Upset, December 2022 / January 2023

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L.S. Dunes Magnolia Park Jamie Lenman White Lung

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DECEMBER 2022 / JANUARY 2023 Issue 83

RIOT 4. JAMIE LENMAN 8. WHITE LUNG ABOUT TO BREAK 12. HONEY REVENGE 14. SNAYX THE BEST OF 2022 16. SLIPKNOT 26. KID KAPICHI 26. ROLO TOMASSI 27. PUP 28. MAGNOLIA PARK 32. STATIC DRESS 33. NOAHFINNCE 33. PUPPY 34. L.S. DUNES TEENAGE KICKS 42. SHOW ME THE BODY

Upset Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler

Scribblers Alexander Bradley, Dan Harrison, Jack Press, Jamie MacMillan, Jessica Goodman, Kelsey McClure, Linsey Teggert, Rob Mair, Sam Taylor, Steven Loftin Snappers Anthony Scanga, Frances Beach, Jessica Griffith, Jonathan Weiner, Leila Rummery, Lindsey Byrnes, Luke Dickey, Mark Beemer, Paige Margulies, Sarah Louise Bennett, Scott Chalmers, Zachary Spangler PUBLISHED FROM WELCOMETOTHEBUNKER.COM PO BOX 420, HASTINGS, TN34 9LZ

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.

Riot.

EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN ROCK

4 Upset

L IS A Y

LOVE S ALL YOU JAMIE LENMAN explores love and atheism on his fifth and freshest album yet.

Words: Linsey Teggert. Photos: Scott Chalmers.

Y

ou really think there’s a heaven and hell?

Well, maybe there’s a planet Krypton as well,” spits Jamie Lenman sarcastically. It’s the opening line on the first track of his new record; a bold lyrical statement to match a bold album title, but then again, Jamie has never been a shrinking violet.

‘The Atheist’ sees the musical chameleon declaring his position on the existence of God, and it’s something he’s been wrestling with for a long time.

“I like the way it describes me, Jamie Lenman: The Atheist,” he explains. “I had a few titles I was playing with, but I thought ‘The Atheist’ was the boldest and would tell people something about me before they pick it up.”

It’s a heavy theological subject to wrestle with, but this isn’t Jamie’s God-bashing concept album. While not all of the songs deal directly with religion, it was a deliberate choice to bookend the album with two tracks that directly reference God, or rather, the lack of God: aforementioned opener ‘This Is All There Is’ and closer ‘War Of Doubt.’

“It’s like saying at the beginning, ‘Hey, we’ve accepted there is no God, now let’s talk about this other big stuff with that in mind. No one is going to come and help us; there’s no one else to rely on but ourselves, so here are the socio-economic concerns, and here are the political concerns. It provides a nice umbrella theme for everything else to sit under, even if it’s not being directly tackled.”

Reminiscing on his upbringing, Jamie recalls how he wasn’t raised in a particularly religious household but that God’s existence was established simply as a natural fact. “It’s just presented as a fact of life: there’s God, heaven and Jesus, and you don’t question it until you grow a brain and think, ‘Hold on a minute’.

I went through a period of really

Upset 5

trying to become a practising Christian, and I tried to go to Church on the regular, but it was awful.”

He credits watching a littleknown cult Australian film called ‘Bad Boy Bubby’ by Rolf de Heer as a lightbulb moment when it came to figuring out where God fit into his life, so much so that ‘This Is All There Is’ and ‘War of Doubt’ open with soundbites from the film.

“It’s an enormous film that’s pitch black in places - a very dark ‘Forrest Gump’ is a lazy way to describe it - but it’s the story of this character who at the end arrives at his own atheism, and it’s portrayed very much as a positive, and that’s what I wanted to do. Everything made so much sense when I saw that film, and it enabled me to tackle life so much easier. I was so much happier.”

A record about atheism could have had the potential to be angry or bitter, particularly on the heels of 2020’s ferocious ‘King of Clubs’ but Jamie insists the opposite is true, that ‘The Atheist’ is his lightest, most accessible record yet - a tonic for the darkness of ‘King of Clubs’.

Sonically, it’s softer and more melodic, leaning towards indie-pop and even flirting with stadium rock. If 2019’s ‘Shuffle’ was Jamie scratching a creative itch, and ‘King of Clubs’ was a release of pressure, then ‘The Atheist’ is a long-held ambition to make a poppier record that there’s finally been space to realise.

“I’ve been trying to make this record for a long time; even before I made ‘Devolver’ in 2017, I had a discussion with my producer Space about what kind of record we should make. I had this idea of no distortion, no shouting, a lot of acoustic guitars and gin-soaked ballads with a poppy vibe, but he said no, we should make a post-hardcore record, so we made ‘Devolver.’ So, I’ve been trying to make ‘The Atheist’ since then; it just got shunted out of the way by two records in between.”

Embracing the lighter side of things on this record certainly suits Jamie: despite the subject matter, ‘This Is All There Is’ is defiant and hooky with a big attitude-filled sing-along chorus, and ‘Song On My Tongue’ brings to mind Jimmy Eat World with its twinkly emo guitar breakdown. Elsewhere, softer tracks such as ‘Hospital Tree’ strip away any pomp for heartfelt vulnerability.

Queen and Weezer are two bands that have been name-

6 Upset

dropped in press releases, and nowhere are the stadium-bothering sensibilities more apparent than on the tracks where Jamie explores another of life’s big topics: love.

Atheism and love may seem like two polar opposite subjects, but in the absence of religion, Jamie placed his faith in love.

“Okay, we don’t have God, but what do we have instead - and the answer is right in the middle of this record, on tracks five and six - we have this amazing woman.”

Jamie is, of course, referring to his wife, who he very clearly worships.

Track five, ‘Lena Don’t Leave Me’, is Jamie’s lighters-in-the-air, fist-pumping pop banger where he celebrates his love for his wife, complete with 80s-esque guitar solo. It’s utterly brilliant.

“Those two songs back-toback are about how I feel about my wife. ‘Lena Don’t Leave Me’ is about how she’s the other half of me, which is a cliché, but it’s exactly how I feel. Love is as present as the Godlessness on this record. I was born a romantic; my greatest ambition beyond being an astronaut or fireman or a rock star was to fall in love with my true love, a real Disney sense of the word.

Once I’d found this person, I kind of didn’t need anything else, so you could argue that she’s what I have instead of God; her and music.”

In terms of both sonics and aesthetics, ‘The Atheist’ feels like the beginning of a new chapter for Jamie. His three previous albums ‘Devolver’, ‘Shuffle’ and ‘King of Clubs’ almost seem like an accidental trilogy of sorts: all were recorded with producer Space and are much sharper-edged than ‘The Atheist.’ The visuals were hard and shiny, using block colours of red, white and black. This new record is softer in all respects and saw Jamie working with a different producer for the first time in years. Recalling his “punk kid” roots, Jamie laughs joyfully when he talks about this new direction.

“I almost wrote some of the songs as an experiment, particularly ‘Lena’ and ‘Talk Hard’, as if I was trying to write the most balls-out stadium pop songs, like Queen and Toto combined.

I’d never considered recording them, but management loved them. I mean, there’s a fucking key change in ‘Talk Hard’, but it just feels good! I’ve made a career out of what I would call post-hardcore songs that are long and windy with pretentious titles - certainly with my band Reuben - so to write

a classic-feeling pop song feels incredibly subversive. Even though it might sound a bit staid and middle-aged to someone else, this is really daring stuff for me!”

With a musical career that is going stronger than ever over twenty years in, Jamie Lenman is still one of the most innovative artists in the UK alt-rock scene.

With a seemingly endless creative drive to keep exploring and pushing boundaries, it’s astonishing that he’s about to release perhaps his freshest-sounding record.

“I just have something in my brain, I’m almost envious of people who can make the same thing again and again, but I get bored so easy.

One of the first singles we put out with Reuben, ‘Scared of the Police’, featured the line, “I’m scared of becoming a statue, a monolith, and not changing, ever.” Staying the same has always terrified me, so I hold true to that. Twenty years since ‘Scared of the Police,’ I’m still following that line. ■ Jamie Lenman’s album ‘The Atheist’ is out 25th November.

“I WENT THROUGH A PERIOD OF REALLY TRYING TO BECOME A PRACTISING CHRISTIAN, AND I TRIED TO GO TO CHURCH ON THE REGULAR, BUT IT WAS AWFUL” - JA M I E L E N MA N

4 night special edition 8 - 11 june 2023 fri day

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(BILL SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

PR EM ON ITI ON Canadian punk trio WHITE LUNG reflect upon motherhood and growth on their blistering final album.

Words: Linsey Teggert. Photos: Lindsey Byrnes.

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A

fter an exhilarating, often chaotic decade and a half together, Canadian punk trio White Lung are about to release their fifth and final album, and, of course, they’re going out with an almighty bang.

Despite emerging at the end of a very grown-up, transformative period for the band, ‘Premonition’ doesn’t compromise any of the ferocity and feral energy that White Lung have wielded throughout their career.

It’s been a long road to get to this goodbye: when White Lung returned to Vancouver to record the follow-up to 2016’s hugely acclaimed ‘Paradise,’ they had no idea of the circumstances to come that would lead to an unintentional five-year hiatus.

“In October 2017, I flew up to Vancouver to go into the studio, and I realised I hadn’t had my period,” frontwoman Mish Barber-Way recalls candidly. “So, I pick up a pregnancy test before I head into the studio, and of course, it’s positive.”

With her first baby due around the time of the fifth album’s planned release date, White Lung decided to postpone the release until 2020. “Well, what happened in 2020?” asks Mish. “The world stopped!”

Throughout the progression of her pregnancy, Mish continued to travel to Vancouver while she was still able, feeling comfortable enough to continue recording with the band’s long-time producer Jesse Gander.

