Graphic Nature: Dealing In Discomfort
GRAPHIC NATURE only have about six or seven proper songs to their name, but they already have a visual style distinctly their own. Their music videos are all awash in blue and black, evoking the palette used by the nostalgic classics of early 2000s action films like Underworld. And their sound? Well the Kent five-piece takes a little bit from that era too, with the band falling somewhere between the emerging worlds of nu-metalcore and neo-industrial bands like VEIN.FM and a bit of CODE ORANGE. But for a band in their infancy, they have an incredibly polished sound and fearless stage presence befitting a band that’s been around three times as long. And to stand out in this day and age, with a tsunami of incredible metal acts emerging from England all at once, fearlessness is truly the key all the way around.
“You can’t be afraid to pull from everywhere that inspires and excites you,” says frontman Harvey Freeman. “Two of my friends’ bands, STATIC DRESS and MODERN ERROR, are two bands that are literally pulling sound from all directions to create their music. Today, you can have a bill with four bands and they’ll say ‘this is our heaviest song’ and then say ‘this is an electro song we made,’ or, ‘this is some crazy interlude.’ It’s so refreshing, and if we don’t enjoy the music we play and pull from what we love, what’s the point?”
The point may be hard to pin down in the midst of a now two year, ever evolving pandemic and an English scene literally exploding with new talent. From SLEEP TOKEN to VEXED to VENOM PRISON and beyond, there’s no shortage of bands all working their way to the top of the metal community’s collective consciousness. But for Freeman, GRAPHIC NATURE isn’t here to try to push anyone out of their lane, but rather rise on the same tide as their peers.
“It’s never really bothered me to see bands of our genre going farther or not doing as well as us,” he explains. “It’s all subjective. People will either like one band and not like another. Jealousy shouldn’t be a thing, and we’re all going to get to the same point if we put in the work. Putting someone else down to build yourself up, I don’t think that really works. The bands I’ve grown to know are getting bigger than us and I love that. They deserve it and they make great music.”
The landscape of metalcore has changed vastly even over just the last five years. Groove and atmosphere are two things being brought back to the forefront as the generation that grew up with nu-metal bands like DEFTONES and KORN are starting to form bands of their own. Freeman should know best of all, the 30 year old’s band is named after a DEFTONES track from Koi No Yokan. And when it comes to bringing it all back around and what’s old is new (nu) again, he actually expresses a very surprising desire that reverses the tried and true method of metal discovery over decades.
“I want people to see GRAPHIC NATURE and come out and say ‘holy shit, that was sick! I want to go listen to DEFTONES, or KORN, or SLIPKNOT‘, and to be that gateway band for them to get into heavy music, as opposed to the other way around, but if it happens that way, of course that’s cool too,” he laughs.
It makes logical sense with the atmosphere and groove the band already brings in spade on their new EP, new skin. In the same way KORN made us bounce and made our skin crawl, GRAPHIC NATURE aims for the same target. “We want to convey this almost uncomfortable feeling between songs,” says Freeman. “You can get a band that’ll play a seven song set, and in between each song they’ll speak and tune up, and just repeat that. I’ll speak to you when I’m ready to speak, and if the music needs to breathe, I’m not going to say a word and I’ll just stay there in complete euphoria along with the crowd. Having that moment with the crowd while the backing track plays is so important.”
But perhaps the other thing separating this new wave of English bands from their past idols and influences is just how socially conscious they are, and how they recognize just how important that is in how they construct their image and their brand. “You just have to be fucking real as a band,” says Freeman. “And you have to have a good message. Lots of bands I listen to or know have a solid message behind their work, and for us, it’s a lot of mental health issues which fuels our music and lyrics. That’s the most important thing to me; to have a platform where I can express how I feel about these things, and then have someone listen and maybe reach out and say ‘I feel those things as well, can we talk?’ or ‘I didn’t expect you guys to be so heavily into speaking about living with mental illness.’ I want to start up the conversation with our listeners, and its so, so important now more than ever to talk about mental health.”
Longevity is the name of the game, and if GRAPHIC NATURE are aiming for longevity, perhaps they can learn from the band that created their namesake. If there’s a band known for constantly re-working their way to the forefront of metal media through art and hard work, it’s DEFTONES. But what does Freeman know he can learn from them to set his band apart?
“It’s the atmosphere they create, and that no two songs sound the same. And its their perseverance. And that’s what gives us the biggest high; the perseverance to work through the rough patches and create something sick.”
new skin is out now via Rude Records.
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