Formally known as Sang Froid prior to announcing their name change just today, ‘The Still’ see’s the Bristolian art-prog quartet stepping boldly into the future whilst retaining those idiosyncratic sensibilities that made them such an alluring entity from the offset. Born forth from the fertile ley line of creativity also inhabited by contemporaries such as PEACH, Chiyoda Ku, CLT DRP, Voronoi and Sugar Horse, ‘The Still’ is a deeply possessive shawl of noise, one that circumvents genre in thanks to it’s off-kilter rhythm, jazz-orientated drive and the impassioned, enfolding vocals of Aisling Whiting. Yet, despite it’s shadowed presentation, it’s also a track of optimism and hope, one that urges oneself to take the time to breathe, mediate and search for light in increasingly dark times such as these. Frankly, it’s a testament to the unfettered sense of dichotomy inherent to Sans Froid craft and a track that pays further credence to this brilliant band’s approach to musical innovation.
Highlighting this is the accompanying music video for ‘The Still’, which you can watch exclusively below. Shot during a recent appearance at Rough Trade Bristol, the music video – filmed by Joe Singh – perfectly encapsulates the live Sans Froid experience, something that showcases itself as a truly immersive and striking demonstration of adept skill. With further appearances already booked for ArcTanGent Festival, Reverie Festival and Simple Things as well as release of their forthcoming debut LP Hello, Boil Brain pencilled in for Autumn, 2024 is solidified to be the year where Sans Froid go from regional legends to national ambassadors of the scene that birthed them. Watch the video below, find the band’s full list of upcoming dates here, and keep an eye out for further new material coming hopefully soon.
It’s been years since we’ve seen an emerging band as original and as promising as Exploring Birdsong. It’s probably been even longer since we’ve seen a band master their own truly unique sound from the offset of their career. ‘The Collapse’ pays further testament to such sentiments regarding Exploring Birdsong. Originally being written during the band’s early university days prior to being re-approached last year, the fashion in which the trio amalgamate contemporary pop, sleek prog and suave alt rock sensibilities proves this to the quintessential Exploring Birdsong experience. At least, that is until the band inevitably up their own ante in the coming months. Whilst it would be oh-so easy to compare this act to artists such as Agent Fresco, Everything Everything and previous stage-mates Sleep Token, to even make such surface level comparisons ultimately feels limiting and doesn’t do the breadth of Exploring Birdsong’s musical wingspan justice. There’s something utterly unique and breathtaking to this band’s organic approach to sleek contemporary songwriting, and here, Exploring Birdsong demonstrate both grace and technical prowess like a slow unfolding of wings. – Dan Hillier
British alt rock supergroup Every Hell have upped the ante from their debut track; their newest effort, ‘The Watcher’ is an absolutely massive, stomping anthem, which can only be described as a twisted pop epic. Mixing the crooning and oddly haunting vocals of Will Gardner with new producer Toby Stewart, you have a track that’s been three years in the making and inspired by a bad night out by the former Black Peaks frontman a few years ago. As the band gear up for their first headline show at the end of this month, it’s astonishing just how cohesive and unique they sound, mixing indie rock, doom and hints of classic rock to create a sound that at times baffles, but always excites. – Chris Earl
Lambrini Girls are one of the more distinctively British punk bands around at the moment and they’re unafraid to make a splash, whether that’s pissing off TERFS or the rest of the right-wing. Their new track, ‘God’s Country’ is a snotty, spit flecked middle finger to the nasty underbelly of Britain. Highlighting elements of the sad nature of modern culture like racist uncles, austerity and the infamous Woking branch of Pizza Express, its damning in it’s accuracy. Set to a stomping, fuzzy lo-fi back beat, lead vocalist Phoebe delivers a stirring call to arms to try and wake the masses up. One listen will have you irate, two will have you nodding your head in angered agreement and by the tenth time you’ve jammed it, you’ll be ready to take to the streets. – Chris Earl
De’Lour have released their new single ‘Crown’ which is the first glimpse of new music from the band’s upcoming EP set for a 2024 release. Embracing their influences, the band have expanded on their sound incorporating elements of nu metal and shoegaze. Not afraid to allow the song to have space, the song mainly shines the light on vocalist Aaron Roberts to wade through brilliantly emotive and layered verse structures. The chorus is brilliantly juxtaposed to the verse structure, complimented by ferocious segments of blistering metal riffs and commanding drums whilst Roberts soars vocally. The bridge section dials up the intensity and the band elevates as a unit. It’s impressive and at times, rather euphoric. Lyrically, ‘Crown’ explores the idea of a relationship that has become cumbersome and is in turn pushing you further away from yourself, but then subsequently breaking free from this and no longer allowing these constraints to hold you back. With more music on the way, this new direction for De’Lour is shaping up to be both exciting and promising. – Jac Holloway
