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upsetmagazine.com
** Plus ** Dooms Children Spiritbox The Mysterines Laura Jane Grace Ice Nine Kills Witch Fever The Velveteers Ian Miles + loads more
Trivium Bullet For My Valentine Tom Morello
OCTOBER 8TH \\ 2021 STORE.BLANKETOFFICIAL.COM
OCTOBER8TH 8TH\\\\2021 2021 OCTOBER STORE.BLANKETOFFICIAL.COM STORE.BLANKETOFFICIAL.COM
NOVEMBER 2021 Issue 71
RIOT 4. THE MYSTERINES 8. LAURA JANE GRACE 12. WITCH FEVER 14. IAN MILES 18. ICE NINE KILLS ABOUT TO BREAK 20. THE VELVETEERS FEATURES 22. WAGE WAR 28. TOM MORELLO 32. TRIVIUM 36. DOOMS CHILDREN 40. BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE 46. SPIRITBOX
Upset Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler Scribblers Alexander Bradley, Alex Cabré, Dan Harrison, Dillon Eastoe, Edie McQueen, Jack Press, Jamie MacMillan, Kelly McClure, Linsey Teggert, Melissa DarraghSam Taylor, Steven Loftin Snappers Steve Gullick, Debbie Ellis, Rashad Bedeir, Mike Dunn, Fiona Garden, Travis Shinn P U B L I S H E D F RO M
W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M U N I T 10, 23 G RA N G E RO A D, H A S T I N G S, T N34 2R L
All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of The Bunker Publishing Ltd. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which The Bunker Publishing Ltd holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of Dork or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally.
HELLO. Where did 2021 go, exactly? At the time of writing, we’re already getting towards half way into October, and thoughts have started to turn towards such important matters as ‘end of year lists’ and ‘what will be big in 2022’. That’s all for next month’s bumper double edition of Upset, though. For now, we’ve got more than enough current concerns to bother us with. Chief amongst them, this month’s cover stars Wage War, who are fronting up an issue packed with some actual legitimate icons. Icons like Tom Morello, who has put together an album with so much star power it demands a second glance just to confirm it’s actually
real. Bruce Springsteen? Blimey. There’s Trivium, who ten albums deep may well have just made one of the best of their career, and Bullet For My Valentine - more that just simple stalwarts of the scene. And Wade MacNeil - what more can you say there? Lots, actually. Which is a good job, because we’ve got a magazine to fill. Enjoy!
S tephen
Editor / @stephenackroyd
Riot.
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THIS MONTH >>>
After finding herself laid up and in need of some comfort in sound, Laura Jane Grace is back with a new surprise EP. p.8
Manchester’s Witch Fever are speaking out about womxn sexual freedoms and misogynistic attitudes with their debut outing, the ‘Reincarnate’ EP. The band talk us through the release, track by track. p.12
Ian Miles from Creeper is delving into horror for his debut solo album. This one isn’t for the faint of hearted. p.12
“GOT DEALT A GOOD CARD THERE IN TERMS OF WRITING AN ALBUM” Rock’s buzziest up-and-comers, The Mysterines have made the most of the past year and a half of turmoil. Words: Alex Cabré. Photo: Steve Gullick.
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Riot.
After finding herself laid up and in need of some comfort in sound, Laura Jane Grace is back with a new surprise EP. Words: Linsey Teggert.
