The band have received countless awards, including Best British Band from Kerrang! and NME, Best Live Band from NME and Q, 3 BRIT award nominations for Best British Group (including one in 2021) and a Mercury Prize nomination for Album of the Year for 2009’s ‘Only Revolutions’. Frontman Simon Neil has also received Kerrang!’s Classic Songwriter award, as well as the inaugural Fender Play Award at the 2018 Q Awards, the magazine describing him as a “frontman who possesses the perfect blend of raw emotion and rock’n’roll charisma, the sort of figurehead who inspires the next generation to pick up a guitar”.

Released in August 2020, their eighth album ‘A Celebration of Endings’ gained praise from the likes of The Independent, who branded it “an album that soothes, shakes and surprises at every turn” in their 4 star review, whilst the Sunday Times made it their album of the week, describing it as “combining feral sonic attack with an innate melodic touch and lyrics about empowerment, activism, love and connection”. The album won the award for Best Album at the Scottish Music Awards 2021.

Biffy Clyro are due to headline Glasgow Green in September this year, followed by a run of intimate shows in England in October/November labelled ‘The Fingers Crossed Tour’ and a headline set at Download Festival on Sunday 12th June 2022.

‘Blood Red Shoes’ is the band’s fourth album, but the first one they’ve self-produced, having previously worked extensively with Arctic Monkeys producer Mike Crossey (even if Ansell describes using him as a “hotline for when I messed stuff up in ProTools” during the making of this). It marks a shift not only in method, but in location, too: the album was recorded in Berlin. “We wanted to get out of England and write somewhere different,” says Ansell. “We settled on Berlin because it’s cheap, convenient and super easy to get a space to record. And loads of cool records have been made there.”

Despite their nod to the city’s musical history, Brighton/London-based Blood Red Shoes did not set out to ape Bowie’s Berlin period. Instead, they focussed on stripping away the pristine surface of 2012’s third album ‘In Time To Voices’ to return to the raw, rock ‘n’ roll grit at the centre. “Everything was so perfect on our third album, but we realised that the imperfections are what makes our band – that’s what people like about us,” says singer/guitarist Laura Mary Carter. It’s a plan that was solidified on a tour of the USA in April 2013, which interrupted the album’s writing and recording.

“That tour did something to us,” says Ansell. “In most towns outside the major cities, we were really stoked if we got 50 people out. You’re playing this close to someone, no lights or big PAs, no tricks, no big production, nothing to hide behind. It’s just the absolute bare essences of whether you can excite someone by just rocking out. Doing that night after night in the States, we realised that you have to connect to someone just by the sheer energy of what you do, not worrying about singing perfect harmonies. We got back to Berlin and thought, let’s just get drunk and rock out.”

Video footage shared by the band from the recording sessions shows them having a whale of a time: spinning round in chairs, recording drums topless and making plenty of noise. But, say the band, the video doesn’t tell the full story of their 5pm to 4am working days. “They flit between us fucking around and us being really workaholic and focused and talking about nothing but the songs. That’s not on the video because it’s not interesting to look at,” says Ansell.

The freedom of recording on their own terms caused major changes in the way they work. A handful of the songs have improvised lyrics, including ‘Speech Coma' and forthcoming single ‘An Animal’. “A lot of the lyrics this time are totally spontaneous,” says Carter. “It’s a good way of getting at what you’re thinking; you look back and realise what it was all about.” Ansell agrees: “It’s amazing what you come out with, these more subconscious things. I don’t even know what half the fucking words mean.”

Another shift in the lyrics has been a new sense of positivity. "One song in particular, ‘Everything All At Once’, comes from “the idea that you might not even wake up tomorrow, so you might as well experience everything right now.”

It’s perhaps a viewpoint they’ve arrived at with the confidence of having achieved something relatively few bands of their generation have achieved – making it to their fourth album. “I think is an element of luck involved, but mostly it’s because we work our arses off,” says Carter, who also came up with the concept for the album’s sleeve. “We never switch off. We never let anything just happen; we steer everything. A bit control freaky, really.”

