This Is Scotland Not LA 2 compilation premiere & a deep dive into Scottish Hardcore

Coming up as a long overdue follow up to the original released back in 2005 and offers a snapshot of the current hardcore scene in Scotland in 2022, This Is Scotland Not LA 2 compilation is packed with 28 bands representing all forms of hardcore from the heavy to the melodic, the tense to the manic and the metallic to the punk, it offers the listener an insight into the diverse and flourishing post pandemic hardcore scene in the country. Today we’re stoked to give you an early listen of the full thing, along with a multi-artist interview with some of the artists feature on the compilation!

This Is Scotland, Not LA 2 by JCHC zine and Everyday Madness Everyday Records is a snapshot of the Scottish hardcore scene in 2022 showcasing a diverse mix of styles from heavy beatdowns to melodic choruses, tense ecossemo to manic powerviolence.

The bands featured on the compilation are: Afterburn, At Their Mercy, Bed Of Wasps, Below The Neck, Bleaks, Bitterwood, Demonstration Of Power, Despize, Divide, Endless Swarm, Final Day, Fit For Work, Freedom Fist, GANGS, Gay Panic Defence, Get It Together, Glass City, Hard Stare, Headcleaner, Hellbound, Kaddish, Kakihira, Kingpin, Nothin’ But Enemies, Shelf, Slept On, Start Again, and Truth Ruiner.

Links denotes IDIOTEQ-featured bands – click to check out selected publications.

The compilation is currently on pre-order for 20th June release on CD and digital via Everyday Madness Everyday’s bandcamp at this location and JCHC will have the discs in the distro to pick up at JCHC and Truth Ruiner gigs.

Hey guys! Thanks so much for joining us! For starters, please share some details about your backgrounds, experience and your initial introduction to the Scottish hardcore. How did it all start for you and your band?

Graham – Start Again/Shelf/Everyday Madness Everyday Records: I’ve been kicking around the scene since the latter half of the 80s, I got into hardcore punk via thrash metal and tape trading, I was blown away by stuff like Minor Threat, Jerry’s Kids, Negative Approach and closer to home bands like Extreme Noise Terror, Heresy and The Stupids, I was really drawn to not just the energy but also the DIY ethos of it all, you didn’t need anyone else’s permission to get involved, you didn’t need a record label, a manager, a booking agent etc. There was no divide between the bands and the audience, no idols and rock stars just a network of friends.

The Spermbirds song ‘Get On The Stage’ really resonated with me early on, you don’t have to be a passive consumer, everyone is welcome, “Anyone can get on the stage”. And that truly is the thing with hardcore, no-one is stopping you except yourself. And now we have much more access to technology and the internet making things like recording and putting music out there so much easier. You don’t have to know what you’re doing, and you don’t have to be perfect either, just be creative and inventive, express yourself, don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.

Back then I lived in a small village pretty much out of the way of anywhere exciting and couldn’t play an instrument (I still can’t) so started a zine called ENZK – basically just wrote to bands and asked them questions then printed it up and sold it via flyers in tape trading and bugging the shit out of folk at gigs. I also formed a band with two mates, none of us could play so we just made a horrendous noise, we built amps out of old speakers and converted an old mobile home outside a fish factory into our venue to play in. Built a stage in it, painted the inside black with multicoloured splatter effects and nicked lamps off roadworks to give it all a stroke inducing orange lightshow. Couple that with the racket we made and the stench from the gutbuckets outside and it was a full-on sensory experience. A bunch of folk would cram in and then chaos would ensue, it was truly shit, but it was wonderful because it was ours.

We used to get through to Edinburgh for gigs on Sundays as those actually finished before the last train to somewhere vaguely close to home left, it was mainly thrash and death metal but I did get to see some of the bigger grindcore bands Napalm Death, Carcass etc and occasionally bands like Snuff and Leatherface too.

