Meet Those Fucking Snowflakes.
As self-described on their Bandcamp page, they’re ‘a post-hardcore,
calculator-punk band from Blackpool, formed late 2018, shouting about some
stuff that’s made them vexed’.
Dressed in dishevelled suits and blond wigs while sporting tracks
titled ‘Boris Johnson and the Big Red Bus of Bullshit’, this band make no attempts
to hide their political views (personally, I get the sense that they’re not big
Bojo fans – but, hey, that’s just a hunch.).
A lot of other musicians recently from Stormzy to Idles have been voicing
their disdain for the current Tory government. However, I don’t think any band
has quite taken things to such comically caustic extremes as Those Fucking Snowflakes.
In fact, it’s quite thrilling to hear a band in 2020 that’s this outspoken (it’s
not just Tories that experience their wrath either, but also Trump, meat-eaters
and Morrisey).
It helps that they’ve also got some exciting musicianship to offer. Their new EP Straight Wealthy White Male Suffrage kicks off with twangy Nirvana-esque guitars and then dives into some turbulent distorted riffage more akin to TPTBUTET all within the first minute, setting the tone for the chaos to come. It’s raw and punky, but equally intricate and proggy. You can stream the EP below.
I decided to do a Q and A with the band to find out more about their
‘calculator punk’ sound, their political views and the music they’ve been
listening to recently. You can check out the interview below.
If Those
Fucking Snowflakes was a pizza, what toppings would it have?
BP (vocals/guitar): Vegan gammon, jalapeños and
the contents of an Oven Ready Brexit Deal. No cheese.
Your new EP Straight Wealthy White
Male Suffrage is a lot of fun! What was the writing and recording process like?
BP: The writing part was good, we practice
weekly and just thrash the basic ideas out. ‘Weak Men Fear Strong Women’ took
us a while to finish writing as there was a lot of counting and time signature
fiddling in the middle bit whereas as ‘Meat Is Murder But Morrissey Is A Dickhead’
was done in one practice, we never meant to record it - it was just a cheap
laugh for us. ‘Boris Johnson and the Big Red Bus of Bullshit’ was the second
song we wrote as a band, it used to be called ‘Slow Song’ as it was pretty slow
but that changed pretty quickly. You can still hear echoes of what it was at
the very end.
The recording was less fun, the drums and
guitars were done in our practice room in one day in January 2020 (maybe early
Feb) and it was freezing with the wind coming through the windows - I couldn’t
feel my hands by the end of the day but wanted to get it all done. Doing the
vocals was odd, we did them in the cupboard at Shaun’s house - the kids were
there at one point so hopefully they didn’t hear any lyrics. Shaun is setting
up a proper recording room in Blackpool town centre now under the name REC, so
it should be warmer next time.
DW (bass/vocals): Recording this one was weird,
in hindsight we recorded it at just the right time. There were a couple of
issues with the bass tracks and we were planning on going back and fixing them
but then lockdown happened, and we couldn't meet up again. Luckily Shaun was
able to do something with what we had already, and it turned out fine. If we
had left it a week or so later to start, we would have been screwed.
What’s lockdown been like in
Blackpool? How has the pandemic affected the band?
BP: We couldn’t practice for a
while as our room is above a pub, so we were shut down - so about 9 or 10 songs
got written at home and we’ve been working through them all since we got back
in the room in June (I think it was June, time passes strangely at the moment)
but we are catching up - two of the lockdown songs are being recorded next week
for a new EP. All our gigs were cancelled as well, and we have nothing booked
yet. It’s frustrating but necessary.
It seems like business as usual here in
Blackpool though, there’s tourists, all the tourist stuff is open - it’s quite
worrying, nobody seems to be exercising any caution really. There’s definitely
a second wave on the horizon. Might stock up on the chickpeas now.
DW: I'm not sure Blackpool is any worse than
anywhere else, maybe we have a few more people coming on their holidays. I was
in Southport over the weekend and it was just as bad, but posher.
You guys label your sound as
‘calculator punk’. What does it take to become a calculator punk band?
BP: We need about 7 x 50 to do it. It’s
basically just trying to overcomplicate your songs as much as possible, makes
them more fun to play - adding odd changes and trying different time signatures
whilst still sounding like easy to play punk music. Never settling on a
standard song structure and trying to find different ways to play the songs
other than 3 chords in 4/4. It’s not very easy listening though but we enjoy
it.
DW: There's lots of counting. It's awful.
You guys aren’t shy about your
political opinions. Have any Tory music listeners ever taken offence to your
music? What would you do if Boris Johnson turned up at one of your gigs?
