Oh boy, the airwaves are bristling with the anarchic spirit of Hot Fiends as they unleash their debut EP, ‘Cult Supreme’, into the wild, serving a solid punch to the gut of post-hardcore, served up with a side of punk ferocity and a dash of dark humor.
Produced in collaboration with Raygun Studios and released on the 6th of March, 2024, ‘Cult Supreme’ embodies the chaotic essence of giving a chimp a guitar and a gun and watching the madness unfold.
Hot Fiends, consisting of Sean Duke, Ben Flowers, Leo Osbourne, and Lewis Magill, have carved their niche in the Brighton & South Coast music scene with their blistering live shows and unbridled energy.
Drawing inspiration from the likes of Soul Glo, Gel, Pissed Jeans, and The Blood Brothers, ‘Cult Supreme’ is a raw, unfiltered snapshot of a band at the peak of their creative powers, ready to get you hooked by storm.
The EP is a sonic slap full of jarring transitions, twisted tongue-in-cheek lyrics, and dark, infectious riffs that linger in the mind like a bad thought. It starts with the knife-fight jangle-rock song, ‘Massive Weakling’, followed by the headbanger’s fever-dream, ‘Big Snake’. The EP ends with the dark breakdown of the of ‘Richard & Judy Do LSD Live On Air This Morning’.
We have teamed up with the band to give you their full track by track commentary below!
Massive Weakling
“This song is about sucking at life but just getting on with it anyway. The line “Teach me the secrets of workplace etiquette, read out the words and they spell death” is about people who strive to be good employees but are unable to actually get anything done. We’ve done enough dead-end jobs and wage slaving to know the futility of actually giving a damn about hard work. The title makes us think of a massive dude with tiny weak little legs, which always makes us laugh.
We usually load this up to the front of our live shows – as it’s tight and punchy. The verse is almost bouncy and happy like an indie track but immediately undercut by the nasty chromatic phrase under screams of ‘massive weakling’. “
Big Snake
“This song is about a literal big snake, coming to your house and emasculating you. As the song progresses, you realize that it is something otherworldly that is taking over someone’s life, eating their dog, stealing their keys. They realize it can’t be killed or reasoned with, so they move out and let the snake live in their house.
That’s literally it. I just thought it was funny. There’s no subtext. It’s not even an innuendo.
I had a friend who kept snakes, and one got out once during the night, and it was underneath the bed I was sleeping in. We spent the day tearing his flat apart, cutting the sofa open, only to find it there, pissed off and coiled up, hissing at us. That snake didn’t have bat wings, but it could of been from hell.
This is one of our favorite songs to play live, as the fat-hogging riff is a head-banger’s fever dream. When recording this song, we invented a new patch ‘Scream+’, to give the chorus vocals their hellish, underworldly sound.”
Plague Bringer
“The song is about a fictional disease like Black Death, but it takes a more extreme approach. The line “Into the blight of a thousand years,” shows the plague as an eternal being that sucks all life and is indifferent to your existence or mortality. It’s a bit grimdark and Papa Nurgle, with serious four-horseman vibes.
The intro is as nasty as we could make it, mixed with a verse that is a throwback to classic metal and hardcore. We love to mix beefy traditional riffs with more unusual, avant-garde, or dissonant sections to keep things interesting – it’s not just straight hardcore, nor is it all horrible, unlistenable noise. We’ve had people come to our gigs who aren’t fans of heavy music come up to us and say they ‘strangely enjoyed it’ – which is the kind of half-compliment we’ll take any day. ”
Richard and Judy Do LSD Live on Air This Morning
“This title probably means nothing to anyone outside of the UK and under 20 years old, but we love it. The song title in our minds is part of the classic math & grindcore tradition of giving songs ridiculous names to give listeners something to remember them by – considering the unintelligible lyrics and bizarre anti-pop structures.
Unlike the chatshow hosts Richard & Judy themselves, the whole thing is meant to be as un-radio-friendly and “content-friendly” as possible. It has a lot of dark themes: from smashing someone’s head in with a hammer to mutated less-than-human creatures that live on blood. While it sounds pretty savage, I was trying to conjure up the over-the-top vibes of Hammer Horror vibes, with its tongue firmly in its cheek.
So the title is actually on-theme at least, it’s not quite as dumb as it sounds – just nearly as dumb.”
Deep Sea Diver
This is about someone who runs away from their problems as fast as they can, instead of confronting them.
The lyrics “Getaway driver, Deep sea diver” are about the lengths and speed we go to get away from our problems. The rest of the song describes the metaphorical “car crash” that happens when we can’t run forever, with lines like “It all goes up in flames, get away.” “Static hissing in despair” is a description of the scene over the radio, like police calling in the scene.
We were unsure about this song when recording it. It’s the closest to a traditional verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure we will probably ever do. We thought it was a bit of a filler, but actually, it’s had the most radio play of any of the songs. It just goes to show, that sometimes you’ve got to let the audience decide what works and what doesn’t.