I came up to Dundee record shopping one time and asked a guy who was browsing if there were any gigs in Dundee, he told me there was one the next night, so I came back through and saw Exalt and Brain Damage. It got to be quite interesting when two guys seemed to start a fight, crashing through chairs and sending them flying, turned out it was Jase and Skinz having a dance. The guy from the record shop turned out to be Paul who has playing in Brain Damage, and later in Broccoli. Engage and Divide, among others.

A year or so later I moved to Dundee and got involved more with the punks here, I still did the zine now and again, put on gigs, crammed into cars to go see bands in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, took photos and occasionally recorded music. I’ve now been here over thirty years, still gone to as many gigs as I could afford to and still in love with local bands, supporting pals and making new ones.

In regards to how the compilation as a whole came about, Gary from Truth Ruiner/JCHC messaged me one night asking if I’d thought about doing a part 2 to the original This Is Scotland Not LA compilation which I’d put out with ENZK number 10 back in 2005, (I’ve always been passionate about local bands and scenes and championing them as much as possible) and funnily enough I had been toying with the very idea earlier that day, Gary said he’d love to do it as a joint release between JCHC and Everyday Madness Everyday and we rattled of a list of bands that it would be cool to have on it and that was it, a proposal, a spark of an idea, it’d be cool aye.

About ten minutes later my brain was in overdrive, figuring out costings, making artwork and messaging a bunch of folk I knew in bands if they’d be up for it.

It seems that Scottish hardcore folk don’t sleep as I soon had a bunch of replies along the lines of ‘Fuck,aye, we’re totally up for that’
So I messaged Gary back to start hitting up the folk he was connected with and before we knew it we had a nearly chock full line up. We wanted the comp to be as comprehensive as possible so made a post on the GHC FB page to see if there were any other bands that we didn’t know about or had missed and after a few days the line up was complete, and we got everyone to get their chosen tracks in and that was it, from idea to completion in about three weeks. Nae messin.

One absolute positive for me about the entire process was the enthusiasm of everyone to be involved, there was no ‘Oh, I’ll get back to you on that’ or refusals. All the bands clearly want to support each other and it was heart-warming that when sharing it on socials everyone has been saying how honoured they are to be a part of the comp, it makes me so proud to have these bands representing the scene, lifting each other up and championing everyone else, it’s so damn cool.

Jamie – Freedom Fist: I’ve been in the Scottish punk scene for 20 years. The first shows I went to were the legendary Edinburgh DIY Cold Dead Hands gigs. Walking in to a venue and seeing all the band equipment not on the stage, but on the opposite end of the crowd area so the band were right in the audiences face, for the first time was something I’ll never forget.

Freedom Fist started as a lockdown project. I wrote the whole album in a week and then thought it would be pretty cool to make the songs exclusively about Scottish independence politics and Scottish social stuff. Because it was never meant to be a proper band I thought, why not have three vocalists? So got Danny and Matt to come to mine to record. It’s sort of snowballed from there…

Ian – At Their Mercy: Jeremy the guitarist and Ian the bass player are both HxC OGs and have been into this type of music since they were teenagers in the mid to late 1980s. Jeremy was previously in an 80s Grind band called Atavistic and met Ian, who had been in various Scottish HxC and Metal bands over the years back in 2014 and they found a common interest in the type of music they wanted to play. That’s how At Their Mercy started.

Scott who had been primarily a Death Metal vocalist previously and a close friend of Ian’s joined on vocals in 2015, as they had been wanting to do a band together for a number of years. Then after a couple of drummers came and went, Dom joined in early 2019. He has really helped to tighten up our sound and comes from more of a Thrash background originally.

David – Afterburn/Dai Tan Films: Both our guitarists are originally from Poland (Luke and Adam) and Luke played in various hardcore bands over there before moving to the UK and starting up here. I was first really introduced to hardcore when I was asked to join War Charge and play bass with Luke and we went on to play the 1st Outbreak Fest as our 1st show, toured Europe multiple times and even made it out to Asia. After WC split up, myself and Luke continued to do bands together and we started up Afterburn in 2019 and our other band which also has Joe (Bass in AB) called Slowmove.