Ansell has his own theory: “We’re still a gang!” he says. “I’ve watched bands that start to break up because they get bored of it or they get distracted or cos they start wanting a family. Real life stuff – gross! Bands fragment as a gang, but there’s only two of us. I can’t think of a day we haven’t spoken to each other for at least five years. We hang out even when we’re not doing the band. I consider myself to be part of a very small gang. It’s us against the world, and that’s one of the reasons we’ve lasted.”

Blood Red Shoes have also benefited, says Carter, “because we’ve never been in a scene.” But in the years since their 2008 debut, they have found kinship with other bands, from Pulled Apart By Horses to newcomers Drenge, whose singer Eoin Loveless takes the lead on ‘Wretch’, the B-side to Blood Red Shoes’ comeback single ‘An Animal’. “They’re the next generation two-piece,” says Carter. “When we first met them, Eoin told me he remembered learning our guitar parts when he was 15 and I felt really old!”

A fiercely ambitious band, Blood Red Shoes have clear aims for the album: they want it to appeal to fans old and new, and they want it to power them on another massive tour around the world. Their long-running tours have won them huge audiences from Indonesia to Russia, Australia and beyond.

The most important thing, for Carter and Ansell, is that they’ve rediscovered the passion at their core. “You know like what it felt like when you’re a kid in art class and the teacher goes out and you just throw the paint around?” asks Ansell. “That’s the feeling of freedom that I can hear in the record. It’s really sloppy, and I love that about it.”

In 2014, Courteeners stand on the brink of unveiling their fourth and - by some distance - greatest album. In the six years since they released their sharp and underrated debut St Jude – a pinpoint accurate portrayal of youth enjoying life – the band have been steadily rising. All their albums have gone Top 10 – St. Jude (no.4), Falcon (no.6), ANNA (no.6) - and the growth in their live shows has been exponential and astonishing.

Just to take one example, on the 5th and 6th July last year, the band played two nights at the Castlefield Bowl, Manchester. They sold all 16,000 tickets in a day. In fact, they sold 100, 000 tickets in 2013 alone, also selling out Manchester Arena and Brixton Academy in the process. This time round – before the album’s even been heard by anyone outside the band’s inner circle– they find themselves headlining the Radio 1/NME Stage at this year’s Reading and Leeds Festival and handpicked to support The Killers at their 40, 000 capacity Glasgow Summer Sessions show on August 19th. The momentum is with them.

And the reason? Well, that’s when we need to turn our attention to the band’s singer and sole songwriter Liam James Fray. A riot of contradictions – romantic, sensitive, brash yet self-doubting – it’s his songwriting, an acute observation of how life is mostly lived, that has fuelled the band’s longevity, striking a resounding chord with an increasing large bandwidth of people across the country.

“Right from St Jude, everything was about how I was feeling,” explains Fray. “I did feel frustrated, stuck in a rut. But, I was full of ideas, watching the world go by outside, wondering if music could take me further than work, eat, club, sleep (a bit) die etc, I did seek escape from that life and I wrote about that. It wasn’t a formula. I wasn’t hell bent on capturing the abstract at 21. I wanted to focus on what was real. My world. Other people’s worlds. It’s what I knew. It’s what I grew up on. Pulp, Stephen Fretwell - they wrote about real life with frustration, heart and with humour.”

Concrete Love continues down that path. It radiates a confidence that’s perhaps best summed-up by the album’s two greatest moments, both of which are totally different to anything the band has attempted before.

Summer comes totally from leftfield, a joyous Beach Boys-eseque slice of perfect pop driven forward by a hypnotic, leaping riff. It’s a pure pop moment and all the more thrilling for it. It’s matched for freshness and ambition by Dreamers – a five minute epic that’s the perfect encapsulation of Fray’s outlook. It’s an atmospheric call to arms shot through with acute observation on the charts and underscored with a vibrant romantic sensibility. “The charts are full of cartoons and lawyers having a gap year before choosing their employers/But what about my life/Who is singing about that?” laments Fray, before a euphoric chorus bursts through. “Dreamers and writers/Risk takers and fighters….Come on and unite us”.

