There’s barely any downtime in Shooting Daggers’ orbit. If they’re not playing shows somewhere in the UK or across Europe, they’re rehearsing, plotting, or just finding reasons to be in the same room. Weekly practices turn into long hangs. Day jobs get squeezed in between drives, sets, and whatever comes next.
“We’re juggling between the band and our day jobs, it can be tough at times but we are all so driven,” they say. “We kinda need to keep going and keep creating, it’s part of who we are.”
That pace bleeds straight into “The Real Life Thing,” a seven-track, 20-minute mini-album landing June 5th via New Heavy Sounds.
It wasn’t written in isolation or as some neat follow-up to “Love & Rage,” but built gradually through constant proximity—rehearsal rooms, tours, shared spaces, the everyday rhythm of being around each other. They’ve been working on it for a long time without really stepping outside of that flow.
What comes through is a push against the flattening effect of living online. “We wanted to write about feeling truly alive in the ‘real life’, opposing the ‘screen life’ that we are all experiencing.
Social media became such a big part of our lives, it almost became hard to keep touch with reality.” The record leans into the opposite—time spent together, on tour, at rehearsal, in the scene.
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“The Real Life Thing is the reflection of our joyful moments together… with people, with community, with sorority.” Songs like “Loud Mouths” and “T.R.L.T” pull from that directly, while “Le Soleil” and “Adrenaline” hold onto the idea of finding something worth keeping even when things around you look rough.
“It’s about putting things in perspective and trying to do the right thing, enjoying our time on earth regardless of the ugly.”
There’s a wider thread running through it too—trying to hold onto community and a sense of shared purpose in a world that keeps pushing people apart. “At its heart, the album is about reclaiming a sense of community, hope, and strength, in a hyper-individualistic world that feels as though it’s falling apart,” they say, pointing to “My Oh My!” as one of the clearest examples.
That sense of community isn’t abstract. It shows up in very specific people and moments. Beth from Girls Rock Glasgow fed directly into “We Just Wanna Play,” which leans more into a chant than a conventional song—something closer to a playground rhythm where girls and queer kids state plainly that they can be in bands, can be part of hardcore, can take up space on their own terms.
Touring sharpened those connections. They crossed paths with The Menstrual Cramps and ended up bringing them into the record. “We met our besties The Menstrual Cramps and toured together last year. We had to include them in one of our tracks.” The same circle extends outward—queer skate sessions in Bristol, bandsboycottbarclays, labels and promoters backing queer hardcore, rehearsal spaces like Overdrive studios where this whole thing actually lives day to day. “Community is the real life thing.”
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“Glow,” the latest single from the record, pulls a lot of that together in a more focused way. It came out of the same period when they were supporting Refused on their final UK run, watching Dennis Lyxzén up close every night. “He jumps, he twirls, he dances, he dresses fancy… anything but a generic hardcore singer.” When they started writing a song about rejecting fixed gender roles and unpacking internal misogyny, his presence felt like a natural extension of the idea. “When we wrote this song we knew who we wanted… we had to try.”
He said yes immediately. “It was a complete honor to be a part of this album,” Lyxzén says. “They were great of course. Radical and fun and they just seemed like great people.”
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The track itself benefits from that pairing in a very direct way. The dual vocal setup doesn’t just add a guest spot for the sake of it—the voices cross, overlap, and break each other’s patterns. That interplay keeps the song from settling into one lane, constantly shifting its energy and making it hit harder because of it. There’s a looseness to how those parts move around each other, and it makes the whole thing feel less predictable, more alive.
Lyrically, “Glow” is blunt about where it stands. “This track is about denouncing gender roles and respecting gender identity. Self-liberation, embracing femininity and fighting internal misogyny. Feminine isn’t weak, and masculine doesn’t have to be stereotypically strong.” It’s less about presenting an argument and more about clearing space—letting different ways of being exist without explanation. “Anything is valid as long as you feel powerful from within.”
The video pushes that idea further out into the real world. Shot at Commando Temple in Deptford, it pulls in Pride in Strength workshops and members of the queer wrestling collective Fist Club, who not only appear on screen but also taught the band how to wrestle. The whole thing leans into the physical—bodies, movement, contact—mirroring the record’s push away from screen-bound life. There’s also a nod to the Netflix series “GLOW,” with its focus on an all-women wrestling company, but here it’s filtered through the band’s own circle.
It came together through a long list of people giving time, space, and whatever they had on hand. Jakob Arevärn handled additional filming for Lyxzén’s parts, traveling from Sweden on short notice. Friends like Levi and Ivona documented the day. Someone lent an old TV. The gym opened its doors. “The list is long, we could thank so many people,” they say, before rattling off drummers, gear nerds, promoters, labels like New Heavy Sounds and Les Murenes, and the wider network that keeps things moving. “Our drummies and other shredders, gear nerds and passionate peeps, who put so much time and energy into the community, the scene, politics.”
Back in the studio, the record took shape with Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse, building on what they started with “Love & Rage” but pushing further out—hardcore, shoegaze, post-hardcore, riot grrrl, all shifting in and out without settling. Seven tracks, twenty minutes, no padding.
Alongside it all, they’ve been playing wherever they can: Brighton at The Pipeline on April 3rd with Nothing Works and Tomar Control, London the next night at The Blue Monk, and Punks For Palestine at New Cross Inn on May 4th. In between, more rehearsals, more plans, more time spent figuring out what comes next.
“The Real Life Thing” lands June 5th on limited black vinyl and digital.
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