Kettering, UK’s LET IT DIE have recently put out an amazing metallic hardcore / blackened doom split with Falmouth, Cornwall’s MONOLITHIAN. Titled “Because The World Is Perfidious, I Am Going Into Mourning”, the outing was released by Skin & Bones Records and Moshtache Records and became a perfect chance to sit down with LET IT DIE and discuss the split, their previous releases, grimy towns and scary routes of England and a lot more :)
Are you in dire need of some fine class diverse metal trip? Dive into this!
Hey, man! What’s up? For all of the kids not familiar with your name, shoot us a little introduction for LET IT DIE, where you’re from, how you got started, etc.
Yo!
My name is Red and I do vocals in LET IT DIE, we then have Ben on guitar and Alex on drums. We’re from typical small town called Kettering in Northamptonshire in the UK and we’ve been together for just over three years.
We started as a band due to the demise of two other bands (Ben and Alex were in JEALOUS and I was in YOU SUCK) that just happened to split up within a couple of months of each other. We’d been friends for a couple of years beforehand anyway (Alex recorded the YOU SUCK cassette release in fact) and when JEALOUS called it a day they discussed almost straight away about carrying on with a new project. They knew I had free time on my hands and with doubts that their bassist wanted to join said new project they originally thought about asking me to play bass (my main instrument). Turns out that he was interested in joining so they approached me about doing vocals instead. I was super stoked that not only was I getting to do a new band so soon after the demise of YOU SUCK but that I was being asked by friends from a band I really enjoyed anyway! The bassist we had quit LET IT DIE a couple of years ago so we replaced him with another amp and have been a three piece ever since. I know it’s not the most exciting formation story but whatever!
Haha! It’s not that bad, Red! Comparing to yopur previous engagements, what does this new project explore?
I think LET IT DIE is definitely the sum of its parts plus an ever growing/changing collaboration effort between the three of us. JEALOUS were a Hardcore band in the vein of RISE AND FALL and CURSED and YOU SUCK was a Powerviolence duo and I think LET IT DIE encompasses aspects from both whilst exploring new ways to represent our ideas and push our writing skills.
Ben is the main songwriter and usually brings a few loosely collated riffs to us and we hammer it out from there. Al is super on point with his drumming so things always come together quickly that way. As for myself I really love Black Metal and Powerviolence so I try and influence the songs in those directions (MORE BLASTBEATS!). With regards to my vocals I’ve really been pushing myself recently and the two tracks from our new split with MONOLITHIAN include the most dynamic range I’ve ever achieved of any band I’ve been involved with, very happy to say the least.
At a base level though it all just comes down to wanting to write heavy-ass riffs that we feel are worthy of a headbang. If we can do that whilst writing songs that flow well AND feel crushing then we’ve set out to do what we intended.
Hey, man! Are these three outings on your Bandcamp (one demo, one 7’’ and one split with MONOLITHIAN) the only two LET IT DIE records available so far?
Yeah, they’re the only ones currently available but we’re constantly working on new material and have three songs roughl 75% done at the moment. We do have spates of focusing on new material more intensely but the writing of new stuff is pretty much constant and riffs and structures appear all the time!
What’s the story of you and MONOLITHIAN teaming up for this joint? Are they good friends of yours?
We’ve known MONOLITHIAN for a while now and they’re so damn good. After we released our self-titled 7″ we knew we wanted to get a split out fairly quickly as there had been a LONG time between our demo and the 7″ so we set about thinking of bands we’d like to ask to be part of the split. It just so happened that around the same time MONOLITHIAN were due to do a split with another band full of our good friends who decided to split up which left MONOLITHIAN with their track recorded but nothing to use it for. After a quick back and forth we agreed to join forces and voila!
Cool. Regarding the other upcoming collaborations, can you reveal something more?
Technically we can’t reveal anything at the moment unfortunately but I am currently sorting out details for both releases so information may become evident soon. What I can say is that the first will be a split with an incredible American band who make the most intense music I’ve heard for a long time and the second release will be a multi-band project for sometime next year with loads of our friends!
Sounds nice :) Back to the MONOLITHIAN split then… You’ll be releasing it via Skin & Bones Records and Moshtache Records, right? Are you close with the guys runnin’ both labels? How did you end up on their „roster”?
Absolutely yes. Both Ed at Moshtache and Stephan at Skin & Bones are very good friends of the band and myself personally. We have known Ed for over two years now. He came to see us when we played Truro in Cornwall on our first ever tour with WITCH CULT which coincided with him starting the label (I think it was only a matter of weeks old when we first met) and we’ve been firm friends ever since. I believe our demo was one of the first pieces he bought for his distro actually. He helped put out our self-titled 7″ too and I cannot speak of him highly enough. He is dedicated, knowledgeable and not afraid to embrace a wide variety of music via his roster.
