Upset, August 2022

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Travie McCoy Loathe Sick Joy Stick To Your Guns Yours Truly Sens e s Fail renforshort

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The Present Is A Foreign Land

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Mothica The Faim Viagra Boys

AUGUST 2022 Issue 79

RIOT 4. MOTHICA 8. SENSES FAIL 10. SICK JOY 14. SLAM DUNK 20. STICK TO YOUR GUNS 24. YOURS TRULY ABOUT TO BREAK 26. RENFORSHORT FEATURES 28. DEAF HAVANA 36. THE FAIM 40. VIAGRA BOYS 44. TRAVIE MCCOY 50. LOATHE

Upset Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler Scribblers Alexander Bradley, Dan Harrison, Dillon Eastoe, Finlay Holden, Jack Press, Jasleen Dhindsa, Kelsey McClure, Rob Mair, Sam Taylor, Steven Loftin Snappers Bridie Cummings, Derek Bremner, Fredrik Bengtsson, Jake Crawford, Joe Calixto, Jonathan Weiner, Kirsten Thoen, Lissyelle Laricchia, Sarah Louise Bennett P U B L I S H E D F RO M

W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M U N I T 10, 23 G RA N G E RO A D, H A S T I N G S, T N34 2R L

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 The Bunker Publishing Ltd. 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 The Bunker Publishing Ltd holds no responsibility.

The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of Dork or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.

HELLO.

Being in a band isn't all glamour. It's not a world of universal adoration, impossible riches and endless people proclaiming your brilliance. It can be tough too. Deaf Havana certainly have known their ups and downs. Now down to a duo, James Veck-Gilodi and his brother Matty feel like a band who, at the very least, have decided who they are. We're delighted to welcome them back to the cover of the mag this month, as they prove that everything is a journey, and if the destination is self-realisation, that's a win.

S tephen

Editor / @stephenackroyd

Riot.

THIS MONTH >>>

With their much-anticipated debut album, Sick Joy are ready to fly. p.10

EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN ROCK

The Big Story

Night vision.

Mothica’s second fulllength is nothing short of ambitious.

Words: Steven Loftin. Photos: Lissyelle Laricchia.

4 Upset

The good times seem to be back at Slam Dunk 2022 - check out our full report. p.14

Stick To Your Guns' Jesse Barnett is here to wake up the masses. p.20

N THE LATE 60S in West Virginia, residents purportedly saw a shadowy manifestation before disasters including a collapsing bridge. Known as the Mothman, he became a harbinger of death and terror. Naturally, it’s a creature similar to this that alt-popper Mothica has manifested in the physical realm for her second album, ‘Nocturnal’.

“He’s kind of based on a Luna moth,” his creator begins. “I liked the glowing green of nocturnal and it being like nighttime, glow in the dark. He’s this kind of furry moth with the green suit and green wings, and he just wants people to fall asleep, but we don’t know why,” she smiles, questioning her answer.

For Mothica, ‘Nocturnal’ has been a long time coming. An ambitious offering, this second full-length brings together the ideas which first formed years ago when she began creating music. Growing up as McKenzie Ellis in Oklahoma City, it was at 18 that she began writing music after a childhood of depression, self-harm, along with alcoholism aided and abetted by toxic relationships.

A hard worker by nature, it all began to pay off after a viral TikTok clip of her listening to her track ‘VICES’ worked its way onto 20 million phones. Ever since, it’s been Mothica establishing her vision - the first instance coming in the form of 2020’s ‘Blue Hour’. “I’ve been in the industry a really long time. You know, people had told me my time had passed,” she admits. “And then when everything kind of started happening, and I was like, ‘Oh, I can show you now that I was right, and I did have something worth sharing with the world.”

Here on ‘Nocturnal’, all rumination aside, Mothica’s main concern is taking herself from her driven cocoon into a fully-formed mythological Mothra of sorts. Noting it’s her “first time making what I think a Mothica album could be”, it’s a final form that threatens to keep on growing, proved by her multiple mentions of having concepts for future releases already laid out. “I want each release to be self-contained so that it has its own identity.”

Where ‘Nocturnal’’s rock elements are a first, dark and moonless pop has been the DNA of Mothica. This time out, she was processing in the name of ambition. “A lot of the songs come from that - and a lot of songs will never come out because they’re just too angry.” Admitting that “I definitely experience emotions in extremes,” it’s this she pegs as the reason she’s able to write songs in the first place. “I don’t think I could write songs if I didn’t think dramatically that the world was ending every time something happened!”

But back to Moth Man. This personification of Mothica, and her fluttering namesake, comes from choosing the moniker when she was younger after finding an affinity Upset 5

“YOU WOULD NOT EXPECT A MOTHICA SONG TO HAVE A METAL BREAKDOWN IN IT, BUT WE TRIED IT” - M OT HI CA with the oft-maligned goth cousin to the butterfly due to their nocturnal nature. Her moth alignment has meant “everyone always wants me to dress up like a moth, and I think I will for the next video, but I’ve been really resistant to it because it’s just too much pressure. If you’re Mothica, and you being a moth, how am I going to represent that?!”

On the topic of representation, her debut was focused on her sobriety.

“I was very emotionally overwhelmed,” she recalls.

“Everything was just a sea of emotion, anxiety, and those songs were very diary-like.”

For ‘Nocturnal’, she says the validation of her music finally finding a mainstream audience, thanks to both ‘Vices’ and a remix of Bring Me The Horizon’s ‘Can You Feel My Heart’, allowed her to move forward. “I wanted to make something a little more empowered, and there’s a little bit more anger,” she says. “There are a lot more songs that are like, I’m gonna stomp on all my problems.”

Some themes from ‘Blue Hour’ are carried forward to ‘Nocturnal’, with the former being a sunset moving into twilight and the latter Mothica “owning the night.”

It’s a sentiment which rings doubly true as she admits she also faced problems when darkness fell.

“I was going to sleep doctors a lot, and I had a lot of sleep paralysis and just issues with sleep,” she reveals. “I was diagnosed with hypersomnia; sometimes I would sleep for 15 hours

a day, and sometimes not sleep at all. It was always a revolving theme in my life of being inspired and staying up all night and wanting to just go on this project, or being really depressed and just not wanting to be awake. So there was a sleep element throughout the album. I don’t write about my sleep issues, but I guess that’s why the subject kept interesting me.”

This inclusion of something which has plagued McKenzie lends itself to the empowering lightning strikes reaching down from the low sweeping angst-driven storm cloud in the form of chugging guitars and studious drums.

It’s a reaction to a time she “spent a lot of years living in a basement with no windows in college, and so it was really weird.”

Unable to tell what time of day it was, “when you’re in darkness all the time you realise, oh, your brain kinda needs that to fully know what’s going on,” she says with an accepting smile today. “And so nocturnal just came up as a thing, and then we wrote the song, which is the most insane one, I think.

You would not expect a Mothica song to have a metal breakdown in it, but we tried it, and then there’s a ‘Toxic’

by Britney Spears influence in that song too. That was so fun to me, just trying to see where it could go.”

Nourishing herself on a healthy diet of 00s staples such as My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Taking Back Sunday - and even a heavier dose of Children My Bride and White

Chapel - along with going to shows at rough ‘n’ tumble hardcore venues at the age of 14, even to Mothica it’s a mystery as to why it’s taken her so long to write a record with some stony, rock guts.

But coupled with this spiky rock edge comes elegance. The first sounds heard on Nocturnal come from a haunting, elegant waltz before the brash bombast of the titular track.

“I just love Motown and these old 50s songs and how depressing they are,” she laughs. “I’ve always wanted to write a modern spin on that.”

Even adorning the artwork is Mothica with classic retro marcel waves in her hair.

“I’ve never had done-up hair, makeup styling - I’ve never got to live that little pop star fantasy until now”). The video for the single ‘Last Cigarette’ meanwhile has Mothica snooping around as a noir detective on the hunt for said Moth Man, who structures the album with interludes offering advice. It stems from wanting it to sound “like these old commercials about sleeping pills where it just has this sinister vibe.”

Wider inspiration for the project and its visuals came from the master of goth cinema himself, Tim Burton, partly due to his “whimsical and dark and weird” nature.

But while there’s a grander concept at play, the songs

are all standalone - a rough vein running through of selfhelp and understanding - but for the most part, its facets of Mothica presided over by her greatest invention yet.

While this soothing narrator may be garnering attention “because he was supposed to be kind of scary, but he ended up being kind of furry and cute, he might have some darker intentions we don’t know yet,” Mothica warns with a wink.

When it comes to realising her journey, after having paid her dues and been told it’s just not happening, Mothica’s evolution into this next phase still brings a side of doubt. “I don’t know if I ever feel super free,” she admits. “In making music, I’m always focused on what’s next, but a younger version of me probably wouldn’t be as confident to make ‘Nocturnal’.

“I would never allow myself to make something harder rock because I thought I’m not in a band; I would be a poser. Why am I setting that restriction on myself?” she ends, relishing in her sudden epiphany. “I can do what I want. In that way, I guess I do feel free to explore things I might have thought were off-limits for me.” For all his sinister intentions, it would seem Moth Man might just be a good egg after all. Mothica’s album ‘Nocturnal’ is out now

Riot.

Everything you need to know about...

SENSES FAIL’s new album

‘HELL IS

Photo: Jonathan Weiner.

IN YOUR HEAD’

Billed as a thematic sequel to their 2006 second full-length ‘Still Searching’, Senses Fail’s eighth record ‘Hell Is In Your Head’ questions the meaning of life itself. Vocalist Buddy Nielsen lets us in on some need-to-know tidbits.

THIS RECORD IS BASED ON TWO DIFFERENT POEMS One is called The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot and To Think of Time by Walt Whitman.

The first half of the record is broken down into five songs named after each part of The Wasteland. It is a musical interpretation of the poem.

THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME THAT I PLAYED ALL THE GUITAR ON A SENSES FAIL RECORD 8 Upset

Or any record for that matter. I have been recording for 18 years and never played guitar on a record until ‘Hell Is In Your Head’. It was the first time I had a chance to sculpt the guitar sound and playing style.

WE HAD TO STOP RECORDING BECAUSE OF THE PANDEMIC

because of the pandemic, we got to track it at my house, and I was able to engineer it. It is the first time I have had her on a record and the first time she has ever sang in the studio.

MOST OF THE GUITARS USED ON THE RECORD ARE SINGLE COIL

Even though he left the band in 2014, he has come back to record the last two records.

We used about ten different guitars for this one, and most of them were Fenders with P90s or tele pickups. I wanted to give the record a different sound that other SF records by using more single coil paired with higher gain amps than humbuckers.