This new sense of musical sure-footedness is partly attributable to Fray’s relationship with producer Joe Cross. “Musically it was very liberating because we were creating in so many different ways. He gave me new confidence with my voice, I’ve never really had that before. I wasn’t forcing it, I was singing” laughs Fray.

“It was the most free I’ve ever felt in the studio, we were experimenting all the time, different people popping in and out at all hours of the day and night. Working with members of the BBC Manchester Philharmonic Orchestra and Manchester Ladies Choir really lifted the place and pushed us on….”

“The challenge, and the fun, is myself and Joe getting some of the songs - which often start from a folky perspective, on the acoustic or the piano to a point where I can channel my inner -Nick Zinner. I want them to sound big. It’s exhilarating feeling them grow. There are elements of Motown, UNKLE, Simon and Garfunkel!”

“St. Jude was punk and brash and exciting,” clarifies Fray, “but Falcon and Anna were totally different from that. I wanted us to push ourselves. When I listen to our music, I don’t hear any of the groups that we’re often associated with.”

To that end, the writing process for Concrete Love found Fray decamped to Paris. Starting in October last year, he spent three months writing and recording in the Montmartre (for a historical precedent Echo And The Bunnymen did the same thing when they were searching for the spark and inspiration for the extreme otherness of Ocean Rain).

It was a time spent walking the city seeking out new experience and something of that city’s nocturnal allure permeates the grooves of the new record. Having said that, it should be noted that the Gallic sojourn was followed up by sessions in a wholly different romantic setting - Whitby, then finally, homeward bound, in Ancoats.

The thing easily missed about Courteeners is that they might be earthed in the experiences of growing up in and around Manchester but there’s a tension in their music that comes from a desire and a fascination with breaking out of that.

It’s at the heart of what makes them such an interesting, contradictory group. With Concrete Love, it feels like they’ve finally got the balance right. It’s their most rounded and satisfying album to date and it coincides with a moment when they’re nearing the peak of their live powers.

That’s as good as summation as any. For Courteeners, it finally feels like their time has come.

To give you an idea of Dinosaur Pile-Up’s definition of ‘hard and fast’ just glance at what they achieved on the live circuit last year alone. The States three times, Japan twice, Europe, India and their native UK. That’s a hell of an itinerary for a live show as notoriously savage as theirs.

And now it’s time to add the heavy. Wielding their third album, ELEVEN ELEVEN, Dinosaur Pile-Up are reborn – ravenous for bigger crowds, broader stages and the fresh blood of fans’ ears.

Sculpted by the expert hands of producer Tom Dalgety (Royal Blood) the crushing, jagged riffs of this third monster are the meat on the Dinosaur’s bones. If their career was a B-movie, then they just hit the scene where everyone starts running scared. Cities from here to the States are about to take a proper kicking.

Parking the monster metaphors for a moment, though – it’s striking that ELEVEN ELEVEN is the first album to be recorded by more members than just Matt. From day one the band has been Matt’s vision, leading him to fill the roles of songwriter, guitarist, singer, bassist and drummer singlehandedly. But now, in this new era of Dinosaur Pile-Up, he’s handed drum duty over to Mike (a member since 2010) and bass over to Jim (who joined in 2014), allowing Matt to focus on crafting bigger, more brutish hooks than their previous two outings.

In case you were sleeping, debut album Growing Pains (2010) rudely introduced a vivid and chaotic band, built on a turbo-charged bedrock of Foo Fighters, Weezer and Nirvana. Second outing Nature Nurture (2013) saw the band’s sound develop a near-split personality, with calmer surf-rock riffs lulling listeners into a safe place before revving their menacing motor back up and ramming audiences straight back into the pit.

