Brighton hardcore punks NEGATIVE MEASURES discuss inspirations, new music, and more!

UK DIY Hardcore Punk band NEGATIVE MEASURES (for fans of: Refused, Black Flag, Sick of it All) dropped a brand new single titled “Beneath The Ground” in March and today we’re giving them a closer look through a special feature, including their story, new music, take on COVID-19 situation, Brighton music scene, and more! As usual, we’re including a bunch of new bands worth a check, special Spotify playlist and the band’s special “We Exist Because Of These 10 Bands” list!

Since forming in 2014, NEGATIVE MEASURES have released 2 EP’s and multiple singles, toured the UK regularly and played with bands such as While She Sleeps, Employed To Serve, Stray From The Path. Their most recent tour in promotion of “Beneath The Ground” was unfortunately cut short due to the Coronavirus outbreak, so here we are, helping them get some well earned hype and let you know they ROCK! “Too punk for the hardcore kids and too hardcore for the punk kids”, the band utilizes their inspirations at its most energizing, yielding some of their most powerful and catchiest work to date.

Comments the band:

Tommy (guitar) and Arthur (drums) formed this band a week before our first show. They wrote a few songs for fun and decided to book a gig before having a full lineup, asked me and Hannah (bass) to join for a couple of shows initially and we’ve just never stopped from there. Since then we’ve released a bunch of singles, 2 EP’s and toured a bunch.

Lyrically, Beneath The Ground is about procrastination and losing time, feeling like you’re watching yourself sit through life and not doing anything. It’s something I’ve been trying to work on and better myself by doing for a long while now but I’m definitely my own worst enemy at times. It’s in a more straight-up hardcore vein than our previous releases and has a bit of bounce to it which makes it super fun to play live.

We recorded it with Ford Lane Studios and it was mastered by Bob Cooper who did our previous record The Waste Time Continuum.

Continued below…

Our original plan for 2020 was to tour as much as we could and release singles throughout the year but COVID has prevented us from doing what we wanted to. We’re now just getting our heads down and writing new material as well as trying to figure out how we’re going to approach being in a band in these times.

COVID-19 – its impact on local community and music scene

It sucks, everyone has had to put their plans on hold and we’ve all missed out on so many good shows. It looks like the industry is going to take a while to recover but I just hope when everything eventually returns it’s going to be even better. 

𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐷𝐼𝑌 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑦.

Where we live in the UK the government has unsurprisingly dropped the ball and failed to act fast enough to this pandemic, the people who are praising Boris Johnson for how he’s handling this baffle me. We have the highest number of deaths in Europe, largely because he and his government are so committed to putting profit before people.

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Other acts worth a shot

Drain and Plastics have released really cool records so far this year. Our friends in Ill-Informed also released a monster double A-side called Void // Spite which absolutely rips if you like things verging towards metal. Vent and Vision Quest have also come through with great EP’s.

𝑊𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑆𝑝𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑦 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑢𝑛𝑘/ ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒/ 𝑎 𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑒’𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜, 𝑤𝑒 𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑒𝑤 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘𝑠, 𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡!

𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑎 𝑏𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑐𝑙𝑖𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑑𝑜 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑦, 𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟. 𝐿𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒.

We Exist Because Of These 10 Bands

Sick of It All – Tommy (Guitar)

One of my biggest inspirations growing up was Sick Of It All. I was introduced to them by my older brothers when I was very young and they kind of paved the way to what I believe hardcore is and was about. Their riffs, the lyrics and the passion are all what make them the perfect HC vessel.

Black Flag – Jack (Vocals)

I think every punk and/ or hardcore band these days is a little influenced by Black Flag, whether consciously or not. Everything about this band is important to me: the way they sound, their work ethic and their intensity. Almost a perfect band in my opinion.

Run The Jewels – Arthur (Drums)

The best thing in music right now. Fight me. RTJ are great, not only because they’re both insane rappers but because EL-P’s beats are on another level. They play out like songs, not beats.

Blood Red Shoes – Hannah (bass)

Blood Red Shoes were the band that taught me guitar. Laura Mary Carter’s style of playing is something totally unique to me still to this day, and it’s always amazed me how much that band manages to do with limited instruments. They’ve remained a songwriting influence for me until this day.

Against Me! – Jack

They’ve been one of my favourite bands since I came across them as a teenager first getting into punk rock and they’ve taught me a lot about life through their music and their journey as a band. They manage to be a very raw, straight up punk band but also very melodic and emotive in a way that I’ve not really seen from any other bands and I love that about them. It’s impossible for me to listen to Against Me! and not get very excited and hyped up.

Descendents – Arthur

Bill Stevenson is hard as fuck. In my opinion, he’s a drummers drummer. He manages to both play for the song and wail on the kit at the same time. It’s been said a lot that they’re the forefathers of pop-punk but what I think gets lost in that sometimes is that they wrote great songs, regardless of the genre.

Eels – Tommy

Most of my inspiration to create comes from Eels. The fact that every album is different, has a different take on life and sound. Mr E is an outright genius.

Gallows – Hannah

Gallows are just about as hard and raw as bands get, and in their Frank Carter era, they became the epitome of what it means to command a crowd. When Negative were all fresh out of our GCSEs we used to sit in Arthurs bedroom and watch Gallows live videos again and again. They have captivated me more than pretty much any other band on Earth, they have the energy to power a fleet of Eddie Stobart’s or something.

Refused – Arthur

One of those bands that other groups have tried to replicate since but no one can quite do it in my opinion. Everything about that band and their energy is what I crave in hard music. Saw them a few years ago came out with a dislocated knee and it was still one of the better gigs I’ve ever been to.

OFF – Jack

Keith Morris is my favourite frontman of all time and OFF is as good as anything else he’s ever been involved with, in my opinion. The First Four EP’s record/ collection might be my favourite punk release of the last 10 years.

“Beneath The Ground” by NEGATIVE MEASURES – the lyrics:

Consumed by the will of my want
Remove myself from this world I belong
Am I stuck in reverse?
Seemingly already bound to my hearse
Out of sync
Struggle to think
Too much time in a fiendish condition
Sitting watching breathing existing

And now
Bleed from me
Moments passed in misery
I am lost
Never found
I will bury myself far beneath the ground

Consumed by a memory of fight
Remove myself from this line of sight
I choose to keep myself this way
Every decision a break in the chain
Carve me out
On the pillars of doubt
A routine perfected
A vision rejected

Never be enough
Not enough