Traditionally most high gain louder record bands won’t employ single coils for rhythm tracks choosing to use them for leads, if at all. I heavily use the Jim Adkins Tele Thinline, A Rosewood Tele and the J Mascis Jazzmaster. ■

MY WIFE SINGS ON THE LAST SONG ON THE RECORD WITH ME

Senses Fail’s new album ‘Hell Is In Your Head’ is out 15th July.

We were two weeks away from wrapping up the album, and then on 11th March the NBA basically shut down, and we decided we needed to do the same.

DAN TRAPP, THE ORIGINAL DRUMMER FOR SENSES FAIL, PLAYS ON THE RECORD

It is a song for our daughter, and actually,

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THE F*** WORL 10 Upset

*ING LD.

With their much-anticipated debut album, Sick Joy are ready to fly.

Words: Kelsey McClure. Photos: Bridie Cummings.

Upset 11

B

righton-based three-piece ‘Sick Joy’ are amongst the most exciting new players in the grunge scene. In between the hustle and bustle of releasing their newest single ‘don’t feel like dying’, we caught up with Mykl Barton (vocals/ guitar) to discuss their gem of a debut album ‘WE’RE ALL GOING TO F***ING DIE’.

background, not white. But then it made more sense to just be plain. It was an idea kind of based on the title and how we could best represent the meaning behind it. I think a lot of people think the title negative, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s poking fun at the part where all of us are that person on the cover. It’s supposed to be a representative of missing out on the things that we could What were the main be doing. Its inspiration was influences behind this album? itself.

I guess with my limited writing technique, I tend to What was it that first made lean towards writing about you want to make music? the simple, universal things Probably isolation. I guess it in everyone’s life, like love, sounds cliche or pretentious death, sex and sadness, but but feeling like you’re on also happiness and either side your own or not really fitting of them. Not just some Mötley in - which even includes with Crüe bullshit about sex or the the people who didn’t fit in. misery behind death. The first I heard loads of songs that song I wrote, ‘don’t feel like sounded like me and was like, dying’, was there as soon as ‘oh I get that!’ I wasn’t even I woke up, in a brief moment really expecting to be in a band; of clarity, and it just felt right music just makes me feel good to get it down. Because 2020 and like time disappears. We had happened, I didn’t know really get to be present, and it if anyone would hear it, and makes you feel good. It helps it could have just been like a you to understand yourself and bedroom project with me and the world a bit better. So sadly, my drummer. We didn’t know just because I felt lonely. when the world would happen again, or if anyone would give a Did the creation process shit when it came around again. differ from the recording of Some super early influences your EPs? were things like Pixies, Nirvana I wasn’t worried about anyone and all that 90s stuff. And then else; an outside influence there was also the British side wasn’t even a part of it. There of it like Blur records, a lot was no ghost in the machine of Thom Yorke, Placebo and telling you, ‘what’s Brighton Radiohead. I also love a lot of going to think about this?’ or metal, so I was getting back into ‘what are your current fans Korn and Slipknot as well. It was going to think about this? like it didn’t matter what people It was just go, if it sounded would like. I didn’t have that good. But I also lived with our voice that every person, never drummer Drew at the time, and mind every artist has as to how we couldn’t get out anywhere, so I just had to learn how to it will translate when it goes out. Instead, it was just, does it use Logic, which I still suck sound good to us? Yeah? Then at. We had the bones of it but couldn’t constantly be going cool, let’s do it! So probably back and forth between the every band I’ve ever listened rehearsal space. So we were to that I thought was good, I able to just keep building it up thought, let’s do a bit of that. and adding things we wouldn’t usually do and spend ages on Can you talk us through the it. Before we’d even gone into inspiration behind the cover the studio to write, we already art, too? had the harmonies done. We This is going to sound so ended up using stuff from those obnoxious or pretentious, but Logic sessions in the record.

I don’t actually remember. I The beginning of ‘rich hippies’ don’t want to say it came to me in a dream or some bullshit is something I actually made a mistake on and thought it like that, but I don’t remember sounded like an intro. its embryonic state. The only thing that was different was When it comes to that it was going to be a blue

12 Upset

songwriting, do you tend to lean towards the music rather than lyrics first?

Yeah, we go for the melody first, and if you get a great lyric, then it’s the full package. If the lyrics are really bad, then it fucks it. If the lyrics are fine and you can’t understand what they’re saying, but the melody is great, then I’m in! In some of my favourite songs, I still don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.

Which song from the record are you most proud of?

I liked making all of them because you got to do stuff you can’t do on EPs, since there you have to find a way to best represent yourself in three minutes. Closing track ‘ultimately’ is something we’d usually never do. I think that song is a refined version of what made me want to get into music. I remember feeling not great and naturally leaning on the thing that I do during those times - which is music. The day was a write-off before it was

even 12 o’clock, and thankfully, I spent the day doing that, and it became a write-on instead. I’m very proud of that one, but I like a lot of the songs for different reasons.

On the flip side of that, what non-Sick Joy songs do you wish you could have written?

Oh, there’s fucking millions. The first one that came to mind is ‘Ain’t Nice’ by Viagra Boys, but l also love ‘2008’ by Cleopatrick - that one is unreal. Then there are bigger songs like ‘Dumb’

by Nirvana and ‘Debaser’ by The Pixies. All the songs I love, I’m like, ‘I wish that was mine’.

At the same time, I’m glad it’s not because I get to enjoy it properly.

Can you sum up the new album in just one word?

Ultimately. Because ultimately, we’re all going to fucking die. ■ Sick Joy’s album ‘WE’RE ALL GONNA F***ING DIE’ is out now.

the new album - out 15th july

pre-order now

deafhavana.com upset-vertical_74x210mm_2mm-bleed.indd 1

2022-05-

THE GOOD TIMES ARE BACK AT SLAM SL S L AM DUNK 2022 14 Upset

STAND ATLANTIC

With the tropical weather and trees hugging the back of the stage, the Jurassic Park theme tune is perfectly placed as the Aussie quartet stumble out on stage. There are no dinosaurs to be found, but instead plenty of fresh new tunes from their month-old new album 'f.e.a.r'.

New numbers 'pity party' and 'deathwish' sit comfortably alongside old favourites 'Lavender Bones' and 'Lost My Cool'. And, judging by the one solo shoe flying overhead, it's clear the crowd are loving it. "If you don't lose a shoe, you're not pitting hard enough," encourages Bonnie Fraser.

Words: Alexander Bradley.

Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.

S

lam Dunk has come around quicker than ever this year. The delays last time mean it's only been nine months since Leeds and Hatfield got a serving of all that is alternative, pop-punk and hardcore. Despite this edition of the festival going back by a week to line up with the Jubilee weekend (it's what The Queen would have wanted), it feels like Slammy D was back on track.

With only a few months between both 'Dunks, you might think only the bands would be different this time out - well, yes and no. Temple Newsam, home of day one in Leeds, is still a bastard made of hills, while Hatfield Park remains a luscious open space fit for any festival.

Within those sites though, the layouts have been re-jigged.

The side-by-side stages that meant the party never stopped in previous years are gone, and what's usually the punk/ska Punk in Drublic stage of the last few years is now front and centre for Sum 41 to headline.

Pop-punk lovers are hidden away in a big top while the hardcore crowd gets sunburned outside, which definitely feels the wrong way around.

There are no compromises when it comes to the line-up, though. Sum 41 headline the Main Stage (main by name, not by nature - it's tiny), while Neck Deep and Alexisonfire stand shoulder to shoulder on the billing, each delivering sets worthy of topping such an impressive roster of bands.

Elsewhere, the line-up has made more steps towards diversity.

Where the festival late last summer was spent wondering if it was really safe yet, this time around, it feels as good as ever to be in a sea of elbows, knees and armpits, beer-soaked and sun-kissed as whatever band kicked up another gear. It feels like the good times are back at Slam Dunk.

Upset 15

With KT Lamond and Stevis Harrison joining on guitars, the future of Cancer Bats looks bright, and, as Alexis singer George Pettit join for 'Pneumonia Hawk', it seems their legacy remains intact too.

KNUCKLE PUCK Bouncing all over the place in the North, then refined and reset a day later, Knuckle Puck have some fun at the "best fucking festival in the entire world".

Unusually, it would seem Knuckle Puck's idea of "fun" is some crushing emo heartbreakers, but it works as a few hundred people come together to lift songs 'Want Me Around' and 'Untitled' to a level where they're totally devastating anymore.

MEET ME @ THE ALTAR

If ever in doubt, a medley of pop-punk tunes will do the trick, and that's exactly what Meet Me @ The Altar deliver.

Sounding great with huge breakdowns, when they cover Jimmy Eat World, New Found Glory, Lit and Limp Bizkit in a quick-fire burst, they have the crowd in the palm of their hand.

CASSYETTE

Sad girl summer arrives in style as Cassyette kicks things off on the Jagermeister Stage. The singer demands B.P.E (Big Pit Energy) and the freshfaced crowd duly oblige.

With a hot streak of her own singles to work with, Cassyette's half-hour set is all killer with the brand new 'Dead Roses' and the summer anthem 'Sad Girl Summer' slotting in comfortably next to 'Dear Goth', 'Behind Closed Doors' and 'Prison Pocket'. The stage at times feels a bit too big for the singer, but helping open Slam Dunk feels like another huge checkpoint on Cassyette's way to the very top.

PINKSHIFT

If playing a show was like 16 Upset

going into battle, then this is a huge victory for Pinkshift.

On their first visit to the UK, they manage to turn the Key Club Stage into a tiny punk show. Showing off their one EP 'Saccharine' and their brand new tune 'nothing (in my head)', they also air some unreleased tracks which all hold the same punchy, feisty feeling as confirmation that the sky is the limit for this band.

MAGNOLIA PARK

They're going to need a bigger stage for the next time Magnolia Park come to Slam Dunk. The six of them tear up the tiny Key Club stage with a powerful performance. With their new EP just a week away, they open with the feel-good tune 'Feel Something' for which they've enlisted pop-punk royalty in Derek Sanders

CANCER BATS

The Bats let fly as they bring their new era under the harsh spotlight of the afternoon The rise and rise of Hot Milk sunshine. continues with a standout Backed performance. Blazing a trail by their across the stage like a pair outstanding of fireworks, the Manc band new album bring all the energy and alt'Psychic pop hits to back themselves Jailbreak', up. The plan is to "show them Cancer Bats how we do it in the north", balance their and with an opening like 'I set with a JUST WANNA KNOW WHAT couple of HAPPENS WHEN I'M DEAD', new tunes there's a chance they might and some of have been heard down in their grittiest Hatfield. With some certainty, hits like 'Hail Hot Milk aren't future rock Destroyer' stars anymore; they're already and there.