Now though, with their third album heralding darker, more intense vibes – as well as invoking comparisons to Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana – there’ll be no more sleeping for you. That’s a threat and a promise. Dinosaur Pile-Up are a band – and they’re about to go harder, faster and terrifyingly heavier than ever before.

It’s there in the band’s backstory – they’re young men, barely into their twenties, but their tale together is old, stretching back into a shared childhood. And it’s there in the trio’s music – beautiful, emotional, uplifting, well-wrought songs that take their time to do their magic. Songs that know you don’t need a rush and a push and the chorus is ours. That you don’t have to try so hard to move the masses. If you mean it, they will come.

So Fatherson have been striking a resonant chord with crowds at home in Scotland these past three, four years. Two singles (‘Mine For Me’ and ‘I Like Not Knowing’) secured national support and airplay from Radio 1’s Huw Stephens, Zane Lowe and Greg James. They were from the 2014 band’s self-released debut album, ‘I Am An Island’ and there was an unexpectedly packed-out show in the 12,000-capacity King Tut’s tent at T In The Park. In November 2015 the band launched the first single ‘Always’ taken from second album ‘Open Book’ (due summer 2016), securing further support at Radio 1, Radio X (Shock of the New) and Absolute amongst others.

Further afield, the school friends from smalltown Ayrshire have played in the UK and Europe with Idlewild, Twin Atlantic , Lonely The Brave, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Enter Shikari, Frightened Rabbit. They also travelled to SXSW last year where they gained more support from fans and critics alike (Wired magazine said they were one of 10 bands about to blow up at SXSW). They also recently completed a comprehensive UK tour with Prides, their music mining an emotional and energetic hinterland somewhere in between those bands. And along the way Ross Leighton (guitars/vocals), Marc Strain (bass) and Greg Walkinshaw (drums), 23 years old to a man, have gathered fans and gathered momentum.

“The main thing you always get from people is their passionate interpretations of Ross’s lyrics,” says Strain. They get quite a close emotional attachment for completely different reasons.”

“Which is incredible,” shrugs a grateful Leighton, the band’s principal songwriter. “It’s daft that people even listen to your tunes, never mind dive so deeply into them. This guy came up to me two weeks ago and showed me all these photos of how he’d proposed to his girlfriend – and in the background were images of loads of our lyrics. There’s things like that all over YouTube,” he adds with a shake of the head that’s part gratitude, part embarrassment. “People making these emotional videos using our tunes as the soundtrack. People take something from the songs that they were never purposefully designed to have. But if they take solace in the songs, that’s great. Or even,” Leighton says with a laugh, “if they hate them, at least they’ve got a strong reaction. And that’s good enough for me.”

“Maybe that’s why things for the band have just grown and grown – albeit slowly,” chips in Walkinshaw with a smile. “People are still discovering us.”

But it is all there to discover. That emotional connection fans seem to unavoidably forge with Fatherson is partly reflected in the title of their second album. ‘Open Book’ is a soaring, heartfelt collection of songs, and the first fruits of the Scottish trio’s new deal with major label indie imprint Easy Life/Sony RED (home to Lower Than Atlantis, Arcane Roots and Black Peaks). Recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales with Bruce Rintoul (Twin Atlantic and Eliza and the Bear), it’s an album that is set fair to propel Fatherson from intense and intensive fanbase to extensive one.

Leighton, Strain and Walkinshaw have known each other since they were aged seven or eight. Moving to secondary school together, they found new toys.

“We learned how to play instruments 'cause we formed a band together, in first year at secondary school,” recalls Strain. “We were learning on the job from the start. Since then we’ve never not been doing the band. Since we were really young it was always the main priority.”

Then, relocating to Glasgow together to attend university, they stepped up a gear. The band took precedence over everything else.

“We’re really lucky that life has never got in the way,” acknowledges Leighton – although Strain’s tutors (he’s still not completed his degree) might take issue with that stance.

In 2015 the focus was on writing the songs that would comprise ‘Open Book’.

