LENGED OUT‘s debut EP “Lunaris” has been over a year in the making and it’s finally scheduled for a fall, yet to be detailed release, later this year. The band recently dropped the second forerunner track dubbed “Nihilus”, a mid-tempo, blistering offering fearlessly diving into their inspirations and some fresh ideas how to make your metal/hardcore experience even more adventurous. Today, we’re teasing their new record with some more details behind their work, through a brief interview with the band’s Callum Parker and their top 5 Lenged Out shows remembrance.
What is Lenged Out?
Hampshire (UK) originated hardcore/beatdown with influence from sludge and doom metal. Lenged Out emerged onto the scene in late November 2019 with their debut track “Dethroned” followed by “Nihilus”, off their upcoming EP “Lunaris”. Since then, they have played up and down the country with the likes of Desolated and God Complex.
Lenged Out currently remains unsigned and independent.
Who are Lenged Out?
Lenged Out is a five piece consisting of mostly students. Our ages range from 18-21 and the majority of us met in college in Gosport and are now studying music at university in Brighton.
The band was started by Callum (bass) and Jay (vocals) who met at college and started messing around with some demos. Joe (guitarist) then joined us from being another friend at college and then ali (drummer) joined from being in a previous indie band with Jay.
This was the lineup for a year (we turned a year old this month) and then last week we welcomed our second guitarist Daniel.
Me and Jay are dead into hardcore so that was the basis and Joe’s really into doom and sludge so naturally that’s how our sound came about.
What is Lunaris?
Lunaris, deriving from the latin translation of “Moons” is partially a concept album lightly inspired by the movie “An American Werewolf in London”. The lyrical content often mentions the theme of werewolves and moons, yet the majority of the lyrics are still about pressing and relatable issues. We go over the effects of “medication” and the police/government.
Give us a quick lyrical track by track rundown and some thoughts on your main inspirations.
We all personally have quite different music tastes, yet still in the metal genre as a whole. We think you can really hear the influence from these different genres whilst still tying our sound to the base of hardcore.
Intro – We really wanted a good intro track to open sets with and wanted to keep it simple. I’d say influences for this were bands like Judiciary and Grove Street Families. We love clean interlude tracks, influences for this Malevolence and Desolated.
Dethroned – This was the first track we ever wrote and it took a little while to get a hang of the process. It was exciting practicing together for the first time and recording with our producer (Adam Cox, guitarist for scolds) was a great first experience and we were extremely proud of the outcome.
The lyrical content is largely about not being able to trust somebody with a true or false sense of power, a single person having a higher ego thinking they can do whatever to someone is just never a good idea. It’s largely but not strictly based on the government.
Influence for this one is probably Malevolence, it has lots of the lead guitar parts similar to what they do.
Nihilus – This is the single I prefer personally, you really get a sense of our doom and sludge influence. The songs about the state of the world, it lightly touches on what’s known as “medication” and it how differently it can effect people, the pre-breakdown section is very clear in its message to the police and government.
Influences for this I would say are Acid Bath.
Delirium – This ones still in the writing process, we have the drums and guitar down but are yet to do the lyrics and rehearse it. The lyrics I believe are gonna start to touch more here on the werewolves and moons. The guitar is more chorus-ey and the writing is more of a modern metal-core vibe. This song is going to feature Scottish band Bitterwood.
Lunaris – This is the title track and my favourite of all of them. The riffs are heavily inspired by Guilt Trip which are one of mine and Jays favourite bands and then the songs just goes all over the place. Weird time signatures with harmonics and then Joe’s doom influence comes back to finish it off at the end in a beautiful way.
The lyrics are mainly a direct reference to the movie an American werewolf in london and its quite obvious once you know that.
This song is going to feature US band 156/Silence.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
The current plans are finish our last recording session for the EP, get a music video done to go with it and get back to going round the country playing as soon as we can.
We’ll probably have another EP out before the end of the year and then a full length will hopefully come in 2021.
Give us your quick thoughts on the George Floyd protests and the BLM matter.
I think it’s amazing how many people acted and spoke up across the world.
We joined forces with lots of other bands in the scene to work on “UKHC 4 Change” “UKHC for change – a collaborative fundraising effort between 30 punk and hardcore bands from across the UK scene. Compilation tape + t-shirt pre-order are available now at this location.
100% of proceeds from both the shirt and the compilation will be split between activism and protest efforts in the UK and US. 50% of proceeds will go to the UK Black Lives Matter fund, which is a coalition of black activists and organisers across the UK. The other 50% of proceeds will go to Act Blue, who have set up a donation link to split between 70+ community bail funds, mutual aid funds, and racial justice organizers.
Thank you to all the other bands involved, to Alec Davies for the designs and to Nuclear Family Records for curating this comp. We stand with you.
We managed to raise £1,150 in total.
How about COVID-19? How has it impacted the band?
It sucks but everyone’s going through it, we’re all in this together. It was horrible at first, we could of finished this EP months ago but had to put a full hold on it. Thankfully we’re able to practice together again now!
Lastly, how’s your local scene these days?
I love the Southampton scene. Its full of good energy and rarely ever any problems (from my experience). There’s the kingpins of the area like Desolated and Grove Street Families and then a whole surge of new young bands like ourselves.
I can’t wait to get back to playing.
Any other bands worth a check?
Some great worthy mentions of bands and mates similar to our size: Dresden, Vakora, Majin, Derelict, Malign, Scolds, Revoked, and Web (sorry if I forgot anyone). Other than those, we have other projects ourselves that we working on such as: Melanchole and Concrete Jungle which should have music out soon!
Check out our Spotify playlist with mates, influences and bands we’ve played with.
Extra: Cal’s top 5 Lenged Out shows:
5 – Southampton – Our first proper show was a bit of a milestone in itself, we got to support God Complex and MTXS. It was our first experience playing in a proper venue and soundchecking, the whole setting up and getting prepared was more nerve racking than any of the actual performing. It ended up being a smooth and exciting night though with every band killing it.
4 – Gosport – This was a secret show we did for friends only for my birthday, Vakora and local indie band The Directors played and it was a great night. We all just got drunk and had fun, did some awful covers and had a laugh – one to remember for sure.
3 – Southampton – This was my first show I ever booked and boy was it eventful. We had Malign headlining who we also supported in Sheffield, they brought the nutty Northerners and the injuries. My friend Mike got knocked out COLD, woke up outside and had a minor concussion.
Then later in the night vocalist Sean from Gunned Down completely tore his ACL and PCL at the same time whilst he was performing and continued his performance unable to move in pain on the floor waiting for an ambulance.
2 – Southampton – This one is #2 as it was such an early milestone for us. This was a show where we supported Desolated, Revulsion and Realm of Torment. It was a great show and I somehow managed to fall up my stairs the night before and break my foot and dislocate a toe, I had to play on a stool which just made the whole thing hilarious but it was for sure the tightest we have ever played.
1 – Sheffield – Our second proper show we drove 5 hours to support Curbstomp SCBD. It was an exciting and long drive and we were given such a warm welcome matched by the craziest pit I’ve seen, Northerners are a different breed. We ended up sleeping on some random lads floor who we now consider a good mate and I do bookings with him now under Bloom. (big up Tom)
If there’s any other info you’d like or specific questions you’d like me to ask other members for their input please let me know and I’ll pass it on to them and get their answers, thank you!
– Callum Parker