'Gatekeeper'.

HOT MILK

on the recorded version.

Brimming with confidence, the pull off a ballsy cover of 'Sugar We're Going Down', attracting people straight from out on the grass and front and centre.

MOM JEANS

Picking up from where Hot Mulligan leave things, Mom Jeans continue the Midwest emo vibes in the lazy, hazy, late afternoon. They come in search of the "legendary circle pits", and the crowd muster a few pockets of chaos as they blast through new tunes from their latest album 'Sweet Tooth'.

BEARTOOTH

Beartooth run up a huge gas bill with an incendiary show full of as many flames, smoke, bangs and whistles as possible. Six months sober and in fine form, Caleb Shomo leads the charge for an audition of future festival headliners.

Whether it's new numbers like 'Devastation' and 'Dominate' from their latest album or throwbacks to 'In Between' or 'Aggressive', it's a performance that rarely lets up.

NECK DEEP

From competition winners

KENNYHOOPLA

A real standout moment at this year's festival, KennyHoopla is a little late on, but he comes, sees and conquers. Like Mentos in a Coke bottle, the singer fizzes and spins around the stage, moving so quick he even jumps the gun on the lightning-fast intro to 'Hollywood Sucks'. Going solo on 'how will i rest in peace i'm buried by a highway?', the singer does get a chance to show some restraint in amongst the boundless energy he brings to most of his set.

Upset 17

to stage headliners in nine short years, Neck Deep seize the opportunity with both hands. From the comfort of their onstage bedroom, they seem right at home as they kick off with brand new single 'STFU'. Marking their tenth anniversary as a band and first new single as independent again, it's clear Neck Deep's ambitions are still set on world domination, but this set is all about looking back. Genuinely humbled and grateful, Ben Barlow repeatedly thanks those who helped get Neck Deep to this stage as they throw back with some really old cuts like 'What Did You Expect?' and 'Over and Over'. Promising some small, no barrier shows to come later in the year, Neck Deep show they've got all the bases covered, whether it's playing a headline festival slot, sweaty bar gig, a two-minute punk song at breakneck speed or some cheesy love song. "We'll get you with a love song, and then we'll make you fucking two-step," jokes the singer as they chop and change from 'A Part of Me' to 'Can't Kick Up The Roots'.

It won't be long before

they're headlining the whole festival, and no one will begrudge them that.

SUM 41

Some killer. Some filler.

THE WONDER YEARS

Playing the longest sets in Slam Dunk history, The Wonder Years step in the vacant slot left by Motion City Soundtrack's absense to play both 'The Upsides' and 'Suburbia…' in full on both days. "I didn't think we'd be around to celebrate the first birthday of 'The Upsides'," admits Soupy in Leeds, but with the crowd singing every word, the continued importance of these albums could not be more evident. Slammy and The Wonder Years go hand in hand, both growing exponentially and always championing the next wave that follows closely behind; it's only fitting to celebrate such seminal records in this setting. As if to rubber-stamp their set going down in Slam Dunk history, the band are joined by members of Neck Deep, Trash Boat, Hot Mulligan, Pinkshift, Mom Jeans, and more, highlighting the role those albums had in shaping the bands we have now.

ALEXISONFIRE

But with the Devil as their backdrop, blood dripping amps and flames galore, Sum 41 bring one hell of a show to close out Slam Dunk. Topping a bill that celebrated a lot of the emerging new wave of bands, it's fitting to finish on a pioneer of the pop-punk boom. That said, the superfast turbo-charged cover of "one of the best British rock songs ever written" in Queen's 'We Will Rock You' is criminal. "Thank you for putting up with all our stupid bullshit tonight," Deryck Whibley adds afterwards. Despite this, 'In Too Deep' and 'Fat Lip' remain undisputed classics of the genre and send the crowd into a frenzy from the very first note. Closing out the day on 'Still Waiting', it serves as a reminder to the new generation that sometimes you just need a simple hook and lots of heart to go make something special.

DEAF HAVANA

Having only played two shows since 2019, Deaf Havana are thrown straight in the deep end with a late headline slot on the Rock Sound Stage. With brothers James and Matt Veck-Gilodi the only remaining members 18 Upset

No band can do it like Alexisonfire. Walking out to the soundtrack of 'The Last of the Mohicans', dressed in tie-dye t-shirts, leather vests, overalls and double denim, then exploding into 'Drunk, Lovers, Sinners and Saints' with pinpoint precision is the sort of opening only Alexis could make. When, drowned in purple light, they perform Prince's 'When Doves Cry', you realise how utterly ridiculous this band is - in a good way, of course. Between those moments, they wax and wane through expansive instrumental moments and intense flashes like in 'Dog's Blood' or '.44 Caliber Love Letter'. It's a special headline slot on the Jagermeister Stage; one that will live long in the memory. since the last album and three new musicians as part of their live set-up, it feels like a band still figuring their dynamic out. It's a blessing to still have Deaf Havana, in any form, still around, and the crowd warmly celebrate three new tracks from their upcoming album, 'The Present Is a Foreign Land'.

Moving forward and feeling their way into a half-hour set, moments like 'Caro Padre' still hit as hard as ever as James shows that while every other part of Deaf Havana can change, his voice still remains as devastating as ever. ■

" WE CAN'T SHUT OURSELVES OFF FROM KNOWLEDGE"

20 Upset

Stick To Your Guns' Jesse Barnett is here to wake up the masses.

Words: Jack Press. Photos: Joe Calixto.

Upset 21

I

t's been a long five years, and the world feels a bit of a mess, but hardcore punks Stick To Your Guns are back and ready to lead a revolution with their new album, 'Spectre.'

"We can either dance and descend, or fight back and build something new, something better," vocalist Jesse Barnett states matterof-factly from a rehearsal room somewhere in France.

"We desperately need it because I have no idea how much time we've got left on this Earth – which is not dying, it is being killed."

Building something new requires burning down what's come before.

Something has to die to be reborn, and that's what Jesse – joined by bassist Andrew Rose, drummer George Schmitz, and guitarists Chris Rawson and Josh James – aims to achieve on their seventh album.

It begins with dismantling a broken system and throwing a Molotov cocktail from within.

"You have to fight if you're going to win; bourgeois electoral politics is a way you can fight too, but it's going to change very little because the game is rigged. France, Germany, the United States, Canada, England; they own the game.

They let us play it, and we call it freedom."

So if freedom is nothing more than a Truman Show fantasy, what do Stick To Your Guns believe we need to do to break the mould and start from scratch?

"I'm simply asking people to break out of that mindset to start their own movements. To organise their own communities and figure out what's needed for them to thrive and not constantly be begging these fucking capitalists who sit on their fucking thrones.

'Please, sir, please can we have healthcare, please can we have food, please can I not work so much so I can see my children'."

22 Upset

'Spectre' is riddled with political figures and historical movements. From revolutionaries like Thomas Sankara and Che Guevara ('Liberate') to labour unions like the Industrial Workers of the World ('Who Dares Wins'), the album invites you to break out through education. Follow its breadcrumbs, go down its rabbit holes, and you'll find the threads Barnett believes we should follow.

"We sit here year, after year, after year, after year, and we beg for these things, and while we beg, they take more and more and more of our livelihood away.

"Eventually, you have a person who rises to power like Che Guevara or Thomas Sankara who say 'enough, enough, we're not asking anymore, we're just going to take it', and that makes the West very scared. That's why they propagandise us to believe these people are evil when they're liberators."

'Spectre' exists to liberate us from the shackles our systems have locked us in.

Its ideals are driven by its namesake, a reference to The Communist Manifesto, and its opening line: "There is a spectre over Europe, the spectre of communism".

Stick To Your Guns have never pulled punches, and Jesse isn't one to err on the side of caution. He's fully aware there are more than a few faces in their crowd who'll turn their noses up at their communist teachings, yet it's something he hopes will pull the wool from over our eyes.

"Given that I'm a devout socialist, it's an important text for me. I can understand how that might be a no-go area for a lot of people, but I implore them to not take anyone else's word for it and to look into these things for themselves. We can't shut ourselves off from knowledge. I view the United States as the evilest entity on the planet, so if the most vile and evil entity on the planet is telling me to stay

away from communism, then it's only going to pull me in that direction even more."

Stick To Your Guns aren't asking you to quit society for the communist agenda.

They're not even telling you to start voting for socialists.

They just want to inspire you to change yourself and your environment, to provoke the change we need.

"The band itself and our songs aren't going to change anything. They're only meant to inspire people to change themselves and their environments," Jesse reflects, always speaking

so confidently it's a surprise he's not a politician promoting his platform. "The music doesn't make anyone an activist, like me being on stage talking about these issues isn't me doing the work necessary to change the world; beyond all, these ideas are meant to inspire people to take that out into the world and produce real action."

Real action is revolutionary, which Stick To Your Guns believe we're taught to avoid. It's like they're slipping suppressors in our water streams. That's

"THE CAPITALIST CLASS IS NOT GOING TO WAKE UP ONE DAY AND DECIDE TO DO THE RIGHT THING" - JES S E BARN ET T

why at all times, 'Spectre' sounds like a rallying cry.

"If you're unwilling to act, they can't perform your action for you. Me watching an anti-racist movie isn't going to make me anti-racist. What am I doing in the world to prove what I believe? A belief is nothing but an idea in your head, and if you don't bring that idea into fruition in the world, it doesn't matter what you believe at the end of the day."

To inspire change, they've undergone it themselves. Stick To Your

Guns are no strangers to the hardcore stereotype. They know there's a staple sound, a stencil to draw around.

But on 'Spectre', they've chosen to ignore it, to bring big pop choruses to their breakdowns, and to follow in the footsteps of bands like Turnstile, who've redefined what hardcore really is.

"A lot of the time, our band goes into the studio like 'there was this cool riff I heard on a Terror song', or 'there was a really good Architects chorus, so let's try to do something like that'. We're constantly

borrowing from one another.

We've even tried ripping ourselves off," Jesse laughs, bemused at the sheepish elitism they've helped normalise.

"With this album, we put all that aside and didn't use outside influence. We looked in our own toolbox and used our own tools – when you start to pick the album apart, it seems like it's all over the place, but when you listen to it as a cohesive work, it doesn't seem all over the place, it's strange."

It might feel strange to Stick To Your Guns, but it makes perfect sense when pieced together. The gritty, grungy shoegaze of 'Open Up My Head' is juxtaposed by the police baton bludgeoning hardcore of 'Liberate'. It's intentional, even if they thought they wouldn't pull it off.