“I’ve got 600 voice memos on my phone,” says Leighton. “I sit down with a guitar for ten minutes and just vomit everything out. And then I listen to it and realise how depressing it is and try and make it a bit happier,” he grins. But that, he thinks, is how you should write songs. “For a lot of people, music is that bit of escapism and that bit of therapy. And if you don’t write what you feel, you might as well not write at all.”

Some of ‘Open Book’s opening songs are already cornerstones of Fatherson’s live set. ‘Just Past The Point Of Breaking’ is rich with what Leighton sums up as “singalong chorus, weird verses, middle-eight that’s just a bit topsy-turvey, and a big chorus at the end”. It’s followed by ‘Always’, the emphatic, turbulent, irresistible anthem that was released as a single to coincide with the band’s autumn UK tour with Prides.

“I had that drumbeat for ages,” says Walkinshaw, "and I’d banked it ’cause I really liked it. I’d tried it on a few tunes and it never worked. And it just forced its way onto this one.”

“Always is one of those songs that just happened,” says Leighton with another self-effacing shrug.

For polar opposite reasons, ‘Younger Days’ is an early stand-out, too. The empathetic ballad does what it says on the keys.

“I’d watched [Ray Charles biopic] Ray and I was inspired to write that on the piano,” says Leighton. “But in fact a lot of this record was written on the piano, then moved on to other instruments. I’ve never done that before.”

Then there’s ‘Forest’, another immediate fan favourite, its towering chorus begging to be bellowed by an impassioned, moved audience: “Can you hear me calling in the forest? Can you hear me screaming my lungs out? You know that I’m here for you…”

Rounding off ‘Open Book’ is ‘Chasing Ghosts’. It starts, appropriately, as a spectral, folk-hued tune, moves on via heartbeat drums and brothers-in-arms harmonies, and hits the emotive peak with stirring strings and Leighton’s soulfully admitting he’s “opening up here…”

“It embodies the sentiments of the whole album,” the frontman concludes. “’Open Book’ takes you on a few twists and turns, and ends up somewhere fragile and simple and plain.”

It’s the kind of honesty Fatherson’s fans have to come to expect, and to relish. It’s the emotive climax to an album that pulls the listener close and pushes the musician/listener kinship. It is, ultimately, the slow build – to something great, to something resonant, personal and powerful.

In the end, Marc Strain smartly isolates the strength within and around Fatherson: “I wouldn’t be in a band if it wasn’t this one…”

…while Greg Walkinshaw unwittingly identifies the almost telepathic connection between these lifelong friends that gives their music its emotive punch: “I don’t think I’d know how to be in a band with anyone else…”

…and Ross Leighton tries to make sense of the magic that occurs between this band, their music and their fans: “If you build a family around what you do, that seems to carry you along. I don’t want to be a rock star. I just want to sing tunes that are meaningful to us, and to people that need something meaningful. That’s all it should be.”

The band has had 24 top 10 hit singles in the last few years, but their upward trajectory doesn’t seem to waver - 2018 was yet another massive year for FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH who became the #1 most-played artist on U.S. Rock Radio in year-end radio reports. The group which Billboard described as “a revitalized band with a renewed focus,” released their seventh studio album, AND JUSTICE FOR NONE which debuted at #4 overall on the Top 200 Chart and was hailed by KERRANG! as “… an album that delivers, ticking the boxes of what a modern metal album should be." AND JUSTICE FOR NONE has generated 225 million U.S. on-demand streams, over 360,000 U.S. digital song sales and became the #1 streaming Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album of 2018. It marked the group’s fifth consecutive Top 5 album release. The album also reached the #1 position on four other charts including: Top Digital Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Hard Music Albums. With their 2018 Summer and Fall tours combined, the band donated over $250,000 to charities just in one year.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s eighth studio album is set for release in winter 2020.

