Amidst some other incredible acts on offer at Green Man Festival, Charlotte Foulkes-Hannam sat down with deathcrash, a four-piece band that took on the Far Out tent on the festival's penultimate day.
deathcrash, a very bleak name for the cheerful and chatty bunch I sat down with at Green Man festival. This London based slowcore quartet joined me on the hay bales in the press area to discuss all manner of things, but mainly their latest album Less, released this March. Having dominated quite a niche scene in the UK, their album received much critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, Loud and Quiet, Line of Best Fit, SoYoung – and having loved the release myself, I was very eager to see them live.
In soaking wet shoes from the rain the night before, myself and a large crowd of dedicated fans trudged through the thick mud at dawn (12pm) to hear their devastatingly tender sound open the Far Out tent, with the first sunlight of the weekend peeking through. They played a mix between this album and their previous, Return. The crowd remained captivated for the whole set, as was I, drawn in by the dramatic ebbs and flows of melancholy and anger, combined with mesmerising synchronicity.
'Were you happy with the turnout?' I asked.
‘I was very impressed people actually came!’ – Tiernan (Vocals & Guitar) remarked, with the others murmuring in agreement, ‘they really put in a shift, no one was leaving.’
‘And it’s really hard to bring that energy at midday,’ said Matt – their guitarist.
Patrick, the bassist who brings deathcrash their signature heavy sound added: ‘I enjoyed it, it was one of those shows where you have to work for it a bit.’
‘...but it payed off in the second half,’ Matt affirms.
It’s never an easy job, being the opener of a stage, especially one that hosted Slowdive the night before, but despite any odds they brought a great crowd, and really owned the space by the end of the set.
We spoke about their summer; they haven’t done any other festivals, but are saving their energy for a very busy September. They are going on a UK/EU tour, with UK headline dates in London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and more (find info & tickets via their Instagram @deathcrashdeathcrash.) They are also supporting a band called Codeine, one of their influences, in France and Belgium. I will certainly be trying to catch them on this tour, recommend you to as well!
Have you toured abroad before, what’s the reception been like?
Matt replied, ‘we’ve done The Netherlands and Belgium – they love us in Belgium.’
‘They're still making their minds up in the Netherlands,’ says Tiernan.
They’re heading back to Rotterdam in September, hopefully they will win them over finally! They will also be playing Hamburg.
This tour will be their longest yet - ‘how do you find tours, going abroad with all your gear?’
‘A f***ing nightmare,’ says Patrick, but ‘also kinda lit’. Matt butts in with a slightly more cheerful tone; ‘You feel like sh*t, because you eat so much motorway food, but then you just have a few beers every night.’ They’ve slung the burden of driving onto their manager, Joe Taylor, at least.
Who gets Aux?
'Patrick. Well it’s more a question of who commandeers the aux,' said Matt, jokingly. ‘It’s mainly just trap.’
deathcrash are quite the dynamic band, and if you’ve seen them live you will have experienced the sharp moments of transition between slow melting sounds into a loud, heavy breakdown.
‘Whats your experience with soundtechs? Are you a nightmare for them?’
'We’ve got our own soundtech traveling with us, it makes such a difference,' said Patrick.
‘It’s hard to get it right live,’ said Tiernan, but they seem to have learnt with experience.
‘We’ve gotten much more used to knowing exactly what to do in that half hour soundcheck,’ concurred Patrick. Matt said that previously travelling round, they had to give a three minute pep talk to every soundtech, saying ‘it's gonna be loud, just let it be loud. It's gonna be quiet, just let it be quiet.’
They left some useful advice for any bandmembers alike reading this; 'it’s important to get a sound engineer to trust you, if you say nothing to them, which you typically do earlier on, you won’t get what you want from them.’ And it was important for them learning to say their pedals are meant to be louder, and really figuring out and vocalising what you want in your wedge. They don’t have much complicated gear; ‘we’re quite anti-electronic’ said Tiernan, 'and the festival thing is nice; you get short soundchecks so try not to make things perfect, they’re not going to be.’
That’s enough technical talk for now, I wanted to hear their experience of recording Less, a 2-week stay on a remote island off the Hebrides. A place with under 200 inhabitants, none of which they met, in a place that felt like ‘you’re in the end of the world’ – taking two days to even get there (another burden of driving I assume Joe had to take on.) The album itself is a more stripped-back approach compared to their previous, and this was reflected in their recording experience. The album was built off constraints; ‘we gave ourselves too short of a time to make it’ – said Matt. We set them up to prevent ourselves from overthinking as much. Patrick adds that they also set technical constraints, ‘the guitarists had no pedals, only amp distortion, and all the reverb in the album was made from the live room’. The minimalism is reflected in the piece, but by no means detracts from the intricate quality of the work.
Did you live and breathe recording?