"If you were to listen to 'Open Up My Head', and then the next day listen to 'Liberate,' you'd be like there's no way this is the same band, but when you listen to them together, it makes sense in a weird way.

"Obviously, I think critics of Stick To Your Guns have had that over our entire careers. It seems like we're this band that's all over the place, can't figure out who we are, when in reality, we just like a lot of different things. I love big choruses, I fucking love them, but I also love fucking breakdowns that want to make you beat the fuck out of your friends."

That's the line Stick To Your Guns tows on 'Spectre'. It's music that

makes you raise one fist and sing while you fight with the other. Whilst Barnett's been accused of being proPutin over the past weeks, he's quick to say he's not advocating war, but that violence can't always be avoided in our world.

"People often excuse capitalist violence all the time. Look at the war that's happening right now. There is no reason why this fucking war should be happening.

It's inexcusable. The only people this serves are billionaires and people who sell defence contracts, while people's children, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers are being slaughtered. We're watching this happen all for the capitalist class.

"As a society in the West, we excuse this type of behaviour all the time, but when someone like Sankara or Guevara uses violence to stop the violence that's happening to their people, all of a sudden, we say no one should use violence. What people don't understand is that the capitalist class is not going to wake up one day and decide to do the right thing. They're only concerned about profit, so unfortunately, violence is needed in order to stop that."

Whether they're inciting violence, inspiring revolution, or igniting pits with absolute bangers, one thing's for sure: Stick To Your Guns are the spectres of hardcore once more. ■ Stick To Your Guns' album 'Spectre' is out 29th July.

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TRACK BY TRACK

YOURS TRULY is this what i look like?

Billed as kicking off a whole new chapter for the Aussie group, Yours Truly’s new EP ‘is this what i look like?’ marks their first new material since 2020 debut album ‘Self Care’. Mikaila Delgado talks us through the release, front to back.

Photo: Olli Appleyard.

WALK OVER MY GRAVE ‘Walk Over My Grave’ was one of the earlier songs written for the EP. It’s the angriest song we’ve ever written; at the time, we were pretty mad at the world, and I was hurt personally. This song is about losing someone close to you and having things remind you of them constantly and wondering if it was the same for them. Someone had told me that every time I shivered, someone was walking over my grave. I was driving my car one day and shivered; I instantly started thinking of them and pulled over to write down the lyric.

anything I loved.

CARELESS KIND I wrote ‘Careless Kind’ after having a conversation with a friend about my anxiety. I was so jealous that they could see things so black-and-white, and they had this mentality of ‘everything will be okay’. I’ve always been a really anxious person; I’m a huge overthinker.

This song is a letter to myself, asking, how can I be a little bit more careless? Should I appreciate my anxieties?

Because right now, I felt they were my biggest enemy.

IS THIS WHAT I LOOK LIKE? ‘is this what i look like?’ is actually a voice recording of me speaking into Lachie and our producer Stevie in the studio. I remember at the time we were writing ‘Hallucinate’, and I had been telling them how horrible my anxiety was.

I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep - I was literally wasting away.

I was talking about how I put everyone and everything above myself because I viewed myself so low. You can feel the chaos BRUISES (FEAT. DR€W ¥ORK) build in the track as it goes into ‘Bruises’ was the very first song ‘Hallucinate’. we wrote together after Self HALLUCINATE (FEAT. JOSH Care. The song is about selfFRANCESCHI) sabotage and how everyone ‘Hallucinate’ follows on from says things will get better in time, but I seemed to just mess the previous track. Explores how an anxiety attack can things up more and more. take over your whole body What of Self Care was about and almost make you feel like impostor syndrome, whereas you’re under the influence a lot of these songs are about self-reflection and a battle with of something. I’ve always struggled with not letting it your own self-worth rather take over me. When we were than everyone else’s worth of writing this song, and I heard yourself. I remember writing the line, “bruises like wine heal the recurring synth/drone. I felt anxious; it took me to being better with time”. I felt quite in a social situation I had to emotional because I felt so bruised in my personal life and get out of. I remember writing career. I remember sitting in my the words down on paper and lounge room during Covid and feeling my eyes start to close out of exhaustion. Writing this drinking a glass of wine and song was such therapy for me. thinking to myself, is this just Especially the heavier/darker how it is now. The song was ending. When that part hits me trying to find any form of and I sang the last chorus, I felt excitement or euphoria in life something lift from me. whilst destroying absolutely

IF YOU’RE DROWNING (I’LL LEARN HOW TO HOLD MY BREATH) ‘If You’re Drowning (I’ll Learn How To Hold My Breath)’ is about falling in love with someone during a really difficult time and wanting to take on their world with them. No matter how heavy it is. All of a sudden, you have this strength and resilience that you don’t even have for yourself because they are so important to you. Falling in love during a global pandemic was definitely expert level for my emotions, but it’s a reminder that when your heart hurts and you feel like you won’t survive, you probably will.

LIGHTS ON ‘Lights On’ is about selfreflection and how horrible it can be. Being stuck in our houses for two years really forced us to get to know ourselves, and to be honest, I don’t think it was glamorous for many. I realised how much I associated my self-worth and my own identity to being in this band, and with it being taken away and not knowing if it would ever come back, it sent me into a slump and lots of thinking of, ‘who am I? Who am I to others? How do people perceive me? Am I anything without this pink hair and band I’ve been in since I was a teenager?’ It’s about trying to find answers to questions you didn’t know you had until you were isolated from everything you know and see what you really look like with the lights on. ■ Yours Truly’s EP ‘is this what i look like?’ is out 15th July.

Upset 25

About Break. to

NEW TALENT YOU NEED TO KNOW

26 Upset

R

RENFOR -SHORT Words: Steven Loftin.

The buzzy up-andcoming alt-popster has arrived with her debut album.

We’ve all had conversations with our inner selves. That mystical shadow inside us that narrates our every day, packaging up all our worries, hopes and dreams. Welcome to ‘Dear Amelia’, renforshort’s inner person.

“It’s like a personification because she’s kind of a human form, but it’s just like picturing that… if that makes sense?” she smiles. “I have it written down because I just spit it out of my head and expect it to make sense to everyone!”

Her debut album is a patchwork quilt of renforshort’s - aka Lauren Isenberg - internal chatter, external events and the ties that bind them. ‘Dear Amelia’, with its open-letter title and purposeful poeticallyloaded moniker... “Yeah, so poetic - randomnamegenerator. com.” Er, maybe not in that case. Her eyes roll as she laughs, “I just searched up most popular girl names, and that was the first one that came up.”

Bringing this all to life is a way for the twenty-year-old budding Canadian pop star to process and deal with such.

“Exactly. It’s the you that’s inside you,” she nods. “When you put too much pressure on the you that’s inside, you just deplete. Basically, the message is talk, don’t be afraid to sit down and talk to someone.

That’s the best thing you can do for yourself. She’s also representative of people in my life that I’ve lost to suicide.

Yeah, she’s a bunch of things.”

Over the last few years, people spilling their guts to the page has become a regular occurrence. Harvesting personal experience in the hopes of speaking to a brighter audience, the medium has become fodder for self-help and a way of really unpacking a world and the complex emotions that come alongside

it. Pegging yourself as one of the voices to assist in such matters sounds like a big undertaking, but renforshort is ready.

Having first begun releasing material in 2019, throughout a handful of singles and accompanying EP’s, including 2021’s ‘Off Saint Dominique’, Lauren’s begun to piece together just what else she can offer up. “I know what people need more. The songs about mental health are sometimes the more uplifting songs.” She hopes that when people listen, “they’re like, I relate to this.

That’s what I really see. Like, that’s my job, that’s what I want to do.”

It sounds like an element of responsibility comes along with being renforshort? “There can be, I think. It’s a really good question,” she ponders. “I’m a person like anyone else is, and what I want to do is make music for people that need to hear what I want to say or what I’m saying. And I think that it’s not so much responsibility as it is like… it’s tough, because I feel like it’s my duty, in a way. Yeah, I have a platform. I’m going to use it for good.”

With the sounds of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bob Dylan and the like emanating around her in childhood, Lauren’s penchant for songwriting, honesty, and the pursuit of timelessness makes total sense. “That’s the music that I want to make,” says Lauren. “When you make pop-rock or whatever, lyrics don’t have to be compromised.

I think a lot of people think that it’s less emotional in a way or vulnerable than more folky music.”

This letter is founded on the idea that Lauren just loves lyrics. “I love writing. I think

“THE MESSAGE IS TALK, DON’T BE AFRAID TO SIT DOWN AND TALK”

REN F ORS H ORT some people write pop-rock songs and write lyrics that are meh,” she contemplates with a smirk. “But that’s their option!

And people like that, but that’s not what I like to do.”

When it comes to standing amongst the popsters and rockers of this modern-day, she feels she has to be “a little louder than some other people, but that’s just because I’m a young girl, and it’s hard to be taken seriously and aren’t listened to as such.”

So far, who and what Amelia is has been the primary focus, but she’s also managed to wrangle in a couple of familiar names - the first, who else but Travis Barker. It’s almost a right of passage at this point for the Blink sticksman to make an appearance on your debut, but more unexpectedly is Nottingham songwriter Jake Bugg.

“That was so crazy; I bawled my eyes out for like three days straight when I found out about that!” she eagerly recalls. “When I told my singing teacher, she was bawling her eyes out because she’s known me since I was 11. It was just the most like incredible moment in my life.” It’s his affinity with the pen - much like the sounds of her childhood - which has cemented Jake as a powerful figure in her life. “It was in that very foundational time when you’re 14, you find the

music, and that music is just so memorable to you. It brings you back to feeling like a kid.”

On the subject of musical heroes, Lauren’s gone as far as to dedicate a song to the inimitable Strokes frontman, Julian Casablancas. “He’s just so in his own world,” she laughs.

“I mean, he just marches to the beat of his own drum.”

For posterity’s sake, what’s the choice Strokes cut from renforshort? “I don’t think I can answer that question,” she says defiantly. “I do not think that they’ve ever made a mistake.” Given ‘Dear Amelia’’s concept revolving around the internalised and emotional, an ode to an early-noughties frontman makes sense - your musical idols can help you understand life.

With Amelia very much now signed, sealed and ready to be delivered on renforshort’s debut, has much changed for Lauren now the album’s done?

“Nothing’s really changed, to be honest,” she says after thinking for a moment. “I mean, I’m still like, I don’t know what’s going on. What is life? I don’t understand. But yeah, it still all rings very true to me. I would be concerned a little bit if it didn’t because how would that relate to other people if I can’t even relate to it anymore?” ■

renforshort’s album ‘dear amelia’ is out now.