Stephan is one my best friends and only lives twenty minutes from me. He stepped in to help release this split when the label who were going to release the original split with MONOLITHIAN and the other band backed out. Nicest dude ever and hopefully the split will raise his profile a little because Skin & Bones has some great stuff coming up that deserves people’s attention.
And what about Dead Chemists, who supported your 2012 7’’? Are you still lookin’ for releasing more tunes together?
Ed and Mitch who run Dead Chemists are our homies for life so I’m sure we’ll work together again. They’ve been busy releasing some great stuff this year!
Was Southern Lord Records really interested in putting out your next release? Or was it just a smart promo move and a nice press release joke? ;)
The Southern Lord thing was completely true. It’s a long story but to cut it short we were approached by Southern Lord not long after our demo came out about putting something out through them and we of course accepted, it was a no brainer. After a few months of working out details of what we were going to release and when, we spent a weekend recording five new songs. The very next day we received an email from Greg saying that he unfortunately couldn’t afford to put the money into our release any more and that was that. Major bummer but that’s the way it goes. We re-recorded those five songs and they became part of the self-titled 7″ anyway.
I bet you’ll be acquired by another dope label very soon :)
Alright, you’ve just come back from your nice weekender. Shoot me an exclusive tour report summing up those three shows ;)
Ha! It was a strange weekend for sure. But yeah, we did three dates this weekend and it was a lot of fun amongst other things.
On Friday we played in Southampton in support of HARM’S WAY, TWITCHING TONGUES and I EXIST who are on tour. We were all pretty pumped to be playing HARM’S WAY but knew going into it that it would be a strange show. We don’t exactly sound too similar to HARM’S WAY and we knew full well that most of the kids who had turned up wouldn’t really understand/enjoy our music because we don’t have beatdowns and we’re a lot faster than any of the other bands on the bill. Turns out we were right because the audience just looked confused for the most part and only a handful of people seemed to particularly enjoy it. It’s no biggie but sometimes you wish people would flex their head a little more. HARM’S WAY played very well but there were a bunch of kids being deliberately violent and it was kind of boring to have to spend half the time protecting yourself from spin kicks and elbows despite being at the back of the room when you could being spending one hundred percent of the time y’know, watching the band.
On Saturday we played a half-day event in Manchester called Fuck Fest that is an annual showcase for the roster of Church Of Fuck. We played last year which was a blast and this year was no different. With so many good bands playing and so many friends present it was hard not to have a good time. We always love playing with our BFFs RAZOREATER and this time was no different but I think the set of the day came from a fairly new band on the block called OLD SKIN who you should definitely check out! We played quite well and rocked out by all accounts. Credit goes to Laurence who was running the whole thing after only recently taking over the running of Church Of Fuck who are a label you should definitey support and invest in as they put out super gnarly jams and do a lot for the local scene. The night ended with ESOTERIC YOUTH headlining and having a bit of a stand-off confrontation with the jerk of a sound guy because they were running over time a little. Everyone loves a little drama!
Then finally on the Sunday we play in Rhyl, North Wales. Rhyl is grim. Rhyl is REALLY grim. So many sketchy people and a general air of tension all around that town. I even witnessed a fight break out between two girls literally three feet in front of me whilst I was chilling outside making a phonecall. Bear in mind this fight happened directly outside the police station, that is a good indicator of Rhyl’s general ambience. The show itself started pretty late due to the promoter having family problems and stuff but it turned out okay in the end. After the local band played second on the bill most of the punters left or went outside and neglected to watch RAZOREATER or us which was kind of a bummer because it just helps to kill the scene when people do that. Even when we’re not playing it’s still infuriating to watch and considering this was a free entry show I don’t see why there was a mass exodus after their friends had played. Still we made the most of it and RAZOREATER killed it for a second night in a row and then we played last and had a fun but ridiculously sweaty time.
Then we drove three and a bit hours home that night because I had to be at work for like, eight the next morning. Always fun!
All in all it was a very fun weekend with great hangouts, good riffs, loads of friends and plenty to talk about. Can’t wait for our next weekend outing with RAZOREATER and THE INFERNAL SEA from 19th-21st July!
Oh man, I’ve just checked out Rhyl. What a nice seaside town ;) I love the derelict fairground pics.