“I was going through all these massive changes in my body and my psyche and my spirituality because I’m prepping to become a mother, and I’d lived a pretty wild life up

to that point.”

Knowing she was about to leave her previous turbulent lifestyle behind; the endless touring, the lack of any stability and the cigarettes and whiskey she used as a crutch when recording (“I’d never recorded sober before,” she confesses), actually came as a huge relief to Mish, changing the whole dynamic when it came to her songwriting. Having only written three songs for the album before entering the studio, the whole trajectory of the record changed.

“Before that point, I really didn’t know what the album was going to be; I’d been really struggling lyrically. I realised retrospectively that I’d been carrying around this severe unhappiness and that there had been this huge hole in my life, and I just really wanted to be a mother, but I was still living this insane lifestyle.

Once I discovered I was pregnant, the whole direction of the album became about that. It felt very different to write an album knowing I was embarking on this huge change that would be permanent.”

Having to go through the whole process sober was a challenge, Mish acknowledges, as she was forced to reflect upon herself in a bold way. “I second guess myself a lot and self-criticise: liquor was always a way to shut up those voices and just write and not really think.”

On previous records, Mish had used storytelling as a way to hide behind her feelings, confronting the issues through someone else’s narrative, and sometimes those narratives were dark.

Take the frenetic ‘Sister’ from previous record ‘Paradise’ for example, where Mish sings from Upset 9

the viewpoint of Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka, who murdered three young women with her husband, including her own younger sister.

In stark contrast to such violence, ‘Premonition’’s lyrics are all focused through the lens of motherhood. “I was speaking through a lot of characters on ‘Paradise’, hiding behind a lot of metaphors, and I realised I was wrestling with my own unhappiness rather than confronting it.” Such a huge change in circumstances forced Mish to confront her demons, writing more directly than she ever had before. “I decided I was just going to say what I wanted, and I didn’t care what anyone thought,” she states defiantly. “Though it’s probably boring - no one cares about moms,” she laughs.

Sure, motherhood and pregnancy are not the typical subjects you would associate with punk rock, but the motherhood of ‘Premonition’ is primal and raw, and if anything, this new perspective has only served to strengthen White Lung’s whirlwind energy. It feels even more urgent and passionate, with pummelling 10 Upset

“MOTHERHOOD HAS HELPED ME BE WAY LESS NIHILISTIC ABOUT THE WORLD” - M I SH B A R BER-WAY drums courtesy of AnneMarie Vassi and knife-edge guitar riffs from Kenneth William threatening to explode at any moment.

There’s always been a nihilistic quality to Mish’s songwriting, and it’s still present in places, particularly ‘Date Night’, where she imagines herself on a date with God, who is drunk-driving in a Cadillac as they leave behind a burning LA. Even though this is one of the few tracks written before she discovered her pregnancy, Mish points out that it presciently explores the album’s overarching theme of leaving an old life behind.

“Motherhood has helped me be way less nihilistic about the world, way more forgiving about my circumstances, and way more open-minded and accepting of the daily changes that life brings. I think I spent a lot of time in my touring years being in such chaos, but trying to control it and being a very angry person. That’s not a

very healthy place to be; it’s not sustainable.

In fact, you could say that alongside becoming a mother, another of the driving influences behind ‘Premonition’ is a sense of Mish’s own rebirth. It feels fitting that at the end of White Lung’s life as a band, she has been able to confront and come to terms with her own past: the conclusion of a natural story arc.

“When I was in my twenties, I was a complete and absolute wreck. I had no spiritual compass; I was very self-centred and very angry. Because I’ve been in a band and done a lot of press, I can Google and read an interview with myself when I was 27,” she cringes. “I look at it and think ‘Oh my God, that person is a disaster!’

I used music as a place to throw it all out there and drugs and alcohol to mute those feelings because they were so overwhelming.

“But I think everything happened exactly as it should, and I’m grateful for

that, but man, I was so wild and self-destructive. I’m in that period of self-reflection where I understand that I had to go through that to appreciate the growth and to understand that it’s never too late to make amends with yourself or with other people. So absolutely no regrets, none.”

As with her personal journey, there are no regrets or unfinished business when it comes to White Lung. There was no drama or event, stresses Mish; it just felt that the world had made the decision for them, with the pause during the pandemic allowing them to comfortably fall back into their individual lives and own careers outside of the band. They hope to play some goodbye shows, but as Mish points out, having not played live together since 2017 and having not played the new tracks in a room together yet, it will require a lot of practice. “I think we’ll probably try and do it, but I’m trying to be less of a control freak and just leaving things up to the universe instead of trying to force them.”

As for the future, Mish is more than happy to leave behind the punk-rock lifestyle and be a stay-athome mom for now. Her husband was also in a band, and their house is full of instruments and music, so what happens if her kids decide they want to be in a band too?

“When music became a career, at least for me, I put so much pressure on myself that I kind of forgot about the joy it made me feel, but music is such a beautiful thing. I can’t wait to play music with my children, and then if they want to be in a band later, then great, I’ll give them some hot tips for the road. I’d be supportive of them, but hey, don’t think I don’t know what goes on!”

■ White Lung’s album ‘Premonition’ is out 2nd December.

About Break. to

NEW TALENT YOU NEED TO KNOW

12 Upset

HONEY REVENGE Words: Sam Taylor.

Photo: Paige Margulies.

Californian poprockers HONEY REVENGE are a lot of fun. Only a handful of tracks deep, they’re quickly picking up pace with their relatable, hook-filled bangers that shine a light on even the bleakest of times. Devin Papadol (vocals) introduces his band.

What’s your band’s origin story - how did you meet, how did you start making music together?

The internet is a beautiful thing. Long story short, I was in another band that had a video going around of us playing live. Donovan (who plays guitar for us now) saw that video and messaged us asking if we knew any bands looking for guitarists.

They were moving here from Georgia and wanted to find their place in the scene out in LA. We coincidentally needed a guitarist at the time, so they sent in an audition video and joined from there. That band didn’t end up surviving the pandemic, but Honey Revenge came out of it!

I want our sound to be and how to write a good song in general. I’m still really proud of ‘Miss Me’, though. It’s what made this band who we are.

Do you have any lyrics themes you find yourselves repeatedly returning to?

Haha, yes. I write a lot of lyrics about being overly self-aware. A majority of those are about how I talk too much. I think I use music and songwriting to express what’s going on in my head in a very train-of-thought kind of way. That being said, the lyrics are often realisations. I think I heard Donny say that self-awareness is the key to self-acceptance. I’m learning to like myself and also improve as a person overall.

I’m only 24, so my songwriting is a direct reflection of me manoeuvring through becoming a person.

Tell us about your new single, ‘Rerun’. Where did it come from?

I’m super impatient. ‘Rerun’ came from feeling like I was living the same day over and over again with no payoff.

I’m sure the pandemic had a lot to do with that, but I was miserable. Music is a waiting game sometimes.

Can you remember the first You put your heart and soul Honey Revenge song you into something and hope wrote? How has your music someone finds you relatable progressed since then? enough. It sucks. I was in I wrote ‘Miss Me’ for that a really dark place when I other project about three and wrote the song. I’m doing a lot a half years ago. It went from better now, and I’m excited being a completely different to put the song out and heal song to what it is now. Since from the time that I wrote it. then, I have developed a much clearer idea of what

“YOU PUT YOUR HEART AND SOUL INTO SOMETHING AND HOPE SOMEONE FINDS YOU RELATABLE ENOUGH”

- DEVI N PAPAD OL What else are you working on at the moment?

We have SO much music in the works. We’ve written more songs in the last couple of months than I think I’ve written at any other point in my life. It’s very exciting, but now comes the process of selecting the “best ones” which is tough.

We may also be playing some shows in some new places next year… so we are getting prepped for that too.

Are you creative in nonmusical ways too?

I’d like to think so. I’ve always said that because I don’t play any instruments, I see all of our songs in music videos and colour schemes in my head. I love to plan out all the little details around the music. I develop ideas for music videos months in advance, along with the wardrobe, makeup looks, and single artwork. Nowadays, visuals are such a vital part of a release, so why not make it fun?

What’s been the highlight

of your time as a musician so far?

The coolest part of being a musician recently has been developing friendships with artists I grew up loving. If 13-year-old Dev could see who I work with and play with now, I’m pretty sure she’d be shitting bricks. It’s mindblowing to me that people I look up to take my little band seriously and believe in us.

What’s in the top spot on your band bucket list?

This is tricky!!! I am severely under travelled, so I want to tour anywhere and everywhere. I’d love to play in Europe, and Greece because I’m half Greek. I also discovered so much music from video game soundtracks as a kid, so having our song in a cool game would be a bucket list item for sure!

Is there anything else we should know?

We are chronically online as a band, haha! Following us on your favourite platform is the way to stay up to date on the Honey Revenge buzz! ■ Upset 13

14 Upset

SNAYX Brighton-based duo Charlie Herridge and Ollie Horner - aka SNAYX, pronounced “snakes” - are pushing back, that’s for sure.

Speaking out against the misdeeds and wrongs of the world, they’re heading into 2023 all-guns-blazing.

The duo fill us in.

What first sparked your interest in music?

Ollie: I started learning guitar with my best mates around 10. We didn’t do much apart from learn things like the James Bond theme or ‘Wonderwall’. I nearly quit, but one day I heard the opening chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on the radio advertising a Nirvana compilation album.

I don’t come from a musical family and wasn’t exposed to the guitar music most of us take for granted, so hearing those power chords blew my tiny little mind, and I practised those chords until my fingers bled.

Charlie: For me, I’ve always been obsessed with music.

I wanted to learn guitar at the age of 6, and I’ve always wanted to write songs. At about 8 years old, I formed a band with schoolmates and began writing original songs for us to play. Most were simple pop or rock songs, but then at about 9, I discovered Green Day and the ‘American Idiot’ album. I became obsessed with that American pop-punk sound and began learning every Green Day song I could find the chords for.