Fully emphasising the age old mantra of good things come to those who wait, the new heater from Gaffa Tape Sandy is the sound of a band who have spent countless moons perfecting their craft. Coinciding with the announcement of their wildly anticipated full length debut Hold My Hand, God Damn it – released May 31st via Alcopop! Records – ‘Scrapbook’ is quite frankly an earworm that gets in your head with all the grace and tenderness of a facehugger. Standing as four-and-a-bit minutes of cerebral, highly carbonated alt-punk, here, Gaffa Tape Sandy sound like one of those rare yet vital acts who are essentially impossible to dislike. It’s impossible not be roused by the pin-whirling vocal melodies present, the soaring chorus melodies, or the downright filthy riff and tones present that serve as the bedrock of this track. It may feel like we’ve been waiting for their debut LP for centuries now, but it’s clear Gaffa Tape Sandy’s long awaited record is going to be well worth the wait. – Dan Hillier
Bristol’s newest post-punk obsession Knives fly out of the shadows with a barrage of saxophone infused noise. After making waves with a storming cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Babooshka’ and their 2023 EP Newshounds, the ferocious sextet are back with their new single ‘Doppelgänger’, featuring discordant shouted vocals from frontman Jay Schottlander backed by an earth-shattering dual guitar and sax wall of noise. ‘Doppelgänger’ stands out as Knives’ most full sounding track yet, making full use of each band member to create a venomous cacophony of sound. If Knives weren’t already on your radar ‘Doppelgänger’ is sure to grab your attention and leave their name seared into your brain. – Tom Bruce
The overdue return of Crossfaith is finally here. The turbo-charged Japanese metalcore champions, after recruiting new guitarist Daiki Koide (ex Her Name In Blood), are taking us back to ‘Zero’ with a ferocious injection of energy, a fresh forward surge of motivation to keep the band going after the departure of longtime member and bassist Hiroki Ikegawa. The song boasts not one but two gargantuan electronically boosted breakdowns, and encapsulates the very strongest demonstration of what the band have always done best; huge party ready rave-metal anthems. Crossfaith are well and truly back, and the future is as exciting as ever as they gear themselves up to begin touring internationally once again, we can only hope more music is coming just over the horizon as everything falls back into place for one of the most exciting and entertaining bands in heavy music. – Elliot Grimmie
As their brilliant prior work alluded to, here, Shooting Daggers showcase an organic approach to contemporary UKHC that’s comprised of modern hardcore, punk and riot grrl in order to square up against bigotry, the patriarchy and the male domination of culture. However, it’s also a record of love, one that rallies for intersectional feminism, self-love and reclamation of one’s own power. Whilst the record may exactly be what it says on the tin – an album that sees the band pursuing communal unity and raging against the evils within the world – Love & Rage is far more than just a standard hardcore record. It’s a statement of intent and a rallying call for one and all who are sick of toxic masculinity, oppression and culturally ingrained bigotry.
With the record out now via Heavy New Sounds, we got in touch with Shooting Daggers to break down Love & Rage, track by track.
Related: Shooting Daggers – Love & Rage | Album Review
‘Dare; is our opening track, we wrote it after our tour with Axe Rash in 2022, they heavily influenced us for that song. We came back to London with their raw d-beat sound in mind and a heart full of love for the people in the punk DIY community who helped us in all sorts of ways during the tour. ‘Dare’ is a song that encourages women and queer people, but everyone really, to take their chance and stop waiting for someone’s approval or to be “good enough” to start doing whatever they truly want to do. D.I.Y. or Die.
We see ‘Not My Rival’ as a straight to the point punk hardcore anthem that never gets old. The lyrics are about dismantling the male gaze, fighting against the internalised patriarchal messages that we all unconsciously absorb. It’s about breaking the cycle of female rivalry. We want to encourage lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down. In our music video we wanted to showcase that unity and that sorority the Queercore Punk scene have.