It could easily be a late night cult cable series, but it’s KVELERTAK’s third full-length album, Nattesferd [Roadrunner Records]. Unpredictability threads together the record’s nine songs, and it also remains the band’s calling card. This mastery of the musically unexpected has cemented the Norwegian sextet—Erlend Hjelvik [vocals], Bjarte Lund Rolland [guitar], Vidar Landa [guitar, piano], Maciek Ofstad [guitar, vocals], Marvin Nygaard [bass], and Kjetil Gjermundrød [drums]—as one of heavy music’s most celebrated acts.

Rolling Stone pegged their last offering, Meir, at #2 on its “20 Best Metal Albums of 2013” and named Nattesferd among the “25 Most Anticipated Metal Albums of 2016.” Pitchfork, Spin, The Quietus, Decibel, BBC Music, and more have sung their praises. While opening a sold out Foo Fighters show in Norway, rock legend Dave Grohl presented the band with their first Norwegian gold plaque in recognition of 2011’s self-titled debut. Turning Metallica into vocal fans, they’ve toured with everybody from Slayer and Mastodon to Gojira and Anthrax, building a diehard fan base along the way. However, Nattesferd sees the musicians raging at full blast and progressing once again.

“We wrote more as a group,” says Bjarte. “Everyone brought something to the table and we approached it more as band than ever—both with the material and performances.”

“There was a lot more experimentation this time,” agrees Erlend. “On the last two albums, Bjarte did most of the songwriting. Now, it felt like the whole band was more involved. It was something we wanted to do. We were supposed to do that on the last record, but we didn’t have much time. This writing process was more relaxed and free. It’s organic and natural. For the first time, we really focused on achieving what we sound like on stage in the studio. So, we recorded live. We want it to be unpredictable.”

Coming off the road after a marathon of touring behind Meir in 2015, the boys hunkered down in their rehearsal spot to write. By early 2016, they entered Amper Tone Studio in Oslo with producer Nick Terry [The Libertines, Turbonegro]. The six-piece emerged with their most explosive salvos yet (all screamed in their native tongue, of course!)

“We actually recorded the base tracks with drums, bass, and three guitars all at once,” Bjarte goes on. “It felt liberating. We recorded for three weeks, and Nick mixed and mastered it at his studio.”

The first single “1985” begins with a bombastic, brash, and ballsy arena-ready riff before spinning out into Erlend’s inimitable roar and a sweeping refrain. “When I first heard the song, I got that instant eighties feeling,” the frontman explains. “It’s a dystopian lyric. I think technology was pretty perfect in 1985, so we should’ve just stayed there. That’s basically it!”

Meanwhile, “Ondskapens Galakse” simmers with an ominous intro, haunting bridge, and captivating chorus. “It’s more of an H.P. Lovecraft-ian lyric,” he goes on. “It’s about awakening the ancient ones and waiting for a galaxy of evil. I think digging into mythology, literature, and folklore makes for good lyrical material. That’s what I’m interested in when I’m trying to write lyrics. It’s probably from listening to way too much black metal and heavy metal!”

“Berserkr” sees a punk wail crash headfirst on an unshakable metallic groove with what might be the most badass lyrics ever. “It’s about how in the Viking age, they had these warriors who would just get fucked up on ‘shrooms and kill Christians,” Erlend remarks.

The title Nattesferd specifically translates to “Night Journey,” and it’s completely apropos for this nocturnal rock ‘n’ roll romp. “I thought it was pretty descriptive of all the songs together,” the singer states. “The whole record is a journey, and the lyrics are pretty dark, so it works out well. Also, it reminds me of Fly By Night—the best Rush album!”

Ultimately, Nattesferd offers an escape. “It’s a release,” Erlend leaves off. “I hope the audience feels the same way we do when we’re playing a live show. I’d like whatever shit you’re thinking about to disappear

By the very uninhibited nature of her sound, the understated approach in which Låpsley introduced her music came by way of the simplest of discoveries; a handful of people engaging so closely with it they couldn’t help but pass it on, write about it or play it. When you can’t keep a secret it inevitably works its way beyond what you believe is possible as an artist out there on your own - cue up support from the likes of BBC Radio 1’s Annie Mac, Huw Stephens and Phil & Alice, mentions in the NME and online support from Gorilla vs Bear, Disco Naivete, Pigeons & Planes and DIY among many more.

