When it comes to 2000s UKHC, Nick Worthington was there not only as a fan but also a contributor. He fronted Dead Swans, a band that had a successful run that brought them a worldwide audience via their attack of vicious hardcore with melodic flourishes piercing through.
Dead Swans would become part of the Bridge Nine Records stable of artists, a label that had a massive impact on hardcore throughout the 2000s. After issuing several releases with the US-based label, and tons of touring, the band split up.
After that, Nick moved to Austria where he played in another awesome group called Public Domain (love the skate reference there). When he moved back to the UK, the singer formed his current band, Still In Love, bringing forth melodic hardcore with bite.
Nick was nice enough to dedicate some time to talk about his journey through hardcore.
When and how did your love affair with hardcore begin?
Probably in the early 2000s. I used to skate a lot at the Level in Brighton and one day I got talking to Matt Devine at the park, who’s now a close friend and ended up bring the drummer in my first band Turn Cold.
He was a BMXer but also in an amazing hardcore band called Abandon Ship at the time and he invited me to a show they were playing that evening at the Freebutt opening for Give Up the Ghost.
I ended up going along on my own, watching Abandon Ship blew my mind. Up until then I’d only really gone to punk shows at the Concorde 2 on Brighton beach, so that night is definitely where my love for hardcore music started.
What were some of the other local bands in Brighton that you saw play live early on?
The Permanent, Burning Times, Cold Snap. There were so many great bands that came and went, the Brighton Scene was amazing at that time and still is now.
What’s the genesis story behind Turn Cold?
I guess it kind of carries on from my answer to the first question…after meeting Matt at the park that day and going to see Abandon Ship we became close friends. Luke, the bassist in Turn Cold, was also a BMXer so we all just kind of knew each other from local skate parks.
The three of us were chatting at the park one day and came up with the idea of maybe doing a band. Matt was still in Abandon Ship but had a bit of free time and Luke and I both really wanted to give it a go. Luke then ended up introducing us to Joe Carter who became our guitarist and it started from there.
In terms of musical style, Turn Cold had a sound that had a strong American influence to it.
Basically we were all obsessed with Carry On, Count Me Out, and Panic and I think we had an idea of how we wanted to sound based on those bands, but in the end I don’t know if we really sounded anything like them.
READ MORE: 2018 Interview with Carry On Vocalist Ryan George
I love that self-titled EP from 2005. What’s the story behind the label that released it, Courage to Care Records?
Courage to Care, if I remember correctly, was run by Pete Bust who sang in 50 On Red and our friend Katie and they were based up in Leeds. I think we played a show up there and one of them picked up our demo and ended up asking if they could put the next record out, which was that self-titled 7 inch.
Did the EP do well within the UKHC scene?
I feel like the record did well because the scene was so big but personally I think we lost momentum and people lost interest by the time Sowing the Seasons came out.
After releasing the Sewing the Seasons EP, Turn Cold broke up in 2006. What ended up happening?
I laugh about it now, but I’d completely forgotten this story until I met up with Luke last year for dinner and he reminded me what happened. We got asked to do a UK run with AFI in 2006.
Our guitarist was roadying for Bring Me the Horizon at the time and decided he’d rather do that instead…so me, Luke and Matt decided it just wasn’t worth it and broke up the band. In hindsight we probably should have just got a fill in guitarist but we were 18 and not the smartest… so that’s what happened.
Did forming Dead Swans feel like a fresh start? Was there a big discussion when you formed the band about what you wanted to achieve, or did things just happen organically?
Lyrically, it was definitely a continuation from Turn Cold so it didn’t really feel like a fresh start. After Turn Cold broke up, I guess I was open to doing something new and was already friends with Ben and Robbie from Nervous Wreck. The idea of the band kind of just started organically with them and we all knew Benny Mead from Akehurst, all four of us grew up in Worthing.
Around the same time Pid had just left The Legacy and that was kind of the final piece of the puzzle. We wrote our demo and ended up recording it at the same time as the Nervous Wreck split with Risky Business - they had some extra time leftover at the studio with Sam Thredder and we figured we’d just record the Dead Swans demo then and there.
Gallows was getting a lot of music press attention in the UK at that time, with some journalists comparing them and the hardcore scene to the ’77 punk movement. How did it feel from your standpoint as both a musician and fan in the UK?
It was definitely an exciting time and I guess yeah, bands like Gallows in the early 2000s had a big influence on the hardcore scene sound and aesthetic. I can see why that comparison would be used, I feel like hardcore when it’s authentic is a continuation of punk music, not just the sound but the whole attitude…that you’re doing something outside of the system.
The Southern Blue EP came out in 2007. How was the band’s debut received at home? Were you playing a lot of shows during that time?
That period of time was definitely the most shows I’ve ever played in my life.
When 'Southern Blue' came out, things started growing quickly, we were playing pretty much every week and the EP did much better than we expected, especially in the UK. There was a time period where we were playing the Underworld in Camden around once a month.
