Live4ever Presents: After Independent Venue Week, The Howlers talk recent past and burgeoning future


As always happens at the start of a new calendar year, a clutch of bands come to the fore fighting for attention. Dark garage rock is on the rise, and there are a host of acts flying the flag.

The latest members of this pantheon are naught more than embryos in the music scene; drummer Cameron Black joined his university colleagues Adam Young (vocals, guitar) and Gus Ter Braak (bass) in the late summer of 2018 and together the trio, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of their former moniker Scrubs, have become The Howlers.

As part of Independent Venue Week, the trio put the cap on an impressive week having supported indie mainstays The Rifles at a sold-out Borderline in the heart of London by going west for their own headline show at Bristol’s The Lanes. For our Live4ever Presents… series, we caught up with the band before this show to hear all about their recent past and burgeoning future.

Howlers

16 Beasly Street




So you guys have had a good week!

Adam: Sort of yeah. I was ill towards the beginning of the week, so we had to cancel our headline gig in London. But we had The Rifles at the Borderline which was sold out, so that was cool.

And how were the gigs?

Cam: The Borderline was great, really really good. Good sound and stuff. We were a bit off. It felt sloppy for me.

Adam: It was sloppy, but that gig was a highlight. BBC Introducing for the area said it was a highlight of the festival. There was a magazine reviewing the festival that said our set was a highlight. Even though we were sloppy, even when we’re s**t we’re good. It was packed anyway.

So, how did you meet?

Adam: We met in London.

Cam: Me and Adam met in 2015 when we went to uni. We kind of f**ked about for a year or two.

Adam: We were just taking Libertines songs and re-writing them.



Gus: We f**ked about for two years without a drummer, and our housemate played bass for a while and I was playing drums. We started the band with a guy called Sam, then after half a year we got Cam in. We did the first EP with Sam, and we got Cam in about five months ago.

Adam: We all bonded over different interests. Me and Gus like the 00s indie stuff. Me and Cam bonded over Afrofunk, and those two bonded over Led Zeppelin and stuff. So we all bonded with each other. We all like pretty much the same stuff, but that is the stuff we grew up listening to. And it just so happens that’s the stuff that we have the most inroads to.

When we walked onstage and supported The Rifles…the fans have never heard anything like us so we’ve got to be…it takes a lot of balls to do. Most gigs aren’t scary, but when you’re walking out on stage to a crowd who you know are loyal to their band, you have to be unbelievably good to turn them. It is a bit daunting but I think we’ve found our groove.

You were called Scrubs initially. Why the name change?

Adam: There’s a couple of reasons as to why we chose that name at the time. But me and Gus were living right by Wormwood Scrubs prison, so that was why we picked it. Then we moved and brought Cam in, so it felt like a rebirth, and that we needed a new name.

Adam: We had that name before we wrote these tunes. That name sort of carried on while we wrote these tunes, but it was sort of wearing thin. Every night I’d have to say it and it just felt horrible.

So why The Howlers?

Adam: We moved out to East London and there’s a pub around the corner called Howling At The Moon.

Gus: It’s where Arctic Monkeys recorded the Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High video.

Adam: We only realised when we were drinking there, there’s a big photo of Alex Turner in the bathroom. We debated it (the name) p*ssed in the corridor next to the toilet. It came from that. These boys weren’t 100% on it for ages, but it’s grown on them.

What are you trying to achieve with the music?

Adam: Ourselves, the Blinders and the Wytches are a genre that is being formed, or given a re-birth, the garage surf sound, but is combined with darker themes. But we’re not political. Us and the Blinders both pay homage to the Wytches in a sense of where we take some influences from, but we’ve both gone our separate ways. Our songs are open to interpretation. I write the lyrics, but I write them in a way where I have a thing in mind. But then once it all comes together, that thing could be about something else.

Cam: Look at Fat White Family, for instance. They are very staunch, brilliant lyrics and political view. But they’re disgusting, and they write about whatever they want to write about. They don’t put all their eggs in that one basket. Not to say the Blinders do, that is their message and we respect that.

On that, how does the songwriting work?

Adam: I wheel a skeleton into a room and say ‘put some meat on that.’ I’ll have an intro riff, an idea of how the lyrics are going to go, but I don’t know anything drums. I know a little bit about bass but he (Gus) always changes it anyway so it doesn’t matter.

What’s the plan this year?

Gus: We’ve recorded six songs. It’s probably going to be singles. We do want to do singles. You do an EP, it’s four songs, but you do want a single.

Cam: We’ve got a lot of plans. We’ve finished off the tour. We’ve done a lot of shows since I joined the band. My first gig we played to about two people, then ten gigs later we played at the O2 Academy in Birmingham. The Nottingham gig at Rock City at the end of February is going to be our biggest show yet, and our biggest crowd.

Where are you hoping to be in 12 months’ time?

Gus: Fyre Festival headliners! If we release new tunes, we’ve got some PR stuff behind us. Hopefully it’ll get to radio and to bigger audiences.

Adam: We’ve signed to a Sheffield label called These Bloody Thieves. They absolutely love what we’re doing. In the studio we did a b-side, one take. It’s something that’s been knocking about for a long time. He’s always liked it. That was half-finished the day before we went into the studio.

Adam: We’ve got a few gigs lined up, in terms of possible festivals. We’re doing Thousand Island in London and Camden Rocks, which is a massive festival. We hope that people like it, and we’re pretty sure that people will.

You can’t control what people think, all you can do is keep playing.

(Richard Bowes)

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