Martin – Slept On: Slept On started in 2017 with members that have 15 years of experience from older Glasgow bands such as Delay is Fatal, Search Party and Atriedes. It’s the tried and tested way of jamming and then people’s influences come together to make something new. We try to bring a mixture of everything – skate punk bits, 2-step parts, beat downs, a cheeky solo every now and again. Even the occasional doom riff gets in there! We started playing support shows in Glasgow (TRC and Brutality will prevail) but now it’s mainly shows with other local bands pulling in decent crowds. We have some support slots in the pipeline however!

Mark – Get It Together: We formed as a bedroom band in 2013 after Craig and I (Mark) met at a Hot Water Music show having not seen each other since our days in The Punchline Is Murder and The Fight Back respectively (roughly 6 years). We replaced our dodgy drum tracks with Graham and added Swain on bass until he qualified as a paramedic and Ade comfortably stepped into his shoes.

I think the first Scottish Hardcore band I saw was Santo Caserio opening for Strike Anywhere in 2002. I was given a proper introduction to the Scottish scene playing bass in The Fight Back. We got to share bills with great bands like Divide, Allergo, Broken Oath, By My Hands, Today We Fight, I Stand Alone, Atomgevitter & Engage, who I got to fill in on bass for.

It’s really cool to be a part of this compilation after appearing on the first one all those years ago.

Finnbar – Below The Neck: Below The Neck came from a somewhat diverse selection of bands – a Hard Rock band, a Pop Punk band and an alt-rock outfit. This is our singers (Thomas) first band and it honestly doesn’t show. We all sort of knew each other from shows and saw each other wearing merch from bands like KNOCKED LOOSE/CODE ORANGE etc. There was nothing like what we were doing in the Highlands that we were aware of, so we all wanted to kinda get stuck into it.

From pretty much first jam we were all the way in, in terms of wanting to do something hardcore influenced. We all have different levels of exposure to HC – I (Finnbar – Drums) personally was out of music until CODE ORANGE’s I AM KING came out and I was battling a severe bout of depression and it was one of the only things that lifted me out of the shit at work to be honest. That was the gateway back into stuff that I used to love like POISON THE WELL, THE BLED, THE AGONY SCENE etc., and then from Scotland I was right into MY MINDS WEAPON and CLEARER THE SKY (both of who I saw a few times back in 06/07 and I loved them) those were probably my first experience of Scottish Hardcore.

Now that I’ve got the chance to go back and look at some of the history of Scottish hardcore and spent so much time immersed in the current and future of it – it’s such an exciting thing to be a part of. Don’t let arseholes put you off from being excited about it – this music should be a place for anyone to come together, but we know it’s not always like that. If you’re at a Below The Neck show, or at a show I’ve put on – I promise you that I’m there and you can speak to me and be a part of anything that’s going on. Open door hardcore!

Duncan – Fit For Work: With Daniel playing for Cradle of Filth, Iain drumming in anything from 1 to 58 serious bands depending what day it is, and me slowly letting the concept of musician-hood gather dust altogether, as old Orkney school pals freshly reunited in Glasgow the three of us thought it’d be fun to hang out and scratch a serious punk itch together. As a few songs were coming together Iain bumped into another Orcadian – Josie – in the street, and it suddenly made face-palmingly obvious sense to have our professional poet, performer, activist friend join our silly political punk band on vocals. Once we had an EP ready to launch we were instantly shown what a warm and amazing scene we were joining, with some of its pretty established staples happily agreeing to come play as support on good faith that we weren’t going to embarrass them… 

Gary – Truth Ruiner/JCHC: Everyone in Truth Ruiner has been involved in the Scottish Punk and Hardcore scene, in one way or another for a long time. Ewan and Ian especially have a wealth of experience playing in various punk/emo/hc and metalcore bands over the last 10-15 years. All of us have always gone to shows, booked shows and played in bands. Truth Ruiner was my (Gary) first real band as an adult and we started when I was 29. We formed in July 2020, played our first show in November 2021 recorded our first demo in April 2022 which was released in May 2022 on Make That A Take Records. We’re currently writing for an EP which we start recording in July. 

Tell about your contribution to this new compilation. Why did you choose this particular track?