Your split with Architects came out the year after that. Describe your connection with those guys. Did you play shows together often?
Back in 2005, when I was in Turn Cold, I was working at a bar in Brighton called the Penthouse and Dan and Tom Searle used to come in a lot and we’d hang out there and other Brighton bars and go to shows together.
Architects were already a pretty well established band in the UK by the time Dead Swans started and they asked us to do the split not long after Southern Blue came out. We played a bunch of shows with them over the years as well as touring the split.
Dead Swans was nominated for Best British Newcomer at the Kerrang! Awards in 2008. Who else was up for the award, and what are some memories that stand out from the ceremonies?
I honestly don’t remember who else was nominated but I do have some pretty ridiculous memories from that night. First off, every other band had a music video to introduce them and we had nothing, so it was just a really pixelated photograph of us and a black screen with Dead Swans written on it.
We were sitting at a table with the guys from Bring Me the Horizon and our table was the only one that made any noise when Dead Swans were announced because no one else knew who we were, although after they played a section of The Hanging Sun, Zack de la Rocha said to one of us (I don’t remember who) that we sounded hard… that was pretty cool. Also, Robbie stole Anthrax’s rum and slid down the staircase shirtless before getting kicked out.
At what point did you start talking to Chris Wrenn at Bridge Nine Records about possibly signing with the label? Was coming over to the States a huge priority for the band? Was that part of the discussions with B9?
Chris Wrenn and Karl Hensel contacted us after the split with Architects. They were coming over with Polar Bear Club and we met up with them in Kingston at The Fighting Cocks.
I honestly can’t remember much but we must have talked about joining B9 and it wasn’t long after that that they signed us. Going to the States was definitely something we all wanted, so it was really exciting.
The band traveled to Massachusetts to record what would become the Sleepwalkers album. What did producer Jay Maas bring to the album? Also, did you encounter any culture shock during the sessions?
I remember being on the plane over to record Sleepwalkers and we hadn’t actually finished the record, I was finishing up the lyrics on the journey over and we wrote the end of Tent City in the studio with Jay. We’d heard the previous records he had produced so we knew it would be the right sound for us at the time.
As far as culture shock not really, mainly because we were just going to the studio everyday and then eating and going back to Brian from In Remembrance parents’ house where we were staying.
How did you approach your lyrics back then? Did you constantly write in a journal or into a document on your computer, and then mine from there once you had music to write to?
I’ve always had a small notebook on me for writing lyrics, back then it was the same, and I’d just write things down when they came to mind. Obviously, once a band I’m in are actively writing songs, my lyric writing is a bit more prolific as it’s on my mind more, but for the most part, yeah, I’m always noting things down and coming back to it later.
When you listen to the songs on the album today, are you taken back to the inspiration points to the lyrics? For instance, the song "Ivy Archway” carries a certain drama to it that feels like it must have been written about something deeply personal to you.
At this point, I have a certain detachment from those songs, they were written at a really specific point in my life when I was much younger and because we played them so much over so many years it became quite painful to keep getting on stage and being pulled back to that time, so I sort of switched off from them.
A lot of the lyrics on there were about a break up at the time, but there are also songs about losing my Grandad and my frustrations and general lack of accountability. "Ivy Archway" was just a hopeless acceptance of friendships and situations that would come and go when you live in a small town, and wanting to get out but not really feeling like you ever will.
Did the constant comparisons to American Nightmare and Carry On get on your nerves? “They’re the British version of American Nightmare” was something people were saying here, usually as a compliment, but still. I could see how that would get grating after a while.
Honestly, I take it as a compliment, American Nightmare and Carry On were and still are amazing bands. Obviously, you always want to have your own sounds but if you’re going to be compared to other bands, those are good ones to be compared to.
That being said, they weren’t actually bands that Dead Swans were listening to or taking influence from directly, I think the comparison comes mainly from having an emotionally charged vocal sound as opposed to sounding musically alike.
How much touring did you put in to support the Sleepwalkers album? What were your impressions of America once you started playing over here? I’m sure being on B9 was a big help in terms of visibility.
We did a short run of shows when we went over to record Sleepwalkers and then a full US tour right after the release with Comeback Kid, Mother of Mercy, and Shai Hulud.
I think our first ever show in the US was in Doylestown, Pennsylvania? I can distinctly remember there being some controversy because people mistakenly thought we were a straight edge band, which we weren’t. I went into a bar in Doylestown to buy beer to take away because they didn’t have any off licences and people were staring at me like I was mad.
The drives between shows were no joke, we weren’t used to that length of traveling between venues, but despite the discomforts we all look back on it as one of the best times of our lives. We just felt really excited and lucky to be there as a UK band on B9.
Did the touring schedule factor into the lineup changes Dead Swans went through back then?
