It takes a lot to stand out in the UK scene right now with hardcore being in the best place it has been in years. Some bands rely on gimmick, some on being over the top and outlandish, and some like Supernova simply play what they want to play, say what they want to say and happen to be pretty damn good at doing it.
Since the last time they were featured on the site, Supernova have gone from strength to strength with plenty of shows under their belt and new EP which picks up where their demo left off last year and smashes through the glass ceiling of what the band themselves even thought they were capable of.
This is a band who started out with little expectation for themselves, looking to spread their anti-fascist, pro-equality message to the world and to have fun doing it. And instead, they have become one of the front runners of the straight edge revival (certainly in the UK at least) and now people overseas are starting to take notice.
We managed to catch up with Lindsey, Supernova's vocalist, to pick her brains now that the new Promo 2025 has dropped.
You just dropped your new release, Promo 2025. Can you tell me how the songs came together?
It’s been a long time coming! We’ve been so busy in both our personal lives and playing shows that we didn’t write anything as a band for around six months after the demo was done. I pretty much write lyrics constantly; I swear the notes and voice recording apps are my most used on my phone.
For songs, a lot of the time we start with a riff or a point of reference for a sound or vibe we like and tend to hammer the lyrics to it from there and build the rest out.
You are a band that makes no bones about talking about what you believe in. Can you explain how important spreading your message is to you?
For me, it’s so integral to the foundation of what hardcore is about. Collectively, most of our musical influences come from bands who have/had something to say, but on a personal level I’ve just always felt that hardcore is so deeply inherently political and it’s a space for us to talk/sing/shout about what’s important, what enrages us, what unites and divides us.
You have just come back from a stretch of European shows, were you expecting to achieve as much as you have when you started?
Honestly, it feels surreal. We didn’t think we’d do more than a handful of shows at most, it seemed wild to even put out the demo at the time.
Now we’ve played a tonne of shows, in like nine different countries, opened for Terror, Love Letter, Ringworm, we just released a promo, and we’re about to head out to play a festival in Madrid, followed by a run of UK shows and then play a festival in Cologne before heading back to open for Bane in London - all in less than a year of being a band.
None of that was ever on our radar, so we’re kind of pinching ourselves and trying to take it in.
Can you elaborate on the themes of the new songs?
For sure, we really wanted the songs on the promo to cover things we hadn’t necessarily touched on with our previous release. The opening track, "Possible," is straight up the only posi song I have ever written, under the notion that better is possible if you keep fighting for it.
"If Only You Knew" is about making a conscious choice to stay gentle and kind, despite the world around us constantly forcing us to be tough. It’s almost a societal standard to be "hard" and so much of hardcore leans into that macho energy, that sometimes it feels like that’s the only way to be. I wrote this song to summarise my acceptance of not being understood; because even though it would be so much easier if everyone understood your pain, sometimes the only way that they could understand it would be to experience it themselves - and that’s not something I ever want to put back into the world.
The last track is how I feel about the people who drop in and out of hardcore, taking what they want from it and seeing the subculture as a trend. I think "From My Hand" is the most direct, no explanation needed!
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Straight Edge as a movement is as strong as it ever has been now, how does it feel to be one of the bands spear-heading the revival?
That’s a major compliment, thank you. We certainly don’t see ourselves in that way, but it’s been so fucking cool to have people telling us they’ve claimed edge after seeing us or having younger generations lose it to our set and ask to use our marker to X up.
Straight Edge is a personal commitment to each of us, and whilst we’re stoked to see so many new Straight Edge kids cropping up recently and choosing this path with us, it’s not a requirement to listen to our music.
What else have you got lined up for the band? And what are your current goals?
July is stacked for us. We’re really looking forward to playing the new songs at our upcoming shows and seeing how they go down. We’re self-releasing the promo on tape in the next week and maybe a little extra something is coming mid-July, too. We’re in conversations with labels; we’d love to get out an EP early next year and press on vinyl, which is a bucket list thing for us that we never thought would happen.
We’re already writing, planning some cool shows and would love to be able to keep doing what we’re doing. Other than that, we’re on the hunt for a permanent drummer after having fill-ins for so long. Straight edge drummers are seriously the needle in a haystack of hardcore!
Have you got a message you would like to put out there?
If you aren’t using your platform for the good, know you’re complicit in the evil. It’s free Palestine until Palestine is free, don’t trust the 1% who would do the same to you as they’re doing to them if your circumstances meant you were born there, too.
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Supernova on social media: Instagram
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