Upset 27

PRESENT PRESENT PRESENT PRESENT PRESENT PRESENT

28 Upset

A lot has changed for Deaf Havana, but as they prepare for their new album ‘The Present Is A Foreign Land’, they’re confident in their own skin.

Words: Alexander Bradley. Photos: Derek Bremner.

TENSE TENSE TENSE TENSE TENSE TENSE

Upset 29

AMES VECKGILODI has spent many years trying on different disguises. As a teenager, he emerged rough around the edges with Deaf Havana as an abrasive post-hardcore outfit.

They burst out with ‘Friends Like These’, and never spoke of it again. He dialled it right down for the Americana-soaked album ‘Old Souls’. Clean cut, white shirts, tweed and a love for Springsteen

“IT WAS THE FIRST TIME EVER THAT WE WEREN’T TRYING TO SOUND LIKE SOMEONE ELSE” - JA M ES VECK- GI LO DI at 23 years old. Deaf Havana have been a rock band. A pop band. They searched for redemption on the synth-laden ‘RITUALS’, culminating in the band headlining Brixton Academy in late 2018. A year later, they were playing

that album in full at Ally Pally.

And then it all stopped.

The band stopped. The world soon followed behind. Two years passed.

Three of the band left for lives outside of music.

And here we are. The present is a foreign land. James and his younger brother Matthew remain. Blood is thicker than water, after all. Change has always been sewn into the fabric of the band, whether with the music or their personnel. They just rolled with the punches back then. But this time it’s bigger. The energy is changed. This is a new start.

And for James Veck-Gilodi, there is no disguise anymore. The mask has slipped. ‘The Present Is A Foreign Land’ is all about not recognising the world around us, and the sentiment is the same for the singer. Head shaved, bearded and leaner, this is the singer in his early thirties. This is the brutally honest truth of Deaf Havana.

“I DID NOT ENJOY IT ALL. I had a horrible time,” James begins. It’s not a good start. We’re backstage between Deaf Havana’s two shows headlining one of the smaller stages at Slam Dunk.

They’re in at the deep end, having only played three shows since 2019 and with a new drummer, bassist and synth player joining their ranks too. They’d much rather be playing now, in the late afternoon sunshine, rather than waiting around and thinking about all the other bands that could headline instead.

He continues, “I always get in my head too much and think about shit. I don’t enjoy quite a lot of shows. I don’t relax and enjoy the moment. I just think about how shit we sound or something stupid.”

Outside of his own thoughts, the reality has been much different. Their set in Leeds was a triumph. The new singles - ‘Kids’, ‘Going Clear’ and ‘On The Wire’ - evenly spaced through the set and embraced with the same love as

30 Upset

Upset 31

old favourites. Throwbacks to ‘Mildred’ show they still know how to party, while ‘Caro Padre’ finds James’s voice as devastating as ever.

They seem more confident by the minute, the new recruits helping create the feeling that the band are playing with real stakes again.

It’s only a brief conversation in Hatfield, but we part with the hope that tonight’s show will be better for James at least. “If I can get over stuff like last night and get out of my own head, I know I will love it again,” he says.

TWO WEEKS ON from Slam Dunk, everything feels more positive as we look back at the festival. According to James, the Hatfield show was much better: “It’s just me getting in my own head,” he begins. “Basically, I drank at Slam Dunk, and it made me go a bit mental and get really negative,” he reasons.

“I just felt a bit old, basically, and it made me question everything, whereas if I’d been in a good frame of mind, I would have just been like, ‘meh, it’s cool’.”

“And also, unfortunately, because we were clashing with Sum 41, we didn’t have the chance to feel young,” Matty jokes, always available to be the light relief.

It’s an understandable feeling to have. While Deaf Havana stopped - heck, even while the world stopped - some bands didn’t. Social media certainly didn’t. New music didn’t completely dry up, and Slam Dunk welcomed many newcomers to its line-up.

It’s also a theme that runs throughout the new album; getting older and wondering what happened to youth.

The euphoric single ‘Kids’ hopes “we can stay young forever”, the title-track wrestles “I’ve lost a decade in a moment / washed out before I even noticed / wake up you’re not getting younger”, and ‘19 Dreams’ revisits the ambitions they 32 Upset

had when they started out some 17 years ago.

When you’re already trying to figure out where all those years have gone, and you suddenly see a new generation of bands arrive on the scene, no doubt you’re going to feel a little out of place. The bigger issue is the alcohol being used to numb that anxiety.

It’s the rock and the hard place between which the singer has been stuck in the last few years. Impressively, he had managed 11 months fully sober up until recently - but it’s never a straight road, and bumps are to be expected.

“I started filtering it in again, and it got a bit out of hand, so I stopped again, and then I just started again.

Classic fucking case, isn’t it? Trying to quit, and it’s hard. I don’t know, I would love to get to a point where I can just moderate it and drink like a normal person, but I realise I’m not drinking because I like the taste of alcohol. I’m drinking because I wanna shut my head off.

I’m happier when I don’t drink, but there are so many challenges. I’m so anxious.

I’m scared of fucking everything.

“For instance, I stopped drinking for ages, and then I had to go on holiday. I hate flying, so I just freaked out and drank in the airport so I could get on the flight.

It’s loads of little stupid obstacles that I need to get over before I think I can be fully sober, but it’s definitely somewhere in the future, if not now. I think there’ll be a point where I’ve had enough.

Maybe I just stopped too early, but I definitely don’t want to get back to the point where I’m drinking a lot because it just gets in the way of everything,” he opens up.

Having seen sobriety for almost a year, James is the first to admit he saw the benefits of not being drunk, tired or hungover every morning. In fact, while making the album, he wasn’t

drinking at all. That allowed for a lot more control and experimentation with how he sounds on certain songs.

Some vocals are much softer than anything he has done before, so “I don’t have to give it like ‘Mustang Sally’ every fucking time,” as he puts it.

Seeing both sides of the mirror, the singer has also seen the effect drinking has had on Deaf Havana’s live shows and has drawn a line in the sand, which he is trying to stay on the right side of.

“One thing I’m now 100% sure of is I don’t want to drink while I’m playing shows. If there’s a day off or something and there’s a party, I’ll go. But I definitely don’t want to drink and play shows because as soon as I get on stage, I feel uncomfortable. I used to think it made me feel comfortable - to be a bit drunk and go on stage - [but now] it’s the opposite.”

“I need to feel fully in control on stage, so that’s one thing I’m sure of now.

I only know that through playing shows both sober and then again playing them while drinking, and I realise how fucking uncomfortable I felt, so that is one positive.

There are positives that come from starting to drink again,” he rationalises. It’s not clear-cut or an exact science, but it’s something

James is very much dealing with on his own terms, and, right now, he seems to be turning another corner.

As for Matty, he remains a pillar of support for his older brother to lean on. After tackling his own relationship with alcohol and its effects on his mental health, he is well aware that being sober isn’t black and white.

“I’m just here to support James in any way that is,” he reasons. “Whether that is saying, ‘look, you’ve got good judgment, you can work this out. If you feel like you want to have a beer, have a beer, see how you feel afterwards. Work out why you want to have a beer as well’.”

On top of being brothers and bandmates, it seems as though James and Matty know one another better than anyone else could.

Where other siblings would war with one another, it feels more like it’s them versus the world. The bond between them is their own superpower. So whether it’s sobriety or keeping Deaf Havana going, they’ll be sure to do it together.

In the studio, that sibling link - the symbiosis - was able to flourish.

Collaborating on the technicalities of the album, they found “a shorthand”, as Matty calls it, for getting the job done. By knowing one another’s limits, they Upset 33

could creatively push one another further than before.

For Matty, he talks about “being able to push in certain directions that might not seem obvious”, and James agrees.

“There are certain things that me and Matty know about each other that, musically, you can’t get unless you play together for your entire life, even just to the point where we’re not afraid to tell each other to fuck off. If there’s an idea that we don’t like, we’ll happily voice it. I’ll try stuff that Matty suggests more than I will try stuff that a random person suggests to me,” he adds.

It results in ‘The Present Is A Foreign Land’, an album in which they could explore creatively more than ever.

‘Help’ is vibrant, cinematic indie rock with a flourish of horns, while the strings on ‘Nevermind’ raise the drama skyward. ‘Someone Somewhere’ even includes a duet with alt-pop duo IDER to create the lo-fi anthem of the sad summer we’re facing.

Take those and throw in straight-up rock moments, stabby synths and gospel goodness and the picture starts to take shape of how open this album is musically.

It’s Deaf Havana untethered, no longer focused on just one sound. Despite that, it’s still a cohesive record, something that was very much Matty’s vision.

“It was the first time ever that we weren’t trying to sound like someone else. Or I wasn’t trying to sound like someone else. I’m so guilty of that,” James admits. “I wasn’t really listening to music at all when we were recording this, so I didn’t have anything to rip off, whereas before, I would hear stuff and go, ‘Oh, that’s cool, let’s try and sound like that’. It’s so obvious when you do that.

This time we just didn’t do it, and we didn’t have anyone telling us what to do and what not to do.”

That’s the disguise gone completely. So the question 34 Upset

is whether James recognises himself in the Deaf Havana of old? It’s a tricky question, and the lines between therapy and interview seem to thin, not for the first time. It feels good, though, watching self-realisation happen. It’s like watching a chrysalis break open.

“I never really knew what or who I was as a person or musically, so I would get hammered and think, ‘Oh, this sounds cool, copy that’, so I was just a tonne of different people,” he answers. “It wasn’t really healthy to be like that, but I just didn’t really know how else to be. It just sort of happened. I’m definitely different now, but I can still see a bit of it there. I still don’t fully know what I’m doing. I can be easily led.”

And so we arrive at the real Deaf Havana. The real James Veck-Gilodi.

It’s a coping mechanism, and he agrees that a lot of having a veil on, clinging to a particular style, was all about protecting himself, themselves, from the fact they didn’t really know who or what Deaf Havana was.

“I’ve always given people music and apologised for it.

This is the first record ever - Matty said the same thing - that I’m not embarrassed of,” James concludes. It’s an astonishing statement the more you think about it.

Five albums down already.

Singles. World tours. And now, when it looked like all was lost, they finally found themselves.

That’s not to say that they’re okay. Deaf Havana are unapologetically who they are on ‘The Present Is A Foreign Land’. It’s an album about getting older, but there’s also a journey charted from a singer at the very brink.

The album opens with ‘Pocari Sweat’. The first line stands starkly. “I was on a bridge in Singapore and thinking of jumping,” it goes. It’s true. Unblinking.