Who was your first-ever favourite band or pop star? What did they mean

to you?

Ollie: Like Charlie, I idolised Billie Joe Armstrong and Green Day. The ‘American Idiot’ album was my introduction to more politically charged music, and he was a voice for a disenfranchised generation surrounding world events at the time. They also introduced me to skinny jeans, and for that, I’ll never forgive them.

Charlie: Yeah, one of the first really iconic bands that stood out to me growing up was the Prodigy. I remember seeing the video for ‘Firestarter’ on MTV one morning and being both excited and a bit scared.

The lyrics were volatile and unashamedly direct, while the explosive drum and bass riffs shook my young brain.

Keith Flint’s performance was iconic and the band’s sound was groundbreaking at the time. Still gutted that my mum wouldn’t let me get a matching haircut…

What were your earlier bands like?

We met in college and were in a variety of different bands before SNAYX. Most notably, we were in a bit of an indie boyband together at one point with four-part harmonies… Everyone makes mistakes. But nothing has quite excited us like this project. People really connect with it, and we love pushing to see how the sound will evolve and develop.

Words: Sam Taylor.

Photo: Leila Rummery.

“WE WERE IN A BIT OF AN INDIE BOYBAND TOGETHER AT ONE POINT… EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES”

some other up-and-coming names and didn’t really know what to expect. But we played to packed rooms on both nights, the crowds were amazing, and the staff and crew were amazing. The level of care and thought that went into the festival was mind-blowing. It was just out of a love and next level of appreciation of live music. I don’t think you’d see it in the UK. We can’t wait to go back.

What would you most like to achieve during your music career?

We’d love to release a full debut album someday, but much more importantly, the greatest achievement we could possibly imagine would be to have bootleg SNAYX merch being sold outside any venue we play.

That’s when you know you’ve made it.

brand-new tracks. They’re both politically charged and reflect the times we’re living in. They hit hard. We can’t wait to release them.

Who do you think is the most exciting band or musician around right now?

Ollie: Bad Nerves. They released one of the greatest debut albums of all time.

Something big is about to happen for them. I don’t know what or when, but it’s coming.

Charlie: For me, I definitely think Vukovi are about to explode. They’ve been around a minute, but the new album is killer, and I think the scene is now fully primed for their full takeover.

Music aside, what do you do for fun?

Charlie: Aside from music, it’s tricky because we’re What’s the best song both quite avid gig-goers. you’ve written so far?

I’m quite a big sports fan.

We have a song called I love watching rugby, F1, ‘FAYX’ which we perform football, boxing… live. It’s pure joy and total Ollie: Yeah, our fun is mostly carnage. We just love ending musically oriented. I do like our sets with it and diving to stay fit and sometimes go into the crowd to bounce running, but that’s not fun.

What’s been the highlight around.

What is fun, though, is being of your time as a musician a cat dad to a young tabby so far?

What are you working on at called Buck, affectionately We just played our first-ever the moment? known as Boopis Teenyman.

European shows at an We’ve just been in the What a guy. Me and his mum incredible festival called Left studio with Jamie Hall of are getting matching tattoos of the Dial. We clashed with Tigercub, recording some for him very soon. ■ Upset 15

2022 has been a banner year for heavy music. From continuing to blast back into the mainstream to producing some of the best genre-based work in years, over the next few pages we’ll run you through some of the very best of the last twelve months, starting with the iconic...

THE

16 Upset

B E ST O F 2022

SLIPKNOT are still one of the biggest bands on the planet. Twenty five years in, and they remain unmatched amonst their peers when it comes to their power, influence or sheer size. But beautiful? This we’ve gotta hear.

Words: Ali Shutler. Photos: Jonathan Weiner. Anthony Scanga.

Upset 17

S

lipknot are a ferocious force of nature that have spent the last 25 years challenging the culture of metal with disgustingly heavy music. Their fans are called maggots, while their music tackles the darker recesses of life. They’re a lot of things to a lot of people, but you’d be hard-pressed to call anything about them beautiful.

But that’s precisely how founding member, percussionist, and visual artist Clown says it felt when he first realised that Slipknot was bigger than the nine angry individuals making the sort of heavy metal that would perfectly soundtrack the end of the world. The band were in Indianapolis when their self-titled debut album was released in 1999 as part of the travelling Ozzfest. Before they’d taken to the stage to perform their premidday slot, Clown and drummer Joey Jordison met a couple of fans who’d already been to the local record store to buy a copy. “We just looked at each other, and we had tears in our eyes,” admits Clown. “We couldn’t believe it. I saw this kid, and suddenly I knew who we were speaking to with our art.

It was a beautiful feeling. Ever since then, it’s been us and the maggots.”

Fast forward to today, and Slipknot are comfortably one of the biggest, most influential heavy metal bands in the world. They’ve survived numetal, endured countless waves of panic about the death of guitar music and continued to push themselves to new places. “There are no rules anymore,” says Clown. Next year Slipknot return to headline Download Festival alongside Bring Me The Horizon and Metallica. Their own travelling Knotfest has dates in Chile, Brazil, Australia and Japan. Still, that relationship between the band and their fans remains the backbone of everything Slipknot is.

Speaking to Upset from his home, Clown admits that he’s been up since 4:50am adding to his various Metaverse projects. “I want to be the liaison for a younger generation. I want to introduce them to Slipknot,” he says, always eager to expand the community. Earlier this week and back in the real world, he took part in a signing for the band’s No.9 Whiskey when a little girl approached him alongside her parents. “She just wanted to draw a picture of us, so she sat there and drew me and Michael [Pfaff, aka Tortilla Man],” explains Clown with a smile. “I was pretty

18 Upset

“I WANT TO BE TH E LIAISON FOR A YOUNGE R GE N E RATION. I WANT TO I NTRODUCE TH E M TO SLI PKNOT”

- CLOWN

pissed that she kept it for herself, though.” Maggots regularly share paintings, band tattoos and song covers online, while most Slipknot shows are full of homemade t-shirts, boiler suits and masks. For a band that made their name championing destruction, Slipknot have become a force for creation.

“Slipknot invokes this kind of spirituality through the vibration of artistic expression,” explains Clown.

“People are compelled to be creative around Slipknot. It’s a big part of what we do.”

Formed in Iowa in 1995 from the ashes of various other bands, Slipknot first broke through in 2001 with their second album, ‘Iowa’, and its nihilistic, parent-provoking anthem ‘People = Shit’. Their chaotic onstage antics included huffing the fumes of dead animals while various physical injuries accompanied the drink, drugs and self-destruction. It’s all become the stuff of legend as the masked ninepiece offered pure, unfiltered rage to a post-9/11 world.

A lot has changed in the years since. Founding members Paul Gray and Joey Jordison have both passed away, while percussionist Chris Fehn left the group in 2019. Rock’s gone from being one of the most exciting forms of musical rebellion to being a genre anchored by nostalgia before a TikTok-fuelled resurgence.

Meanwhile, Slipknot’s new album ‘The End, So Far’ sees them tackle the apparent death of empathy, the negative impacts of social media, love, loss, remorse, the power of community and other people’s expectations about the band.

We’re speaking a month after Slipknot released ‘The End, So Far’, and it became their third record to top the UK Official Albums Chart after ‘Iowa’ and 2019’s ‘We Are Not Your

Kind’. “I was over it about six months ago,” admits Clown, preoccupied with what comes next. “It’s way too early to be discussing it now, though,” he says before reassuring us that our hair looks fine. It was meant to be an audio-only Zoom, but when has Clown ever played by the rules?

Back to the release of ‘The End, So Far’ and Clown explains how he “doesn’t really enjoy watching everyone scurry around” and isn’t happy that today’s interview only went ahead once management deemed “there was something they thought we needed to talk about.”

(Did we mention the band are playing Download Festival?) “You’d think that people would just call me up to talk about the dream, instead of needing to talk about something with a barcode and a price tag.” He sighs.

“I guess you can’t have one without the other.”

“I’m just glad that the bomb has dropped and everyone is chewing the fat from the bone and hissing at each other,” he continues of ‘The End, So Far. “You have the obvious ‘why can’t you make another ‘Iowa’’ response, and the less obvious ‘this is the greatest album of all time’.” Clown’s not keen on either. “You can’t pit Slipknot albums against each other,” he says before adding that people need to give acts like Black Sabbath the respect they deserve. “*One* of the greatest albums though…well, maybe,” he adds with a smirk.

Clown really starts enjoying new albums when there are enough new songs in the set. “When I can see that the maggots have digested the new material enough that it compels their soul, that’s when it’s fun for me.

Honestly, that’s why I still do what I do,” Clown continues. “To share that real experience with other people.”

Clown did enjoy recording ‘The

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“WE'RE STI LL HAVI NG FUN, BUT I'M MORE DANGE ROUS NOW I N A M E DITATIVE STATE THAN I EVE R WAS FLYI NG OFF TH E RAI LS”

- CLOW N

20 Upset

End, So Far’ at Henson Studios, though. “I was born on Jim Henson’s birthday,” he says. “He made The Muppets, and I started Slipknot, so that felt relevant.”

What was less fun, was writing the damn thing. “You’ve got nine guys with extreme personalities, and none of us are alike,” says Clown. “As you can imagine, nothing we write is the same. Everyone lives in different states. Everyone’s either getting married and having kids, or staying not married. Some people love to write every day. Some don’t. Honestly, it’s a shit show.”

Clown explains that the main reason writing Slipknot albums are a shit show is because “we’re all just so out of our minds with art. I didn’t have a lot of fun writing with the guys this time around,” he continues. The most fruitful collaborations came with newer members Alex Venturella and Pfaff. Clown doesn’t care about how long they’ve been part of Slipknot, though. “They’re in the band. They stepped up.”

