Issue 44 / May 2014

Celebrate good times? Ah, come on. Sure, things feel pretty good
in Liverpool right now: at the time of writing, Forest Swords has just
collected the GIT Award to national acclaim, a summer ripe with festival
treats stretches before us and, hey, both of the city’s football teams are
positively resurgent. But unless you’ve been holed up in a particularly
well-sealed cave for the last few years, you’ll surely be aware that the
bigger picture is distinctly less rosy. Jobs are scarce. Food banks are rife
and, tragically, necessarily so. Our essentially unelected Prime Minister,
champion of benefit cuts and big business tax breaks, believes he is
doing the work of a god whose own acolytes depict him as an invisible
sky man who sticks to earthly concepts of work and weekends whilst
fashioning the entirety of existence.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course; if the BNP’s electoral
successes of 2009 taught us anything, it’s that we should be extremely
concerned about Nigel Farage’s increased media profile. Indeed, it
almost feels selfish to indulge in relatively trivial pastimes like pop
music right now. If music is ever going to mean anything, it should at
least have the decency to reflect and confront the reality of the times
we live in. Because right now Britain is dark. It is angry. It is sad. Right
now, no Liverpool band is engaging with those truths more explicitly
than WE CAME OUT LIKE TIGERS.
“To me this record feels like an achievement.” Bassist Mykle ‘Ollie’
Smith is discussing his band’s new EP – twenty-four minutes of rawragged
hardcore known as Ever-Crushed At Pecket’s Well. It is, quite
simply, raging. “It feels like a real statement of intent. It’s angry, it’s
fast, it’s heavy, and slow and pastoral, and it’s stark as well.”
Vocalist/violinist Simon Barr continues: “On the last record [2012’s
Agelessness And Lack] I think we were trying to play a style of music
we weren’t good enough at. This time I think we’ve finally managed
to do it right.” He’s certainly right about the latter: WCOLT’s searing,
intense take on punk rock is nothing if not eclectic, drawing from black
metal, screamo and post-rock dynamics. No punches are pulled and no
skies remain unscraped by their towering intensity. If it earns them the
epithet ‘emotional hardcore’, then that’s fair enough – an explanationcum-manifesto
on the band’s website describes their new collection
as “the angriest, saddest songs we have ever written.” It’s strange to
see those two emotional states used to convey a position of strength,
I suggest. A pensive Simon pauses for a second: “I don’t think any
emotion is black and white. A lot of the record is sad and angry about
the same thing – the state of capitalism in the world at the moment,
and the terrible things we have to live with. I guess I’m angry because
they make me sad as well. It’s good to feel strong emotions and it’s
good to be passionate – and it’s good to be angry.”
The manifesto also points the finger at the current state of punk
rock, calling out unnamed bands that “fawn over pornographers”
in exchange for appearances in nu-emo lad mags whilst apparently
seeing no irony in paying lip service to a safe-space-focussed
radicalism. It’s difficult not to interpret that as a sense of disillusion,
although guitarist Fabian Devlin immediately disagrees. “We don’t feel
let down by hardcore or punk, because there’s so many positive people
involved in it,” he says, fixing me with a fiery, unblinking stare. “It’s just
disappointing to be let down by the people who – you think – think the
same as you, and find people behaving in ways that are the complete
opposite of what you think’s acceptable.” “At the minute,” nods Ollie,
“hardcore’s more of a fashion statement than a group of ideals that
people live their lives by.”
So has punk’s ostensibly political core been worn away by
apathy? Again, Fabian doesn’t hesitate. “I think complacency is
as dangerous as apathy. To assume that everybody in the room is
anti-capitalist and anti-fascist, against sexism and patriarchy… it’s an
incredibly dangerous thing to do, because you have to continually
reinforce those ideas. As soon as you let one thing slide, you can
lose everything.”
“There’s a huge problem with liberalism being reinterpreted as
radicalism,” continues Fabian. “You see it on the internet all the time,
where people say ‘I have my opinion and you have yours, let’s all get
along’. That’s bullshit! If your opinion is that it’s OK to exploit people,
then you’re not fucking welcome at punk shows! It’s as simple as that!”
To some, this will no doubt seem little more than small-scene dogma;
a puritanical, exclusionary attitude propped up by student politics. But
to the trio of close friends at the heart of We Came Out Like Tigers, this
is about far more than ill-considered poses and transitory ideals. This
is a way of life. They believe in punk rock because it nurtured them
and provided them with an ever-growing network of friends and likeminded
souls. It’s afforded them the opportunity to travel the UK and
Europe, to spaces where these codified principles are not designed as
rhetorical bullshit, but as conduits for a more egalitarian way of living.
Disagree with ‘em all you want, but you can’t knock their conviction.
“We talk a lot about single-issue politics,” explains Simon, shedding
some light on the frequent intra-band exchanges of ideas. “Like just
being a feminist, or just
being into animal rights. I think punks often
have the façade of being switched on – like you can be vegan, or straight
edge – but when you look into why those things are happening, they’re
just not looking at all. It’s cool that we have a DIY scene, but the DIY
scene should be a place we can organise to make the world better. I
believe in punk!”
Surely this sense of frustration must leave the band feeling isolated
from the vast majority of their musical peers, though? The singer
laughs warmly. “It’s not my every waking thought. You have different
friends for different situations; I have friends that I like to be around
who don’t talk about politics. You can’t be angry all the fucking time,
and you can’t just define who you are as being angry about things. You
still have to find beauty and joy and love in life.” Fabian nods. “One
thing punk rock has is that sense of community, and you gain so much
from that. There’s no denying that.”
Perhaps this underlying positivity, hidden though it may be under
larynx-lacerating screams and crushingly bleak guitar scree, is what
makes WCOLT such an exhilarating joy: that barely perceptible mote
of optimism that separates them from the cry-wanking legions of
faux-punk moaners, indicating that their sadness and anger come not
from a place of narcissistic self-immolation, but rather a sincere belief
that things could and should be better. It’s certainly borne out by the
band’s endless sense of determination, as Simon sums up: “It’s hard
sometimes, there’s so many obstacles [to overcome] to keep your
band going. But no matter how hard it gets I’m adamant that I wanna
play punk rock. I wanna do that for a long time. It’s not just a hobby. I
feel like we’re just getting going.”
So listen to Ever-Crushed At Pecket’s Well. Soak it up. Feel it seep in.
Amidst all the darkness it so adroitly reflects, let that sense of hope
take root. Then tell yourself: this is only the beginning.
Ever-Crushed At Pecket’s Well is out now via Dog Knights
Productions.
wecameoutliketigers.co.uk