Negative Frame: The Big Icebreaker
A hardcore singer in leather trousers. While this sounds more like the punchline to a great joke, this was actually Kesari Gorin for NEGATIVE FRAME’s first-ever show in 2017. “It was funny,” Kesari reminisces, “trying to wear fucking leather trousers. I didn’t realise how hot it’d get on stage. Never doing that again.”
You’re unlikely to find many other punchlines to NEGATIVE FRAME, a band whose DNA is so deeply rooted in standing up for people and doing the right thing. The day after chatting to Distorted Sound, the London-based metallic hardcore quintet headlined an Alzheimer’s UK Fundraiser near Liverpool. “We love doing shows like that with a good cause,” Kesari says. They were also in the first group of bands to pull out of Download 2024, alongside the likes of PEST CONTROL, SCOWL and SPEED, due to the festival’s payment partnership with Barclays, which was accused of “investing in arms manufacturers supplying weapons used by Israel in Gaza”. “We’re not political,” Kesari says, “but stuff like that, it’s not even politics. When there’s a genocide, it’s not politics; it’s human. It doesn’t benefit us pulling out, it’s just kind of the bare minimum for us is to do the right thing, you know.”
After pulling out of Download, which would have been their biggest festival appearance to date, guitarist Olly Coyne started writing Heavens Blue off their debut album, Break The Ice, released in August. “It’s a great thing and it [the boycott] very much needed to happen, but it was still sad. We pulled out of a massive fest,” Olly says. “So I sat in this room and wrote the start of the acoustic track. But then, my girlfriend’s friend died in a motorcycle crash. And I wrote this melodic part in the introduction. What’s going on always feeds into what we’re doing.”
Grief, and the kaleidoscope of pain it causes, is densely woven into Break The Ice, as the album traverses themes of personal struggle, addiction, isolation, loss and suicide. “Grief is a hard one to work with because you either get angry or you’re in denial. But that’s the whole thing, it’s working through it in different ways, finding some way to let go – obviously not forgetting – but working through the pain,” Kesari says, who lost his mate at the age of 18, and while he’s “snuck” onto previous NEGATIVE FRAME tracks, Cut Throat and Cold Nights are the first tracks specifically for him. “Everyone’s lost people, everyone’s got their own demons and things going on in their head. So hopefully if people listen, they can relate to it and work through it positively,” whether that’s quietly at home with a Break The Ice vinyl or trying to out-spin kick Kesari at a show.
Live, NEGATIVE FRAME are a bulldozing force of chaos. Olly’s Chapman guitar is a sight for sore eyes with the number of scratches it has gained since that first show nine years ago, and Kesari cartwheels across the stage like someone who couldn’t possibly have a physical disability – even though he was born with bilateral congenital talipes. “It has definitely gotten worse since we started the band,” Kesari says. “For a one-off show, we’ll get on stage, and we’ll all go crazy, and I’ll do my little spin kicks. But then people don’t see the next day when I’m struggling to stand up. I obviously can’t let it get in the way – there are loads of people with disabilities in the metal and hardcore scene. So hopefully, whatever I go through, it can just help people realise they can come to a show and not feel left out.
“But it’s horrible. Even on this last European tour [with KENYA], I had to use a fucking walking stick for loads of it. And it’s hard, having people see me hobbling around the show with a stick and then I get on stage and do a spin kick, and everyone’s like, ‘what’s going on here?’ It’s embarrassing as hell, but it’s just one of those things.” There might be a future opportunity for some crowd-killing with a walking stick at shows. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it,” Kesari half-laughs, half-seriously reflects. “And because I’m disabled, they can’t hit me back, can they?”
But it won’t be a case of either spin kick or get the stick, because NEGATIVE FRAME are unshakeable. “If people don’t move, it’s not going to take us out of the zone. You just lock in. You get in the zone. You do your thing. If you’re not getting the reaction you want, you treat it as a practice. You just fucking ignore the crowd, even though it’s for them. It’s still performing, but you just ignore them and do the best you can.” And right now, nothing beats the London (and UK) hardcore scene. “I think London’s on fire,” Olly says. “We have New River Studios, New Cross Inn, Camden Underworld…We have so many great spots in London, and it’s the heart, you know. We have Rukshin Records. We’ve got everything here…I love it.’’
After nine years of writing, Break The Ice, so titled because it’s going to “break the ice with the people we don’t know yet,” Kesari explains matter-of-factly, is here. And it’s positively dripping in dark melodies, grooved-up riffs, and a banging tablas (classical Indian hand drums) intro. It’s musical catnip to anyone with a propensity for that metallic hardcore sweet spot. So go find a stranger, grab a cup of vodka and give them a big cheers to break the ice before talking about NEGATIVE FRAME, the hardcore band from London about to break through much more than just ice.
Break The Ice is out now via Bloodblast. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS132 here.
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