This isn’t someone in a good place.

“I DID QUESTION WHETHER IT WAS A BIT TOO ON THE NOSE, BUT I WANTED TO SHOCK PEOPLE” - JA M ES V E C K- G ILOD I Matty jumps in, “Back when we were in Singapore, I was not his best mate. I reckon I’d have pushed you off if I’d known that’s how you felt,” he jokes. “Sorry, being a dick,” he adds, but James smiles. You can just about get away with that when you’re brothers.

It’s inescapable, though.

The weight of that line, and quite a few others through the album, are about someone struggling to find the merit in carrying on.

“The last track on ‘RITUALS’ ends where that begins,” James explains.

“It ends with me feeling like that, talking about it in a roundabout way, and then this album starts at that shittest, lowest point.

Throughout the album, it gets more and more positive, I think. I wanted to start at the most negative possible note; [sing it] over a pretty song and then increase the positivity somehow. I did question whether it was a bit too on the nose, but I wanted to shock people and be like, ‘what the fuck is this?’”

When those thoughts are in your head, it makes sense that you might feel the need for a disguise, for your own protection. For years, James alluded, used metaphor and hinted at some of the battles and problems without facing them head-on. Even now, he still finds it easier to put them in a song than to talk openly.

“It sounds weird, but it’s much easier to just sing about it because I feel detached from it. It’s sort of like… it’s not an act because I mean every single word,

and everything that I say has happened, but it kind of feels like you’re performing it. There’s a distance. I’m singing from behind a screen. If I had an honest conversation with someone about it, they know for sure that that’s how I feel,” he explains.

In context, it’s impossible not to hear the album’s closer, ‘Remember Me’, with its soaring gospel vocals, as some sort of eulogy.

“That’s the word I’d use,” Matty nods. “At that point, when that song came about, I’d kind of wrote it as our last ever song.”

Against all the odds, though, they don’t intend for this to be the end for Deaf Havana. If anything, they’re back at the start again. They have new goals. They’ve rediscovered a love for making music. They’ve sat on this album for so long that they’re already sketching out what might follow.

As for playing music live?

They’re getting there. Matty is loving it, and James will.

The plan is to tour a lot and pay the rent on time. It’s not the dreams they had when they were 19, but it’s the real, honest answer.

And, for James, he’s getting there. The road isn’t straight, and it won’t be without more bumps, but he seems to be coming through the other side. He is clear on what he wants for Deaf Havana and how to get there - and through all of that, he will have his brother at his side. ■ Deaf Havana’s album ‘The Present Is A Foreign Land’ is out 15th July.

Upset 35

36 Upset

Returning with a new line-up and a new album after a period of upheaval, The Faim are back in business.

Words: Steven Loftin. Photos: Jake Crawford.

“THERE’S NO EGO AROUND WHO DID WHAT; IT’S A TEAM EFFORT” - STEP H EN BEER KA N S OR THE PAST FEW YEARS, globetrotting group The Faim have been firing ideas for their second album ‘Talk Talk’ at each other from Australia to LA. Working via remote sessions, the distance has only strengthened their bond. “[It’s] mainly because we’re all in the places we want to be,” founding bassist Stephen Beerkans explains. “There’s only so long you can write and work somewhere that your heart isn’t.”

Since they formed, the four-piece have wrangled ambition and drive and turned it into a bonafide job to afford themselves such opportunities.

Following the release of their debut album ‘State Of Mind’ a few years ago, it’s been a constant focus to continue their upward trajectory.

Having undergone a lineup change in 2019, these days, the band are tighter than ever. With Sam Tye (guitar) and Linden Marrisen (drums) joining Stephen and Josh Raven (vocals), despite the long range of its members’ hearts, The Faim are armed and ready. Similarly, egos are left at the door. While the bits and pieces that make up ‘Talk Talk’ spawned from the minds of each breathing component, the ritual of bringing them together allowed this second iteration of The Faim to establish ground.

“We’re all adding to the songs that we think represent The Faim as a whole,” Stephen explains. “There’s no ego around who did what because it’s just a team effort to get them to the final spot.”

“That’s definitely a thing that I’m very grateful for with this band,” he continues. “Which I know some other bands don’t 38 Upset

have. For a band member to have the ability to be like, ‘Oh yeah, I wasn’t a part of this song, but I’m going to bat for this song like it’s like my life’.

You know what I mean?’”

Songwriting can be an intensely personal endeavour; chuck into the mix other people’s opinions, and you can easily wind up with lines drawn and members being told well and truly where to stick their views. But in true Faim fashion, they’ve got each other’s backs.

And even if they don’t get near a song (“I didn’t even touch the bass on ‘The Hills’”), the fact that they only care about the bigger picture makes The Faim a watertight unit.

“When you spend as much time together as we do, you know what people are going to like and not like,” Stephen considers, mentioning that he’s written “like a million ideas” that haven’t made the cut.

A band who from the getgo have been dedicated to grabbing both rock and pop and whacking them together, it’s quite hard to pinpoint just where they belong. Of course, appearing at Slam Dunk and touring with the likes of fellow Aussies Stand Atlantic doesn’t hurt.

“Our genre is so eclectic!” he enthuses. “I was doing a profile for this website, and I had to do a one-sentence bio, and I was like, ‘The Faim is four guys that can’t settle on one genre’,” he bursts out laughing.

“Everything just sounds like A Lot, but I hope that because everything is done in-house and with the four of us now, that’s the best way for it to sound like us. We’re having fewer people from outside bringing in big influences, so hopefully, this is one palette that can really show what The Faim is, and people

can recognise the musicians behind each part.”

With Stephen in LA, Sam in Melbourne, and the rest of the band in Perth, it’s helped them stay grounded and grow as people. For Stephen, their remote sessions also helped him hone his thoughts before taking them to the larger table.

“You can sit with yourself, and you can get rid of all your bad ideas,” his eyes darting to the trash can icon of his computer.

“When you’re in the studio, it’s a lot of pressure because if you’re putting out an idea, everyone hears it, but when you’re by yourself like you can feel free to like, really like try a whole bunch of things and then not be afraid to fail.”

‘Talk Talk’ is another manifestation of The Faim reaching higher. It’s poppier, brighter, and owes itself to the camaraderie the band has established. They’ve even done the majority of the work in-house, meaning they’re a bonafide, songtoting and producing band, which Stephen marks with a beaming: “We just feel a lot more personally attached to each song!”

Marking this change for the band comes closer, ‘Era’. The final song tracked for the album, penned by both Stephen and Josh, it encompasses The Faim’s past, ready to see them off to their present and future. The song came about when the band were drained of all their creativity due to the long recording sessions for the rest of the tracks. “In classic band fashion, we’re gonna go in with a positive mindset and see what happens,” Stephen recalls. “So we just wrote the song. We wrote a chorus about it being the final song of the album and the era, and this crazy ride over the last few years.

We were feeling strong as writers at the end of that process, so it feels like the start of another era, like we’re only just getting started. It sums up the process of recording that album, but also, we’ve got more left in the tank.”

The tank does appear to be filled up and ready for the next long-haul grind. The Faim are back, and they’re hungry for more. ■ The Faim’s album ‘Talk Talk’ is out now.

Upset 39

CAVE

40 Upset

IN.

ROM THEIR CHARGED NAME to their vicious attitude, Viagra Boys are never afraid to reach for the extreme.

With their third album ‘Cave World’ grabbing those sonic and thematic heights in a tight clutch, Sebastian Murphy reveals the changes in his own erratic behaviour that have enabled an increase in creative potency. “I take music seriously, but I find humour to be a very important aspect of everything I do, both in my art and my personal life,” the singer and frontman says when reminded of his previous thematic obsession with shrimp.

With their existing records, ‘Street Worms’ and ‘Welfare Jazz’, the raucous-yet-honed group have managed to hide somewhat sincere reflections within a sarcastic tone because it makes it easier to process not just for fans, but for the artists too. However, Sebastian now says that “in light of what’s going on in the world today, you can come to a point where you have to be serious. You can’t just hide from everything all the time, and a lot of what’s happened to us all has started to get into my head even though I’ve tried to avoid it for years.”

In the seclusion of rural Sweden, the group were empowered with a societal immunity to global events; instead of experiencing the chaos first-hand, they were forced to watch it unfold through screens. “I was looking at the news and memes a lot, and you could quickly tell there was this madness going on in the world,” the lyricist recalls. “People were splitting up into polar opposites; anti-maskers, maskers; anti-vaxxers, vaccinators. When I was watching that unravel around the world, it was like watching an entertaining

Stockholm post-punk troublemakers Viagra Boys are trying to make sense out of chaos, tackling the world’s woes head-on.

Words: Finlay Holden. Photos: Fredrik Bengtsson, Kirsten Thoen.

Upset 41

TV show, and I ended up writing about it, commenting on people as a whole rather than the pandemic.

With anything from gun rights to abortion, everyone’s fighting right now.”

With all this conflict occurring in what felt like a different world, Sebastian actually managed to tone down his relentless lifestyle and focus on manifesting a clarity he had never previously managed to achieve, despite multiple attempts.

“There wasn’t all that much partying going on, and I started living a much calmer life. There was much more structure to my life, much more vision,” he calmly reflects, having reached a level of Zen long aspired to.

Going sober turned out to be an easier experience than expected, too. “After I got through my amphetamine addiction, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do anything without speed. I didn’t think I’d be able to paint or draw or write any songs because I would take speed to do anything.

For the first year, I was unable to do absolutely anything creative, and I was very frustrated. You just have to force yourself to do it before you eventually realise it’s just as good sober.”

Frustration is certainly a feeling expressed throughout ‘Cave World’, with recent single ‘Punk Rock Loser’ emphasising concerns about his own past behaviour (“I go to the function just to fuck shit up / I warned you baby, that ain’t juice in my cup”).

However, Viagra Boys have used this newfound state as a means of fuelling their creative output without letting it become too much of a focus. Moving beyond a sound synonymous with British post-punk, the now-quintet feel liberated from any constraints.

“We don’t have many restrictions when it comes to genre or genre mixing,” Sebastian explains. “A lot of these post-punk bands sound the same; they play more pretentious music, in a way. It’s got to have this edge all the time; it’s always got to be super tough and angry. We’re more experimental when it comes to making something that’s a mixture of pop and punk; we started taking away a lot of those classic elements with a synthesiser or some cheesyass guitar and drums. A lot of it is just us having fun.”