‘Smug’ is one of the songs we’re the most proud of in the album. We really pushed ourselves both in the writing process and in the recording session because we wanted to deliver a “banger”! Funny because this track almost didn’t make the cut in the album because our producer wasn’t really a fan of it. Luckily we didn’t listen to him and now it’s one of our favourites and became a single too! ‘Smug’s’ lyrics are about the hierarchy of the music scene and how important it is to go back to your roots and never forget where you came from/started. For this reason, in the video we highlighted our little community and our favourite spots in SE London.
‘Wipe Out’ is about the queer skateboarding scene in London. The song’s lyrics were born after a session with friends in Aldgate East. It was during spring and the spot was covered with cherry tree petals. It was such a dreamlike session and it made me think about how fun, powerful and epic skateboarding feels like. Even if it means eating shit and “wipe out” more than actually staying on the board haha. Skateboarding, to me, embodies a collective sense of freedom.
The Infernal Sea strike their own path through the black metal mire with a unique blend of rock ‘n’ roll headbanging and black metal ferocity. We sat down with D.L (vocals) to unpick how their unique sound came about, as well as some other choice topics. “It’s definitely an intentional thing,” D.L says when asked about how the sound was developed, “we’ve always been a rock ‘n’ roll infused black metal band, we never really wanted to be a blasting chaotic black metal band, there’s bands out there that do that awesomely, it’s just not for us.” The collective worked together to forge their style, “we have a lot of influences, we’re all into death metal, black metal, hardcore, hip-hop, folk, we listen to everything. We try to bring a little bit of everything into the music, by writing songs that we like enjoy, and take them influences in.”
The new album Hellfenlic is replete with top tapping riffs, underpinned by meaty drum beats, like the double stop section on ‘Shadow of the Beast’. A symptom of their rock ‘n’ roll background, “that riff (in ‘Shadow of the Beast’) is a pure headbanging riff, when J.E wrote that, it just had us all nodding. He writes a lot of earworms, as soon as we heard that riff we were just like yes, that has to go in, that’s the basis of the song it has to go in there. That’s what we’re all about, it’s the headbanging riffs, because it’s rock ‘n’ roll and rock ‘n’ roll is fucking cool.”
This attitude of creating music for themselves first and foremost carries over into the recording process, where J.B (drums) takes on a lot of the work, “our drummer J.B, he ran a studio called the Noise Cabin, so we’ve been quite lucky with that really. Pretty much everything we’ve done so far, aside from the first album. J.B is really good at engineering; he’s recorded pretty much everything else.” This DIY attitude was put to the test during the pandemic, and has carried on beyond, rather than meeting up and jamming out songs the band prefers to start off, “separate and then we come together once the songs are formed to see how they feel in a live situation. Our guitarist J.E is really good at demoing and sorting out songs, and there’s a fair amount of contribution from C.R now too. They both contributed together a lot more on Hellfenlic, a lot of the songs on that record are actually 4 years old, we wrote them during the pandemic, it was the perfect time to just sit down and write really.”
Sometimes it’s a slog to hash the music out, these things take time, D.L knows this all too well, “you’ve got to be in the mood for it, you’ve got to be in the zone. If you’re having a period where you’re down and depressed, it can be quite crucial to write in as you’re in a different zone. Whereas if you write when you’re in a happier state the music takes on that uplifting feeling too. So, it is quite pivotal when you write stuff that if you’re not feeling it, you can’t force riffs or lyrics out because it’s just not going to work, then it can become frustrating.” At times songs can take months to come together, but like the preverbal flood gates, “one day it connects, then I can write all 8 songs there and then and be like cool I’ve got this now.”
