London bruisers Headstone were an absolute no-brainer for the Best New UKHC Bands of 2025 piece I put together at the end of last year, but they’ve definitely already surpassed themselves in 2026 with the release of their debut EP, Year of the Stone.
Beefing up both their sound and songwriting, neither of which was particularly lacking in the first place, the band has put together a massive set of tracks here. There are guest features from Luke from Xile and Liam from Divine Hatred/Crowquill. There’s a heavy, moody interlude about halfway through, and naturally, there’s a track called “Headstone." Hell yeah.
It still has that Satisfaction-era Hatebreed-by-way-of-London beatdown vibe that guitarist Jack Chambers described to me last time we spoke - or, as he puts it this time around: “Still Headstone, just better.” Here's our complete chat.
How do you feel about Headstone's first year as a band?
It’s been great. We’ve learned a lot, and I feel like we’ve all improved. It had been a while since any of us had been in bands, so it’s been nice to get the rust out. We had to turn down a fair few show offers, annoyingly just through work commitments, so this year we’re just trying to play as much as possible.
Any highlights so far?
The first shows outside of London were great. Seeing people know the words and dance to mosh parts in cities we hadn’t been to as a band before was an amazing feeling. We played Lincoln, and I think none of us had ever been there before, bar maybe Filip (vocals). We had no idea what to expect, but it was so much fun. We want more of the same this year, fingers crossed.
Was there anything you set out to do differently on Year of the Stone over the demo and single you previously released?
We definitely wanted to branch out a bit more than we did on the demo. We all love so many bands and genres, so we wanted to broaden our sound a bit, and we’re all better musicians and writers now, so that’s actually come through quite naturally. It’s still Headstone, just better.
Do you think playing shows since the release of the demo has had an effect on the way you write?
Shows have definitely helped us pinpoint what works and what doesn’t live. At the end of the day, the biggest joy from doing this is seeing people dance, whether that be two-stepping or just straight fucking each other up, so we’ve taken that on board a lot more. We’ve also learned a lot from bands we’ve played with, whether that be gear-wise or composition-wise.
We all dance for bands we play with if we’re into it so it’s natural for us to be like “well that made me want to dance, that build up got me going.” etc. It's been a great learning experience being inspired by people you now consider friends.
What are the new tracks on this EP about?
Most of our songs are born from places of both life struggles and worldly issues. A lot of the lyrics, all written by Filip, can relate to both daily issues people experience, be it with work, money, love, hatred, bigotry, as well as apply to the broader nightmare going on in the world today.
One specific I’ll give away is a song called “Still Here,” which is specifically about reaching rock bottom with your mental health and fighting through suicidal ideation to come out the other side. I’m very proud of that one (well done, Filip).
Do you have any band bucket list items you’d like to achieve in 2026?
A tour would be cool. We’d need to plan it way in advance so we can all sort time off, but that’s just something every band aspires to. Same with playing shows in Europe. We’ve also not played a festival yet, so that would be fun.
Other than that, we just wanna keep playing shows and having fun, so as long as like five people give a shit, we’ll be about.
What else has Headstone got coming up?
Shows! We're doing a short weekender at the end of February, a fair few London shows, some of which have been announced, some haven’t, we’re going to Manchester for the first time in the summer, and hopefully we can play a few more places for the first time.
We’ve already started writing new music, so I’m sure that’ll take shape over the course of the year, too.
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Headstone on social media: Instagram
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