While it’s clear from their live show that the bold group have fun with old material too, reaching for 42 Upset

“WE’D BE MUCH HAPPIER IF WE WERE LIVING IN TREES, EATING TERMITES AND SCRATCHING OUR ASSES” - STEP H EN BEER KA N S uncompromising peaks has been the fulfilling mission of ‘Cave World’ and gave Viagra Boys a clear and rigorous goal through practice sessions and into the studio. “The important factor was to have something that’s a bit extreme – even if it’s extremely bad, at least it would be extreme,” the ringleader laughs. “We wanted something that would stand out.

I’m sure we could make a great straight-up punk album in no time if we wanted to, but we wouldn’t have been as happy about it. We wanted to make something that would push us to another level.”

Having fun and experimenting is something the band has gradually leaned into as the process became more and more comfortable, and it is that level of creative comfort that allowed further artistic movement than ever before. “We don’t want to make an album that sounds exactly like the one before it.”

With that thought in mind, there has also been a transition in animalistic obsessions – from shrimps to monkeys. As disordered as this may seem, the surprisingly logical focus comes from an overwhelming feeling of dissatisfaction in our society – even Sweden can’t always be a haven. “I was watching some documentaries about monkeys and felt that life would be much easier if we didn’t have this self-conscious attitude.

We’d be much happier if we were living in trees, eating termites and scratching our asses.” As you can probably surmise, that’s also where the album’s title and partial thematic

through-line stems from, “we should be moving back into the caves where we belong.”

In the face of an investigation into Viagra Boys’ artistic methodology, Sebastian suggests it’s best not to think too deeply about such things.

“It’s always the end product that’s the most important to me; I don’t give a shit about anything else,” he declares.

“I just want to express a feeling that you can’t really describe in the correct way. I want music to be some form of truth; that’s always the most important.”

Finding that truth becomes more natural when surrounded by those who understand you, and Sebastian has finally found someone to truly bare his soul to. “I got engaged during COVID and got to spend a lot of time with my fiancé. It’s the first time that I’ve been in a relationship where we can create things together; she’s also an artist and is just hilarious. When we’re at home, we can sit and make sculptures together, which sounds really cheesy, but it’s everything I’d hoped for.”

If you’ve been to a Viagra Boys show, it’s easy to lose sight of this sweetness through the thick mist of energy - not to mention sweat – but this frontman still admits that “a lot of what you see is true. I’m still struggling in life; I still struggle with alcohol intake and the occasional late night. That person is still very much a part of me, and I’m always going to be battling with my inner demons, but I think that’s what makes people relate to us – this self-hatred mixed with hope, experiencing every feeling at the same time.”

Humbly achieving everything the Sebastian of years past could’ve hoped for, ‘Cave World’ is the result of an odd period of time; chaotic, yes, strange, yes, but surprisingly positive for Viagra Boys? Undeniably so.

“From making this album, I think the next thing I do, I want to make even more extreme,” he proposes. “I want people to not expect what’s coming next. I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do for the next album yet, but hopefully, it’s something that I’ve never heard either. I always want to take things to the next level; I just barely touched that with this album, but I want to keep doing that even more.” If ‘Cave World’ is just another step on the ladder, Viagra Boys are onto something momentous. ■ Viagra Boys’ album ‘Cave World’ is out now.

Upset 43

ILIKEITWHENY 44 Upset

YOUSLEEP Travie McCoy has been through the music industry wringer, but with his new solo album, he’s finding a route to happiness.

Words: Jack Press.

ONESTLY, I FEEL LIKE A BAG OF DOG SHIT ON FIRE!” chuckles Travie McCoy from his home. “I’m getting over COVID for the first time, and it sucks; I thought I was invincible. I got my two shots and a booster, but I’m sitting in my house feeling like a fucking wet bag of dirty gym shorts.”

Six years ago, Travie McCoy dropped off the face of the earth. Jaded by music industry execs sucking his blood – “that fucking machine is something my cogs don’t fit into” – he took time out of being a global pop star to work on himself. Having cleared his head, he’s back with new album ‘Never Slept Better’.

So, how ironic is it that his first single in six years, ‘A Spoonful of Cinnamon,’ is about Covid – and now he’s caught it?

“When the pandemic started getting crazy in New York, I think I’d been to 15 funerals, or lost at least 15 close friends and family.

It was a lot to swallow, but I felt that it needed to be spoken on because I’d be naïve to think that there wasn’t a million other people out there who weren’t going through the same thing as me.”

While his comeback conquered the last two years, ‘Never Slept Better’ is six years’ worth of diary entries. It’s the highs, the lows, and the inbetweens of a boy from Geneva, New York, and the life he’s led.

From his battles with addiction to his struggles with depression, it always comes back to the music industry machine. So, why tell his story now?

“I never stopped making music, but I did take a sabbatical to reassess the people around me and their intentions and why I felt like I was putting more into my career than the people I was paying to help me.

“Honestly, I was being bought down and censored, like you can’t say this on this song because somebody will feel this way. Listen, I’m a 40-year-old man; you can’t tell me what the fuck I can and can’t say. I’ve always been a free bird, I’ll always Upset 45

be a free bird, and the minute somebody tries to put a fucking leash on me is when I lose my shit and fight back.”

‘Never Slept Better’ is the soundtrack to that fight.

Over half a decade’s worth of frustrations and regrets can be heard. At times it’s incendiary, at others, reflective. While he’s happy “raging against the machine on this album,” it’s the lessons he’s learnt as both a musician and a human being that really matters.

“I realised that I’ve spent most of my life as a people pleaser, someone that didn’t ever want to upset anyone.

But then again, all these motherfuckers are living off of my blood and my sacrifices,” Travie spits with venom.

“Once I realised the way to approach it in a humane way, I decided to part ways with my management and my label; there were times where Gym Class Heroes were the cash cow, but when other artists started to get back into their groove, they put us on the backburner like we didn’t hold everything down while everything else fell apart. That didn’t sit well with me, so it was this moment of self-importance when I finally knew my worth when they obviously don’t.”

Like Scott Pilgrim vs. the world, it’s Travie McCoy vs. the music industry. He likens his wake-up call as “taking the blue pill” and “seeing things the way they’re supposed to be seen.” ‘Never Slept Better’ takes its title from Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game.

If you need a quick primer, it’s about a big-game hunter from New York who falls from a yacht, swims to an abandoned island, and is hunted by a Russian aristocrat. So, what’s that got to do with Travie McCoy? “The last line of the story is, ‘I’ve never had a better night’s sleep in my life’. To me, that’s synonymous with everything I went through in those six years trying to 46 Upset

“IF YOU FUCK WITH IT, YOU FUCK WITH IT, AND IF YOU DON’T, YOU DON’T, BUT I’M NOT GOING TO FUCKING CHANGE MY STANCE” - TR AVI E M C C OY figure out how to stay away from that fucking Russian, which is the music industry,” he laughs. “I mean it, though.

I’ve never slept better. After all this shit, I can do what the fuck I want, like after getting out of my deal and leaving my management, I literally never had slept better my whole career.”

You can hear it, too. From the Frank Carter-featuring spoken-word title-track to the energetic empowerment of opener proper ‘Stop It’, Travie sounds more fired up than ever before. It’s all part of a master plan because they “can’t just fucking throw the songs together.” Every track tells a story, and every track has its place. Take the fade from ‘Stop It’ to ‘Deja Fait’ – the duality of light and dark is its own duel of fates. “’Stop It’ was me saying listen, I’ve been through the fucking wringer, and I came out a better man. I refuse to let anyone fucking tell me otherwise, so ‘Stop It’ is me saying get the fuck out of my face.

“Following it up with ‘Deja Fait’ is my way of saying I’ve been doing this shit for ages, and I’ve walked through the fire so you can run through it. I didn’t want to come across like I’m the demigod that gave you guys the power to do what you do or gave people of colour the comfortability of being different; I just want younger kids to know they don’t have to fucking bow down to these labels.”

Travie has always been at the forefront of representing the underdogs in alternative culture. When Gym Class Heroes blew up in the mid-noughties, it gave marginalised kids the opportunity to dream. Even if his label tried keeping him under lock and key.

“I had label heads in my ear saying ‘if you say this, we’re not gonna get this radio show’ or ‘this demographic’s not gonna fuck with you’ – I don’t give a fuck about demographics, I don’t give a fuck about radio shows.

“I give a fuck about my mental health, my fans’ mental health, the state of what we’re going through as a society, so I decided fuck it, I’m going to speak on it, and you’ve got to hear it. If you fuck with it, you fuck with it, and if you don’t, you don’t, but I’m not going to fucking change my stance after going through the wringer.”

Going through the wringer is a common theme throughout ‘Never Slept Better.’ While ‘Stop It’ welcomes you into Travie’s newfound freedom, closer ‘I’ll Never Be Loved’ – featuring Hamzaa – dives into the mess of a mental health provision the music industry provides, time travelling back 13 years to when he was in rehab.

“I wrote the verses when I was in rehab 13 years ago, and Sia sent me a hook.

The second day I was out of rehab, I went straight to the

studio and recorded those verses. I didn’t rerecord them for this record; they’re the same verses to keep the urgency of how I was feeling.

You can feel the tension in my voice.

“This is the perfect exclamation point for the end of the album, with the Bessie Smith sample at the end, like nobody knows, like when you’re down and out, nobody knows unless I told them, and that was me telling you I was down and out.”

On it, he sings of being sold the ‘sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll’ dream, and the grim realisation it’s like stealing candy from a baby.

It’s the lynchpin for a lot of the album and for his views on everything.

“That was every boy’s dream; we wanted all of that, so we got it and realised that it doesn’t fill that god-size hole that we have in our stomachs; nothing will, except self-healing and selflove. There’s no label that can write a cheque to fill that hole. There’s no label that can set up a Zoom call and make you feel better when you’re not feeling good. They can try; I’m sure there’s a fucking textbook they use to deal with artists.”

‘Never Slept Better’ isn’t all doom and gloom. It’s a tale of triumphing over the trials and tribulations life chucks at you along the way. It’s about the boy from Geneva becoming the man of New York, but it’s also a guide to life according to Travie McCoy, and you’re welcome to try it.

“When my dad used to tell me to go with your gut, I never understood it. But it’s literally a brain in your stomach - so we have our brain, our head and our stomach, and it tells us when things aren’t right. If there’s anything I want anyone to take away from this album, it’s to listen to all three of them, cause they will not lie to you.” ■ Travie McCoy’s album ‘Never Slept Better’ is out 15th July.

Rated.