Our guitarist Pid was running a business at the time Sleepwalkers came out and it made it difficult for him to keep up with our touring schedule. Luckily we had a lot of friends who were great guitarists and able to fill in for him. That’s how Joey from More Than Life and Kai from Landscapes ended up being a permanent part of the band later on.
Why was there a long gap between Sleepwalkers and the band’s next release, 2012’s Anxiety and Everything Else EP?
Things just kind of fell apart, we were partying pretty hard and not taking things seriously after the success of Sleepwalkers. That was the beginning of my addiction starting to get out of control, I’m surprised that that EP actually even happened to be honest, but yeah that’s why there was a big gap.
Listening to that record today, I forgot how vicious and to-the-point the material is on it. How do you feel about those songs today, especially since it’s Dead Swans’s, well, swan song release?
If I’m honest, I haven’t listened to those songs in a very long time. When it was written there was a lot of drink and drugs around, we weren’t really as focused and I can hear it in the record. I’m happy that it resonated with people, but it’s not a time in my life that I care to look back on too much.
If anything, that record only happened because we owed B9 an album and we rushed it. I’d do things very differently if I was in the same situation now.
Why did the Dead Swans break up when it did?
Things were heading that way for a while. We weren’t writing music or playing as well as we should have and I’d moved to Vienna a year before in 2012. After we did the tour with Horror Show, we kind of collectively decided to call it a day.
I can’t remember things that clearly, it was a pretty messy time, but I know there were a lot of factors that contributed to it with drink and drugs being one of them.
How has it felt to play the Dead Swans reunion shows you've done since 2016?
It was exciting and messy and pretty much exactly how it had been before we broke up. Not much had changed but we all still really wanted to play and it was fun regardless.
I can’t speak for the others, but getting back together was definitely a bit of a Band-Aid for me. My addiction was serious and I wasn’t in a good headspace. I used it as a distraction, so it wasn’t the healthiest environment but I still loved being on stage and connecting with people.
During your time in Dead Swans, you moved to Austria. There, you started a new band called Public Domain that had more of a punk vibe to it. There was also a skateboarding theme going on.
Coincidentally, Robbie and I both moved to Vienna in 2012 and were still hanging out, going to shows and skating together. We decided we wanted to do something a bit more stripped back musically, with some of the other guys we were skating with. We started as Public Domain but actually changed our name to Last Shreds after the first demo and EP came out.
We recorded another demo as Last Shreds and a split with Ultraviolet from Boston. I actually listened to those records for the first time in a while last year and I’d forgotten how much I like them. We did a short Europe run with Defeater and Gnarwolves in 2017 but it’s a shame we didn’t get to tour more.
That brings us to your current band, Still In Love. What’s the story there?
It’s kind of a long story on my side. I’d had, in the back of my mind, the intention of writing a record for Dead Swans about getting sober since my first attempt to do it in 2017. I eventually moved back to the UK in 2018, finally got sober and finished putting most of the lyrics together.
To cut a long story short, I realised it was never going to get written with Dead Swans, so I started reaching out to other musicians that I knew from the scene. During the pandemic I had a couple of false starts with new bands, one of which went pretty far along in the writing process. It was only when I had given up on the idea of anything happening that Still in Love came about.
Adrian was passing by my work one day. We stood in the doorway having a chat and said we should start a band, so I told him about "Withdrawal Symptoms" and the concept behind the lyrics. Adrian was already in another band with Mark and Giulio and then Bill, who had been in Throats with Mark, joined the lineup.
I had originally wanted the name of the band to be Withdrawal Symptoms, but in the end we decided it was better as a title for the first record. I was listening to a Cat Power song called "Still in Love" on the underground one day and the name just clicked.
Unfortunately Bill and Giulio weren’t able to continue with the band after recording Withdrawal Symptoms Pt. 1, so we brought in Mophead from BWP on drums and Curtis from BMTH on Guitar and started writing Pt. 2. We’ve all known each other and played on tours or in bands together at some point over the last 20 years so it’s a really great line up and writing with them has been amazing. They are all insanely talented musicians but more importantly, really kind people, who have the right priorities.
We definitely have a lot of diverse musical influences but we all love bands like Tragedy, Cursed and The Hope Conspiracy. I think our sound is still developing to be honest so I’m excited to see where this next record takes us.
Still In Love released Withdrawal Symptoms Pt. 2 in June. What can we expect from you guys in the coming months?
We have already started writing music for our next release. We recorded both parts of Withdrawal Symptoms with Lewis Johns at The Ranch so it’s thanks to him that it sounds so massive, he’s a magician.
We’ve got a few shows coming up this year as well, with some great bands, so should be announcing those in the coming weeks.
What are some UKHC bands that you feel more people around the world should know about? That includes both current and older bands.
Past bands: Abandon Ship (always!), Insist, Fast Point, On Thin Ice
Current bands: Without Love, No relief, Disengagement, Stiff Meds
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Still In Love on social media: Instagram
Tagged: 2000s hardcore week, dead swans, still in love, turn cold