‘It was so intense’ said Tiernan, 'you live in bedrooms right off the studio, recording all day everyday.' ‘It spilled over late every night, we weren’t relaxing enough’ – Patrick admits. The environment naturally would cause you to create something melancholic, however the album wasn’t originally intended to be so sombre. ‘In our heads, we'd really been making, like, more of a poppy album now’, Tiernan explains, laughing at the irony. ‘And then we put the record on, it was just instrumental at that point, and we were like, fuck me, this is brutally sad,’ laughs Matt. But it felt amazing to listen to it through. They said they wanted it to just capture them in that moment, so that they can move on, and have ‘free range to do whatever we want next.’
Did you have conflicting ideas, how did you know when to leave a song?
Tiernan reminisces – ‘there's a couple songs where we had to move on and accept that like maybe we haven't got it to its best place, there was an evening of convincing Noah (their drummer) that we'd got it to its best place. Everyone accepted that we couldn't do any better. And the next morning Rick, our producer, comes over and he's like, you guys gotta do it all again.’
‘Overall we didn’t have too many conflicting views,’ said Matt. ‘We all knew where we wanted it to go, and we were more aligned on this album than Return.’
Do you keep the songs the same live, or enjoy playing around with them?
Matt replied, ‘we keep the songs on Less more consistent to the recordings. They really encapsulated what we sounded like at that time, so we don’t change them much, it makes sense to play them how they are’. Patrick explains the difficult choices of what to play live, ‘some are more difficult to play live, and you have to ask whether they can even be played live.’
Tiernan sympathised, ‘we have to understand maybe some songs we love aren’t right live, we’re having these conversations in the moment and we don’t have the answers.’
"One thing you get from all being in the band for many years is a shared language"
Do you all have similar influences?
A bit of both, they have bands that they unite on, which is mainly just the slowcore stuff. They formed in 2018, and Matt explains that ‘one thing you get from all being in the band for many years is a shared language. What we're really good at is knowing what each other means, we don’t talk technically, saying this one needs to be Adagio or whatever, and we’re good at understanding when something’s not been clear, and phrasing it in such a way that everyone can get on board.’ Tiernan noted that they don’t have classical backgrounds; ‘we’ve been teaching ourselves, really. Which definitely brings up its own problems sometimes, but I think we're pretty good’. I agreed that it helps you to develop your own style more, to learn the ropes yourself.
We then spoke about the realities of a slowcore band coming up in the London scene, which was not a rich tapestry of slowcore at the time. Matt said they were the only slowcore band they knew of at the time. Although we discussed the case of being ‘lumped in’ with other genres, including post-punk, which they all agree is ‘really clinging on’ at the moment. They did a few Windmill bills, and that scene was fun when they were younger but in their words, ‘it’s not deathcrash.’ They found their way during Covid by focusing on developing their style, getting more slow as time went on, and recording a lot, which helped them grow the most. Then came a lockdown tour, at seated venues, with people being served dinner while they were playing. Not really the ideal setting for a slowcore gig. ‘People ordering hot dogs and redstripe during the gig was really burnt into my memory’, remarked Tiernan.
I sort of rounded up the interview by asking them for any slowcore band recommendations, as they would be the best people to ask. Matt came in full force with some indie-adjacent slowcore bands – Teeth, Babehoven, Knifeplay, but that most of the slowcore comes from America. Sprain was another mentioned, and Robbie and Mona, and C-Turtle, whom they said were ‘proper duster vibes’.
‘There’s not many slowcore bands around, and to be fair, there’s probably reason for that,’ Tiernan expressed. ‘We’re not commercially successful!’ Matt said. ‘But it's hard to know also where we stand, you know. Like, are we a big UK slowcore band or a small one? Is the scene big or are we small? I don't know.’ While there are no firm plans, they spoke about how it would be cool to go over to the States, especially given the scene over there, one with much more history around it. Its just an issue of finances.
"But it's hard to know also where we stand, you know. Like, are we a big UK slowcore band or a small one? Is the scene big or are we small? I don't know."
'Are you full time deathcrash?' I asked. 'Or jobs on the side?'
‘Jobs on the front!’ They all exclaimed. Tours are covered, but they’re yet to be in the profits, however they’re hopeful things might change by next year.
And one last bit of scoop is that they’re heading to a far and distant land, Japan, for a three-show tour! They’ve never been and are very much looking forward to it, especially the food– and their biggest twitter following is in Japan, so hopefully there will be some big crowds there!
Thanks to deathcrash for their time, and if you haven’t yet, check out their album Less on all streaming services, and get a ticket to their September tour!
Charlotte Foulkes-Hannam
You can read Charlotte's full review of Green Man Festival here
Edited by Tabitha Smith
Video: deathcrash on YouTube
First Image courtesy of Green Man Festival via Facebook
Other Featured Images courtesy of deathcrash via Facebook
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