Even after all these years, Comeback Kid are still kicking up more fuss than most the bands that they’ve influenced. ‘Disruption’, their new single, pays testament to such a sentiment. Taken from their upcoming EP Trouble – released March 15th via Sharptone – ‘Disruption’ is one of those versatile hardcore tracks perfect for either shouting along, two-stepping or even pulling off the most silly of struts. It’s the unfettered Comeback Kid experience, an energizing call to arms that can only come from a legendary band now over two decades in the game. “‘Disruption’ serves as our call to arms type song”, states Andrew Neufeld. It’s about just getting through the next day, or the next step because it could all come crashing down at any given moment.” – Dan Hillier
Brighton’s best El Moono are making some big moves in anticipation of their long-awaited album The Waking Sun, out this May, with the first two singles ‘Chains’ and ‘The First Man On Mars’ blowing fans out of the water with a new, noisier yet more refined sound. Latest single ‘The Charm’ steers the band in a different direction, building up tension slowly with reverb drenched ambience and vocals that show off a new side to frontman Zak Jackson’s voice, leaning closer to crooning cleans than his usual unhinged screams. ‘The Charm’ sees El Moono try a totally new direction for their sound, one that sounds both fresh and effortlessly natural. – Tom Bruce
As one can expect, the latest track from the artful Japanese noise-rockers Bo Ningen is a rugged cliff face of a soundscape. The first track to be taken from their alternative soundtrack for the 1973 classic film The Holy Mountain, ‘The Climbing’ is a bizarre, noise-drenched cut of instrumental psych-rock that perfectly mirrors the inherent artistry of the surrealist film in question. In true Bo Ningen fashion, it’s uncompromisingly unique, yet still irresistibly intriguing. “We wanted to make something more than ‘a band jamming to the film’ live score”, state the band on the soundtrack as a whole. “To do so, we tried to decipher the secret of Jodorowsky’s (director) alchemy to reach our own Holy Mountain, reflecting the underlying structure of the film—which is delusional at sight, yet mystically logical throughout—in each stage of the music.” – Dan Hillier
Returning last year with their first recorded output in three years, Gouge Away are back with their introspective new single ‘Dallas’, a song formed from multiple iterations and various attempts at crafting it. Written at a time where vocalist Christina Michelle was at rock bottom and acting recklessly in order to gain support, the realisation hit that changes were needed in order to stop hurting the ones she held closest. The song began coming together at soundcheck in Dallas and as such this was the name used during the writing process. With Gouge Away being the nostalgic and reflective band they are, they kept the name. Laced with vivid songwriting, subtle melodies and boasting a switch up whereby the song takes new form and feels more like an outward portrayal of emotion that matches the tonal shift. At 6:00 minutes long, it really is an emotive journey. – Jac Holloway
Originally forming in 2019, Seek Harbour swiftly become a dotted band within both their native Kent scene and the wider national pasture in thanks to their earnest and impassioned approach to post-hardcore that harkened titans such as Casey, Being As An Ocean, Dream State and others of their ilk. However, what separated from their fellow counterparts both home and away was their inherent sense of dichotomy that permeated their material. Whilst post-hardcore has long been a genre reversed and revered for it’s sense of melodic intimacy and abrasion, this young act seemed to grasp this dynamism from the very onset of their career in thanks to fluidly organic dual vocalist dynamic.
Across the band’s first smattering of standalone singles, they demonstrated a unison of both anger and depression, optimism and despondency and longing and isolation with nothing but finesse. Their 2022 debut EP Far From Home was a testament to such an ability, and it appeared that nothing that jeopardise their momentum and trajectory. Then 2023 happened and the band almost broke up.
Whilst the minute details regarding the catalyst of the situation are unimportant, the end result was clear; the band had lost their prolific sense of vocal dynamism. The consecutive follow-up to Far From Home – which was already written at the time of the lineup shuffle – was suddenly left to sit unheard in a hard drive. Such a blow could and would spell the demise for most emerging acts of Seek Harbour’s stature. Thankfully, the band re-found not just their footing, but their sense of vocal dynamism with new co-vocalist Aimee Allin, a voice who refracted perfectly with original vocalist Edwin Hall.
This was a fact perfectly demonstrated in late 2023 with the release of their de-facto comeback track ‘Skin Vs. Chrome’, a track that not only stood as the proof of their established consecutive momentum, but as documentation of the dichotomy that lies at the crux of their output. With Allin’s vocals elegantly complimenting and contrasting against Edwin’s – and vice-versa – the single explored the nature the juxtaposition and contrast, and how such discrepancies in life are constitutional to our own personal tales of growth. ‘Emotion Vs. Motion’, the band’s new single, only highlights this to glaring degrees.
With ‘Emotion Vs. Motion’ out now, we got in touch with Edwin Hall to chat about the band, their new lineip and what is set to their biggest year to date.
