Microwave: Let’s Start A New Era

Ever since their formation in 2012, MICROWAVE have been mostly playing it safe. But Portals, the opening song on their fourth album, Let’s Start Degeneracy, is a unique one for the band.

“The lyrics are sung by my girlfriend, Blaire,” explains vocalist/guitarist Nathan Hardy. “The JOHNNY CASH cover of that song was playing, and she was singing along with it. I thought it sounded really cool. I had never heard the last verse that sounds super scary and foreboding, and I thought the lyrics were hard as hell. I thought it would fit and I liked the how the lyrics could be recontextualised on the themes of our album, and I recorded it and put it in the key of Ferrari, which is the second song on our album.”

The idea of having Portals as the opening song was so it was clear to fans of MICROWAVE that this album was very different to anything that the band have put out previously, which is emphasised by transitioning into the second song Ferrari, before going into the traditional sound of MICROWAVE. This is before the album then returns into the strange and experimental side of things.

One of those songs is called LSD. “The song was recounting a psychedelic experience where I was reevaluating my life and my principles and intentions,” Nathan explains. But it isn’t related to the title of the album, which is a quote from a Conservative politician’s take on drugs in 1970. Nathan is keen to stress that “we made an effort to not be too on the nose with the acronym LSD because I feel like it’s cooler if it isn’t obvious or on the nose. But it’s broad and we were just trying to set the scene of where we were coming from with the time period that we made the songs.”

The title track of the album was the hardest song to write because there were multiple versions of it, and the song itself is very experimental. “That and the sound-scape songs were not necessarily the hardest ones to write, but they were challenging. But the easiest song to write was Bored Of Being Sad as it was like a song that we have done a bunch of times, with a more traditional MICROWAVE dynamic as we knew how we’d like the song to sound like.”

Nathan explains that the band chose the song as their first single because everyone in the band agreed that the song has the sound that most MICROWAVE fans will be familiar with, as it is a high energy song. He also highlights the song Circling The Drain, which was the first song that the band wrote coming out of the pandemic. “We put out a record in 2019, and then a few months later in 2020, our headline tour was cancelled, so it felt like we were smacked down,” Nathan laughs.

He says that the band have got progressively more experimental and smooth and controlled to some extent. “We’ve tried to venture into more interesting production concepts, and it is a part of trying to grow and develop as a person.”

But he admits that this album could have sounded a lot more different to its relaxed and chill vibe. “We were working on another handful of songs that were heavier and of a similar path to our last record and going down towards the heavy doom sound. But those songs were just not getting finished, and then we decided to work on the new, chill songs, and it worked really well.”

“My songwriting on this album was discovered in the process of working on it, as I am always writing and collecting words and phrases out of context. Once I have the melody for a new song, I go through this long document of out-of-context words and phrases and cherry pick the best ones. The lines that fit in will relate to each other and it is like uncovering a fossil. It’s a surprise to me too to some extent. I read somewhere in a book that if a writer knows what is going to happen in their novel, then the reader will as well. It has to be a surprise to you as the writer, which I have carried over to songwriting.”

Let’s Start Degeneracy has also opened the doors to new sounds for MICROWAVE. “There’s a lot more in the tank for us. We could collaborate with some musicians in the near future, and it would be fun to keep going down that same sonic ally and try to do a few more chill indie rock songs. And then maybe we’ll make a doom metal record after that,” Nathan laughs.

There is a major difference between the physical and digital versions of the album. On the physical version of the album, Santeria is a hidden track that closes the album, whereas on the digital version, the song Huperzine closes the album. Nathan explains that because Santeria was already released digitally as a stand-alone song, it didn’t make sense for it to be a closing track on the digital versions of the album. “We were stoked when Santeria came out as it got a lot of positive reception, and I was happy with how it turned out. But Huperzine is a groovy, reflective song. A lot of the lyrics are about saying goodbye, so it made sense for it to be at the end of the album.”

With a tour in both the UK and America this year and a new album out, MICROWAVE are making sure that 2024 is a year that they will always remember. This is just the start of an exciting new chapter in the band’s career.

Let’s Start Degeneracy is out now via Pure Noise Records.

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