Without Love, melodic hardcore lads from Northern England, have just unleashed their latest 12” EP, Diminishing Returns. In partnership with Southern California’s legendary hardcore label Indecision Records and the UK’s fledgling alternative label Best Life Records, the band brings us 8 tracks of unrelenting fast hardcore.
While the band has consistently delivered high-quality songwriting in the past (how many hardcore bands do you know that use a capo?), they have really come into their own, offering just over 15 minutes of real-deal hardcore reminiscent of the early- to mid-2000s, the heyday of labels like Rivalry, React!, and Bridge Nine Records.
So last year, you released a promo with some of the songs from Diminishing Returns on cassette, so these songs have been kicking around for a while, and you’ve been playing them live for some time. What have y’all been up to since the last “official vinyl release” with Time X Heist?
Yeah, we had the two songs from the promo in the set, but we wanted to limit it to those two until the record was out, so we wouldn’t be burnt out on playing them before it was even released! We’ve pretty much been working on these songs since the split came out; it takes us a while to get stuff done. Other than that, just playing gigs when we can, getting a few weekenders under our belts, including a short run of shows with Time X Heist when they were over here.
Speaking of live shows, you have your first on the European Mainland with Spear coming up. I feel like getting you over there has been a long time in the making, hasn’t it?
We’ve talked about getting over to the mainland every year since we started the band, so we’re really looking forward to it now that it’s finally happening. We’ve all done European tours in previous bands, but that feels like a long time ago now. We head over there later this week, and it’s gonna be great to see Spear live and to visit places we've never been. Shout out to Daan from the band Hometown Crew, who sorted out the dates for us, and they’re joining us on the last date, so it’ll be awesome to play with them again.
We’re also heading back over in June for Farewell Youth Fest in Dresden, and we’ll have a few more dates to add around that as well.
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What can listeners expect lyrically from you on this new record?
I don’t think I realised it when writing the individual songs, but the throughline of the record is feeling hopeless/powerless about the state of the world. If people want to dive into the lyrics, I’d rather they interpret them for themselves, but the themes include misinformation, comparisons between current and historical events, speciesism, our responsibility to the generations that follow us, and other lighthearted topics.
You’ve been partnered with Best Life for a while, who released your split with Time X Heist in the UK back in 2023. How did your relationship with Indecision come about?
Best Life have been really good to us. Jonathan’s always on board with whatever we want to do. When it comes to Indecision, I don’t need to tell you how iconic their back catalogue is, but some of the stuff they’ve put out recently have been some of our favourite records of the last few years. It was Mark from Time X Heist who put us in touch with Dave at Indecision, and it went from there. Dave’s been great to work with, still can’t believe he was up for taking a chance on a small band from the UK, but we’re eternally grateful that he did!
Your artwork was done by Chris Mollet, aka Youth Energy Designs. Chris is a buddy of mine from way back when. What inspired you to go with him (the art looks awesome by the way!)?
Yeah, Chris nailed it with the artwork and layout! The art he did for Rejection Pact’s LP from a few years ago was what put him on our radar. We had an idea of the themes we wanted to put across with the art and some half-baked ideas, so we put it to Chris and let him run with it. We couldn’t be happier with the result.
Are we ever going to see you in the U.S., or do we all have to bring our bands over to the UK to see you?
It would definitely be a stretch, but never say never. It’s cool to see some UK/European bands making it over to the States recently for some of the bigger fests. I think, for a long time, it just felt like it was totally unachievable. Without doing a fest, I think you’d need to come over for a pretty long tour to offset the cost of flights, etc. Plus, having mainland Europe on our doorstep is enough to keep most UK bands busy.
If what I’ve heard about the plans for social media screening and the like when coming into the States is true, then maybe we wouldn’t get let in anyway! So yeah, maybe for now you’ll have to keep sending your bands over here so we can educate them about our bland, stodgy British food.
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Diminishing Returns is out now via Indecision Records (U.S.) and Best Life Records (UK/EU).
Without Love on social media: Instagram
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