GroundCulture: Trauma Can Teach

Upon hearing a band for the first time it’s a natural reaction to try and make comparisons or pigeonhole them into a genre but the lovable Geordie’s in GROUNDCULTURE are not the kind of band which comfortably slot into a pre-established mould. Throwing in all kinds of eclectic styles ranging from punk, hip-hop and rock, the Newcastle outfit traverse down their own path. “It’s hard to put us in one particular genre,” states guitarist Mattie Turner. “We try to be quite diverse and delve into so much more than just metal and incorporate a little bit of everything.”

Their self titled debut EP released back in 2018 took them on an inspirational DIY journey spanning multiple years. “It was a bit of a crazy one!” declares frontman Roy Watson. “We were just finding random spaces like kitchens and people’s bedrooms to put that together.” Mattie adds, “we wrote the EP about four years before it was released too. Sometimes being a perfectionist can be a blessing and a curse, if you hear the same thing over and over again you kind of become desensitised to it and don’t know if it’s good any more when it probably didn’t need changed to begin with.”

For their debut full length, How Well Do You Really Know Yourself?, GROUNDCULTURE have pulled out all the stops to create an emotional, uplifting release which focuses on their personal experiences and hope it can be used as a tool for others to heal. “Each song delves into our minds and particular emotions we were experiencing at different times,” explains Roy. “Every song has a different vibe or focus in both its sound and lyrically. It’s all about insecurities, past mistakes, past traumas, going down the path and loves lost. It’s a very internally aimed album.”

“One of the biggest aims for us was to make sure it didn’t sound negative,” adds Mattie. “It’s about leaving negative situations and things that are personal but flipping them to how you can progress as a person from these experiences. The track Trauma Can Teach which we did a video for is a good example of this. Using things that happen in your life and no matter how bad they are that you can still better yourself as a person. We’re really fun guys and like to take the piss a lot but the music is serious so it’s finding that right balance.”

Letting your demons free and wearing your heart on your sleeve is no easily achievable feat and this experience was a particularly emotional journey. “The process me and Mattie had to go through for this release was very emotional. It was kind of like free falling, everything is out in the open,” admits Roy. “It’s weird getting songs out there that you’ve sat on for so long that no one else has heard,” adds Mattie. “You don’t get a lot of opinions. You will get some people who obviously really like your band and will tell you what they think about it but there are a lot of people who will keep it to themselves and you won’t get anything out of them so it’s hard to judge whether the aim of what you’ve tried to do has actually helped people if they don’t tell you. You can kind of get a bit lost in it at the same time. We wish we could hear everyone’s opinions because that’s kind of the point. We want people to enjoy it and benefit from it at the same time, especially when it has been such a personal journey for us.”

Roy and Mattie have never really followed a particular process when constructing tracks. A lot of their best work has been created by feeling a particular vibe whilst sat pitching ideas. “Mattie would write a riff in the room and I would just go alongside him and run into the booth, lay down some vocals and we’d work from that,” discusses Roy. “Sometimes there has been occasions when I’ve written entire songs and brought them in to see how Mattie would interpret them. It works in different ways as we express them differently.”

“It’s a lot more fun to do it this way too rather than following a regimented process,” says Mattie. “You tend to get a good range out of that approach as you can feel the emotion in the room. Our main aim is just to write good songs. We’ve spent a lot of time focusing on hooks in songs and making sure everything fits in place, especially when it comes to choruses. If you don’t have a good song then you don’t really have anything!”

This process has been very beneficial for the band and they have amassed a considerable amount of content which could be utilised for future releases. “Mattie is an absolute demon when it comes to writing riffs, there is a lot of amazing shit there,” declares Roy. “It’s not to say they are all amazing songs but there are a load of amazing sections which we’ve built together over time.”

“Honestly, I don’t think I can explain how many songs we’ve got written,” jokes Mattie. “For the EP we wrote 64 tracks and we only used seven! We started again on the album too and wrote about another 30 tracks. When we started this band it was just me and Roy but now we have a full lineup and have George, Lewi and Josh there’s definitely a lot more input as far as the instrumental side is concerned. It’s not just me any more. George has his own studio so can write whenever he wants. Having five full heads instead of two is great. I think that’s why the album came out so much better. There were more heads around it and you can tell by the progression in our sound too. As far as the future of the band is concerned me and Roy have been doing this for the past 15 years since we were kids so there’s no stopping us any time soon. The sky is the limit!”

How Well Do You Really Know Yourself? is out now via Hopeless Records.

Like GROUNDCULTURE on Facebook.