“IT’S STRANGE SEARCHING FOR IDENTITY WHERE YOU LIVE WHEN YOU DON’T NECESSARILY FEEL WELCOME” 8 Upset
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his past year feels like it could have been a week ago, or it could be a decade long,” muses Laura Jane Grace. We all know the feeling; time seems to have lost all meaning. It only seems like five minutes since Laura released her solo record, ‘Stay Alive,’ last October. Now she’s back with a surprise EP drop, ‘At War Against the Silverfish’, and ready to reflect on another year that lurched from whirlwind to stand-still and back again. “I really ran myself into the ground last October doing a lot of press and trying to promote a record in a way I’d never done before, and then the first week of November leading up to the election here in the US was the most stressful ever,” Laura explains. “The day it was announced that Biden won, I went out into the woods with a friend of mine and their kid, and we were just messing around doing dumb stuff, and I ended up breaking my foot! It was also the day before my 40th birthday, so my 40th was the most depressing day ever, all alone lying on my couch with a broken foot.” Finding herself isolated again and now unable to go on the daily runs that kept her sane during lockdown, Laura once again found solace in music, much like she had done the previous year in bringing ‘Stay Alive’ to life. “Music and songwriting has consistently been a guiding force in a positive way throughout my life; I’ve always taken the attitude of ‘I’m just going to keep writing and recording and do what feels good, and everything else will work itself out in due time’.” The situation may sound conducive to a good old amount of wallowing,
but ‘At War With The Silverfish’ glows with warm intimacy. ‘Lolo 13’ is a tender reflection on a dream love that never was, while ‘Electro Static Sweep’ is a wandering waltz through an old friendship. Though not as raw as ‘Stay Alive’, it’s inevitable given that those songs were originally intended for an Against Me! record. What ‘At War With The Silverfish’ lacks in a sense of urgency, it more than makes up for in personal charm. While the EP displays the honesty and vulnerability we’ve come to know and love from Laura’s work, it’s deliberately light-hearted so as not to be some sort of grandiose statement. “I didn’t want these songs to feel like some kind of defining art piece going forward, coming out of the pandemic with this big statement of what these past twelve months were,” states Laura. “Bo Burnham: Inside - now that’s the pinnacle of bedroom art that you can make during a pandemic, and I’m not even going to try to compete with that shit! “If anything, this EP is supposed to be a reset as far as wherever things go from here: I just wanted to open a door, to give myself permission to do that, to almost wipe the slate clean. They’re just seven songs written in an abstract way, and it feels very freeing and easy to just share them and then move on.” In all the talk of poignancy that tends to surround Laura’s work, it feels like her brilliantly wry sense of humour is sometimes overlooked, and it’s on full display here as she confronts her questionable caffeine choices on ‘Day Old Coffee’ (“Day-old coffee microwaved to boiling, pour it on my eyeballs and boil my dumb shit brains out”) or attempts to deflect the melancholy of a situation with some excellent swearing (“Hey
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Riot.
Ian Miles from Creeper is delving into horror for his debut solo album. This one isn’t for the faint of heart. 14 Upset
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WAR
GA 22 Upset
The last 18-months, like for so many, put a temporary pause on Wage War’s ascent, but channeling that into a new album, ‘Manic’, they look set to soar higher than ever before. Words: Steven Loftin. Words: Blake Jones.
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Invigorated by the need to try something new, Tom Morello has roped in a bunch of his talented mates for latest album, ‘The Atlas Underground Fire’. Words: Jamie MacMillan.
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ockdown turned everything upside down for pretty much everyone on the planet last year, and being a global rock superstar gave little extra protection. For Tom Morello, a life of creativity and performance came screeching to an abrupt halt and, for the first time in forty years, he was facing up to an immediate future that held no shows and no recording sessions in sight. For a man that’s restlessly sought to create and perform for his entire musical career, it was a huge shock to the system - and that’s even before beginning to tackle the challenges of getting through a global killer pandemic. Facing up to an extended period away from music, inspiration came from the unlikeliest of sources. “Yeah, I have to thank Kanye West for this…” begins Tom as we catch up
with him over Zoom, laughing as he delivers perhaps one of the most unexpected things you will hear all year. The opening ‘The Atlas Underground’ record, released back in 2018, sought to continue pushing electric guitar music forwards in the manner that Morello has always hungered for. Fusing his trademark futuristic riff sounds with EDM and artists as varied as K. Flay, Steve Aoki, Marcus Mumford and Killer Mike, it always felt like merely the first chapter in a new era of sound exploration. And, with plans afoot for a follow-up even before it was released, it could only take the hard reset of a global lockdown to derail it. Even despite having a recording studio at home, Tom laughs as he describes his complete lack of ability to work it. “I’m not an engineer!” he grins, before describing the moment where he
realised the potential in his hand. “I heard Kanye had recorded some of his vocals on the voice memo app on his phone,” he says today, “And I thought, well I can’t work a studio, and I can’t run a mixing board or use Pro Tools. But I can hit this red button on an app…” A moment that he describes as like facing a long drought of creativity suddenly began to look more fertile territory. Recording riffs into his phone and sending them around the globe, his world began to open up once more. “All of a sudden, it turned this time of isolation, anxiety and fear of both the American political scene and an open-ended global plague into a life-raft and an anti-depressant,” he says, “and it became a way through the storm.” And an escape too. “We were trying to keep the grandmas alive and keep the kids from going
crazy from virtual school,” he explains. “And there are two insane dogs on the premises. So my house is part nursing home, part day-care centre and part kennel. I would escape that for ninety minutes a day to rock some riffs into my phone and send that to who knows where.” That ability to send his ideas and riffs around the world really took off, for ‘The Atlas Underground Fire’ is a truly global affair. As Tom reels off the guest list, it’s hard not to be pretty dazzled at the logistics. Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Vedder might have proved to be relatively easy catches in their US bases, but many came from further afield. Dennis Lyxzén of Refused fame worked on the record from Sweden, Palestinian DJ Sama’ Abdulhadi combined her work with hiding from the
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THE
COURT Trivium’s new album ‘In the Court of the Dragon’ is a grand affair that sees them delve into myths and legends. Words: Steven Loftin. Photos: Mike Dunn.