Clown knows he pisses the other members of Slipknot off. “I have a lot of voices, and the only way to shut them up is by being creative, so I’m just constantly moving, often without direction or guidance. I’m diseased with art.”

“I’m not trying to start stuff,” he adds, the headlines about drama within the band already flashing through his mind. “I only bring this up because I hate it if some people aren’t happy.” He says his honesty about the process is for “the new artists who give a shit about their future. You just do your best to do your best.”

He goes on to say that everyone gave 190% and that he “loves” the new album. “I’m not releasing anything that’s no good. There are some supernova things going on in there for the spirituality of the band.”

“Most people just want to know about the masks or what touring is like, though. Blah, blah, blah.

I understand why, but there’s a deeper, serious thing going on with Slipknot and what we’ve chosen to do,” he adds. Brooding album opener ‘Adderall’ sees him play drums, letting him channel the pain of losing his 22-year-old daughter to a drug overdose back in 2019. “That was a big, spiritual thing for me.”

‘The End, So Far’ is the last album of Slipknot’s contract with Roadrunner, which they signed back in 1999. “If my parents were still alive, they’d be really happy that I’d

completed a financial contract,” says Clown. “It does feel like the end of an era because so much has changed.”

Elsewhere he’s spoken about finally being free but today, admits that they might resign with Roadrunner, Warner Bros or “whoever wants to work with Slipknot.”

“There’s no hate, and I have no vendetta against the system,” he continues. “I signed a contract for somebody to sell albums, and that’s what they’ve done.” He views the last two decades almost as a trial run, with “massive amounts of money being thrown my way to learn. It feels like the end of our PhD. Now it’s time to apply it to real life. We really get to ask ourselves what the next part of the dream is now. That is a hard question. It can’t be 1999 again. It can’t be 2001. It can’t even be last year. Now, we have to ask how we take the dream and times it by two.”

He talks about all the places that have never got to see Slipknot perform live before, mentioning the vast amount of audio and visual stuff that he’s collected over the years that have never been released before.

“I’ve probably got the first couple of hundred shows on tape. There’s so much for museums and movies,” he teases. “We’ll always do audio, but I want to be more visual as well.”

There’s also the lost project ‘Look Outside Your Window’. Originally recorded alongside 2009’s ‘All Hope Is Gone’ by Corey Taylor, Jim Root, Sid Wilson and Clown, it focused more on experimentation than gruelling aggression. There have been talks of releasing it ever since, most recently during the second half of the touring cycle for ‘We Are Not Your Kind’, but COVID scuppered that. “It’s an amazing body of work. You will never hear another Corey Taylor like this.

The music and the words… it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life,” says Clown, who wants to make sure the project gets its own time to shine rather than being a half-hearted release.

“We wouldn’t want Slipknot to hurt ‘Look Outside Your Window’, and we wouldn’t want ‘Look Outside Your Window’ to be a little irritation to Slipknot. Why? Because it’s beautiful God art and people deserve it. The good news is that six months from now, April Fool’s Day 2023, we’re off the label. There are no plans to immediately release something, and we haven’t talked about it, but I would imagine it’ll probably come very soon afterwards. There’s nothing else to Upset 21

22 Upset

Upset 23

do, and it’s ready to go. It’ll be worth the wait,” he promises.

Still, for all the excitement about the future, Clown sees ‘The End, So Far’ as a defiant middle finger. “Kiss my ass and get out of my fucking way,” he shouts. “Doom and gloom has always been a part of Slipknot; it’s like a parasite. Before I was Clown, I was always called The Dark Cloud, or The Virus, so of course I love something like ‘The End, So Far’,” which leans heavily into spiritual and actual apocalypses.

“We’re still relevant,” he beams, which is no easy feat for a band like Slipknot. “We’re still having fun, but I’m more dangerous now in a meditative state than I ever was flying off the rails,” he continues, hitting a stride. “We’re still here, after 25 years of touring the world, selling some albums, and nobody’s got shit on us.”

Growing up, Clown would listen to the music of the 70s with his mum, from The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Rod Stewart to The Doors. As an “MTV baby” though, he went on to discover Kiss, AC/DC and Iron Maiden on his own, which opened the door to the likes of Killdozer, Mudhoney and other SubPop bands. “My dad told me he didn’t understand or like the music I was listening to, but if I was going to make music myself, I needed to learn about who invented it.” The pair went to see Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, John Mellencamp, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles and BB King perform. “I’m from the elite,” explains Clown of his musical background. “Growing up, it felt like you either went to college or you started a band. I started a pretty big one,” he grins.

That background in music is why Clown believes Slipknot create what they create. “We leave no rock unturned, and we go anywhere we want because we love music, but it’s got to be under that Slipknot name. I feel like this album is special because I really do feel like we’ve done everything now. We’ve gone down every road, from a ballad to a grindcore song.

“People can talk about genre bullshit all they want, but I feel like we’ve explored all the hemispheres in our minds on this record. It wasn’t deliberate; it just worked out that way.”

Throughout their career, Slipknot have championed the next generation of metal. Support bills for headline runs and Knotfest lineups always feel fresh and exciting, while over the pandemic, the band created a 24 Upset

“WE'RE STI LL H E RE, AFTE R 25 YEARS OF TOURI NG TH E WORLD, SE LLI NG SOM E ALBUMS, AN D NOBODY'S GOT SH IT ON US”

- CLOWN

platform for new bands via The Pulse Of The Maggots livestreams.

“I think we always wanted to do better than what had come before us, if we could,” explains Clown. “It’s not about money; it’s not about ego. It’s not about anything other than being able to facilitate things. We were very fortunate early in our careers to play Reading & Leeds. Right away, I was like, ‘Holy shit, American kids are just completely missing out’.”

Clown’s very much up for a return to Reading & Leeds (the band haven’t played since 2002, after being forced to cancel their 2008 slot due to Joey breaking his ankle) or even a debut at Glastonbury. “I’ll open. I’ll go on at midnight. Bring them all on, but it’s got to be right for the kids.”

Over the past couple of years, it feels like the wider world has slowly come around to the idea of Slipknot being an important rock band, rather than a group of mask-wearing hooligans. Does Clown feel like the band are finally getting the respect they deserve?

“We just never got respect, and that was hard,” says Clown. “There were always naysayers, and I get it.

I probably should never have been allowed in this business because I’m just a fucking clown. I’m just an art guy whose best friend happened to be a metal guy, but here I am. I love to play, I love to connect to people, and there’s no competition anymore. We’re the best of the best of the best, in our own mind. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. Get the fuck out of our way, right?”

That lack of respect “used to really matter to me,” says Clown. “But it just led to jealousy and envy, which would then turn into anger. Then you’d start getting angry about other things, like money, because money is what

creates ego and respect. I refuse to chase that. I refuse to demand respect. I let go of all that,” he admits.

“Respect means someone on the other end of it, needing it. I don’t know if I need it in Slipknot.”

So what changed? “This isn’t the answer you want to hear, but I’m going to be real. We lost our daughter, and nothing else matters now, man.

Anything that was relevant, was no longer relevant. Demanding respect, needing respect, acknowledging respect, none of that shit is important.”

“My head is not in the clouds. My feet are buried in the sand. I’m just trying to live the real journey of life now,” he continues, being so open because “it’ll help the maggots with loss. It’ll help the culture to be honest about something that is very real.”

For 25 years now, Slipknot have been a vessel for pure, unfiltered emotion. They take pain, anger, and confusion and channel it towards community and creation.

“I’m trying to keep it real. I’m trying to make a real connection. I’m trying to get closer to the fans. I’m trying to give it all away.”

“We’re not scared,” explains Clown.

“We’re not frightened to express all the colours. We’ve all let it out. When you can show others that you’re willing to cut yourself open and share, they’re compelled to do the same,” he continues. “We have an extreme trust with our culture. There’s this wonderful give-and-take relationship, and it’s beautiful.” There’s that word again. “But for us, it’s just medication.

All of the albums are medication.” ■ Slipknot’s album ‘The End, So Far’ is out now. Download Festival takes place from 8th-11th June 2023.

Upset 25

TH E

B E ST O F 2 0 2 2

KI D KAPICH I BEN BEETHAM

THE BEST GIG WE PLAYED WAS...

Either Reading or Leeds Fest this year, both were insane crowds, and we got to play Smash The Gaff for the first time before it was out.

THE BEST SONG WE RELEASED WAS...

‘New England’ ft Bob Vylan. That was the first tune we released off the new album. Bob’s verse really

THE

BEST O F 2 0 2 2

ROLO TOMASSI JAMES SPENCE

THE BEST GIG I PLAYED WAS...

A headline show at The End in Nashville. This was our first time doing a headline tour in the US, and this show particularly sticks out as being a highlight.

Unbelievable crowd!

26 Upset

THE BEST SONG I RELEASED WAS...

‘Almost Always’, the first track on our new album. I think it’s the best thing we’ve written.

MY FAVOURITE NEW BAND DISCOVERY WAS...

Yawners. It’s a sort of power-pop band from Madrid. BSM released an album for them, and it’s full of absolute earworms.

THE BEST THING I LEARNT

amplified the meaning of the track; he smashed it. It was also the first track we put out that established a new sound for us production-wise.

FAVOURITE NEW BAND DISCOVERY WAS...

Saw turnstile on the John Peel at Glasto this year, and they were mental. Love their new record; it’s on regular rotation in the Kapichi pre-gig dressing room.

THE BEST THING I LEARNT WAS...

All the words to the Only Fools & Horses theme, intro and outro.

THE THING FROM 2022 THAT I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER IS...

WAS...

To trust the process.

THE THING FROM 2022 THAT I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER IS...

Gabriel Martinelli scoring against Liverpool in the first minute. What a buzz.