Graham – Start Again/Shelf/Everyday Madness Everyday Records: Start Again and Shelf are one-man projects because I can’t play in any coherent form worth wasting other people’s time with, so I just ad lib, press record and hope for the best, The Shelf track is the only one of those that was finished. I picked Can You Hear Me for Start Again as the lyrics were an unexpected and unguarded moment that just came out, it’s regarding suffering from depression and I normally don’t express that sort of thing but it was an honest emotion so I decided to keep it and just put it out there, like part of a healing process.

Jamie – Freedom Fist: Pagger that cunt isn’t exactly a very political song but what’s more Scottish than getting drunk and having a scrap? Hahaha… I think this song is probably the most fun one from the album so would be a good introduction for people to the band.

Ian – At Their Mercy: We chose the title track “Disavowed” from our first album because musically and lyrically it represents At Their Mercy best – Socio-political lyrics with a Crossover soundtrack.

David – Afterburn/Dai Tan Films: Chained is the first track we released from the Weight of the World EP and I think despite it’s short track length, it shows alot of the variety of hardcore we play and what we do in a condensed format and it’s probably my favourite track we’ve written so far

Martin – Slept On: We selected Pallbearer for 2 reasons – it was the 1st single of our latest EP and the excitement of seeing how it goes over live makes me want to get as many people hearing it as possible. It has some good moshing riffs! 

Mark – Get It Together: We opted to go for Hole In The Head from our LP Live Free, it’s probably our most well known song and is a good introduction to the band. 

Finnbar – Below The Neck: We put forward “Blight” which was the first single that we had recorded with Lewis Johns (Conjurer, Employed to Serve, Palm Reader) – this is in my opinion one of our best songs and makes me want to jump around like a fanny – and I’ve played it a million times, so thought it would be the best one to get new people to listen to and maybe get a slice of what we’re about.

Duncan – Fit For Work: We seem to straddle a few subgenres of punk and metal, from grindcore to crossover thrash – as well as being one of our favourites to play live, Your Ontology Is Fucking Basic has a bit of a classic hardcore breakdown in it that we hoped would sit nicely on this compilation. The music and lyrics on that track also hopefully show the balance we’re always trying to strike between serious and silly. 

Gary – Truth Ruiner/JCHC: Dogs of Perdition. We chose this track because we collectively feel it’s the strongest track we have recorded at the moment. It’s the only track from the demo that we plan on carrying forward onto the EP. We feel that sonically it’s probably the most in line with how we want to sound as a band. Because we are all pulling from so many different influences, in the beginning it was hard to settle on any one sub genre of hardcore. We still didn’t know whether we wanted to be a melodic hardcore band or a metalcore band and you can hear that on the demo. As time has gone on we feel like we’ve settled on our sound and we’re ready to channel that into our next release. We’re still going to have some mosh parts but we will definitely be leaning more into the melodic hc going forward.

Lyrically Dogs of Perdition is really just about the feelings of hopelessness we feel living in the world that we all inhabit at the moment. During the pandemic when people were isolated from each other social media became a vital tool to connect people and bring us together, but it was also weaponised to an extent and used as a vehicle for people to attack each other in online spaces. You see so many bad faith arguments online that are nothing more than well rehearsed sparring matches. It’s about people using violence, whether that be physical in the real world or online in digital spaces as a way to cope with their own feelings of frustration and hopelessness. I think we’ve all felt a bit doomed in recent times and I guess it can be hard not to lash out at each other when we feel this way. It becomes a bit of a vicious cycle and I feel like a lot of people have become trapped in it.

Give us some other noteworthy bands you feel are worth a solid chech. Both younger, older, not only from Scotland.

Graham – Start Again/Shelf/Everyday Madness Everyday Records: Absolutely every band on this compilation is killing it, I’ve seen most of them live too and they bring so much energy to every gig, I still get fired up on this stuff after 35 years since getting into it and love being down the front, up close and personal.

Scotland also has a ton of awesome punk bands that intertwine with the hardcore scene as well. Some favourites are Goodbye Blue Monday, AllDeepends, Overbites, Bratakus, Dog Eared etc.