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THE
DRA
M
OF
AGON
yths are great. You don’t have to into Dungeons and Dragons to appreciate a good tale. Hell, take a look on social media, and people are constantly making up their own under the guise of ‘fake news’. Even Trivium are no strangers to digging into the world’s myths, notably on 2008’s ‘Shogun’, but this time around, they’re the ones with legendary pen in hand. ‘In The Court Of The Dragon’ is not only Trivium’s foray into the dizzy heights of doubledigit album releases, but also them slapping down some solid proof of their stoic charge to the top of metal’s ranks. It’s also easy to forget that it’s not actually been that long since releasing ‘What The Dead Men Say’ just last year. Unable to tour it, they instead ended up hunkering down in their shiny new hangar in Florida, focusing on creating their tenth outing. Bassist Paolo Gregoletto has been integral to getting the band to this point. Since joining back in 2004, at the height of the initial Trivium mania, none are more positioned than he to note that “this album is a sum of everything we’ve learned over the years.” Indeed, Trivium appear to keep hitting stride after stride, and ‘In The Court Of The Dragon’ is no exception. Loosely tying things together with their own mythology and massively luxurious classic painting to boot, the metaphorical dragon of Trivium has smoke unfurling from its nostrils, ready to breathe the big
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DOOM MERC -HANT Wade MacNeil is back with his new solo project Dooms Children, his most personal and revealing to date.
Words: Alexander Bradley. Photo: Rashad Bedeir.
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t started with a tweet. “Drunk. Miserable. Depressed. August 4, 2019,” read the caption accompanying a photo of Wade MacNeil onboard a plane, drink in hand, with a wincing, pained expression on his tired face. The thread that followed confirmed that he had been to rehab to tackle head-on his addiction and depression as soon as he finished touring with Alexisonfire in January 2020. “I feel ok in my own skin for maybe the first time in my life. I woke up happy this morning. IT’S FUCKED,” he tweeted three months after the time in rehab before concluding the thread by quoting Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’: “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in,” he wrote. From that light that got in, the spark, that bit of magic, comes Dooms Children. It’s a project saturated in colour as a
direct contrast to the dark place it was first conceived. The music is part of the healing process, and knowing that goes some way to explaining why there is a lot of looking back to move forward anchoring this self-titled album. It allows for moments of brutal honesty, like singing, “My father cried when he dropped me off at rehab / Caused so much pain I didn’t even know,” in the opening line of ‘Psyche Hospital Blues’. It’s performed by Wade in a lush blonde wig while straddling his motorbike in the music video; serious, but don’t take it too seriously. There was a need to make ‘Dooms Children’ to get the songs and thoughts out of his head, but now that they are, Wade is in a completely different astral realm where he is sober, happy, and thriving.
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CAN’
ESCAPE THE WAVES 40 Upset
T Bullet For My Valentine are at their most visceral for their self-titled seventh album. This is the start of Bullet 2.0. Words: Jack Press. Photo: Fiona Garden.
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