IF I COULD GO BACK AND DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY, IT WOULD BE...

Spending more time on the seafront in Brighton, where I live, over the summer. As I look out

Walking out onto festivals stages and seeing the chaos, moshing in the heatwave.

IF I COULD GO BACK AND DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY, IT WOULD BE...

Nothing to be honest; whatever’s got us to the place we’re at now has worked wonders - wouldn’t change a thing.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR IS...

Nova Twins, ‘Supernova’ absolutely amazing album.

FOR 2023, WE’RE HOPING...

To show the world our new album live and do as many gigs as humanly possible.

today at the sheet rain today, I know we have a long time till we get that back again!

MY ALBUM OF THE YEAR IS...

‘Once Twice Melody’ by Beach House. I know they’ve been around forever, but I only really got into them on this record. It’s fantastic.

FOR 2023, I’M HOPING...

Arsenal win the league, and we get to play more wonderful gigs.

We’ve been truly spoiled this year, thank you.

THE

BEST O F 2 0 2 2

PUP STEFAN BABCOCK

THE BEST GIG I PLAYED WAS...

Canela Party in Malaga.

THE BEST SONG I RELEASED WAS...

‘PUPTHEBAND Inc. Is Filing For Bankruptcy’.

MY FAVOURITE NEW BAND DISCOVERY WAS...

Amyl and The Sniffers (not a new band but new to me this year, I was late to the party).

THE BEST THING I LEARNT WAS...

How to shred the entire ‘Hotel California’ solo, and also I kinda can play piano now. White keys only, though.

THE THING FROM 2022 THAT I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER IS...

Watching our wonderful friend / monitor tech (who is a tiny human being) eat an entire fried chicken family combo to herself in San Diego. I still don’t understand where it went.

IF I COULD GO BACK AND DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY, IT WOULD BE...

No regrets.

MY ALBUM OF THE YEAR IS...

The Beths - ‘Expert in a Dying Field’.

FOR 2023, I’M HOPING...

PUP gets to tour with Paramore. I manifest it every morning; let’s make this happen.

Upset 27

PARK

MAGNOLIA PARK are experiencing a breakout year with their ambitious debut album, ‘Baku’s Revenge’.

Words: Jack Press. Photos: Jessica Griffith.

28 Upset

I

f you flicked through the record collections of Magnolia Park, you’d find cult hip-hop groups like Three 6 Mafia wedged between pop-punk giants A Day To Remember and Neck Deep. On their debut album, there are interludes inspired by drill pioneer Chief Keef next to tracks featuring emo icon Derek Sanders of Mayday Parade. ‘Baku’s Revenge’ is an album for the outcasts, so how do they feel about shaking awake the pop-punk guard?

“There are definitely some older rock heads and elder emos who’ve been like ‘they’re not pop punk’ and ‘they shouldn’t be here’, but we don’t let it get to us,” says vocalist Joshua Roberts

LIFE Upset 29

from his home in Orlando.

“We’re just creating our own lane, our own way, and some people may not get it yet, but for those who do, we appreciate them so much.”

They pull no punches in waging war against those who aren’t jumping on the bandwagon, of those afraid of change. Album opener ‘?’ lets its titular character Baku take centre stage, firing shots at their critics.

“I hear y’all saying Mag Park ain’t punk” and “If I hear another motherfucker saying Mag Park is a TikTok band, I’m beating their ass” prove they’re not robots; they’re humans hitting back.

“We got the idea from a Chief Keef record, and groups like Three 6 Mafia who do those types of interludes. We wanted to bring that to the pop-punk world because you don’t hear that in this genre at all; we wanted to make sure that it was a statement that people would remember, not just to say ‘oh, this is just another interlude’.”

Baku’s album-invading interludes, voiced by Jay Webster of hardcore hiphoppers UnityTX, are just part of the world-building that takes place. Having laid a trail of breadcrumbs for listeners to follow like Sherlock Holmes on a case, they’ve teased out the character’s arrival, before unleashing him upon their audience on ‘Baku’s Revenge’.

“It’s just another instalment of what Baku can do. It’s a little world we’re creating right now which is obviously going to expand in the upcoming years; it’s another instalment of Baku’s head and what goes on in there, the mischief that he can do.

We think of Baku as that one character that stirs up the trouble that needs to be stirred up.”

It’s not the first time they’ve used characters to channel their traumas 30 Upset

into, nor is it the last time they’ll all appear. “In our earliest EP we had Pumpkin Eater, and on ‘Halloween Mixtape’, we had the Reaper and Houdini and all these other characters who are gonna make the return pretty soon, but right now, it’s all eyes on Baku.”

You might think a pop-punk band throwing out concept records is a little crazy, but there’s a method to Magnolia Park’s madness. Baku, Pumpkin Eater, and the Reaper aren’t just characters to cheer on, but vehicles for Magnolia Park’s

songwriting. “I study a lot of films and a lot of TV shows, and there’s always that one character that’s so out there, and they say everything the other characters are thinking.

“But since they’re so out there, and so comical, people overlook it, but the message is there. You have to rewatch it again or relisten to it again until you’re like, ‘oh wait, they really mean this’, even though it’s in such a comedic way.”

‘Baku’s Revenge’ is an album that explores life’s highs and lows. It

“WE’RE CREATING OUR OWN LANE, OUR OWN WAY” - JO S HUA RO BERTS

doesn’t shy away from the skeletons in the closet, exploring several levels of addiction, experiences of racism and abuse, broken homes and relationships, and mental health. So, while the likes of ‘Feel Something’ and ‘I Should’ve Listened To My Friends’ are festival anthems in the making, they wear their traumas like hearts on their sleeves.

“I believe that our traumas don’t shape who we are, but they do have a big influence on who we are,” the singer confesses like a wise philosopher. “I came across this quote that’s like ‘your past traumas don’t predict your

present, while your present will predict your future’.

You have these traumas, and you shouldn’t let them control how you are.

“There’s a lot of people who’ve had a lot of traumas in their lives that let that consume them and take over, and they can’t move past it. So, when we sing ‘we’re all addicted to our traumas’, that’s just how we all are. We’re addicted to that one traumatic experience we can’t get out of our head even if it’s years or decades down the road.”

Don’t worry, readers, ‘Baku’s Revenge’ doesn’t wallow all the way through.

It’s an album about self-

care, self-development, and self-love. Ultimately, Magnolia Park are a band about growth. “We can’t let those traumas define us and can’t let that depict what our future is going to be. The best type of therapy session you can have is really just being able to write about it, sing it, put it out, and then let the world hear it and make their own interpretations of it; it’s definitely our own little therapy session for the world to listen to.”

The thing we all forget about therapy sessions is that they’re not all about the bad times. To get to the bottom of why we’ve hit rock bottom, we have to revisit the good times too.

And Magnolia Park are no strangers to sharing the highs with the lows, as they do on tracks like ‘Addison Rae’ and ‘Radio Rejects’.

“We didn’t want an album of just one type of emotion; we wanted people to really go through the rollercoaster of emotions like they would in life.

There are those times when even in a depressive state, you have that one time where it can be a moment, a whole day, even a week, where everything is fun, and you’re having a good time - that’s where ‘Addison Rae’ comes from.

We wanted to make sure that there are a lot of polar opposite songs that still fit together, as that’s how life is; there are a lot of polar opposites that you go through throughout the day, but at the end, you’re still here.”

None of this would be possible if Josh – joined by bassist Jared Kay, drummer Joe Horsham, guitarists Freddie Criales and Tristan Torres, and keyboardist Vincent Ernst – didn’t assemble a team around them that resembled the Avengers of pop-punk and altrock. Whether that’s teaming up with A Day To Remember and Neck

Deep mastermind Andrew Wade or collaborating with Mayday Parade’s Derek Sanders and countrygone-rock up-and-comer Taylor Acorn, it’s that team spirit that elevates ‘Baku’s Revenge’.

“Having a good team creates a world of difference. The fact that we’re so young, we’re still very new to this world, yet have such an amazing team on hand - it just makes everything better.

Working with Wade was a big moment, like ‘wow, we’re really in a room with someone who’s created songs I’ve covered at shows - it was a powerful moment for me.”

They’re no strangers to picking up tricks and tips from other genres, and their love of collaborations comes straight out of the hip-hop playbook. “The majority of us are big fans of hip-hop, and we know that they do not stray away from collaborating with each other. Friends in the industry just come together and make music they love.

“We looked at the pop-punk scene, and we realised that there wasn’t a lot of that going on. Yeah, there are bands who are friends with each other and who like hanging out, but you really don’t see them doing songs together and creating art. We wanted to start doing that, to bring a bit of that hip-hop element over into the pop-punk world.”

What makes Magnolia Park different from every other pop-punk band is the fact they’re not your typical band. They’ve grown up in the scene, not seeing a single band like themselves. When you’re the outsider in a community of outcasts, it grants you new perspectives on classic tropes.

“Whenever people look at us, the first thing that they say is, ‘oh yeah,

they’re not the typical pop-punk people’,” Josh sighs, reflecting on the gatekeepers who’ve tried their hardest to keep them out. “Growing up, I didn’t have people who looked like us to really look up to whenever it comes to this style of music, so now I’m being that person that kids can now look up to and go ‘oh yeah, I want to do this because I see someone who looks like me doing this’ just feels good.”

Along with the likes of Pinkshift and Meet Me @ The Altar, Magnolia Park are looking to change the tale of the tape. They’re coming for pop-punk’s white, male stereotypes, and they’re not afraid of upsetting anyone in a community they care deeply about.

“Now there are so many other bands that are like us, that are full of people of colour who want to do this style of music and get out of that shell, out of that hiding place. It’s beneficial to the community and to the scene, and we’re only going to thrive more now that this is coming to fruition.