Locally we have Make That A Take Records who have been doing awesome work for years, putting on gigs and releasing records so absolutely check them out for a wide variety of quality goings on.

There’s also a blossoming death metal scene with bands like Coffin Mulch, Brain Bath, Penny Coffin and Rancid Cadaver, and thrashers like Tempered, Disposable and Catalysis, again all of them totally bring the fire and again very supporting scenes.

Internationally Drain are really doing it for me, One Step Closer, Incendiary, Magnitude, Restraining Order, Scowl, the list is endless really, there’s so much good shit out there.

For an older long gone band to check out I’d pick Heresy, the label is named after one of their songs after all.

Jamie – Freedom Fist: We share members with the kings of hench party slam – Party Canon and Stalwarts of the UK grind/PV scene, Endless Swarm so of course them. Otherwise almost any band from Leeds. Particularly Hermit and Sulk.

Ian – At Their Mercy: Ironed Out, Bleach HCP, Bun Dem Out, War All the Time, Wardomized, System of Slaves, Zero Again, Static Shock.

David – Afterburn/Dai Tan Films: Greed from Leeds, No One Cares from Indonesia, High-Vis from London/Liverpool, Going Off from Manchester, Wise Up/Blood Fury from Newcastle, Goon/Arrogant from Dublin, Payday/Game/Lawful Killing/Stingray/Sentience/Burn Alive from London, Last Wishes from Leeds, Cruelty/Mantlet CVHC from Birmingham, Redemption Denied from Belgium, Splitknuckle from Essex, so many incredible bands around just now and too many to name.

Martin – Slept On: Smaller bands that we have played with that are amazing – Below the Neck, Worn Out, Lure In, Razor Sharp Death Blizzard, Waves, Bitterwood, Kakihara, Bailer, Skin the snake. Each members current fav band – Cage Fight, Drain, Defamed, The Chisel.

Mark – Get It Together: Honestly, the compilation itself is wall to wall bangers, so go check out everyone’s releases.

My old band The Fight Back released our last demo on Spotify recently, so if you like us, go check that out.

Finnbar – Below The Neck: I’ve kept clear of bands on this compilation as they’re all fantastic, but SKIN OF THE SNAKE from England are some of my favourite dudes, we’ve toured with them and if you like heavy, heavy hardcore with all fight riffs these are the guys. WORN OUT from Ireland are also buds, and they have that incendiary ETID style of music on tap – so much fun to see. CLEARER THE SKY are one that I think a lot of people should check out. I honestly don’t even know if they’re still going (if they are and are ever interested in coming to Inverness for a show get in touch!) however I’ve always dug them a lot. Finally a band from Wolverhampton called UPRAISED are absolutely the dogs bollocks – the people involved with the band are always working on stuff and are instrumental in creating and harnessing a thriving scene there. I have nothing but mad respect for those folx.

Duncan – Fit For Work: I’d say between the four of us there’s maximum achievable consensus on G.L.O.S.S., Wormrot, Natterers and Converge. Some highlights from the Glasgow scene have been Intrusive Thought, Comfort and Gimp World. Please come back, Gimp World? 

Gary – Truth Ruiner/JCHC: Our scene in Dundee has always been great but some local bands I’d like to give a shout to would be Kniveschau Fan Club, they’re a sick hardcore adjacent emo band. They sound kinda like Title Fight and Tigers Jaw, we’ve played with them a couple of times and they’re all our friends. Brodie and Ian from Truth Ruiner, Matthew from Kniveschau’ and Jamie, who was in Uniforms and I have a Vegan Straight Edge band called Final Day. There’s a demo that Brodie wrote and recorded themselves on Bandcamp, Spotify etc. Hopefully we’ll get to play some shows and stuff soon. A Life Without You are a sick young Pop Punk from Dundee who’ve been playing a bunch of shows and are really great live. We played a show with them back in April with PMX and we’ve got another show with them in July! Brodie also plays drums in new band called Crocodile Tears with our pals Beth and Deek. They played their first show last week.

