As December Falls: Join The Club

Despite the name, AS DECEMBER FALLS make the kind of pop-punk that’s perfect for enjoying out in summer, whether it’s in a park with friends on the stereo or with almost ten thousand people crammed into a sweaty, sweltering tent at Download this year for their first ever appearance at the festival. “We’ve all grown up with this festival,” vocalist Bethany Hunter smiles. “It’s just down the road from us as we’re all from Nottingham.” The turnout, too, was massive; “there’s always a flow of people at festivals, so when the band before leaves we were sat side stage like everyone’s going, are they going to come back? But as soon as we walked out and played that first song, I saw masses of people swarming into the tent, and just thought; this is insane.”

When we sit down with her over Zoom, it’s barely 48 hours removed from that set and the festival tiredness has well and truly caught up, but she’s still elated about it; not only their debut Download show but a packed out third stage sang back every word to them. It’s all the more special when you understand just where AS DECEMBER FALLS came from. Over the last eighteen months they’ve seemingly been everywhere, but it’s been a hard slog for them to get here, not least because they did this the hardest way possible – totally independent.

Since starting in 2014, they’ve remained fiercely DIY, with no label backing and funding the band through a combination of day jobs and a Patreon community, through their desire to make AS DECEMBER FALLS a community as much as it is a band. Their self-titled debut album from 2019 showed a band with a lot to say, but its momentum was stunted by what we all know happened after, while 2021’s Happier was released at the height of the pandemic during lockdowns, and despite its title was a far more morose affair, often wallowing in sadness despite its sugary hooks. But now, it’s all coming together. In fact, “the last month [up to Download] has been the most hectic month for us ever,” she grins, “because everything just came all at once, it finally feels like we’re getting just a little bit of something.”

That “little bit of something” includes a huge win for independent music; they took home the Best UK Breakthrough Artist award at this year’s Heavy Music Awards, something she’s still reeling from, as she exclaims. “We definitely weren’t expecting it! Honestly, when they said our name, we were all looking at each other saying wait, wait, wait did they say us?” Two weeks after standing, looking bewildered but elated on the HMA stage, to bringing the party to Download? “It was a crazy couple of weeks!” This caps off what’s been their biggest, most successful chapter to date, as they prepare to release their third album, Join The Club, which is poised to launch the quartet even further.

“We absolutely love our first two albums,” she explains of why Join The Club is something of a fresh start, “but I feel like now we’ve grown up and we know what we want to be doing. The first album, we were all so young; we were uni students with no money spending every night in a bar, so that’s what it was about. The second, it’s a lot more serious because it was written in lockdown. But we’re a fun band, we’re a dancey band, we want everyone to have a little party when they’re with us. So this one’s much more positive.”

From the title alone, it’s obvious the band are taking fans, new and old, along for the ride, just as they always have done. Being independent and using Patreon to fund the band, it’s made sure those ties between fans and band are incredibly strong; “we basically used our fans for our label on this one, we’ve been so collaborative with them,” Bethany explains. “We really want fans to feel part of this big community, to join the club and be on this journey with us.” That isn’t empty bluster either; through their Patreon, AS DECEMBER FALLS engaged their fans across the entire album’s creative cycle.

“Every couple of months we had Zoom calls with them, we’d show them bits of songs and ask, what are we liking? What’s the one that made you say, that’s exciting, let’s listen to that? When we first showed them Mayday they were all going crazy,” she smiles, “they were like, this is the best thing you’ve done!” While it wasn’t as much as getting their input into the songs themselves – the band do that all themselves, with plenty of input from each other into every part, though Bethany handles all the lyrics – but music videos, for instance, had plenty of fan input. “We’d send them two, maybe three edits and ask which do you prefer, which do you think fans will like? It’s been so collaborative the whole time.”

Thematically, while she does describe Join The Club as a much happier record, there’s still the band addressing heavier topics like mental health, such as on one of their recent singles, Little By Little. Rather than wallowing, as Happier did, though, there’s still a theme of togetherness and things getting better. “That one speaks to me a lot,” Bethany says of Little By Little. “It’s about one of my closest friends having a really tough time, and how with the help of me and the band, we got them through it. And yeah, you fall back, it’s not an easy ride. That’s what mental health is, but we’re still here for them.”

Elsewhere, Mayday addresses her own struggles; “yeah it’s super dancey, heavy and you can mosh to it, but it’s about how I was really struggling with social anxiety coming out of lockdown. I was suddenly scared to get the tram to go into town; the lyrics at the beginning are me saying I’m comfortable with staying in my house forever, and how that’s really not okay.” Those through-lines of overcoming struggle, as well as finding community, such as the title track’s refrain of “I’m so sad but that’s okay,” or “joined the club so guess I’ll stay”, might not be unique but with the band, they clearly mean every word about building that big community to come together.

Their staunch independence has helped, too; forging fan relationships where fans “know it’s us doing [everything]”, from packing merch orders (“we don’t have a house, we live in a cardboard kingdom,” she laughs at one point) to replying to DMs on social media and it invests fans in their success; “they were all messaging us, not to say great set, but ‘I’m proud of you’. They remember seeing us in rooms with twenty people and now we’re in a ten thousand capacity tent.” For all their hard work finally paying off, “we still doubt ourselves every single day,” she smiles wanly, but they’ve got a constantly-growing fanbase behind them, that know the band have built everything from the ground up and set themselves up for success, and are determined to take their fans with them.

Join The Club is out now via self-release. 

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