“Each of the bands coming out right now, especially those that are POC, they’re genrebending. It’s not just straight riffs and straight drums; we’re mixing all these worlds together and creating something fresh again, and that opens the ears to many other people who wouldn’t even think to listen to this style of music.”

On ‘Baku’s Revenge’, Magnolia Park is creating a community of outcasts, empowering them to push for change in their local scenes. When the message is just as infectious as the bangers that bind them, there’s no way you can deny Magnolia Park from reaching the masses. ■ Magnolia Park’s album ‘Baku’s Revenge’ is out now.

Upset 31

THE

BEST O F 2 0 2 2

STATIC DRESS OLLI APPLEYARD

THE BEST GIG I PLAYED WAS...

Leeds Festival.

THE BEST SONG I RELEASED WAS... ‘such.a.shame’.

MY FAVOURITE NEW BAND DISCOVERY WAS… Thirdface.

THE BEST THING I LEARNT WAS… Health and well-being come before anything else. I’ve personally had one of the most challenging years of my life, both mentally and physically. But getting out the other side has definitely taught me that your work will suffer if you neglect yourself, and that will show in what you create.

32 Upset

THE THING FROM 2022 THAT I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER IS...

Our headline show at the underworld in London.

Never been as warm in my life.

IF I COULD GO BACK AND DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY, IT WOULD BE… Take more time personally, and not overwork ourselves into the ground.

MY ALBUM OF THE YEAR IS… Denzel Curry - ‘Melt my eyez see your future’.

FOR 2023, I’M HOPING… We can start branching out overseas and really start pushing to new places.

THE

BE ST O F 2 0 2 2

NOAH FI N NCE

THE BEST GIG I PLAYED WAS...

Definitely the first show at O2 Islington Academy. All my friends and family were there, and the crowd was insanely up for it.

THE BEST SONG I RELEASED WAS...

Probably ‘Worms’. It’s fun to play when we really nail it.

THE BEST THING I LEARNT WAS...

To trust the people around me when I don’t trust myself. I’ll end up catastrophising something that everybody around me said would be fine. Plenty of “I told you so”s.

THE THING FROM 2022 THAT I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER IS...

My touring experience! We got to travel and play in like 17 different MY FAVOURITE NEW BAND states in the US, and I got to play a DISCOVERY WAS...

Definitely Pinkshift! Their music is a bunch of shows in the UK in venues perfect mix of so many things I love. I grew up going to shows for.

DISCOVERY WAS...

Young Guv. I’m a big fan of classic power pop, and his albums are full of the best songs I’ve heard in a long time. I love the fact that JACK NORTON he’s come out of hardcore and THE BEST GIG I PLAYED WAS... done something super different, Our London headline show at The which feels close to his heart because the songs he writes are Garage in Highbury in London. so beautiful and fun.

It was the biggest headline show we’d ever done and was an amazing way to finish off our tour THE BEST THING I LEARNT WAS... for our latest album, ‘Pure Evil’.

That when you’re fighting We had amazing support acts in Malenia in Elden Ring, it really the form of Zetra and Inhuman helps to use weapons with high Nature, and the support from bleed damage as this is her the crowd was insane. Probably biggest weakness. It makes the best show we’ve ever played, an extremely difficult boss period. moderately less difficult. Shout out to my fellow Tarnished.

THE BEST SONG I RELEASED WAS...

THE THING FROM 2022 THAT I think it was probably ‘Glacial’, I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER IS... which was the last single from The feeling of putting an album ‘Pure Evil’. It didn’t really get out that we’d recorded ourselves the support we were hoping it during lockdown. It felt hugely would, to be honest, because, in satisfying to have a record of my mind, it’s probably the best our time and something positive song we’ve ever done, but that’s to look back on. At the end of life, I guess. The video was made the day, being able to look back by our friend Sam Bailey who’s and say you spent your time an incredible 3D artist and made doing cool stuff you’re proud of us look like PS2 characters on is really what it’s all about. That an iceberg. and money.

THE

IF I COULD GO BACK AND DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY, IT WOULD BE...

Not leave my “emo isn’t dead” water bottle on the aeroplane on the way back from WWWYF. It was beautiful.

MY ALBUM OF THE YEAR IS...

They’re both EPs, so I guess that adds up to an album, but ‘Red In Revenge’ by Sophie Powers and ‘Bimbocore’ by Scene Queen. They both go so hard.

FOR 2023, I’M HOPING...

For the dissolution of the Tory Party.

BEST OF 2022

PUPPY

MY FAVOURITE NEW BAND

IF I COULD GO BACK AND DO

SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY, IT WOULD BE...

Nothing. Everyone makes mistakes, and you have to learn from them and live with them. It’s easy to look back with hindsight and think about how you could have done differently, but it’s important not to dwell and to let that process affect how you’re going to move forward in life.

That’s how you grow.

MY ALBUM OF THE YEAR IS...

I genuinely have no idea. I don’t really make a point of keeping up with new music for the sake of it; I think the great thing about

music is that it’s timeless, and an album from 1978 can be new to you if you’ve only just discovered it. New artists are important and great, but I’d be arbitrarily scrolling through my phone to give you an answer on that one, I’m afraid.

FOR 2023, I’M HOPING...

That we’re able to get a general election called in the UK. I think people on both sides of the political spectrum know that this government is an absolute shambles right now. People deserve a chance to have their voices heard.

Upset 33

TH E PAST L L.S. DUNES may be a band of familiar faces, but don’t go calling them a ‘supergroup’ - there’s much more to them than that.

Words: Alexander Bradley. Photos: Luke Dickey, Mark Beemer, Zachary Spangler.

OF L.S. D 34 Upset

LIVES

DUN ES.

T

here are some new kids on the scene.

They’re in their 40s. They’ve been around the block a few times with Circa Survive, Thursday, Coheed & Cambria and My Chemical Romance, too. But this isn’t a supergroup. “This is a bunch of super friends,” drummer Tucker Rule offers instead.

No, this isn’t some vanity project or some one-off special. This is L.S. Dunes; they’re a new band just starting out.

If you didn’t know the names Tucker Rule (drums), Travis Steven (guitar), Tim Payne (bass), Frank Iero (guitar) or Anthony Green (vocals) already, then you’d be forgiven for mistaking this outfit for a rag-tag bunch of teens just cutting their teeth. With their blistering debut ‘Past Lives’, L.S. Dunes are confrontational, loud and urgent with the do-or-die energy of a group taking their one shot at the big time.

“There are very minimal

Upset 35

pedals,” Tucker explains.

“There is no crazy trickery.

It’s just turn on the amps, sit behind the drum kit, grab the microphone and go.”

It’s all very simple, backto-basics stuff from the band, and that approach certainly helped them capture a youthful essence to their sound. Continuing, he adds, “It’s that sense of immediacy which I think is very special about this band. A lot of the stuff 36 Upset

that is on this record is our first best guess for each instrument. Your gut instinct. I think that’s really important to capture that immediacy because that’s the immediacy you capture when you’re young, when you’re first writing music.”

The philosophy of L.S. Dunes, the urgency, the anger, the feeling they’re playing with real stakes all comes down to their inception. Let’s start at the

beginning.

Cast your mind back to the lockdowns if you haven’t completely blocked them out. Things were pretty bleak. While some of us made banana bread, Tucker Rule chose instead to buy some recording gear and check in on his friends.

“We thought our industry was dead,” he recalls. “We thought we were never going to come back, and we were going to have to do

something different. Music was over, but we decided to start a band,” he laughs, considering the absurdity of it all.

The band came together pretty quickly and was full with “no-brainers”, in Tucker’s words. Having just played with Frank Iero on his Future Violents project, Tucker knew they wrote well together, so that just made sense. Tim and Tucker have played together for

“ALL OF US NEEDED THIS. WE DIDN’T REALISE HOW MUCH WE NEEDED THIS” - T UCKER RUL E

DON’T CALL IT A SUPERGROUP FRANK: Personally, I’m not a big fan of putting labels on things, really… there’s so much nuance and uniqueness in the world, especially in art that it just feels lazy to me and ultimately always falls short on capturing the essence of what you’re trying to describe. Now I’m not dumb; I understand why people are referring to the band as such. All the members have had success in other projects over the years. But really, that’s kind of just a coincidence. We started the band by choosing people in our circle of friends that we liked hanging out with, that played instruments, and who were living relatively close by. It’s kinda how your first band in high school started. It just so happens that most of my friends are incredible, badass musicians.

ANTHONY: From my personal experience, when I hear the word “supergroup”, it doesn’t encompass the life and longevity that I think that L.S. Dunes is capable of. I could be getting ahead of myself, I usually tend to do that, but supergroups to me are maybe one or two albums or kind of a fleeting thing.

I think all of us want to see this as far as we possibly can and don’t want to limit it.

TUCKER: People need that box, and I remember when Thursday was starting out, we thought we were a post-hardcore band, but people wanted to call us emo. Then emo turned into a haircut. Then see people are walking around sad. We were never sad.

20-something years with Thursday, while Travis is “a good friend from back in the day, and I love the way he plays guitar,” he gushes.

With the core of the band in place, albeit scattered and locked down, the ideas came thick and fast, and L.S. Dunes started to become something of a lifeline during those endless days of lockdown.

“Music has always looked after me in some way, shape

or form, so it’s ironic that in a global pandemic, it was the thing that saved me again,” Tucker admits.

Their writing process lent itself to the joke that “L.S.” stands for “low stress” with no idea off the table as the Cloud and Dropbox started to swell with riffs and clips.

“It was the reason some of us would wake up in the morning. Someone would write a riff in the middle of

the night, and I would wake up, and I would get that email like ‘So-and-so sent you this in your Dropbox’, and I would get so excited,” Tucker remembers. As a new parent at the time, the drummer would strategically plan his daughter’s naps around writing his drum parts before returning to his parenting duties.