Gaining a plethora of plaudits for her minimal yet striking electronic production, and achingly beautiful vocals, the music that she has made available online gives an intimate insight into the concentrated potential of this young artist and a promising indication of great things to come.

But the level of their modesty is no match for the scale of the achievement. Purveyors of infectiously crunchy, melodic and spring-loaded hardcore, their rise to the status of UK rock’s most-likely-to has been steady and, with hindsight, inevitable. It might look like that now, but they couldn’t have planned any of this that way. The four members fell together in the late-2000s, uniting as they realised that each other were all the most impressive members of their scene. With a DIY ethic that was honourable, but also borne from necessity, everything they have done until now has been written in Mike’s kitchen. Their story has been proof that the good will usually out.

Since releasing their debut EP ‘Bretton’ in 2008, through two more self-funded albums (2010’s ‘Far Q’ and 2011’s ‘World Record’) and a Biffyesque commitment to touring, they earned a fearsome reputation on the underground circuit, fast rising to prominence, media acclaim and with an often-terrifyingly devoted fanbase. Now, having attracted the attention of Island Records, they’re all set to release their ‘Changing Tune’, the album that looks set to turn them into British rock’s next great crossover act.

As is always the case with self-motivated rock bands who do it the old-fashioned way, they let ‘the industry’ find them rather than seeking anyone out, and after a whispering campaign led them gaining a buzz, they were sought out and seduced. One night in early 2012, in London on the final day of their sold out UK tour, they signed a record deal with a major label and then went off and played the biggest headline show of their careers. Life was going well. The journey then took them and producer John Mitchell to Rockfield Studios in Wales, a place steeped in rock history. Each day they would walk out past the weathervane that inspired the “any way the wind blows” line in Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. They would sit underneath the same stars that were shining on Chris Martin when he wrote ‘Yellow’. “And there we are,” says Mike, “getting pissed and lighting our farts on the sofa. It was mental!” Clearly, you can take the boy out of Watford…

‘Changing Tune’, the album that transpired, from the frenetic buzz of lead single ‘Love Someone Else’, retains the snarl that made their name, but moves them onto a place that, while not exactly more adult (who would want that?) then certainly more sure of itself. “We released a really hardcore metal album,” says Ben, “the second was a fast aggressive punk album, the third one was kind of your skeleton of a basic rock album, a skeleton of what this is. This’s a big, muscly dude complete with skin and organs.”

And while they’ve hardly ‘gone pop’, they do acknowledge a determination to use the bigger platform now that they’ve earned it. “I think our band has a message,” says Mike, “and if you want your message to get across, why wouldn't you make your music that little bit more palatable so that it reaches a wider audience? We feel we can pull that off without losing integrity”

And that message? “We’re four normal working class guys, who had shit jobs and no decent qualifications or anything like that. We’re just normal people. Our message now is that if you want something bad enough and really work hard - it will happen. We’re proof of that” The experience is affecting them more than they might have expected. Of the significance of the title, Mike only half-jokes, “originally there were a couple of positive songs on the album lyrically, which we’d never had before. We used to be so broke, we’d had the worst luck, and everything was kind of downtrodden, bummed out and whinging. But our band became our career, how can you moan when you’re having the time of your life? We've definitely changed our tune.” Although, keen not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, he smirks, “I'll always find something to moan about”

In fact, that attitude, and the wealth of new experiences (from getting a Fender Rhodes and a theremin to “using the studio as an instrument,”) inspires the album in unexpected and colourful ways. This is the message that burns through the whole of ‘Changing Tune’. And the band are primed to expect to expect the unexpected. For a band who named themselves after a place so deep, Lower Than Atlantis are getting themselves ready for the heights.

The band’s writing duo, Gaz Roberts (vocals, guitar) and Joe Forshaw (bass) draw on a wide range of influences to create their eclectic and adventurous music. Gaz, whose often heavily politicised lyrics are inescapably prominent, chooses the band’s song topics with unusual care.