In terms of Scottish Hardcore the comp kind of speaks for itself! There’s so many killer bands on there it’s almost hard to believe they’re all from this one small country. Glasgow has always been the main hardcore scene in Scotland but I think bands like Below The Neck from Inverness and Fit For Work, who are originally from Orkney, I believe are showing the rest of the UK and the world that there is a wealth of talent outside of GHC. Glasgow has been killing it recently though, particularly since Northern Unrest came on the scene.

Most of those guys have been around for years in various other bands but their collective talent experience has really started to shine through in the last couple of years. It’s great to see some of the bands that have been around longer on the comp still doing it too, Get It Together, Bed of Wasps, Kaddish and the OGs Divide are some of my favourite bands and it’s a huge honour to be included among them. Some of the newer bands like Bleaks and Headcleaner are really sick and refreshing too! I’m really excited about the future of Scottish hardcore, I feel like we’re in a real golden era at the moment and it’s only going to get better.

Ok, so back to your bands. Give us the current status, and some updates on your new releases, as well as plans for 2022.

Graham – Start Again/Shelf/Everyday Madness Everyday Records: I put out a Start Again tape a couple of months back, still have a couple left, the first Shelf demo will be finished shortly and then I’ll be doing another Start Again one. Timewise it just depends on when I get a free moment to plug in and record or go out to a field in the middle of nowhere and shout at my phone.

Jamie – Freedom Fist: We released our first EP on Ripcord Records and our upcoming album will be out in September on Roman numeral. There will be a bunch of singles from the album with music videos featuring us dressed up as the queen, Margret thatcher and boris Johnson, running around edinburgh and making cunts of ourselves.

Ian – At Their Mercy: At Their Mercy are always really active at the moment. We will be playing all over the UK in the forthcoming months, in support of our 2^nd album “Catechism” which is will be out on Sudden Strike records around August. Hopefully, we will be back over to Ireland again before the end of 2022.

David – Afterburn/Dai Tan Films: Slowmove is taking up a lot of time for us at the moment as it’s 3 of the same members but our guitarist Adam’s just gotten back from holiday and has a bunch of new tracks he’s written so we’re going to get down to working on those and hopefully get out and playing properly since we released our 7” in the middle of the pandemic. I did a guest vocal on the LP for an English band which will hopefully be out soon but yeah, we’re open for shows!

Martin – Slept On: So, we are currently finishing writing our new EP which we will record with Steven Jones from Bleed From Within again. We’ve started to play some new songs in the set so it’ll be exciting to get that recorded and ready to release probably at the start of 2023. We’ve got a couple of singles from our last recording that we’ll drop over the next few months with some videos for them. Show wise, we are trying to get a Halloween show together with some of our friends (and bands on the compilation) as well as some short tours in Scotland and our first shows in England! 

Mark – Get It Together: We’re quiet at the moment but we’re writing away and demoing new songs. Hopefully we’ll have a new release of some kind ready for early 2023. Give us a follow on Instagram and Facebook for updates on shows.

Finnbar – Below The Neck: We’re currently getting ready for a huge opportunity supporting SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Graphic Nature and Cauldron at Class Grand in Glasgow on June 22nd.

We’ve got some plans for travelling near the end of the year and currently working on releasing the tracks we’ve written with Lewis Johns – we’ve still got three more left after “Blight” and “Amygdala” with one coming soon! We just want to get out and play as many shows as possible and continue to carve out our niche in the UK and especially the Scottish scene.

Duncan – Fit For Work: I sometimes look back on the height of covid and wonder ‘why the hell didn’t we write and record a ton of music!?’, then I try and remember that we were probably all just too busy trying to stay afloat and in decent physical and mental health… Then when things starting moving again the drawbacks of Fit For Work being the fun side project showed themselves – all of our more ‘bread and butter’ bands, projects and jobs have to come first. But we’re still as intent as can be on getting a pile of new songs recorded into hopefully our first full length album, which might just make it out this year… maybe. We’re also trying hard to dip our toes outside of Scotland now and then for gigs, which we’d just started finally doing pre-pandemic. 