BP: At our second or third gig a
punk suggested we ‘drop the political stuff as people won’t like it’, we didn’t
obviously.
The band started just to get all these
frustrations captured into a medium where I can literally scream the anger out
and leave that feeling of helplessness trapped within the song. It’s less political
statements and more expressions of fear and loathing. These are things that
bother us but you can only spend so much time arguing pointlessly on twitter
about it, we’ve stated how we feel if people disagree that’s fine.
I’ve always been a great believer in trapping
your anger and sadness in a song and leaving it there so you can go about your
life and only bring it out when you play the song, I had the same approach with
one of my last bands but the thing that bothered me more then was dealing with
depression and sadness so the songs were more personal. It’s the same approach
I’m just worried about bigger things now. It’s a kind of therapy.
I'd probably grab Boris by the boobs if he
turned up and just keep screaming 'whhhhhhhyyyyy' into his face.
DW: There was a gig in Stockport a while ago
where a drunk old guy tried to cause trouble. It was right before we played
"Stop being Dickheads to each other" so it ended up fitting into the
show. We couldn't have planned it any better really. But we don't usually have
any problems.
BP: Ah yeah, I remember the Stockport gig - he
was saying something about ‘gingers’ in the first band’s set. When he started
saying stuff when we played, I dedicated ‘dickheads’ to him and just played
over him when he tried to reply. I think he didn't take offense to us in
particular, he was just a drunk and obnoxious bellend.
Rank these 7 people in order of
obnoxiousness: Kanye West, Nigel Farage, Morrisey, Katie Hopkins, Piers Morgan,
Ben Shapiro, Tommy Robinson
Tommy Robinson
Katie Hopkins
Nigel Farage
Ben Shapiro
Piers Morgan
Morrissey
Kanye West
Piers Morgan seems to be pivoting to an anti-tory
stance and venting his frustrations at how the general public are getting
screwed over, whilst I appreciate that some of his opinions recently seem to be
more focused on people helping each other I still find him very dubious. I
think Kanye West had serious mental issues and maybe needs help, the others on
the list are just obnoxious dickheads all day every day.
What are your tips for defeating a 'Gammon Faced Vampire'?
BP: Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll, straight to the
chest. Or just ignore them. These people just crave attention, whether it’s
negative or positive they don’t care as long as people are paying attention to
them, attention is the blood they steal from their victims - they feed off it
like vampires and if you cut the source off they will wither and die.
What music have you been listening
to recently? Anything fans wouldn’t expect?
BP: According to my last.fm (yeah
I still use it) for the past 90 days I’ve listened to METZ, Ringo Deathstarr,
Santigold, Billy Nomates, Tomahawk, Girls In Synthesis, Austerity, SNFU,
Godspeed You Black Emperor and Asian Dub Foundation quite a lot. I’ve liked
stuff by TV Priest, Benefits, Panic Shack, and ex-girl recently as well. I
still listen to Emma Ruth Rundle a lot too.
DW: I'm kind of obsessed with the Viagra Boys
album Street Worms at the minute, it's amazing. Some Slift, Helms Alee, Drug
Church, Chelsea Wolfe, King Gizzard and Shakey Graves too.
What’s
your favourite album of the 2010s?
BP: Gangs by And So I Watch
You From Afar, I finally got a vinyl copy of it last year after looking for
years. I kiss it every night before bed. I have the band logo tattooed on my
arm from when my old band got to play ArcTanGent festival with them and I hung
out with Rory for a bit, he was double nice.
What does
the future hold for Those Fucking Snowflakes?
BP: We start recording six
tracks next week for a new release, it’s hopefully coming out on vinyl at the
start of next year. It’s a mix of a couple of old songs, newer ones and two new
‘written over lockdown songs’ - we can’t do gigs so we are just going to carry
on writing. It contains the lightest song (it’s not that light though) we’ve
ever done and the loudest heaviest one we have ever done. It’s pretty dark and
as much as I hate describing music as a rollercoaster it is a rollercoaster of
sounds.
Hopefully after this new EP were are about to record
(is six tracks an EP or mini-album?) is released someone will throw a bit of
cash at us to make a full album and buy a fancy new Orange Bass Amp as ours is
broken. Maybe some more fake blood for the stage as well.
DW: Yeah it looks like we don't have much choice
but to write and record for a while. But if this EP is a Big Dipper then the
next EP will be The Big One. (Pleasure Beach reference)
Follow Those Fucking Snowflakes on Facebook at facebook.com/thosesnowflakes and on Twitter at @thosesnowflakes.