“For me a song always has to be about something tangible, has to tell a story or be an explanation of something. We always try to make each song unique and unusual. So whilst one song might be a story set in a fictitious right-wing pub, another is a lament at widespread political apathy. We have a song that is an attempted explanation of a Roland Barthes essay and another that is just a list of things a carer has to do in a day. If I can’t think of an interesting lyric for something I don’t force it so I end up with something meaningless, I just wait until I see or hear something that gives me an idea.”

At one moment Gaz will be spitting and bawling his lyrics, at another singing in a haunting falsetto with harmonic accompaniment from his band mates. His ragged guitar sound sits alongside Joe’s pounding, hooky bass, the virtuosic keys of Chris Gallagher and Joey Bennett’s steady, splashy drum beats to create an exciting, inimitable sound, both live and on record.

The band signed to legendary A&R man James Endeacott’s rejuvenated 1965 label in November 2014.

Their first release was Honeysucker in April 2015 coinciding with the General Election; it’s an attack on specific companies, specific politicians, who are named in the song and shown in the video. The release caught the attention of protest rock icon Billy Bragg, who invited them to play the Leftfield stage at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.

The bands second release, All Right, which will appear together with Honeysucker on limited 7” for release in August, is currently out digitally alongside another DIY video.

Hailing from San Antonio, Nothing More is a four-headed musical hydra that runs on frenetic passion, unswerving DIY spirit and relentless sonic experimentation. Part schizoid System Of A Down weird-isms, part Mars Volta-esque prog rock freak out, part effortless pop nous, they seamlessly barrel from churning headbang to skyscraping chorus and back again in the blink of an eye. It's a gut-punching blend made all the more powerful by a keen lyrical sophistication and philosophical undertone which both belies their years and marks them out from their contemporaries.

Forming initially as Middle school kids whose aspirations were as serious then as they are now, Nothing More's early development took place against a backdrop of suburban boredom and rabid musical obsession. Having tasted the addictive elixir of rock 'n' roll the band realized they were at a crossroads when they reached college age. “Everyone was telling us to stay in school,” admits Hawkins “but for us that would have been settling. We decided that we had to ignore everyone's advice and totally dedicate ourselves to being in this band.”

And dedicate themselves they did. From fixing up their first tour van out of a derelict, raccoon infested RV to making their own stage rigs for their impassioned live show, the quartet literally built everything they have from the ground up. Those first tours, the ones that wrought the aforementioned scars, were formative in more ways than one. As the four young men saw and experienced more of the world, their spiritual and philosophical outlook began to evolve. “That period of growth was a real struggle for us individually and collectively,” confirms Hawkins “but it made us a lot more open to other ideas and gave us a deeper faith in our own instincts. I think that reflects in our music.”

“There's an old adage which goes 'If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.' That is basically what we are about,” intones the singer. “It's not about us ramming our views on religion, or philosophy, or politics down anyone's throats - it's about providing the opportunity for people to explore things themselves and challenging their reality.”

That Nothing More have undergone a spiritual awakening of sorts ought not to distract from the fact that, in the live arena, they are absolute animals. Raw aggression crashing alongside precise riffing, thunderous bass and nigh on tribal percussion to jaw-dropping effect on a nightly basis. The dictionary definition of 'get in the van and play until you're dynamite live', they've grown through the grassroots by dripping blood sweat and tears across America, challenging the stereotypes of what you might think a band like this can incorporate into their show. Four way drum battles? Three members playing one bass guitar? These guys push the limits in more ways than one.

Nothing More are that rarest of things, a band with the heart, the soul, the brains and the guts to capture your heart and spark your mind. “We want to be a church for people who don't believe the things that churches believe,” concludes Hawkins. “We want to connect people and connect with people.” And what better way to do that than with uncompromising music built on uncompromised principles, fought for and earned the hard way. Nothing More? Accept nothing less.