Gary – Truth Ruiner/JCHC: We’re about to start playing live again after a short break to get Ian settled in on drums after our previous drummer Ally left the band and we’ve been writing for a new EP that we start recording in July that’s will hopefully be out by the end of the year. Our next show is on the 2nd of July at Church in Dundee with some great local bands from Dundee. 

Awesome! Thanks a lot! Feel free to share your closing notes and anything you’d like to bring up here.

Graham – Start Again/Shelf/Everyday Madness Everyday Records: I’d strongly recommend everyone to check out the comp and explore the bands further, the Scottish scene has so much to offer right now. I’ve linked all the bands on the bandcamp page of the compilation so dead easy to follow through to their own full releases. Thank you IDIOTEQ for giving us the space to promote the Scottish scene, it’s much appreciated.

I’d also urge everyone to check out your local scene (or start your own thing), be inspired, get involved, go to gigs, start your own bands/projects, do a zine, put on gigs, make things happen, enjoy your time, today is a day of your life, live it accordingly (says I unashamedly ripping that sentiment from the Salad Days book by Charles Romalotti. Which I’d also recommend reading btw)

Jamie – Freedom Fist: Saor Alba!

Ian – At Their Mercy: It’s important to be humble and be thankful for any opportunities that come your way as a band; no matter how small. It makes a big difference. 

David – Afterburn/Dai Tan Films: We really just appreciate anyone that gives us the time of day be it listening to a track, buying merch, having us on a show or whatever. It’s seeming alot harder to tour now than it ever has been in the past with covid/brexit and I have nothing for respect for the UK bands that are continually out there grinding like Last Wishes, Heriot, Static Dress etc.

We’re getting alot more variance in the sounds coming from UK bands now in the style of hardcore they’re playing but we’re all still playing together which is sick. Thank you Idioteq for hosting this and Graham for asking us to be a part of it. Shout out Nuclear Family Records, CHF Promotions, Mentally Vexed Records, The Coming Strife Records, Make That a Take Records, Ready Eye Collective, Upsurge and UK Hardcore as a whole.

Martin – Slept On: With the pandemic, it’s meant that everyone has spent the time writing and so it’s been amazing to get back to playing shows again. The wealth of new music available now has meant that everyone’s pushing each other to take their game to the next level – which is a great challenge! It’s so satisfying seeing songs going over well live with bigger and bigger crowds. It’s also amazing to see larger festivals like Outbreak that are primarily hardcore being promoted so well and knowing that the genre is as big as ever. Also, smaller festivals like Red Crust have given the opportunity to lots of smaller bands so it’s amazing to see the scene alive and well!
See you in the pit.

Finnbar – Below The Neck: I want the whole Scottish scene (and further afield) to become a lot more cooperative. When you see the wealth of talent and depth of class bands that are out and kicking in Scotland right now, you can just imagine some of the shows that can be happening pretty soon. I encourage anyone reading this to get involved and start a band, put on some shows, make playlists and mixtapes and just generally have as much fun as you can – nothing lasts forever so let’s make the most of it. If all you can do is come down to a show or watch a video online – you should know that the people involved appreciate you and your passion for this stuff. Gig swaps and weekenders with new best pals are the lifeblood of any DIY hardcore scene or band – don’t want for promoters and agents to come and give you opportunities – make the most of the freedom to have the best shit happen!

Duncan – Fit For Work: Of all the bands on this compilation, embarrassingly we’ve only done shows with with two of them so far. It’d be great if we manage to put something together with a bunch more. On that note we’ll soon be throwing a fundraiser gig in Edinburgh to help towards trans healthcare costs for our vocalist and her partner. We’d love it if you’d look us up and give us a follow to keep an eye out, and/or consider sharing or donating directly at gofundme.com/f/butchfemmebodyhack.

Gary – Truth Ruiner/JCHC: Please check out the comp. Graham worked really hard putting it all together. So I’d just like to say thanks to Graham for including us and all the other bands for being a part of it. Scottish Hardcore!