“Every single day, we would be looking forward to a new piece of music or a new riff or a new drumbeat or something. It literally became like a drug. We were all so excited to work on something and build this momentum within each other. No one knew about it.

No one. So the excitement between the five of us was like giddy little kids.”

But for guitarist Frank Iero, there were some doubts that it would all be smooth sailing. “To be honest, I was worried. You don’t know what to expect when you start a band like this.”

Frank, after all, is no stranger to working with different musicians as part of the countless number of bands he has lent his talents over the years. Stepping up with L.S., he found himself once again starting afresh.

“It’s a relationship with multiple people, and sometimes navigating Upset 37

that can be tricky. Other times it can be surprisingly easy. It depends on the people involved. I found this experience to be surprisingly easy. I mean, it’s possible that maybe means that I’m the prick and people constantly bent to meet my needs… but I hope that’s not the case,” he teases. “Then again, I think the record came out fantastic, so if that was the necessary evil as much as it would upset me for that to be true, I’d have to say, at the end of the day, it was worth it.”

So with five or six tracks almost there, Tucker sent them over to Anthony Green without context or info or who else was involved in the project.

“Anthony was always going to be the singer in this band whether he wanted to or not. We kind of designed it that way and wrote around him in mind,” Tucker reveals.

This is where Anthony Green comes in. “During the pandemic, I was losing my mind, and the only thing that was really keeping me sane was making music.

When this project came along, it was just as much of a lifesaver for me as it seems to have been for everyone else,” the singer concedes.

With a couple of blank slates to choose from, the first song Anthony sent back has become the second track on the album, ‘Antibodies’. The track is a slick and taut journey back into the chaos of the pandemic, but, for the rest of L.S. Dunes, it signified the moment they knew this could become a real band when they were free again to do so.

Up until that point, the goal had never been to make an album. The goal was to scratch an itch, keep busy and try to survive a pandemic. They kept it simple and played to their individual strengths; the album is covered in their own distinctive fingerprints 38 Upset

in that way. And, with Anthony’s vocals in place, the five of them were in danger of starting a real band.

L.S. was a saviour for those involved but none more so than Anthony, who got the call to join the band just as the world threatened to swallow him whole. “Writing lyrics like the ones for ‘Sleep Cult’ or ‘2022’ came very naturally around this group of people;

it was very easy for me to bear myself completely with them. It’s a very safe space.”

Starting at the bottom, the opener ‘2022’ finds the singer just trying to survive.

It’s a theme that repeats throughout the album and loops back in the unnerving 50s-inspired doo-wop finale ‘Sleep Cult’ where the singer soothes, “Sorry that I wish that I was dead”.

“I’ll never forget when Anthony first sent that

“IT WAS THE BEST FIRST SHOW I HAVE EVER HAD IN ANY BAND I HAVE EVER BEEN IN, BY A MILE” - F R A N K I ERO

demo over,” Frank adds, looking back at ‘2022’.

“Thematically, it was so heavy, and the music was so fragile that I really wasn’t sure what we could add that would respect the original intent and take it to another level without distraction.

It needed to be delicate yet powerful, beautiful but dirty. Tucker played this drum beat that spoke to me immediately, and somehow I just knew what to do.

“My guitar parts are one take, the first time I ever played the song all the way through, improvising and dancing around the vocal.

I had every intention of rerecording with [producer] Will Yip when the time

came, but after listening to the demo, I knew that performance with all of its beautiful flaws was the correct approach.”

It a song that has stuck with Tucker, too. “I just think you have to be really strong to talk about these things.

L.S. Dunes is such a bright spot in his life right now, and I think all of us needed this. We didn’t realise how much we needed this. Music has saved his life over and over again, and I’m just grateful to be a part of such a cathartic thing for him and for us,” he opens up.

“The subject matter is hard, and it is intense when I’m thinking about my friend.

But, at the same time, I’m

grateful I’m able to hear about it with him right next to me.”

With things starting to return to normal, the band headed to the studio to put some gloss on what tracks they had. This only lead to the creative juices following even harder. In the two days of pre-production ahead of recording, they rattled off the last-minute additions, which ended up as the album closer and the lead single ‘Permanent Rebellion’. The blistering track is another addition to Frank’s hot streak of coming in with a game-changing idea at the eleventh hour.

Instantly and unanimously, the band agreed it would be

their first foot forward when it came around to finally revealing themselves to the world.

But then Frank fell off a ladder. Typical. He broke his wrist pretty badly, and his scheduled recording for September was pushed back until the end of the year after undergoing surgery. However, by the end of 2021, ‘Past Lives’ was done, and no one even knew who L.S. Dunes were. So they waited. And waited.

They joined the Riot Fest line-up in May. Got cryptic in June with the odd silhouetted photo here and there. Imagine slowly twisting the gas tap on.

Started a five-day countdown in late August.

Lighting a long fuse. Then bam! ‘Permanent Rebellion’ exploded, and L.S. Dunes burst into life.

As the dust settled on the first track, they needed to play an actual show.

Between them, they’ve played live a million times, so no sweat, right? Casual debut on a September afternoon in Chicago? A nice little early afternoon set?

Wrong.

According to Anthony, it was “equal parts terrifying as it was freeing,” while Frank poses that the combination of only a handful of rehearsals and a setlist full of songs no one has ever heard was “a panic attack just waiting to happen.”

Tucker was equally as nervous going in. “I think we were all shitting ourselves a little because we only had two rehearsals prior to that, so we were literally going by the seat of our pants and trusting our years of experience doing this and professionalism individually to remember the songs and play as a unit,” he adds.

Unscathed and out the other side just 30 minutes later, Frank says that show might just be one of his favourites. “Honestly, it was the best first show I

have ever had in any band I have ever been in, by a mile! I didn’t feel anything other than excitement and a cathartic elation getting to finally unleash these songs on people. It was like a release valve, we had been holding on to these songs for so long, but at the same time, we had only played them together a handful of times. So it felt dangerous and freeing. I loved every second of it.”

Soon the internet filled with jerky videos and low-quality audio clips of L.S. Dunes tearing it up and coming out triumphant at Riot Fest. After that show, L.S. Dunes became the real deal.

With the odd show here, new track there and the promise of tours to come, L.S. Dunes have quickly become one of the hottest new bands around. The ‘Lost Souls’ - the L.S. diehards - have been making artwork, carving pumpkins and getting tattoos all before the album drops.

The response has been overwhelming, and Tucker is both humbled and aware of the extra level of expectation that’s come with that. “Low-stress” Dunes might just be under a little more pressure now.

Talking about kids with tattoos, he comments, “It shows a level of trust that I’m not sure we are worthy of, but, I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, I think this record will back it up.”

So, that’s the story of your new favourite posthardcore band and how they went from just trying to survive the end of the world to starting a new one for themselves. ‘Past Lives’ is their crowning glory. It celebrates each member of the band for who they are as individuals but shows that, as a collective whole, they are something truly special.

Remember the name L.S Dunes. These kids have a bright future ahead. ■ L.S. Dunes’ album ‘Past Lives’ is out now.

Upset 39

1. NOVA TWINS SUPERNOVA

A rainbow of ideas, sounds, styles and expressions, Amy and Georgia’s second album is strident.

Confident, assured and unrelenting, from the blast of ‘Cleopatra’ to the main character bang of ‘Antagonist’, it’s explosive stuff. Nova Twins stand proud amongst UK rock’s brightest talents, but don’t try to put them in any tightly defined box.

This pair are writing the rules now. Follow, or else.

STEPHEN ACKROYD

2. STATIC DRESS ROUGE CARPET DISASTER

‘Rouge Carpet Disaster’ sparks with electricity, connecting each depraved holler, searing guitar line and furiously sturdy rhythm section barely holding itself together. With unbridled stamina, it’s unrelenting in all the best ways.

Static Dress are here to stay, with the ferocity and determination that will make sure everyone will soon know their name, and this is their statement piece.

STEVEN LOFTIN

3. WITCH FEVER CONGREGATION There’s little more exciting in a band than potential, apart from perhaps potential fully realised. That’s the vibe check for Witch Fever’s debut album - a record that takes their early promise and cashes it in big time. Raw, rampant and unapologetic, it rattles and rolls plenty, but never once looks close to coming off the tracks. Witch Fever do nothing by halves, and this is a stunning start from a band still rising fast. DAN HARRISON

4. PUP THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND

‘The Unraveling Of PUPTHEBAND’ is PUP as you’ve never heard them before. It’s also PUP as they always should’ve been heard. Incorporating horn melodies, searing saxophone solos, campfire vocals, and more besides, on this is the band at their most unapologetically uninhibited. Their most ruthless and their realest offering yet, this is the PUP record the world always needed. JESSICA GOODMAN

5. YARD ACT THE OVERLOAD

Acerbic, immediate, playful and sharp, ‘The Overload’ is whip-smart but never pretentious with it. On the strength of their earliest soundings, one could be forgiven for worrying they had one trick that would run cold across a full-length, but again, that’s painfully wide of the mark in practice. A collection of vignettes - a running narrative of one-liners and challenging ideas it’s an album of depth and consideration. STEPHEN ACKROYD

ALBU MS 11. FONTAINES D.C. SKINTY FIA

Fontaines D.C. have always had an innate connection to their environment. On debut album ‘Dogrel’, that environment was Dublin, the city where the band formed. Second album ‘A Hero’s Death’ was born out of transience.

With their third record, Fontaines D.C. have created a heartfelt ode to home – both the one that shaped them and the one they shape for themselves. JESSICA GOODMAN

40 Upset

12. CAMP COPE RUNNING WITH THE HURRICANE An honest, self-reflective record, with ‘Running...’

Camp Cope have never felt quite as at home time to sit and think as the world around them stopped providing room for a refocused outlook.