And what was that story about Cambridge and people scared of heavy riffs? ;)
Ah, that old chestnut. Basically we were headlining a show at The Man On The Moon in Cambridge about two months ago and we had a few problems to say the least! We got two songs into our set and the power went out. We figured there had been a power cut or it had tripped but it quickly became apparent that the barman/landlord had manually cut the power because we were “too loud”. Some confusion ensued whereby the sound guy was trying to get us to turn down which we begrudgingly did (down to ‘2’ on our amps, bearing in mind we practice with them on 5/6 and usual gig volume is 8). During this time a good portion of the audience left the venue because they were bored of waiting around. We like it loud and nobody except the landlord seemed to be complaining. The power was eventually switched back on and we managed another song and a half before it was cut again. This time the landlord refused to turn it back on and the sound guy tried to negotiate some kind of deal (one involved the quite laughable idea of turning one of our amps off to make it quieter!). During this second bout of confusion information started to filter through that we were apparently “as loud as a jet engine” which they were claiming was 120db (120db is a jet engine at 40 metres, fact fans) and apparently complaints had been generated from the christening party that was happening in the other fifty percent of the pub. Now, who in their right mind hosts a christening party on the same night as a heavy metal show?! Not to mention the fact that the landlord was keeping both doors separating the two halves of the pub wide open whilst bands were playing. It was a joke and we just packed our stuff up after more ridiculous requests from the sound guy. We all had a good chuckle about it afterwards but it was pretty infuriating at the time. Since then the venue has been closed down anyway which I can’t help but smile at in a petty but oh so vindicating way.
Haha! Amazing :)
Having the summer on now, what other places in the UK would you call worth seeing? :)
There’s a lot of cool places in the UK. I really enjoyed playing in Truro, Cornwall a couple of years ago. Because it’s such an isolated place it’s a very tight knit scene and everyone is super nice and enthusiastic about gnarly shows rolling into town. True DIY stuff down there, not to mention it being a really beautiful place. My favourite city and venue is Stuck On A Name Studios in Nottingham. Again, everything is DIY and everyone has a good time and rocks out. Never a shortage of great shows in Nottingham.
What about Kettering? Is it vital for its local scene to have Northampton and Birmigham 30 and 50 minutes drive away? Or it is actually the reason that prevents Kettering from blooming?
Honestly? Kettering is pretty dead. We used to have a kick-ass venue called Sawyers that was great for DIY shows and played host to some big names of Hardcore and Metal but the audience was just too fickle and apathetic and because of a lack of support it had to close. That has been gone for about three or four years now unfortunately. Northampton itself is also pretty dead when it comes to Hardcore and Metal as it’s a very elite Indie town which is why we don’t play there often and have basically adopted Nottingham as home ground despite it being further away than Northampton. Birmingham is on the rise again which is great to see and we’ve played there a few times.
Kettering is geographically challenged in that despite being near-ish some bigger places like Birmingham, Leicester and Nottingham, people don’t travel here because it has no existing scene and with nowhere to particularly start a scene and no positive audience for such a thing, it’ll likely remain that way unfortunately.
Oh my… doom and gloom, man! ;)
Touring-wise, do you have any plans to travel outside of the UK with the band?
As for plans to play outside the UK, the short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is that we had a Euro mainland tour booked for the beginning of August but as soon as I’d virtually booked the whole thing my work decided to cancel my holiday days and fudged everything up so we had to bail on the idea. We are however aiming to come back next April with our best buds in RAZOREATER so watch out for that!
Will you be looking for metal caves full of metal heads or rather DIY punk venues filled up with hardcore kids? :) In what scene do you fit better?
That’s a tough one really. I know tonnes of bands say this but we sit somewhere in between the two I think. We definitely take influence from both Metal and Hardcore but I’m not sure what suits us best, sometimes it’s just best to leave the categorisation to others! DIY is always the way to go and we try and do everything on that level but DIY doesn’t necessarily equate to Hardcore and can be any “scene” so we’ll play to anyone who likes riffs and a good headbang. Also playing in a cave sounds pretty amazing so if anyone fancies hooking us up with a cave show, please get in contact!
Ok, Red. What else? Anything you’d like to add?
Just check us out and grab our stuff if you dig our jams really (www.letitdie.bandcamp.com, www.letidie.bigcartel.com, www.facebook.com/LetItDie). There are a bunch of good little DIY scenes around the country so support your local jank. Most shows are only a couple of pounds so help out everyone and get involved. Start a band, do a label, do a zine, put on shows, have a nice time!
Shout outs to our heterosexual life partners in RAZOREATER for being the best UK band full of the best dudes, WITCH CULT (RIP), MONOLITHIAN (split buddies!), THE INFERNAL SEA (Black Metal out your butt!) and the record labels that have helped us along the way (Church Of Fuck, Moshtache Records, Dead Chemists Records, Skin & Bones Records, Witch Hunter Records). Check out all those kick-awesome bands/labels and buy their stuff, yeah?
Thanks so much for your time!
Thank you for your time too, it’s been a pleasure! XXX
Close live shot by Javier X Camañas.
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