THE OFFICIAL VERDICT ON EVERYTHING

Hot Milk

The King And Queen Of Gasoline EP ★★★★

HOT MILK ARE BY NOW EXPERTS IN THEIR CRAFT. 48 Upset

WITH A WAVE OF POP-PUNK nostalgia sweeping the scene, it might be easy to lose sight of the newest generation of talent amidst various comebacks and Travis Barker collabs. Fresh from bringing some oomph to Pale Waves’ recent UK tour, Manchester’s Hot Milk are by now experts in their craft, taking their cues from their early 2000s heroes and dragging them into the future on latest EP ‘The King and Queen of Gasoline’.

Alongside their now trademark pop-rockers, there’s room for some fresh tricks. ‘The Secret to Saying Goodbye’ nestles a crooning saxophone solo in its breakdown before exploding back into chugging power chords and programmed synths.

On ‘I Fell in Love with Someone I Shouldn’t…’ Han Mee and Jim Shaw pass responsibility for lead vocals back and forth as easily as blink-182 in their prime, and on ‘Bad Influence’ the quartet play with more industrial riffs before emerging into a sugar-coated chorus about kicking back against the haters and living your own truth.

Therein lies the band’s strength, wearing their obvious influences on their sleeves while maintaining an authenticity and forging their own path. Dillon Eastoe

Bad Breeding

Human Capital ★★★

Stevenage-based Bad Breeding’s fourth fulllength ‘Human Capital’ comes at a perfect point, where society feels more fraught than it’s been in quite some time. The album isn’t only armed with 12 guttural hardcore punk tracks, but also a 2000 word personal essay, calling for solidarity in an increasingly disenfranchised and capitalist world obsessed with individualism.

Translating these lyrical themes into sonics is where ‘Human Capital’ shines. The album is aggressive, intense and brutal.

Vocals are drowned out by haphazard instrumentation, but it’s simultaneously grooving and persistent, with some killer breakdowns thrown into the mix. While tracks fall seamlessly into each other, variation would have been beneficial - but when a band is this angry, is there any time for that?

Jasleen Dhindsa

the straight-ahead rock of career-rescuing ‘All Those Countless Nights’ and the Springsteenian choruses of ‘Old Souls’, the album is an affirmation of Deaf Havana’s continuing appeal.

The emo angst of their coming-of-age classic album ‘Fools and Worthless Liars’ has been left in the rear view mirror, but Deaf Havana are proud of where they’ve been since and looking forwards to where they’re headed next.

Dillon Eastoe

Deaf Havana

The Present Is A Foreign Land ★★★★

Deaf Havana’s story has been one of upheaval and reinventions. Once again back from the brink, after effectively having broken up following a 2019 tour, ‘The Present is a Foreign Land’ sees Deaf Havana flicking through their back catalogue and taking inspiration from their best bits.

Shorn down to core creative duo James and Matt Veck-Gilodi, the brothers pull together a collage of everywhere they’ve been together.

Combining the pop nous of 2018’s glossy ‘Rituals’,

Dune Rats

Real Rare Whale ★★★★

Subtlety isn't really in Dune Rats' nature - and nor should it be. A band that are known for having a good time at all costs, 'Real Rare Whale' is an album that reeks of sweaty mosh pit abandon. Opener 'LTD' hollers a war-cry, while 'What A Memorable Night' bounces high. 'Shake or Don't' poses the question "where's the action?

Where's the fun?" - that's Dune Rats in a nutshell.

Always on the look out

Stick To Your Guns are more than living up to their name.

Dan Harrison

Sick Joy

We’re All Gonna F***ing Die ★★★★★

There’s a healthy balance of pessimism, optimism and realism on display throughout Sick Joy’s debut.

Universal themes of love, life and loss are explored against a backdrop of distortion. This is 90s grunge modernised, without losing any of the grit that made it so special. Yet Sick Joy are not restrained by genre, with indie and metal influences also peeking through.

‘WE’RE ALL GOING TO F***ING DIE’ is full of inescapable earworms like polished opener ‘don’t feel like dying’ and the energetic ‘stay numb’. The latter of which deals with that strange second album is something underfoot. If it's anxiety, for the next adrenaline transition from a romantic else. From the thumping, shot, 'Real Rare Whale' is a fear, a determination to to platonic relationship. But, stalking vamp of title track grasp opportunity with riot. Dan Harrison the true stand-out is ‘belly 'Nocturnal' to 'Sensitive', both hands or just an aching beast’, an urgent punk rebounding on an elastic attempt to run faster tune that features Jamie stab, it manages to be both than the tension that Lenman. sinister and razor-sharp. hides round every corner, Brilliant from start to finish, 'The Reckoning' growls Palisades method of coping this is an album created pleasingly, like a lullaby is both cathartic and without inhibitions; authentic adorned with razor blades, effective. Hypercritically yet effortlessly cool. Kelsey 'Highlights' sprinkles salt acclaimed. Dan Harrison McClure over the sugar-rush of Talk Talk alt-pop - when it hits, it's ★★★★ euphoric. Not everything There's a lot to be said for across seventeen tracks not sticking in one lane. could hit quite as hard, That's a mantra The Faim but with smart ideas, have taken to their second sharp experimentation album, 'Talk Talk'. With a and a vision for something nostalgic edge for pop-rock bigger than just the music, Hell Is In Your Head gone by, they're pushing 'Nocturnal' is an album to ★★★★ on everything from epic, get lost in. Dan Harrison Spectre Senses Fail's Buddy driving anthems (madly, ★★★★ Nielsen has done his badly, fixed) to bubbling It's been five years since time. The sole remaining alt-pop ('You (and my Stick To Your Guns' last founding member of the Addiction)'), shimmery folk album - 2017's 'True View'. band, it's testament to ('The Alchemist'), cinematic A lot has changed since his continuing relevance crooners ('Faith In Me') and then, but their importance that 'Hell Is In Your Head' flat out arena rock ('Ease to hardcore remains as isn't an album that allows My Mind'). That they deliver relevant as ever. Allowing itself to rely on nostalgia the lot with sure-handed Reaching themselves to stray away to find an audience. Dark, confidence is a marker of Hypercritical from the beaten path, there's brooding and brilliant, it's just how adept the Aussie an evolution of their own ★★★★ an album of two halves. four-piece have become. terms. Big choruses punch Five of the first six tracks Dan Harrison There's something through with a guttural take their titles from the intense about Palisades' thump, riffs are direct and five parts of TS Eliot's new album. 'Reaching determined, and lyrically the 'The Waste Land', set in Hypercritical' is a record its world and to be viewed righteous fire burns bright. with a purpose. With Not afraid to take on the "more like a play".

The vocalist/bassist Brandon world around them, and the second half - more based Elgar stepping up to sole cynical, oppressive forces in the real world - is more vocal duties following the exit of frontman Lou Miceli, present. Both, though, feel that dominate it, there's a determined sense of urgency immediate and urgent. the band's pandemic Nocturnal throughout. A wake up An album of vision and evolution is obvious. ★★★★ constant progression. Dan call delivered in the most Wound tight, tracks like assertive terms possible, At its heights, Mothica's 'Fade Away' audibly crunch Harrison

The Faim

Senses Fail

Palisades

Mothica

Stick To Your Guns

Travie McCoy

Never Slept Better ★★★

Opening with a spoken work introduction, Travie McCoy is a unique voice. As the forming-force for Gym Class Heroes, it could be argued he was a man ahead of his time, embracing the genrefree future long before the zeitgeist caught up. A record that charts the fightback from the lowest of lows, it's clear this is an album full of cathartic release. Therapy to music, it's honest, truthful and real - but not so dark it ever loses a sense of playfulness. Dan Harrison

Viagra Boys

Cave World ★★★★

Never ones to shy away from confrontation, Swedish post-punks Viagra Boys return jubilant at the idea of the world becoming a bit stupid. Seemingly the toxic rhetoric bouncing around the internet is prime fodder for vocalist Sebastian Murphy’s razor-sharp, bang-on-themoney lyrical sniper. On ‘Cave World’, they take the last few years and distil them into something that doesn’t make you want to cry with exasperation, but instead laugh at the ridiculousness. All the recent societal greatest hits of late, including antivaxxers (‘Creepy Crawlies’) get a nod. Even a few timeless classics such as denying an evident crime (‘Ain’t No Thief’) and a lackadaisical, whimsical cross-hair on gate-keeping punk types in true VBoys style (‘Punk Rock Loser’). Add in the band’s slight skewing to bouncier, boppier sounds - still with that Viagra Boys snarling crunch - and what you have is a resounding success for one of the more intriguing and enrapturing bands to do the post-punk thing. Steven Loftin

Upset 49

LOATHE

EVERYONE HAS THOSE FORMATIVE BANDS AND TRACKS THAT FIRST GOT THEM INTO MUSIC AND HELPED SHAPE THEIR VERY BEING. THIS MONTH, SEAN RADCLIFFE OF LOATHE TAKES US THROUGH SOME OF THE SONGS THAT MEANT THE MOST TO HIM DURING HIS TEENAGE YEARS.

BLOC PARTY Like Eating Glass

‘Silent Alarm’ was one of the first albums I ever went to buy for myself. This band really stood out to me as a drummer, and as I got more into melody and songwriting I realised how much they influenced me as a musician, and still do now.

ARCTIC MONKEYS The View From The Afternoon

Again, being a drummer, this band really stood out to me among other “indie” bands at the time. They were eclectic and exciting, and their songs were never just one thing.

There were always twists and turns in their songs, melodically and rhythmically, and seeing

50 Upset

the trajectory of the band from early on to now has been really inspiring.

MESHUGGAH

Future Breed Machine

This was the first Meshuggah track I heard, and it immediately grabbed me and gave me another perspective on heavy music as a whole. One of the few heavy bands whose older albums still stand up to today’s music.

KORN

Got The Life

My sister went on a trip to America when I was around 6-7 years old, and she brought back Korn’s ‘Follow The Leader’ on CD for me as a gift. I listened to it religiously for many years as it was unlike anything I’d heard

before nu-metal that was heavy, but also very pop-driven, and able to secure #1 in charts.

SYSTEM OF A DOWN Aerials

This entire album, front to back, is amazing. This band stood out to me in that they somehow sounded goofy, almost Danny Elfman-esque at times, but still remained heavy and raw and intense.

INTERPOL Roland

This band always depressed me, but I think that was the point. Their albums were always so moody, dissonant and abrasive, and for some reason, that resonated with me a lot.

RADIOHEAD

Sail To The Moon

This song is one I always go back to when I want to experience Radiohead. ‘Hail To The Thief’ was the album that stuck with me the most from their discography, and it’s still my favourite today.

THE FALL OF TROY Mouths Like Sidewinder Missiles

This was the song that got me into the band, and this was the band that made me want to take my guitar playing more seriously. As a drummerturned-guitarist, Thomas Erak was a big inspiration.

Loathe will tour the UK in October 2022.

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