Secure in where they stand, it’s heart and soul that shine through - the sound of Camp Cope comfortable in their own sonic skin, pushing outwards while looking inwards. They’ve never been better. DAN HARRISON

13. PARKWAY DRIVE DARKER STILL

‘Darker Still’ is a masterclass in modern metal. Cohesive and cinematic, each song paints a violently vivid scene, with the album playing out like the soundtrack to an anti-hero’s final battle.

Gorgeously gothic, multi-layered with a string quartet, and some absolutely magical guitar work, Parkway Drive once again prove that they do nothing by halves.

Massively impressive.

KELSEY MCCLURE

14. PIANOS BECOME THE TEETH

15. ROLO TOMASSI

‘Drift’ is the culmination of a voyage of discovery.

But, while the story of Pianos Become The Teeth could be seen as an odyssey, ‘Drift’ is also a journey designed to be enjoyed from beginning to end. It’s a monumental, monolithic slab of bruising and taut post-hardcore that needs to be appreciated in the round rather than as chunked-up soundbites.

Their finest album to date. ROB MAIR

Tasked with following up the monolithic sound of their last full-length, Rolo Tomassi have raised the bar yet again on ‘Where Myth Becomes Memory’.

The paths chartered in ‘Grievances’ and then in ‘Time Will Die…’ converge and their bruising hardcore stylings are pitted against delicately conjured, sprawling, soundscapes and they find a way to work together. It’s a stunning record. ALEX BRADLEY

DRIFT

WHERE MYTH BECOMES MEMORY

6. THE WONDER YEARS

7. THE LINDA LINDAS

While the sense of growing up to the point of parenthood could potentially change the trajectory of The Wonder Years, ‘The Hum Goes On Forever’ is still chockfull of brash melodies powering through the internal inner-angst.

It sees the six-piece hone in on the most integral aspect of being a band: understanding their people. STEVEN LOFTIN

Mixing righteous garage punk with a wholesome optimism, lead single ‘Growing Up’ lays down a manifesto - one that proves that, while The Linda Lindas’ youth may be notable, it doesn’t require any caveats or asterisk. They prove that beyond everything else, they provide hope for a scene that can sometimes feel like it has lost its way. The kids aren’t just alright - they’re brilliant. STEPHEN ACKROYD

THE HUM GOES ON FOREVER

GROWING UP

8. ALEXISONFIRE OTHERNESS

Thirteen years is a hell of a time to wait for a new album, especially when dealing with a band as important to so many as Alexisonfire.

Reformations, returning live shows and spluttering sparks of new material have all burned a path to ‘Otherness’ - an album that shows that, though they’ve spent time away, they’ve also grown.

One of post-hardcore’s most influential acts, Alexisonfire sound fresher than ever. DAN HARRISON

9. BOB VYLAN BOB VYLAN PRESENTS THE PRICE OF LIFE

Fiercely (and rightfully) proud of their independent status, Bob Vylan are the perfect example of how you can still achieve success without sacrificing or compromising what makes you special in the first place. Debut ‘We Live Here’ was a thrilling collision of grime and punk; here, they’ve taken that template, tweaked it and perfected it. Exceptional. JAMIE MACMILLAN

10. STAND

ATLANTIC

FEAR

‘F.E.A.R.’ is the sound of a band grabbing hold of their own narrative and using it to channel a world of frustration, anxiety and confidence in their own vision.

Described by vocalist Bonnie Fraser as “an anticoncept album”, it’s about throwing yourself into the void and seeing what bleeds out. In refusing to sugar coat the messy stuff, Stand Atlantic cut through. Embrace the chaos. STEPHEN ACKROYD

S YEAR OF TH E

16. BOSTON MANOR

17. PETROL GIRLS

18. DRUG

Boston Manor have a knack for building dark worlds for their music to live within and on ‘Datura’ they’ve created one which you can get completely lost in. Within a rain-soaked cyperpunk city with its neon accented gloom, threat around each corner and the far off churning of heavy machinery, you find Boston Manor navigating through these seven tracks. This is Boston Manor at their absolute best. ALEX BRADLEY

Petrol Girls have never backed down from the stuff they care about.

Important stuff. Stuff that needs saying. But new album ‘Baby’ is different.

With a new edge, there’s an injection of flat-out fun, albeit one with an eye fixed firmly on the prize.

From call out of call-outculture ‘Preachers’ to the pro-choice rattle and thump of ‘Baby, I Had An Abortion’, it suits them well. Essential in a way so much music really isn’t.

DAN HARRISON

By their fourth album, there’s no doubts about what we’re going to get from Drug Church - so the surprise here shouldn’t be the immediacy of a band going straight for the throat, but more just how vital and energised they sound with it. ‘Hygiene’ is a record that takes no pause nor accepts no hesitation. Drug Church are the kind of band that don’t only deliver, but deliver big. DAN HARRISON

DATURA

BABY

CHURCH

HYGIENE

19. SLIPKNOT THE END SO FAR

Perhaps the closest to a straight-up metal record Slipknot have ever dared create, ‘The End, So Far’ feels like a complete album: it’s the band reaching their apex of creativity and culminating absolution of who they once were. This is a different band with different ambitions, even when compared to 2019’s ‘We Are Not Your Kind’.

In over two-decades, Slipknot have never stopped burning down boundaries. STEVEN LOFTIN

20. DE’WAYNE MY FAVOURITE BLUE JEANS

Sharpened up and aimed straight for the stars, ‘My Favourite Blue Jeans’ is immediate, in-your-face and strapped front to back with bangers. From the addictive sugar rush of ‘Sexi Boy’, to the strut of ‘Thank You For Lying’ and smooth as silk ‘Simple’ - featuring iDKHOW no less - every one’s a winner. Two five star albums in two years? Wake up, world.

De’Wayne’s a-knockin’.

DAN HARRISON

Upset 41

SHOW ME THE BODY EVERYONE HAS THOSE FORMATIVE BANDS AND TRACKS THAT FIRST GOT THEM INTO MUSIC AND HELPED SHAPE THEIR VERY BEING. THIS MONTH, SHOW ME THE BODY TAKE US THROUGH SOME OF THE SONGS THAT MEANT THE MOST TO THEM DURING THEIR TEENAGE YEARS. at now, he’s hanging out still can’t pull off what he with his family and his does in this song. Long horses, and he wants to live Fiasco. fucking talk about it, and it makes me so happy every time he fucking talks about it.

THE SPECIALS

CAUSTIC CHRIST Can’t Relate

LIVING COLOUR

Of Invention. When I was in high school, I appreciated this music Auslander for its defiant sense of Harlan: When I first got humour and incredible into heavy music, one creativity. Most kids of my gateway bands grew up listening to was Living Colour. I used Zeppelin or Sabbath. to listen to this song I grew up listening to off the album ‘Stain’ on Frank Zappa. I’ll never repeat because it had forget the opening this incredible bass words of this song tone and amazing heavy “Susie… Susie Cream cheese…”. rhythm— it definitely inspired my playing in Show Me The Body, and I am still in disbelief that we were able to have Will Wear Me Out Calhoun (Living Colour’s Harlan: My favourite drummer) perform on band in high school our new album. was TV On The Radio.

been one of the coolest bands to do it; plus, they are from New York and rep super hard. Not only that but the Bronx. They say “puta” a lot which is so damn cool. The song ‘NY Metal’ is obviously about beef and an impending beating but begins with them shouting out all their homies and the city, and to this day, it makes me excited when I put it on. Also, mandatory shout-out to a different song off one of their EPs about what happens in the night called ‘Central Park’.

FRANK ZAPPA AND THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION

RICK JAMES

TV ON THE RADIO

The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet

Harlan: Before I got into punk-rock and hardcore, I was raised on 60s/70s desert rock, helmed by the incomparable Frank Zappa And The Mothers

42 Upset

I believe my interest in the hybridization of electronic and live music came from listening to this band’s first three records over and over.

But it’s the closing track on their first album, ‘Wear Me Out’, that has always really stuck with me and meant a lot to me.

IRATE

NY Metal

Julian: Irate has always

Pass The Joint

Julian: ‘Pass The Joint’ has always been my favourite Rick James song. Rick James has always been one of my favourite artists and was one of the realist punk rockers to ever walk the earth. He’s talking about where he grew up and how gnarly it was, and then in the next verse, he’s saying where he’s

Julian: I saw Caustic Christ, Pittsburgh hardcore punk crusties, a couple times when I was a kid, and they were so damn good. One of the best live bands I saw when I was a child.

The song can’t relate is highly relatable. I can’t relate to you, I can’t relate to them, I can’t even relate to myself. As a weird ugly and angry kid, this song really made me feel myself, and proud to be a freak.

FIASCO

Rod Ferrell

Jackie: I played the first show of my life with this band in 2005, and this was the first song I saw. A five-minute track about a kid in Kentucky who thought he was a vampire and ate a lot of acid and killed his girlfriends’ parents. I had no idea live music could be that scary or that cool. I would see them play it dozens of times over the next five years, and it always made me feel the same way. I’ve never wanted to play drums like someone more than this kid, and I

Gangsters

Jackie: In high school, me and all my friends were falling in love with Minor Threat, Bad Brains etc., but the first time I heard this, I thought it was effortlessly tough in a way that transcended all the other punk I was discovering. It was also one of the only songs my mom and I could agree on during those years. I am lucky this song didn’t turn me into a third wave ska casualty. SMTB with banjo AND trombone would be a problem.

NO AND THE SOMEBODIES Bike

Jackie: This band, along with Fiasco, cultivated a scene of New York kids that totally defined my teenage years, and this was everybody’s anthem. Hundreds of shows at Goodbye Blue Mondays, Old Knitting Factory Basement, DBA, and other great lost venues of those years. This song and those shows continue to exemplify what I love about live music.

Show Me The Body’s album ‘Trouble The Water’ is out now.

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