” points out Dennis Lyxzén with a smirk, referring to the festival’s tagline. “But thank you anyway.” Ahead of an electric ‘Rather Be Dead’, Dennis explains that, “Patti Smith told us that Rock and Roll is supposed to liberate us and that still holds true. What the world is offering us, I’m not buying it.” Incendiary, outspoken and with the back catalogue to match their confidence, Refused couldn’t feel more at home. And everyone welcomes it. P

Someone needs to have a word with whoever decided to put Moose Blood up against Twin Atlantic but whichever way you go, you’re in for a treat. Moose Blood are on the cusp of something big and tonight’s headline slot feels

Wherever Moose Blood are heading, Twin are already there. They’ve been a Big Deal for a few years now and tonight is a set of the greatest, with room to tease what’s still to come with ‘GLA’. They’re bold, brash but determined to make everyone at the main stage leave with a grin on their face and a riff in their head. It’s almost too easy.

lass Animals’ dreamscape laden electro-pop is the perfect remedy to a slightly cloudy day at Garorock. Going down a treat, they know exactly how to use the stage to their advantage and incite a relaxed dance. ‘Gooey’ from 2014’s ‘Zaba’ is an instant crowd pleaser. The Kills’ set highlights the perfection they can achieve with their songwriting, with highlights including ‘Doing It To Death’ - which sounds just as fierce live as it does on record - and ‘Baby Says’. Unfortunately there’s just a missing something. With Alison Mosshart prowling around the stage while Jamie Hince is rooted into the music, it’s a performance that takes nothing from the day but sadly doesn’t add anything either. DJ headline sets at festivals can be a hit or miss affair, but Jamie xx brings a disco-central set that has the crowd in the palm of his hand and dancing. Blazing through tracks, his set is effortless.

Not quite rock, not quite electronic, Unknown Mortal Orchestra bring a pleasant and relaxing set, perfect for their early afternoon slot. They give a solid performance, albeit one that sadly doesn’t manage to draw the crowd it should. By far one of the of the best received acts, with 2011’s phenomenal hit ‘Midnight City’ causing the entire festival to congregate around the Scène De La Paine stage, there’s something quite inspiring about seeing M83 live, bringing the intricate and expertly produced sound to life. Slaves’ set is filled with political satire and punk aggression. Furiously ripping through their set, they explain one track is influenced by “a lot of big rich cunts running our country.” It’s a sight to behold, and one Slaves surely won’t soon forget. Savages put on, well, a savage performance. The band come out with an air of attitude and it’s just about the most elegantly abusive thing ever. Once frontwoman Jehnny Beth takes

to the stage, they’re an unstoppable beast. Donned in their thematic white and black suits, The Hives have their audience in the palm of their hand instantly. Tearing through hits such as ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’ and ‘Walk Idiot Walk’, frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, is the perfect frontman. Plus their techs were dressed ninjas. That’s right. Ninjas. Sunday night closers Disclosure ensure the crowd leaves the festival suitably impressed. With a stage setup that looks eerily like two spaceships hovering above the crowd, brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence take command of their controls. They know you’re here to see a show and have no problem proving their worth: not to mention the light show that can probably be seen from miles around. It’s an impressively elaborate and well-executed set that provides a closing that perfectly celebrates the 20th anniversary of this hidden gem of a festival. P

GAROROCK Words: Steven Loftin. Photos: Corinne Cumming.

All Time Low ’s

Alex Gaskarth VS

THE INTERNET

YO U G U Y S S U G G E S T E D S O M E Q U E S T I O N S F O R U S TO A S K O N TW I T T E R. W E A S K E D T H E M. H E R E A R E T H E A N S W E R S.

IF YOU COULD BE ONE ANIMAL FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY? Definitely a reverse merman. Fish upper body. Man lower body. Hot. FUNNIEST TOUR MEMORY? Our bus was parked directly next to a canal in Amsterdam before a show. Someone walked off the bus and right into the canal. We all laughed a lot. DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO MAKE MUSIC BUT CAN’T WRITE A GOOD

SONG TO SAVE THEIR FUCKING LIFE? Practice. Isn’t there some book that says if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you’ll master it? Just start writing and keep on writing. Don’t let anybody tell you your ideas aren’t good enough. Over time, you’ll get better and better, and sometimes you even get lucky! WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE UNDERGARMENTS THROWN ONSTAGE? Once, for an entire tour, we collected them in the back of a truck and then donated the total amount at the end of the tour to a breast

cancer charity. That was pretty awesome, and felt like less of a waste. Other than that, we mostly just find awesome times to wear them to parties.

for life. Always rescue, never buy! But only do it if you know you can handle a pet! This has been a public service announcement from the people of AWG inc.

DO YOU BRUSH YOUR TEETH BEFORE OR AFTER BREAKFAST? AFTER! Toothpaste and OJ!? What are you a monster?

IF YOU WERE TO CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT THE WORLD THROUGH MUSIC, WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY? Music is an art form that brings people together like no other. I’d say rather than changing the world, I’d like our music to continue to bring people closer together with a shared goal of shedding their problems for a while and having a good time with us. P

WHAT’S THE BEST MISTAKE YOU’VE MADE? Rescuing pets. It’s a lot of work, and because I’m a sucker for a furry face a lot of the time I impulsively rescue when I shouldn’t take on a pet. But it’s worked out and my dogs are my homies

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